John Ruddy: The lessons I learnt from playing at yo-yo club Norwich
John Ruddy is wearing a smile, happy to see some familiar faces. His game time has been restricted at Wolves but not his mood.
There is only one club the 33-year-old has played for more than his current one. With 243 Norwich City appearances between 2010 and 2017, Ruddy’s tally is at least double that of every member of their current squad barring Alex Tettey (230).
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In those seven years, Ruddy saw it all, including two promotions to the Premier League (in 2011 and 2015) and two relegations back to the Championship (in 2014 and 2016). If anyone knows how Daniel Farke’s current group is feeling as the threat of a record fifth Premier League drop looms, it’s their former No 1.
“The belief has to be something that stays right to the end,” Ruddy tells The Athletic. “They will never waver from that until it’s mathematically impossible. You don’t expect anything less.
“I think slight naivety defensively has cost them in games where they could’ve made it more comfortable for themselves but it’s their philosophy, one the players believe in and want to stick to, and Daniel believes in. It’s got them success to this point. Why would they go away from something they’re comfortable with?
“It’s much like ourselves. We have a way of playing we’re used to. Everyone knows it and anybody who comes into Wolves knows the system and knows what we’re looking to achieve.
“If they had a bit more killer instinct in front of goal, they could’ve wrapped up a couple more games, instead of having to rely on Teemu Pukki for goals or Todd [Cantwell] chipping in. So from now, until the end of the season, the players need to start trying to take that burden off them.”
The plan throughout Ruddy’s spell was to build Norwich towards Premier League stability. If there was relegation, it was hoped to make the club stronger — on the pitch, at the very least. Norwich’s self-funding model and past insecurity in using top-flight revenue to improve facilities is a stark contrast to those currently leading the club.
In reality though, Norwich also struggled to improve on the pitch despite their immediate Premier League return via the Championship play-off final in 2015.
“They were very different experiences, when I think about it,” Ruddy tells The Athletic. “Chris Hughton [Norwich manager from summer 2012 to April 2014] had a certain style of play that the fans didn’t find appealing. But that season we went down, we had 12 clean sheets.
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“The problem we had, and what I’d touch on with the current Norwich team, is that we didn’t score enough goals. We only scored 28 that whole season [2013-14]. We had the players to carry enough threat and defensively we were extremely solid. You don’t keep that many clean sheets in the Premier League very often and get relegated, so we scratched our heads a little over how it had come about.
“Then, under Alex [Neil, Norwich manager from January 2015 to March 2017], I thought we played really well for the majority of the Premier League season. Maybe we showed too much respect to the opposition because we always tried to adjust to what they would do, as opposed to doing what we knew.”
When Ruddy says “always”, he means following a 6-2 defeat at Newcastle in October 2015, in which Norwich pushed for a point at 3-2 down with an hour played and ended up getting thrashed, with Georginio Wijnaldum scoring four times. Neil had been so bold up to that point, chasing positive results in both the Championship and Premier League. Scarred by how his attempts to influence that autumn Sunday at St James’ Park played out, things were never the same again.
It earmarks the balance needed in sticking to principles while learning from experiences.
“That game was a bit of a shock to the system for everybody,” recalls Ruddy. “We readjusted and reassessed the whole season based on that one performance, which was probably the wrong thing to do at the time because we weren’t playing bad football and we weren’t picking up bad results. It was just one blip that snowballed and we probably let that affect us more than we realised.
“Again, we had more than enough to stay in the Premier League but, as you’ve seen this year, it doesn’t matter how good your squad is or how good the individuals are. If it’s not coming together, there’s only one way you’re going to go.”
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Spending so long at the club ensured that Ruddy was a senior foundation Norwich could look to construct around. But as players on more money arrived for the Premier League party, and then left as soon as the balloons popped, Ruddy was among those left attempting to regain momentum.
Norwich’s current playing philosophy and club culture have taken two years to foster. It now relies on those living it to keep it going and pass it on to newcomers, whether those players rise up from the academy or are brought in from other clubs.
That is why Tettey’s latest one-year contract extension to summer 2021 is about more than playing time. It also acknowledges the loss of Bradley Johnson early into Norwich’s 2015 Premier League return.
Voted player of the season as Norwich earned promotion the previous season, Johnson was sold back to the Championship. Derby paid £6 million, which funded Robbie Brady’s arrival at Carrow Road. Neil was happy he had improved the quality in his squad — but no amount of money made up for the loss of a senior personality in the dressing room.
Neil expected Johnson wouldn’t get the top-flight game time he was hoping for and may have become an issue. Ruddy is sure his presence would have been much more helpful to his team-mates.
A post-relegation summer is hard, especially for those players who either want to move on to stay in the Premier League or are unsure about their future.
If you know where you want to be, the focus can be simpler. Proving your point back in the Championship can motivate into the next season.
It works a treat if things then go as planned. It’s when they don’t that the baggage of the previous season hits home.
Norwich kicked off their triumphant 2014-15 season against Wolves. The promotion favourites’ first game ended in 1-0 defeat at Molineux, with Martin Olsson sent off before Dave Edwards scored. It was one of the rare occasions Ruddy laid into a team-mate in the dressing room, in front of the whole group.
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It had not been the easiest few months, given Ruddy was overlooked for England’s 2014 World Cup squad by Roy Hodgson, with Ben Foster and Fraser Forster getting the nod to back up Joe Hart in Brazil.
Come the 2016-17 season back in the Championship, another collapse at Newcastle (losing 4-3 on two added-time goals) sowed the seeds of doubt before Norwich were thrashed 5-0 away by a Hughton-managed Brighton side that would eventually clinch promotion. Norwich finished well off the pace in mid-table.
“We lost a few players who were big for us [including Nathan Redmond and Gary O’Neil] that second summer,” says Ruddy. “They were big influences on the squad and had been shown the door or found somewhere else and we were never going to replace those players with better quality, having gone down, so it was always going to be difficult in that sense.
“We still had the belief that Alex was the right man for the job and he could get the best out of us but I think when you have a certain standard like we players did and Alex did, and it’s not being reached, frustrations begin to boil over and then it becomes even more frustrating that we’re not doing the things we used to do and we’re not getting the results we want to get.
“When you’ve been at a club so long and you start with a group of players, the others come in and the older players leave. Then, that whole group you started your journey with gets broken up, you look around the changing room and you only recognise two or three faces from when you first came in. It has an effect as well, how comfortable you are with the players left and those players coming in. It’s trying not to break up the dynamic of a dressing room that has proved so successful.
“In both cases, it took a while. I think relegation almost hit me a lot later on than I realised.
“In 2014, it was a difficult one to take and I was probably more determined to prove people wrong and make sure my performances couldn’t be questioned. We started well and I started well, so it probably didn’t hit me until… well, I don’t even know when. It just had a very delayed effect.
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“The first summer under Chris, I was hoping to be in the World Cup squad but that didn’t work out. Neil Adams came in for the final few games of the 2013-14 season and changed the way we went about things, in terms of it being more about us affecting the opposition, and the lads responded well to that. Coming into the Championship, there was a real belief in the squad we had. We had some fantastic players and, without sounding arrogant, we were too good for the Championship.”
Norwich have 11 games to go this season. In the words of Farke from several weeks ago, it will take “a little miracle” to keep them in the Premier League. There is likely to be change come the summer in terms of players sold and fresh talent brought in — some of which was signed in January.
But the lessons of the past suggest sticking to principles, keeping some big personalities and experienced characters in the dressing room while dealing with the effects of relegation months after it happens will stand Norwich in the best stead to make sure this time, they really are stronger on the pitch for their toils.
“Even without going up and down I think Norwich have had it, with James Maddison and the Murphy twins [a trio sold in the summers of 2017 and 2018 for a combined fee approaching £50 million],” says Ruddy. “As long as players are playing well and they fit a certain criteria teams are looking for, there is always going to interest generated.
“Looking from the outside, if Norwich do go down and even if they stay up, I expect clubs to come in for their players. Norwich are probably going to lose three of their key players but it’s about where the club sees itself and what their process is going to be moving forward. Are they going to be willing to release those three players and reinvest the money in the academy or first-team squad?
“The club wants to promote youth and promote from within. Obviously, selling for the value their players have on their heads at the moment will go a long way to making sure that can keep happening year on year.”
(Photo: Stephen Pond/Getty Images)
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