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Less than a year into his tenure as Norwich City boss, Johannes Hoff Thorup was dismissed. Now, his first interview since leaving the post has offered a shocking insight into how he was treated by the club.
Ben Knapper and co. had stepped in at Norwich City looking to establish a fresh new project, and installing promising young Danish coach, Johannes Hoff Thorup, was the cornerstone of that initiative.
However, after a poor run of form in the closing stages of this season that saw the Canaries drop down to midtable, Thorup was sacked with just two games left of the 2024/25 campaign.
Jack Wilshere has stepped up in his place as interim manager, and we are led to believe Norwich will hand him the job full-time after the young coach made a strong impression.
Thorup’s dismissal came as a surprise to the fanbase, but it sounds like it was just as much of a surprise to the man himself.
What Johannes Hoff Thorup said about Norwich City sacking
There has been an odd silence around Norwich since Thorup left, with players barely reaction to his departure and the club quickly moving to put Wilshere in the limelight.
Now, speaking to Tipsbladet in his native Denmark, Thorup has addressed the manner in which he lost his job and how he feels about the whole situation.
He said: “You can see in a football club when things start to change a bit. Communication becomes a bit less, and future plans for next season are put on hold more than they had been done previously.
“So I could see that it was pointing in a direction, but it was still a bit of a surprise, because it wasn’t quite what we had bought into to begin with.”
When asked if he thinks the sacking was unfair or too swift, Thorup added: “I always say we didn’t have enough time. We have obviously worked with a long-term perspective, and we also knew that the first season would have bumps in the road.
“That’s why we also made some decisions based on a longer-term view. That’s why we are surprised how things can change all of a sudden.”
Speaking on that longer-term approach and how that was contradicted by the way the club punished him for a poor set of results, Thorup said: “If the communication from the start had been that we should reach the top six and be in the play-offs, we would probably have made different decisions along the way.
“Then we wouldn’t necessarily have played with the youngest team in Norwich in generations, as we did in one of the games, where we had an average age of around 23.5 years, which is younger than some of the FC Nordsjælland teams I have sent onto the field.
“There have been some things along the way that we would have done differently if it had been solely about the performance.”
Indeed, there are many that believe that Knapper and the Norwich hierarchy have betrayed the original plan for Thorup, and it sounds like the former manager would agree with that sentiment.
How Johannes Hoff Thorup feels about Jack Wilshere
All the talk around Norwich now is how impressive Jack Wilshere has been since he stepped up, and it looks like the Canaries will now start next season with the 33-year-old in charge.
Revealing what his interpretation of the plan was for Norwich and Wilshere, Thorup continued: “I was well aware of Jack’s terms of employment, so I knew that at some point he would take the step up as head coach, and we had also made a good plan together with him.
“If it had been Glen [Riddersholm] who had taken over, I would probably have raised my eyebrows more than once, but not when it’s Jack. The premise for bringing him in was his next step in his career, where he would move on from Norwich or Glen and I would move on from Norwich so he could become head coach.”
That’s exactly what’s happening now, only it appears to be happening a good while earlier than anyone had originally anticipated.
By the sounds of it, though, there has been a fatal miscommunication from the powers that be at Norwich. Whether purposefully or not, they set out one target for Thorup and then moved the goalposts, leaving him to pay the price for it.