What a difference a few months makes in football.

At the end of August, a real sense of optimism had been restored at Carrow Road after a few incredibly difficult seasons.

Following the first month of the season, City were flying high as the league's top scorers, keeping up with the early pace setters and playing really well to boot.

Fast-forward two months and there's no sugar-coating it, we're back in the kind of rut we have been frequently blighted with in the past few seasons.

Make no mistake about it, the bright start to the season has been well and truly exposed for what it was - a false dawn.

In a way, it's reminiscent of what first happened when David Wagner arrived on the scene last January.

His first few games produced swashbuckling performances, goals galore and a glimmering hope that the promotion charge was on.

Then things very quickly turned sour.

It seems to be a worrying trend that has followed the former American international wherever he has been - certainly his last two managerial appointments.

At Schalke, he started his first season with five wins out of seven - three of which saw the team score three or more goals.

In the same season, he broke the club's record for longest winless run.

The picture was similar at Young Boys, where he lost just one of his first 10 league games - scoring for fun along the way. 

It seems to be something of a worrying trait of David Wagner teams, which also runs into matches themselves - start well, fade away.

Tuesday's defeat to Middlesbrough, although not unexpected, was just tepid.

As an overall performance, we brought very, very little to the table and despite there being endeavour, there was just so much sloppiness.

The passing was loose, the attacks lacked direction and the final balls were non-existent. 

I lost count of the number of occasions the ball was casually given away and we very much seemed to be the architects of our own downfall.

There was more than one occasion where a better decision could have created an opening, but didn't.

And it's not just the on-field decision-making that has been baffling in recent games and weeks.

In Wagner, I'm struggling to remember a manager who has been able to change so many games with substitutions - for the worse.

Leicester in particular leaps out at me in this sense. Trailing 1-0, we came out for the second half looking lively - only for changes to completely take the sting out of any chance of salvaging the game.

It's become a recurring theme and isn't just a reflection of our lack of strength in depth.

What worries me the most though is the position we find ourselves in as a club. We're now in a state of limbo.

In terms of on-field performances and results, I feel we're sadly now back at the time where we need to be thinking about a managerial change.

But equally, we're in a bizarre situation of being in between two sporting directors and the new man in charge is still a month away from arriving.

There's no way a managerial search should be conducted by an outgoing sporting director.

So what choices are there? 

One is to persist with a manager who has very evidently lost his way - which is difficult to see resulting in anything other than a continued downward spiral.

The other is to relieve him of his duties, but be faced with a managerial search without the full input of the very man whose job it will be to work closest with.

It feels like a rock and a hard place situation if there ever was one.

A third option would be to drop Wagner but not commit to appointing a new boss until Ben Knapper is in the building.

Also not ideal, but probably the preferable option for me.

Frankly, it is a ridiculous position for any club to be in midway through a season. 

If, as he claims, Stuart Webber has known he was on the way out since March, the board should have done everything humanly possible to find his replacement before pre-season - or the start of the campaign at the absolute latest.

It is a bizarre situation which is highly impractical, particularly given the downturn the season has already faced.

Clearly, if things were going well it would feel much less of an issue - and perhaps there was misplaced confidence or, dare I say, arrogance, that the campaign would be going so well on the field that matters of it would take care of itself.

Instead, we're left sitting in limbo while the promotion-chasers, including that lot down the road, are getting further and further out of our reach.