Sunday mornings are all about reading match previews and, in the aftermath of victory over a struggling team, Norwich City supporters are reading all about BAD Middlesbrough.

BAD? Yes Bitter and Disappointed. Caretaker manager, Steve Agnew is reported as claiming that the Simeon Jackson deciding goal was offside. How he makes that claim is beyond comprehension. He was in the dugout, on the half way line, and the goal went in at the Norwich and Peterborough (known always to City supporters as the River) End. Any camera views from a non-televised match are from gantries either on the half way line or at the edge of both 18 yard boxes, so hardly an angle for definite determination of an offside ruling.

On the other hand the referee and his assistant were ideally placed, the assistant right in line with play. The referee consulted his assistant before pointing to the centre spot. Two match officials versus one bitter and disappointed manager. Besides, it is already recorded as a win for City. A loss, another loss, for Middlesbrough who are not only struggling for survival in the second tier, but losing their first ever game at Carrow Road.

Elsewhere on the internet a M'brough fanzine makes out that the northerners were the dominant side over the 90 minutes. Yet still the travelling few had that long journey homewards with defeat as a travelling companion.

For a side that has been reasonably comfortable in the Premiership in earlier years, but has struggled for at least the last five, it is hardly any wonder that all involved with the club are clutching at straws as their ship flounders in the Championship storm. And it hurts. Norwich City supporters know from recent experience exactly how much it hurts. Soon the pundits will begin to say that M'brough are too big or too good a club to get relegated. Then they will start to change their tune.

By the time Christmas comes around, if their fortunes have not changed by then, M'brough supporters will start to bemoan what they perceive to be judgemental errors from the chairman to the kit man, and there will be a rift between those that insist that staying positive is the only way to stave off the prospect of relegation, and those that will say it is already a foregone conclusion and hope they can repeat the performance of Leicester in 2008-09 and Norwich in 2009-10.

The one thing they can ill afford to do now, at every level of the club, is to start blaming the ill luck on officials. That will soon turn to having some complaint in every game and any ideas of actually fighting back to maintain Championship status will fly out the window. As will managers and the better players.

By Christmas the M'brough board will be seriously budgeting for League One, and players will be sold in the effort. That will just lead to further lack of competitiveness and that much closer to the drop.

Norwich supporters know all about it. The scabs have not yet made way for scars.

In the meantime, Middlesbrough must drop the BAD attitude. The game is done and dusted. You lost. Focus on the next game because no amount of whining is going to change the result of Norwich City 1, Middlesbrough 0.

Get over it.

Photo: Action Images

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