Isn't the answer obvious?

Remember this?

“I will stand up and be counted and take the flak that comes,” he said. “The one thing I want the players to do over the next fortnight is look in the dictionary and see what the word honest means, because they seem to have forgotten what that means, ie for themselves, for me and, most important of all, the football club and the supporters who pay hard-earned money, travel the width and breadth of the country to support them and they throw that performance and the performance against QPR two weeks ago back in their faces."

Sounds a bit like this doesn't it?

"Worthington again pointed the finger at his players, as he had done after the accusing them of lacking desire and passion, but admitted the buck stopped with him.“I don't ask for a lot from the players but I do ask for passion and desire, and we didn't show that in abundance,” said Worthington.“But that comes from me and I have got to deal with it and make sure we sort it out.“There are no excuses. We've got some good players here but today the performance levels were not good enough.”And although three Championship managers lost their jobs last week, Worthington insists he does not feel under any pressure.“I don't feel any pressure, I feel disappointed for the supporters who have travelled a long way, paid good money, given up a lot of time to see that,” he said.“What I am disappointed with is the performance level. I can deal with all the other bits and bobs, that is part of the job nowadays.“If you don't want to be in it get out. I want to be in it, I enjoy it. I have said before I love the job and certainly from my point of view it won't be from the lack of trying."

Two matches, nearly 11 months apart, yet nothing has changed, as even the manager (but apparently not the board) can see. And really is the problem actually the players? Of the team that started on that grim November day at Wolverhampton only three (Doherty, Colin and McVeigh) started on Saturday at Plymouth. And it's interesting to note that the player singled out for especial criticism after Wolves - Adam Drury - was unavailable on Saturday - as was the more normal target of the manager's ire - Darren Huckerby.

A fortune spent, almost an entire new team, a new coach, yet still the same old problems remain. Everyone else has long since worked out what the answer is - how long before the Stowmarket property developers get it?

So it's come to this

At last some honesty comes out of Norwich City: Nigel Worthington has been telling it like it is. We are tonight visiting a club that (even ignoring their points deduction) are in the bottom half of League One. Any team with pretensions to promotion to the Premier League would approach this game with a view to playing them off the pitch - particularly as the pitch is "a lovely pitch to play on" according to Mr Worthington. Not us. We are going there to "battle and compete" says Nigel. Which gives us great insight into how he views the squad he has spent millions assembling.

And it does seem that someone has been feeding truth serum to Mr Worthington. Most people would, I think, be inclined to agree with Chris Lakey's assessment of the last week as "disastrous". Not so Mr Worthington who thinks "we had an average week by our standards". Let's recap that "average" week so that we can better understand what the manager's view of our current "standards" is:

We started off by getting thrashed at Coventry - a team so desperate in the striking department that they actually paid money for Leon "he scored against the scum, that's all he's ever done" MacKenzie. And we even had the assistance of a referee who failed to send off Shackell in the first minute and then booked a Coventry player rather than award a clear penalty. Mr Worthington added to the success of that day by picking an unfit player who duly exacerbated his injury and is now out for a month.

We followed it up by throwing away a two-goal lead at Southend, a team with no pretensions whatsoever to be challengers in this league.

And we rounded things off in style at "Fortress" Carrow Road stumbling to defeat against a very moderate Palace side. It says a lot for our standards that our keeper was the man of the match and that we had no shots on target.

Most teams with eyes on the play-offs would look at the three fixtures we had and consider 5 points to be the sort of return to expect in an "average" week. It says a lot for the standards that Nigel Worthington has set that he regards one point as "average".

At the end of last season in excess of 10% of season ticket holders failed to renew. How much higher will that figure be this time if this is what our "average" weeks are like?

Not good enough.