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Doncaster and chairman Roger Munby stood down from their posts at Carrow Road last week in the wake of the club’s relegation to League One.

In urging fans to get behind the board and manager Bryan Gunn, Doncaster made a farewell plea.

He said: “Please do not assume that grass is greener on the other side, that there are queues of wealthy non-supporters desperate to ‘invest’ in the club. Such people simply do not exist. Or, if they do, they always, always want something valuable in return.

“There really is no such thing as a free lunch. It may well be possible for an owner to make a profit out of a football club - that, ultimately is what ‘investment’ means. But that profit would, in all likelihood, come at a huge cost to the club itself.

“There are many examples of where this has happened, despite the best efforts of the football authorities. Norwich City’s most likely route to a secure financial future is, quite simply, wealthy supporters and local businesses using their resources to back the club that they love.

“This, in combination with continuing efforts to drive further money out of off-field activities, is the way forward. It may be unglamorous. It may sound hackneyed. But I believe it to be fundamentally true.”

Doncaster paid tribute to City’s staff, supporters, volunteers and fund-raisers - and had special thanks for the board.

He said: “I would like to thank Delia, Michael and Michael Foulger for all that they did to support me personally and for all of their ongoing financial support of Norwich City.

“There seems to be a perception in some quarters that those directors earn money from the club, or take cash out in some other way, or are involved for some other personal gain. The truth could not be more different. Andrew and Sharon Turner, Delia, Michael and the Foulger family - all have simply given over their hard-earned cash to try to buy on-field success for the club they love.”

Leaving, he said, had been a difficult decision.

He said: “Stepping down from any company is a difficult thing to do. When that company happens to be an iconic football club, to which you have given nearly 13 years of your life, the decision to stand down is one that can only be taken after a great deal of thought and soul searching.

“Roger Munby and I want only for the best for Norwich City and, in circumstances where change is so much in demand, we felt that stepping down was simply necessary for the club to be able to move forward in harmony.

“Ordinarily, to lose four senior people in such a short space of time would be hugely destabilising for any company. But the recent departures of Andrew Cullen, Shaun O’Hara, Roger Munby and myself have created opportunities for the club’s talented senior managers to step up and fill the void and for new people with fresh ideas to come in. “

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Delia Smith defended the decision to reappoint Bryan Gunn as manager but insisted Norwich City must become Norwich united to make it work.

The club’s joint majority shareholder said Gunn needed more time than he had last season in which to make his mark.

She said: “I think every manager has to start somewhere and we just feel he didn’t have enough time and that he needs to get in there and do his own thing. He did inherit quite a lot of what was there.

“We saw some very good football under Bryan, so we’re looking on the bright side. We’re looking for the positives and maybe if we get a few players with heart who are not looking at the end of the season thinking ‘I’m not going to be here, so what?’ it might work for him and we hope it does.

“We also felt continuity was important and we’ve watched a whole lot of staff come in, a whole lot of staff go out. With the experience of John Deehan and Ian Butterworth in League One, the one thing we knew we needed straightaway was that kind of experience.”

But she said there had to be team spirit throughout the club.

“Our ambition for the future is to become a really strong team on and off the pitch,” she said. “We want to try to be more united with Colney, to try to get everybody pulling in the same direction and everybody working together. That’s the most important thing in a football club, to have a team behind the scenes as well as on the pitch and that’s what we’re going to work very hard to create now.”

Delia admitted last season had been a bad experience.

She said: “It has been awful and I am looking forward to having three months of Sunday morning waking up and not thinking ‘Oh my God, we lost again’. We are going to have a little breathing space now but it has been very painful, they have been very long journeys home and when we get home we save up all our TV things that we like, get in, switch on and try to forget it.”

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