Positivity returns at Norwich City as Jez Moxey departs after just six months

On Thursday evening it was announced that Norwich City Chief Executive Jez Moxey had resigned from his role at the club with immediate effect. This news came as a huge shock to City supporters, not least because the ex-Wolves chief only joined the club six months ago, in August, when he replaced David McNally who also resigned following our relegation from the Premier League in May.

Usually, when a manager, player or – in this case – a chief executive, joins your club, you have to take the opinions of their ex-supporters with a pinch or salt. More often than not supporters will hold a certain degree of bitterness and, as a result, their views are not always highly reliable. In the case of Moxey, however, the opinions that the Wolves fans gave upon his arrival at Norwich were difficult to a ignore. Pretty much the entire fan-base, to a man, had only negative things to say about him. They talked about his lack of ambition, his disrespect for supporters and the years of failure that he had presided over. Sometimes, when a fan-base is so universally united in their contempt for an ex-CEO, you have to listen. With this in mind, the prospects of Moxey being the right man to successfully lead our post-McNally era seemed minimal. Within just six months, this has proven to be the case.

His time at City did not get off to the best of starts when he (and the board, manager and recruitment team) failed to sufficiently strengthen the squad in the summer transfer window. Upon relegation, it was plainly obvious to City supporters that we needed at least one new centre-back and two new strikers. Come September 1st, however, we had signed no centre-backs and just one striker and were left with an abundance of attacking midfielders (who we didn’t need). The early signs were not promising.

Moving on, it was not long before we saw his ‘contempt for supporters’, that the Wolves fans had warned us of, demonstrated. Communication with fan-groups was almost non-existent whilst supporters who wrote to him with queries or concerns were either ignored or treated with a blunt, patronising response thanking them for their “continued interest in the club”.

Pretty much the only communication we did get from Moxey was through in-house interviews that were published on the club’s YouTube channel. The most controversial of these was when he came out to back Alex Neil, despite a woeful spell of form in November and December that showed no sign of curtailing itself. At the time, this support of Neil seemed both blinded and deluded and it did very little to endear himself to Norwich supporters who, at this stage, were baying for Neil’s ahead. After three wins in three and an apparent turn-around in form, there is a possibility that Moxey’s continued backing of Neil could prove to be a stroke of genius but this certainly did not look likely at the time and the Scot still has much, much to do if this is going to be the case.

Then came the hugely controversial issue of ticket pricing for the FA Cup Third Round tie against Southampton. At £25 for an adult, this was deemed hugely excessive for a less than appetising cup game and the uproar that this caused resulted in a boycott – which saw the lowest Carrow Road attendance in the FA Cup for many years: 12,479.

The combination of these factors meant that, perhaps slightly unfairly, Moxey was associated with all that was wrong at the club and he was largely blamed for the poisonous atmosphere that was looming over Carrow Road. During the visit of Wolves, this opposition culminated in City supporters joining in with the Wolves fans in their anti-Moxey chanting and after the game a group of Norwich supporters were pictured holding an old Wolves ‘Moxey Out’ banner.

Whilst I think that it is wrong to put all of the blame on Moxey (there are a few more within the board who we could also do with leaving), it does feel like his departure has lifted some of the gloom that was rapidly descending over the club. There is suddenly a far more positive feeling among the supporters and whilst this is largely due to our improved performances on the pitch, there is no doubt that the departure of Moxey has contributed to this improved mood.