It turned out last week that Dean Smith literally didn’t know the meaning of the word apathy.

But , "Apathy? Don’t know the meaning of the word" wouldn’t be out of place among Stuart Webber’s collection of motivational messages on the walls of the Lotus Training Centre at Colney.

Those anodyne quotes curated by Webber when he arrived could probably use a refresh. Daily exposure during work-outs must have dulled any of the inspirational quality they might once have had.

Interestingly, none that I saw on my tour of the facilities early this season were from a woman - so maybe this would work writ large on the gym wall:

"I never think about losing, that’s why it’s so hard to accept a loss" - Katie Taylor, two-weight world boxing champion.

For Stuart there’s this from US footballer Megan Rapinoe:

"If you can’t take criticism, you can’t reach your potential."

And this equally relevant thought from Olympic gold medal boxing legend Nicola Adam:

"Anger is an unnecessary emotion. Loads of stuff in life can trigger it, but what matters is how you react. I choose not to react.."

Webber’s known for his reliance on the mindset guidance of Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and The Infinite Game and a self-help guru. It seems at Norwich City Stuart’s been acting out one of his mentor’s maxims for real: "Greatness is not born from one success. Greatness is born from persevering through the countless failed attempts that preceded." How many failed attempts, Simon? Is it more than six?

I’m wondering if it was a reinvent-your-life handbook that galvanised the club’s sporting director to seek personal redemption spending time (10pc of his time that is) climbing to elevated summits before coming straight back down. There’s a metaphor there best left unexplored.

Or perhaps the inspiration was from the Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell song. It’s been another Motown tune that I’ve been humming in the last few weeks, the theme to Mahogany. And the lyrics pretty much sum up how I feel about the club.

So where are we going to, do we know?

Financially a consistent period in the Premier League is unsustainable (as has been shown!) and for those demanding injections of cash and new owners I’d suggest it’s not that simple. Premier League clubs virtually all operate at massive losses. Deloittes latest annual review (for 2019-20) showed a £966m pre-tax loss across the league, with Norwich City one of the few solvent clubs.

Of course, the pandemic had a significant impact, but the trend has been there for years (£165m pre-tax aggregate loss in 2018-19) and is fundamentally a result of player wage inflation. It would take more than a few millionaires co-opted to the board to keep City in the top tier. And if you need help differentiating millions and billions here’s an analogy that got used in the Elon Musk Twitter buyout debate; a million seconds = 12 days, a billion seconds = 31 years.

Entitlement to belong to football’s elite requires the level of investment (the rare philanthropist aside) only generally available from sources that are disreputable in some way - be that states which institutionally abuse human rights and press freedom like UAE, owners who are focused on asset stripping as many claim the Glazer family to be, or those like Roman Abramovich; alleged to have used club ownership to sportswash assets acquired through corrupt means.

So for me our club need a standard business cliché stencilled on the boardroom wall. "Find your niche’.

Frankly, it’s not hard. In my memory we’ve always been a great community club, but recently there’s been less attention to what we’re best at and what makes us Norwich City FC, as we’ve assimilated to an EPL profile that simply doesn’t fit.

It’s time to do different, be ourselves and de-programme the risk aversion that’s meant #HerGameToo, #SafeStanding and #FairGame have been side-stepped. Even the pockets of excellent ethical practice we’ve seen in recent seasons - #OnTheBaw, Foodbank collections and the #NetZero commitments - have had an air of impermanence about them.

Who knows, give it a season or two and in the league table of right-on clubs and we might not only take the title over contenders like Wrexham, St Paüli and Forest Green Rovers, but we might find a billionaire benefactor in the process.