Blues manager Paul Lambert is looking for the “spark and that momentum to really kickstart” Town’s resurgence but feels there is positivity around the club despite still sitting at the bottom of the Championship.

While the Blues remain eight points plus goal difference from safety, Lambert has instilled a positive atmosphere around the club, a stark contrast to what might be expected.

“That’s the strange thing about being at this club,” he reflected. “The club’s at the bottom, things have drifted, all these sorts of thing have happened, but the support for the club is huge.

“[Owner] Marcus [Evans] has been really, really supportive, everything we’ve asked he’s tried to help. There’s no problem there.

“We’ve tried to put a little building brick to say, ‘We can start from here’ regardless whether the club stays up or goes down.

“We think the club should be run this sort of way and we’re trying to look after the club and put it in the right place, on and off the pitch, whether that’s through the community or whether it’s through anything else, the trust, the town, everything about it because you just sense a massive support behind it.

“This is a huge club this, is has got a massive support behind it, we just have to try and pull that all back together that I think was lost.”

He added: “I was talking to John Wark this morning, Warky came in this morning and we were just having a chat. I grew up watching him in his era and it was brilliant.

“What a helluva player he was, 30-odd goals from midfield. He must be worth about £400 million today.

“When I look at Butch [Terry Butcher] and all them guys and the club, what a club it is, it’s absolutely brilliant.

“And the support behind it. It’s not a normal situation when you’ve got a support that keeps backing the team when they’re bottom of the table, it’s phenomenal the way they are.

“It gets me annoyed when I see it in the position it’s in because it’s got everything there. It just needs that spark and that momentum to really kickstart it.

“But when you speak to guys like that, and even Matty Holland coming in the other week, it’s brilliant, it’s great because the club does have an incredible history attached to it, which in my opinion it had lost.

“We’re trying to get that back and it means a helluva lot having people like that running about the club with the stature that those players gave the club.”

Why does he believe things haven’t yet taken off at Town as they did when he was at Carrow Road? “Somebody asked me that question the other day. Norwich were in League One. They had Championship players in League One, that’s the difference.

“You can go through them all: Grant Holt, Wes Hoolahan, Daryl Russell, they were all top players. They were in League One.

“What actually happened was that they went down and the lads came back up, Chrissie Martin, guys like that, they were excellent.

“I brought in Fraser Forster, he was great, Russell Martin, who was great, David Fox. They all knew it, Gilly [Town first-team coach Matt Gill, then a Norwich player] knew it. They all knew it, they were better players than League One, that’s what they were.

“So all they had to do was gel together, get a wee bit of momentum and get out of the league. That’s what they were.

“This football club went the way it had, they lost a lot of players, lost 45 goals out of the team, which is an incredible amount of goals.

“They recruited eight or nine guys to come in in one transfer window. It’s incredible the turnover.

“But it is what it is. We’ve not won enough games, but that’s football, that’s the way it works. We have to take the good with the bad.”

How does he rate Town’s chances of staying up with only 16 matches remaining? “Same as I did when I first came. We’ve played really well in games and not got a break at certain times and if we keep playing the way we have and we try and turn that little bit of fortune into wins, then great.

“One or two games we’ve not played well and we didn’t deserve anything but there are games where we should have had more points and that’s been the most frustrating thing. But fight-wise and commitment-wise I can’t ask for any more.”

Photo: TWTD

ShropshireBluenago09 added 18:17 - Feb 7 Needs a change of formation 442 or 352 and more direct way of playing. Keane and Quaner 2 up front and knock some high balls in. Put their back four under pressure
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raycrawfordswig added 18:21 - Feb 7 Stick of dynamite up the backside might get things moving
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muccletonjoe added 18:30 - Feb 7 We can't keep playing the same way and expect things to change. Really don't understand Lamberts mentality on this. Our performances under this system are actually getting worse.
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Pecker added 18:36 - Feb 7 Play Judge as a proper 10 and things will improve.
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Michael101 added 08:21 - Feb 8 Is it the systerm??or are the player Norfolk and good
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SouperJim added 10:47 - Feb 8 People are starting to have a pop at Lambert because results haven't improved, but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He's doing the best he can with what is at his disposal and I include the transfer budget in that. “We've tried to put a little building brick to say, ‘We can start from here' regardless whether the club stays up or goes down. We think the club should be run this sort of way and we're trying to look after the club and put it in the right place" This is why I wouldn't want anyone else managing our club right now and as fans we simply must stick with him.

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armchaircritic59 added 22:53 - Feb 8 For me the right time to judge PL is when he's had a whole pre-season's preparation behind him and has got the players he really wants here. See how the first 6-10 games of the new season go, (whichever division), then start to make some sort of judgement. I think big strides have already been made "off pitch", but of course it's "on pitch" where it really counts. Let's hope for the sake of this club, that it all starts coming together next season.

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