At one stage mid-table was a far-off dream for Norwich City.

Faced with the task of bridging the growing gap between Championship and Premier League, the Canaries’ long-term plan centred around establishing a steady place in the top flight.

In the short term they’d have taken scraping survival, with low-20s point hauls the best they could muster under Daniel Farke and Dean Smith.

In May 2022, another season of promotion contention seemed like the worst case scenario, and there was supreme confidence behind the scenes that the promised land was the incoming destination.

But the mid-table quickly became City’s worst nightmare, with Smith’s side tumbling out of the play-off race as the year drew to a close. And based on the start to the season under David Wagner, that’s where they’re headed this term.

They’ve collected 16 points so far during the campaign, an average of 1.6 per game. Wagner admitted that wasn’t enough following Wednesday’s loss to Swansea, and the Championship table is beginning to show it.

His team were leapfrogged by Leeds into sixth that night, dropping out of the play-offs and only two points ahead of Millwall in 14th. Add to that the number of teams slowly finding themselves in recent weeks – this afternoon’s opponents are one of them – and the German’s promotion target already looks misplaced.

In the short term that’s retrievable; Stuart Webber and his impending replacement have options to change things, as does Wagner with Josh Sargent and Ashley Barnes to return.

But fail to do so and the problem becomes long term, and that will be a significant worry for the powers that be in NR1. Absence of promotion would mean further financial constraints, and a Championship side with an ageing squad, an unhappy fan base and a club in flux.

If that sounds familiar it’s because it’s the situation a number of former Premier League regulars face in the second tier at present.

City appear to have far more caring and well-intentioned shareholders than their divisional counterparts, but are fast approaching the same rotted cycle facing Stoke, West Brom, Coventry, QPR and more.

Even Wednesday’s victors were top-table stalwarts at one stage, only to be fearful of relegation and accused of financial restriction by Russell Martin five years later.

Their pattern, one of constant water treading and inconsistency only hoping a mastermind can take hold at some point, is one Norwich fans will be wary of slipping into, and yet the signs are already there.

Perhaps this season’s form hasn’t been a play-off-level team threatening to burst into life, but rather also-rans enjoying the perks of early-season momentum. Perhaps Jonathan Rowe and Gabriel Sara haven’t been symptoms of a good team and are simply much better than the average level of their team-mates.

Many will point to the sidelined Sargent and Barnes, but promotion isn’t gained by a first-choice XI. It’s earned by the sort of squad that has Jordan Rhodes to back up Teemu Pukki, or Alex Tettey to replace Oliver Skipp.

City’s squad depth is not currently at that standard, and the seemingly ever-shrinking transfer budget makes that hard to rectify.

The promise of Mark Attanasio’s increased involvement provides hope that the cycle can be broken, but it speaks to where the club are that the cycle being discussed is a mid-table Championship one.

Just a year ago the columns being written were on disrupting the yo-yo sequence that had plagued them for a decade, and finding a way to out-think the established competition.

That backward slide must be halted as soon as possible, with pressure quickly mounting on all those responsible at Carrow Road. Fail to do so, and they may well find themselves in the consistent company of those aforementioned also-rans.