I think it's time for us all to be a bit more Norm

For clarity, I'm not posting this in my capacity as a mod, just as another user of the forum.

I didn’t know Norm, apart from as a familiar face at away games, with his various distinctive hats, and more recently the big headphones. However, in the aftermath of his death I was struck by what a chill bloke he seemed to be in the various videos of him talking about his time supporting us, and one particular comment that stuck out was someone (sorry, can't remember who) posting that even towards the end of that dreadful FA Cup game against Gillingham he was still saying that we could get something out of the game. I think we could all benefit from a dose of that kind of positivity right now.

Since Sheffield Wednesday a significant chunk of the fanbase appear to have developed a collective case of the jitters, and the Ipswich result has made things worse. While I can understand that to an extent, as we're not safe yet and 2019/20 is still a bit too fresh in the mind, we're not doomed either, and acting like we are may end up being a self-fulfilling prophesy. Yes, we don't pick the team or the tactics, and we're not out there on the pitch, but the nervousness in the stands can affect the players, and they're less likely to take risks to try to make something special happen if we jump on them as soon as they make a mistake. I can think of a number of games where our support has dragged the team through to get something out of a game, and we need to do that again tomorrow, and next week if necessary. It'd be great if we can emulate the recent Watford game, where our fans were so loud you'd have thought they were the home support if not for the words of the songs, no matter how well we're doing at the time.

Now I expect someone is going to accuse me of having rose-tinted specs on, or say "but Ali, it's easy to be positive when you haven't spent loads of time and money travelling to games to watch the football we've seen this season". Ironically, anyone who knows me in person will tell you I'm much more of an Eeyore than a Tigger in temperament, but if we want to see better football then we need better players, and to afford better players we need to stay up. All we can really control in this situation is how we respond to it, and at the moment 100% support is likely to get better results than criticism, no matter how valid that may or may not be. Trust me, it's also much more enjoyable going into a game thinking anything could happen rather than dreading it because you've convinced yourself it's all going to go horribly wrong.

So no matter whether you think Nathan Jones is "not the Messiah, he's just a very naughty boy", where you stand on the Kaminski v Mannion debate, TC's value to the team, who should be playing in midfield or why we aren't scoring enough, remember they may not be "by far the greatest team the world has ever seen", but they're ours. Can we really call ourselves football supporters if we're not, you know, supportive? At the risk of sounding like Ted Lasso, BELIEVE! And if you can't quite manage that right now, fake it until we make it :)