Never mind Black Friday, this could have been a truly dismal Saturday.

Two days on and I think I've put the actual match experience against Crystal Palace behind me. It was all about the result, but I can't help but think that Swansea and Fulham will provide an awful lot more of a challenge at Carrow Road in the coming weeks.

Palace gave it all they had, but their lack of quality was ultimately telling, as was their reliance on long balls in the direction of Cameron Jerome.

That said, though, as the second half wore on you sensed that all it needed was two goals for the new charges of Tony Pulis and the history of Norwich City would be changed irrevocably.

And teams better than Palace would have exploited our second-half hesitancy, which gave the impression of hanging on at all costs, rather than continuing from where we had left off at the break.

The final 45 minutes on Saturday were as depressing as the first 45 against West Ham and can be put down to a complete lack of confidence the moment we are put under the slightest bit of pressure.

We are truly lucky that the 2013/14 Premier League has enough other teams who also can't put it together for a whole match – or else we would be in serious trouble.

It's the one thing that allows you to overlook the actual performance on Saturday – that Crystal Palace, Fulham, Hull, Sunderland and West Ham, among others have as much, if not more, to worry about than us.

But at some point we have to put together a convincing display rather than odd ones which are just good in patches.

Were Saturday to have been a complete one-off, you'd just put it down to nerves.

But this was the latest in a collection of testing afternoons.

At some point soon people will start to look at the performances as well as the results.

We don't know just how many 2012/13 season-ticket holders decided against renewing this year, I suppose that would be considered classified commercial information.

But I suspect that the renewal rate was somewhat less than 100pc at, let's not forget, a time when prices were raised by more than the current rate of inflation.

And at the moment I imagine that there will be quite a few more still to make up their minds for next season because they will consider that at the moment they aren't getting anything like value for money.

A record all-seater crowd witnessing City squeezing past a side on loan from the Championship just wouldn't have happened 20 years ago before the advent of the season-ticket age when people feel duty bound to turn up and fill seats they have already paid for.

But for now, let's consider the positives.

n We won.

n Having waited until the 78th minute for their opening corner at Newcastle, City winning their first this time after 28 seconds was a statement of real intent.

n Gary Hooper and Leroy Fer have each scored twice as City have struck five times in the last three games, so maybe the goals are starting to come from the right places.

n Fourteen points from each third of the season will keep us up.

Anything we get on the road is a bonus, but you would hope that successive home wins will mean we raise our game against Swansea, because they're going to provide a lot more awkward opposition than Crystal Palace.