One of the things that gave me hope about City’s chances this season was the significant turnover of players since the last relegation from the Premier League.

Having a number of new players with points to prove and without the baggage of a previous failure seemed to be a big positive, but what I didn’t factor in were the mental scars that the manager might be carrying.

To me, that is the only explanation for the complete abandonment of the style of football that has been systematically instilled into all levels of the club for the past four years.

Of course, City needed to be less open and more defensively solid than last time around, but how have we come to a situation where their only tactic in the last 30 minutes against Leeds was aimless long balls in the general direction of a striker who hardly ever wins a header?

Alex Neil lost his nerve and his belief in his City team’s style of play after a 6-2 hammering at Newcastle, starting the process that ended with his departure, and it concerns me that we may now be seeing the same thing with Daniel Farke.

We all knew that City were going to have a difficult start to the season, but few of us could have dreamt that after 10 games they would have just two points and three goals (only one of which was from open play) to their name, but the complete loss of footballing identity that we have seen over the first quarter of the season makes it much worse.

After a fairly bright opening half an hour against Leeds, who looked like a side that is going to be battling relegation themselves, City started to fall into the familiar pattern of giving the ball away and making individual errors in a game that had the quality of a Championship battle rather than a Premier League contest.

However, the key to the game was the fact that Marcelo Bielsa tweaked his side’s system in the second half to get them playing higher up the pitch and make it harder for City to double up on Raphinha and there was a certain inevitability that the Brazilian, who had looked the best player on show, would produce a moment of quality to put his side ahead.

When City responded immediately the scene was set for them to push on with the crowd behind them, but Ozan Kabak’s moment of madness and Tim Krul’s uncharacteristic error not only seemed to knock the stuffing out of the fans, but also their team-mates who failed utterly to generate any sort of fightback as Leeds saw out the game with no alarms whatsoever.

It’s been painful to watch a team that has often been greater than the sum of its parts under Farke morph into a collection of individuals who sometimes seem to be making it up as they go along.

As Alex Tettey pointed out this week, the players must accept their share of the blame for where City find themselves, but it was worrying to hear Farke’s post-match interview which seemed to describe an alternate reality in which City had outplayed Leeds and were being inundated with compliments when the fact is that much of the football world currently sees them as a figure of fun.

It is important to stress that it’s perfectly possible to be supportive of the club’s self-funding model while expressing deep disquiet about what’s happening on the pitch and being perplexed by the litany of reasons for the continued absence of Todd Cantwell and the fall from favour of Billy Gilmour.

Most Norwich fans are far from fickle, and they can cope with failure, but when it comes with a large helping of humiliation it’s inevitable that they will react to the prospect of more of the same.

Something has to change and change quickly.