"Waste" - Sky Sports pundit questions big Norwich City decision made by Ben Knapper | OneFootball

The Canaries announced on Tuesday that their head coach had left the club.

Sky Sports presenter and Norwich City fan Simon Thomas has blasted sporting director Ben Knapper's decision to sack Johannes Hoff Thorup.

'Tis the season to get rid of your manager/head coach, apparently, with Norwich joining the likes of Cardiff City, Leicester City and West Bromwich Albion in the festivities.

At the start of the season, the hope of those at Carrow Road was that the Danish boss would be able to replicate the achievements of his predecessor, David Wagner, who was sacked by Knapper last summer, by making the play-offs.

It's coming to that point in the campaign where the top six will be decided, and the Canaries are nowhere near that picture, which prompted the former Arsenal loans manager to pull the plug on Hoff Thorup.

"Whilst we made this appointment with a long-term focus and in line with our wider club strategy and direction, unfortunately recent results and performances have deemed it necessary for us to make a change," said Knapper in the statement which confirmed the departure of the head coach and assistant coach Glen Riddersholm.

For the final two games of the 2024/25 campaign, Jack Wilshere will take interim charge of the club. Regardless of how those matches turn out, it's clear that some quarters of the City faithful are not at all happy with how things have gone since the Dane was appointed 10 months ago.

Sky Sports presenter's angry reaction to Ben Knapper, Johannes Hoff Thorup decision

Thomas, the host of Soccer Saturday, is one of those incensed supporters. He has lambasted the decision to part ways with the Dane, slamming the club for appointing a project manager and then not letting him see out said project.

He said: "If there was a 'process' @NorwichCityFC then surely hiring a manager who could see the process through was the most important part. Instead the 'process' has been in reverse since the turn of the year. What a waste of a season."

An initial post on X from the BBC's Nick Mashiter suggested that Norwich's American owners were the ones behind the decision to part ways with Hoff Thorup. However, his post has since been deleted, and local outlet The Pink Un have suggested that the sporting director was the one behind it.

Ben Knapper will be under a lot of pressure

The former Arsenal employee has been in his current position since November 2023. In that time he has sacked two managers, made 15 signings and brought in five people to the club's coaching staff. When you look at the hit rate of these moves, it doesn't paint him as a promising, up-and-coming football operator.

At 37-years-old, it's not a huge surprise that someone like him isn't hitting it out the park with every swing of the bat. A slightly more consistent and more positive set of results is going to be required of him over the coming months.

Mashiter said that there was an internal feeling that Norwich had pulled off a coup by getting Hoff Thorup in the summer, and this was reflected in Knapper's first public statement about the head coach. Now we sit here, less than a year later, and all of those words mean nothing; Knapper is back to square one and really in need of a good roll of the dice.