Thorup’s departure means 14 of the 24 Championship clubs have changed managers this season — and he is the third boss to lose his job since the start of the Easter weekend following Cardiff’s Omer Riza and Tony Mowbray of West Bromwich Albion.
He was appointed on a three-year contract but had to manage without two leading members of last season’s team, Jonathan Rowe and Gabriel Sara, who had both been sold by the club and his plans have been hit by a number of injuries during the season.
Norwich lost their opening game at Oxford United but remained unbeaten at home until a 2-0 defeat by Bristol City on 9 November.
They only managed one point from four games in December but took 10 points from the next four following a 2-1 Boxing Day home win over Millwall.
The experienced Emiliano Marcondes and Anis Ben Slimane were added to a squad containing Borja Sainz, one of the most exciting players in the division, and US international striker Josh Sargent, who scored twice in a 5-1 win over Swansea in January as the Canaries stayed on the fringes of the play-off picture.
But Sainz served a six-match ban for spitting at Sunderland’s Chris Mepham and a 3-2 home defeat by Sheffield Wednesday on 11 March began the poor eight-match run which ultimately led to Thorup’s downfall.
Their only win in that period was a 1-0 success against West Brom, courtesy of an added-time goal by Sargent.
The club has been owned by American Mark Attanasio’s Norfolk FB Holdings since March, replacing long-term majority shareholders Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones.
Thorup visited Attanasio in the US during last month’s international break and afterwards said: «We discussed everything from strategy to player development, from how we do things now to how we should do them in the future, and (it was useful) also just to get some inspiration from each other and get a feeling of where we are as a team.
«We refer to a team — the USA team and the British team over here — because we do things together. It was a good way of just aligning everything.»
Recent results, though, mean the playing department and boardroom are now out of alignment and Norwich have begun the search for a new head coach in the hope of a big improvement next season.
Attanasio stated an ambition last November for Norwich to become a Premier League team again in three to five years.
The club have won promotion from the Championship three times in the past 10 years, under Alex Neil — now Millwall boss — in 2015 and Daniel Farke in 2020 and 2022 but each of those successes was followed by single-season stays in the top flight.
