But I would suspect – on either side of the Waveney – that there will be elements on there now questioning whether either Glenn Roeder or Jim Magilton are, really, the right men for the job.

After all, having got the Canaries to within striking distance of the play-offs, the manner in which they have now tumbled back into the mid-table pack is clearly 'a failure' on Roeder's part; likewise Ipswich's inability to grasp their own play-off chance is a sure sign that

Magilton can't go the extra mile; that he's not got that in his locker.

That, I guess, would be how the argument would run. After all, both East Anglian clubs are merely 'on loan' to the Championship anyway.

In all but league position, they are Premiership clubs. Look at their stadiums, their crowds, their training grounds, their bank balance...

I say all this only on the back of a speculation that Alan Curbishley is now on his last legs at West Ham United on the back of that run of 4-0 defeats.

The 'sins' laid at Curbishley's door, in particular, that the Hammers looked likely now to fall short of a qualifying for Europe and a place in the top four looked beyond them.

The expectation at Norwich and Ipswich is they have inalienable right to a place in the top flight; that to be left bobbing about with the flotsam and jetsam of the Football League world is somehow an immediate and damning indictment of the two unfortunate men left to keep such rampant expectations in check.

Travel around the Football League and see the new academy set-up that has sprouted up next to the rebuilt Hawthorns, look across at what used to be that vast open terrace at The Valley and stroll up to St Mary's on a Tuesday night, and you swiftly sense that there are a whole clutch of clubs that would claim just as much right to be in the top flight.

But only on the back of nights out with both Watford and Stoke of late, there is a nagging thought that increasingly crosses your mind.

That, to their credit, both Norwich and Ipswich have Premiership expectations of another sort – in that both clubs feel wedded to playing in a Premiership kind of way.

Whether that works is, of course, another matter. For should Stoke and Watford be clutching their tickets to the top flight in seven weeks time, it ought to prompt an interesting debate about expectation, about playing the Premiership way and about the ugly reality of playing winning, Championship football.

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