It's been a pretty underwhelming two weeks for Norwich City fans.

In my last column just a fortnight ago - which came on the back of that excellent win at Millwall - I wrote about the spirit of 1982 driving the Canaries towards a promotion surge.

At that stage the play-offs seemed inevitable due to the momentum building up. Some super optimists were also raising the spectre of automatic promotion still being possible.

Sadly the massively disappointing reversal at home to Sunderland followed by the pretty tepid draws at relegation-threatened Huddersfield and Alex Neil's Stoke have left fans feeling flat.

The general consensus I get from supporters is that we'll now struggle to get in the top six.

Even if we do, there isn't a huge amount of positivity about our chances against a Middlesbrough or a Sheffield United in the play-offs.

And then even if City manage to get through the end of season lottery, there would be the inevitable concern about how things would be different to the last two times Premier League football has come to NR1.

Am I being gloomy? Possibly.

Am I reflecting the views of most fans? I'd say definitely yes.

One bright spot through this past fortnight has been Angus Gunn. One, two, three all join in the song "We've got Angus, Angus in goal, you just don't seem to understand......"

Eastern Daily Press:

I'm holding my hands up straight away and admit I underestimated the stopper earlier in the season.

When the discusssion was ongoing over whether Gunny or Tim Krul should have the No1 shirt, I did an unscientific poll in the office among Canary fans.

The overwhelming verdict was that the Dutchman should get the nod.

I backed that view and tweeted about it and (understandably!) got some pushback from a certain Mr Gunn senior.

Since then, Angus has established himself firmly as David Wagner's first choice.

And to make things even rosier for the 27-year-old, he has picked Scotland over England and all being well will earn his first full international cap in the next few days.

It's been far from an easy and smooth career for Gunn so far and hasn't been able to really stamp his mark on a club.

Angus actually started as a forward when he joined the Canaries' under 8s before moving back to go between the sticks.

He moved to Manchester City in 2011, during which he got into the England youth set up.

Gunny came back to Carra on loan in 2017/18 and was the only ever-present in that Championship season, earning him third place in the player of the season vote.

Man City then sold Angus to Southampton and, after a loan spell at Stoke, came back to his home county.

He's now made almost 80 appearances and surely his last was his best in a City shirt.

Without that string of first class saves, Wagner's men would have definitely gone down to another defeat at Stoke.

I read statistics this week that Gunn's 80 minutes per goal conceded this season is the highest of his career.

His save rate of 74.7pc in 22 Championship matches is the highest in the division for anyone with more than 10 appearances.

Make no mistake, Krul is a terrific keeper and has been superb for the Canaries.

But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Gunn is the future.

And I think he's got a great chance to become City's No1 for the rest of the decade - and if he does he will head to club legend status and make him one of the longest serving keepers.

It would take some going to overtake his Dad's 477 appearances and no-one will ever beat Kevin Keelan's record-breaking 673.

However, a few seasons would see him jump over the likes of Chris Woods and Rob Green in the pecking order.

Plaudits for Gunn are definitely growing. His fellow Scot and Canary teammate Kenny McLean was glowing in his praise.

The Mayor said: “He can definitely be a massive asset for Scotland. He’s one of the best goalies I’ve played with in my career."

Praise indeed. OTBC.

Rugby shows the way

Within 24 hours at the weekend, I watched two massively contrasting sights in relation to refereeing in sport.

I watched some of the Six Nations rugby action - particularly the Scotland v Italy match - when the main official had a microphone on and everything he said could be heard.

There were several occasions when he was faced directly with two (or more) very, very burly blokes.

The ref was in total control, even when dealing with contentious situations.

He was calm, very firm and the players listened to him, acted on his decisions (and called him Sir).

Fast forward a day and we had the ugly scenes at Old Trafford as Fulham's Alexsander Mitrovic pushed the referee as a reaction to his team conceding a penalty and having the hand ball offender sent off.

Week in, week out we see footballers surrounding refs and showing total disrepect.

The game has to learn from rugby.

Sign of the times

I think we were all taken by surprise that former City manager Alex Neil was so critical of the Canaries after Saturday's goalless draw.

If you haven't followed it closely, he basically said he'd never seen a Norwich team set up so negatively.

Our columnist Chris Sutton has hit back strongly and said Neil should "keep his nose out" and felt Wagner was right to be pragmatic.

I totally under the "horses for courses" approach and it's important to play the right team (and use the right formation) against different opposition.

Wagner definitely had a host of problems last week, especially with injuries and I get it why he set the team out as he did.

But there's an argument that a team with real promotion hopes having to play that way against a mid-table side (albeit one in fairly decent form).

It's probably a sign of the times of where we're at.