One of the last things you might expect to find in Norwich is a pub offering a full-on German meal deal of bratwurst and lager. Especially a Wetherspoons. But the lip-smacking combination is not an outbreak of sudden Remainer solidarity. It is offered up in honour of the German manager of Norwich City, Daniel Farke, the Teutonic import who this season is making the unexpected a commonplace.

Here is an example of how much he has changed things. Back in August, Norwich played Leeds at Carrow Road. They were royally thumped 3-0. It was a defeat which deposited the club in the Championship relegation zone. And despite Farke’s revisionist insistence that the scoreline did not reflect the run of play, at the time few regulars were surprised. After all, they had finished a nondescript 14th the previous season and, over the summer, had sold their best player, James Maddison, to Leicester City. Back then, the idea that a side without few of Leeds’ resources could ever be promotion contenders seemed absurd.

Yet, four and a half months and 28 matches later, Norwich will step out at Elland Road on Saturday in second place in the division, just three points behind Marcelo Bielsa’s side. That is what you call an unexpected turnaround.

“We know we are a big surprise,” said Farke, speaking this week at the club’s training ground, where the profusion of cranes and diggers is evidence of upgrading to a previously neglected facility. “We know we are perhaps overachieving. This is what we are trying to do: we are trying to create something extraordinary.”

Extraordinary, indeed: what Norwich have done this season is no less than upend conventional Championship wisdom. The accepted method of escaping upwards from the division is to spend big. The higher the wage bill, the more likely the ascent to the financial uplands of the Premier League.

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At Norwich, money is something they prefer to save. Following relegation in 2016, the club have regrouped, replanned and reorganised. With their Premier League parachute payments ending last season, a new methodology was established by the sporting director Stuart Webber, who had previously been running Huddersfield. High earners were removed from the payroll, replaced by bargain-basement signings. Money has been spent on upgrading the club’s infrastructure rather than supporting the local Ferrari dealerships. The new presiding financial model is to find gems – in the market and in the club academy – polish them and sell them on. As they did with Maddison.

At the centre of the revolution has been Farke. Recruited by Webber from the very place he had found David Wagner for Huddersfield – Boroussia Dortmund’s reserve team – the German with a business degree was brought in on the understanding he was going to have to enter the Championship poker game with little funds to wager. Taking over from Alan Irvine in May 2017, his first season hardly suggested an earthquake was imminent. But now that the team are entirely his, since that early setback against Leeds everything has clicked.

“Norwich is a team designed to attack,” said a clearly impressed Bielsa of the side running his own closest this season. “It doesn’t mean they don’t defend well, but the profile of the team is creative.”

They are a side Farke built around his knowledge of German football: six players were brought in from Germany, including the midfielder Onel Hernandez, who has been particularly enthused by one aspect of English life, telling the Norwich programme how struck he is by the shopping opportunities. “Argos has everything, I have never seen this before”.

There are celebrations on the pitch where earlier this season there were relegation worries credit: PA

To fit in with the new plan, too, three academy players have been promoted to first-team regulars: the full-backs Max Aarons and Jamal Lewis and the midfielder Todd Cantwell.

But it is in the recruitment of the two new arrivals who have had the biggest impact that the Farke revolution is at its most pronounced. Emiliano Buendia, the Argentine playmaker bought from Getafe for just £1.5 million has been a revelation. While Teemu Pukki, the former Celtic striker, signed on a free from Brondby, after hardly sparkling in Glasgow, has stormed the Championship – 18 goals he has scored this season, six of which have arrived in the last 10 minutes of matches. Neither big nor quick, his style has been described by Bielsa, who generally knows a thing or two about opposing players, as “simple and efficient”.

“If you would ask me, yes I would prefer to pay £10 million for a midfield player, £20 million for a striker, it would make life even easier,” said Farke. “But if you don’t have that, you have to fight with your tools. We go with our way and we totally believe in our way.

"I knew the situation, I know it is more tricky to be successful playing with the youngest wingers in the whole of western Europe and more academy products than any other club. But you have to believe in what you are doing. We believed Teemu was able to deliver with goals, and we thought we had found a brilliant player in the second tier of Spanish football in Emi that no one else had seen. We were convinced we could deliver.”

Since that Leeds defeat, deliver the system has. And it is a way which has clearly found favour with the Norwich supporters. This is more than a revolution they are enjoying in Norfolk. As they constantly serenade their manager to the tune of Blur’s favourite, they are living the “Farke Life”.