Many managers have delivered success to Carrow Road over the years.
Now, following a promising summer transfer window that has provided six fresh faces and an equally-exciting start to proceedings in the 2023/24 Championship campaign, it will be hoped that David Wagner is the next man at the helm to bring the good times back.
Norwich City endured a wholly underwhelming and anti-climating return to the Championship last time out, in which they failed to maintain their reputation of being a yo-yo club that consistently launches assaults upon the second-tier promotion places.
They ended up finishing 13th, seven points away from 6th-placed Sunderland, but there is a school of thought that they may well be more competitive this time around.
Only time will tell.
But, who else has brought good fortunes to Norfolk?
That is exactly what we will be guiding you through here, as we take a deep dive into the 10 best managers to ever take the reigns at Norwich based upon win percentage.
It is worth noting that we will only be listing managers who have been in charge for more than 20 matches too.
10Nigel Worthington- 40.7%
Getting the ball rolling here is Nigel Worthington, who oversaw 280 matches across a six-year period spanning from 2000-2006- 114 of which were victories.
The Northern Irishman guided the Canaries to second-tier safety before taking them to the old First Division play-off final in his first full campaign with the club, although they lost out to Birmingham City.
They went up the following season however, but that was followed by a 19th-placed finish.
After failing to launch a promotion bid the following season, Worthington was dismissed and later went on to briefly manage Leicester City in a caretaker capacity prior to spells in the helm for Northern Ireland and York City.
9Ken Brown- 40.9%
No manager in Norwich’s history has been in charge for more matches than Ken Brown’s 367 from 1980-1987.
150 of those were wins, and two stick out in particular.
At the end of the 1984-85 season, Brown’s Norwich defeated bitter rivals Ipswich Town in the League Cup semi-finals across two legs before claiming a 1-0 win over Sunderland in the final that delivered their second trophy in that competition.
The following year, Brown also took Norwich to the top-flight.
8Alex Neil- 41.7%
Alex Neil is right up there among the most successful Norwich managers in recent history, having won 45 of his 108 matches in charge.
17 of them came in the first 25 games of his tenure in a blitzing run that saw Norwich propel to promotion via the play-offs, although relegation soon followed.
Neil was unable to get the team firing on all cylinders once again and was dismissed just over two years on from taking the job.
He has since gone on to manage Championship rivals Preston North End and Stoke City.
7Willie Reid- 41.9%
Neil is narrowly pipped to seventh-place by Willie Reid, who boasts a higher win percentage of just 0.2%.
The Scotsman was only in charge for 31 matches, although he won 13 of them and even managed to seal Norwich’s first League Cup triumph with a 4-0 victory over Rochdale across two legs in the 1961-62 season.
6Daniel Farke- 43.5%
Many people will look at what Wagner’s countryman did for Norwich and will hope he brings the same fortunes at some stage.
After a mid-table campaign in his first year, Daniel Farke took the Canaries up as champions and while they were swiftly relegated, he repeated the same feat once again.
He was sacked just months into the 2021/22 season, though, and has now recently taken the job at Leeds United.
5Mike Walker- 45.0%
Mike Walker came so close to making serious history at Carrow Road.
During the inaugural 1992/93 Premier League season, Norwich were tipped for relegation but instead launched a shock title challenge that saw them eight points clear by Christmas.
They eventually fell away and finished third, although that was still enough to send them on a European adventure prior to Walker’s decision to walk away and join Everton at the turn of the year.
4Martin O’Neill- 46.2%
Martin O’Neill can be considered rather fortunate to break into this list given he only managed 26 games.
Still, 12 of those were wins and just five were losses, before he left early on owing to a disagreement with the club’s hierarchy.
O’Neill joined Leicester and later went on to manage the likes of Celtic, Aston Villa and the Republic of Ireland.
3Archie Macaulay- 46.9%
Kick-starting the top three is Archie Macaulay, who won 105 of the 224 matches he managed between 1957-1961.
During that time, he guided Norwich to the second-tier as runners-up and would go on to manage West Bromwich Albion and Brighton after leaving the Canaries.
2Paul Lambert- 49.3%
Make no mistake about it, Paul Lambert is the greatest manager in Norwich’s recent history, having amassed 70 wins from 142 matches across his three-year stay in the dugout.
He joined Norwich under interesting circumstances, having just defeated the Canaries 7-1 while manager of Colchester United, which led to a vacancy at Carrow Road.
It was one he truly seized and even defeated his old team 5-0 in the return fixture en-route to League One promotion that same year.
Even more impressively, Norwich went straight up from the Championship the following season and then stayed up in the Premier League.
Lambert was promptly inducted into the club’s hall of fame, but left just months after to join Aston Villa, where he spent a further three years.
He later became the first manager to ever take the reigns at both Norwich and Ipswich by taking to the Portman Road dugout in 2018.
1Norman Low- 50.0%
No manager in Norwich’s history has a more sustained win percentage than Norman Low’s 50%, which spans across a five-year period that yielded 129 victories from 258 outings.
Another inductee to the Norwich hall of fame, he later went on to manage Port Vale.
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