splendidrush

My bet today is on a tight game of football not pretty on the eye.  I do think we will win.  Stoke have done remarkable things but I think we are in the good position of having Stoke’s first European hangover game, the new experience hopefully laying them low.

Usually before the game myself and my mate (we shall call him Gamblor) like to guess score, first scorer and attendance (to the closest 500 if you are a purist).  Today I will go with 1-0, Hoolahan (my pick for player of the season – early shouts are for real men) and 26500.

Likely line-up:

Ruddy

Martin

Barnett

De Laet

Tierney

Fox

Crofts

Bennett

Hoolahan

Holt

Morrison

My thoughts are that Bennett will give us more craft and pace in a game that others will have to take the burden physically.  I would keep Johnson on the bench as he is our midfield unit (tall/fat/well-built) to match Stoke at this if we feel the need.  I would go diamond once more as we looked better against Wigan with this formation.

It is also pretty rubbish having to cut into Sunday for the football.  I am a purist and football should be 3pm Saturday.  Normally this is a good opportunity to blame Sky but it is mickey-mouse Europa League that holds the blame here.

I will be tweeting as ever post game so if you fancy a good debate then tweet-me-up.  At some point I should blog on the game itself but the wife’s baby scan tomorrow will probably keep me busy.

Following the miracle of the turn round in our fortunes we as Norwich fans are probably at what good be the highest point in terms of mood.  Whilst the outcome of the next season will see if this is the highest point for this good feeling this leads me to think what was our lowest point?  Since we were relegated from the Premier League last there were some desperate times and trying to recall them has not been difficult.  Here is my selection of the contenders for our lowest ebb.

Huckerby allowed to leave out of contract

What in the bluest of blue hell led to this decision?  Roeder made some poor choice but this defied any sense for me.  Committed to the club, still the best player and an inspiration for those around him.  Some point to age and expense but for me he still had it and could still have done the job for us.  He would have easily been the best player in the next season (not saying much) and ultimately could have kept us up.  Perhaps being so important meant he was a threat to Roeder’s ethos (Glenn is king and always right) or perhaps he actually believed Huckerby was a poor mans Omar Koroma.  With this moment you sensed the problems we would have, that we were fighting relegation next season not dreaming of promotion, that you had to accept demise was likely.

The end days of Worthy

Now this probably was not as low as we got but when you look at the expectation built around that time it certainly did feel bad.  The performance were stale, no passing, no drive, no verve that characterised the rise of his team.  This promoted an air of real bile towards Worthy himself.  People hated him, would curse his very name.  Some people took what they considered to be extreme measures (which ultimately turned out to be walking from the swimming pool to behind the City Stand singing a few songs).  This atmosphere was at its most poisonous during the home game against QPR where the infamous “We’re so shit it’s unbelievable” chant rang out.  Amazing lack of support and frankly seeming all the more odd when you know what was to follow.  What followed after eventually was a Burnley game which I believe was on Sky that was so very bad I have tried to forget most of the complete pounding we received (although a Doherty rugby tackle and Huckerby being the only one to put in a shift stick in the mind).

Peter Grant

I like Peter Grant as a person but the thought of him as manager sends shivers through me.  He was like the assist to the shafting Roeder gave us which set up the relegation Gunn slotted in.  The thing that sticks in the mind is the terrible signings.  Brellier, Fozzy, Semi, David Marshall, Big Dave and Little Jamie Curtain were all poor and wasted money we could not afford.  In failing to score in the 5 previous games we player QPR away which was televised on Sky.  In perhaps the worse game of football I have ever seen we were beaten 1-0.  Grant did the honourable thing a quit but alas he left us bent over with our pants round our ankles waiting for Roeder.

I’m sorry, I must have missed your tenure as England Manager

I wish I missed your tenure as Norwich Manager Glenn.  Far too much for me to detail here but an Opus of an blog post for a later date.  We hated Glenn and I believe he hated us.  A PR disaster who sold all our players and replaced them with dodgy loans not up to the job.  Tactically inept who thought he was the saviour of good football but eventually he players would not break into a sprint for him let alone hit a half decent pass.  He left us a hollow husk of a team ripe for relegation.  We knew things were desperate at that stage, turning up was a chore and the players were not players we felt had a connection to the club or us.  We were like a bad advert for the Premier Reserve League.

Get me John Hartson

Jim Duffy was a desperate interim choice.  What was worse was watching someone so fat he had his own gravitational pull pretend to player football for us.  We were definitely a joke at this stage, if it was another team I would be laughing my head off.

Relegation to the Third Division

We were awful and fully deserving of this fate at this time.  Poor performances all over the shop, players not capable and loan players who did not care.  Carl Cort getting games, Cureton missing everything and Alan Gow wandering around like Bambi only mention a few terrible contributions to a beaten man of a team.  All summed up by the last game at Charlton where we had every chance of staying up but were completely outdone by a team who had been awful all season who were playing under a terrible manager.  No effort, no passion and a shrug of the shoulder attitude from those players involved.  Recently fans sung at Sammy Clingan that he could have been part of our promotion team – short memories of the teams he was part of during his time here.  After that game followed a summer of infighting, rumour, Gunn’s confirmation as manager, the rebate issue and the moanfest at St Andrews Hall.  A very real fear that we were going to continue to slide through the leagues came into our minds.  Everyone was laughing at us, especially the binners (who only built up the level of payback we gave them this season by a ration of 9 to 2).  Lets not forget at this time the seeds of recovery were sown with the changes upstairs at the club.

Essex Wide Boys slap us like Slaaaaaaaags

This one for me did not feel too bad.  I remember laughing, actually out load and I was far from alone.  Perhaps it was shock, perhaps it was being so used to things being terrible that I felt it was typical.  As the goals went in I felt the best thing was for them to score more to ensure that Gunn was moved on.  Poor Bryan, a good man in a bad situation but he was not up to the job.  We also had people chucking their season tickets at the manager on the first game of the season, another point of desperation highlighting our plight.  Watching those small time Col Who fans (both of them) living it up and laughing at our expense really brought it home how far we had fallen.  I hope they treasure that DVD as the revenge of taking their manager and humping them at their place was sweet.  Whilst most point to this as the lowest ebb but it is so linked to the rebirth that I cannot see it as such.

Which was the worst?  I change my mind all the time and I leave you to come to your own conclusions.

This one was so bad I had to Google the spelling of quite a simple name.

A loan that was bad on so many levels.  Where do I start?

What sort of a player was he?  He apparently was a striker but I thought you could of used him as a utility player, quite capable as being equally poor anywhere on the pitch.

Was he any good?  I will cover the good to get it out of the way.  He could run fast.  The bad, as briefly as I can sum it up:

- Kicking the ball

- Being anywhere useful on the pitch

- Knowing the rules of football

He made 5 appearances which was 5 too many.

But simply being a poor player is not the only reason he features in the bad category.  This alone could be forgiven but that are many other things that make this experience memorable for all the wrong reasons.

One thing that stand out is that he was a Roeder player and a prime example of the managerial decisions that dropped us deservedly to the third tier.  The  man who looked like a Geography teacher who disliked kids signed Koroma after keeping us up in his first season from a pretty desperate position.  Whilst storm clouds were gathering for some, Glenn’s self belief (of which the magnitude was only matched by the level it was misplaced) led to some real gems of interviews.  Whilst he was loaning in some terrible players and alienating them entirely with his Roeder-centric style he was declaring his brilliance.  Everyone else was wrong, anyone who played for a Premier League club was brilliant,  Simon Lappin was Dr Evil, Shola Ameobi was Pele, Huckerby was suddenly washed-up and Glen was the saviour of real passing football.  Madness that King Lear would consider too much.

Not only was Omar from Cromer linked to Roeder, he was a ‘arry Redknapp player.  Signed from nowhere and fading back there why did wheeler-dealer ‘arry pick up Omar?  I cannot even begin to think why.  I have never understood the adulation ‘arry receives in some quarters as he can only ever seem to do anything with money.  He also to me was linked with the Portsmouth meltdown of which anyone involved with should have had some serious questions to answer.  Not ‘arry however as the media was more focused on whether he would be the next England manager.  How can he thrive if he cannot buy players endlessly?  Players such as poor Omar.

It is also the sort of player that Omar kept out.  Chris Martin was turned around at Luton but could that not have been done at Norwich with a manager with the people skills to nurture a young talent?  Would he have kept us up?  Tall order but I am sure he would have done a better job poor Omar.

When I think of poor loans Omar is one of the first that come to mind.

Now we are top flight thoughts turn to the challenge of staying there.  People who take these thoughts to the next level tend to play Sega’s cult game series Football Manager.  Whilst the new version of the game is not expected for a few months I am one of those sad cases who is already thinking about how you would play it with Football Manager.  This is a very brief run down of how I would approach it.

Tactics

No contest here for me.  I have never set-up my own tactics from the ground up as this trial and error approach nearly always comes a ground.  I will tend to enter into discussions on various message boards to see generally the most effective formation then tweak it from there.  One person well worth following is Mr Hough on fmbase.co.uk as he has some very effective thoughts on formations to use.  Generally these are narrow formations that require small pitch dimensions.  I would use this as a base and tweak from here.  Currently I am using a narrow 4-3-3 with no wingers.  A good tactic will hide a number of sins elsewhere.

Players

You would need to work out quickly those that can cut it in the current squad.  At this point it is best to put aside your real world thoughts on players  as some odd players turn out to be the best ones.  Indeed I can remember Stephen Hughes, Julian Brellier and Jurgen Colin playing regularly for me in the Premier League and becoming club legends.  Once this is complete you need to turn to the market to plug the gaps.  I would adopt my usual approach of picking up the best free agents, then spend money on wonderkids available and finish up with cheap older players to fill any remaining gaps and provide much needed experience.  Free agents this year would include Earnshaw, Upson, Woodgate, Reo-Coker and Viera.  Wonderkids would need scouting and maybe a visit to a message board for some tips.  The older players would be Beckham, Campbell and Henry.

Coaches

Whole sale changes getting anyone with better stats in.  You need to get the training categories as close to 5 stars as possible so sack the dead weight in your backroom at whatever cost and bring in anyone from all corners of the globe.  Do it quickly and offer mutual terminations.

Training

Easy to build your own schedule for each position you have in your set formation.  Generally for me tailored schedules would be GK, FB, CB, DM, AM, QS and TM focusing more on the attributes you need to enhance for that position.  Set your coaches to the correct schedules and you are up and running.

Preseason

2 games a week and ensure your reserves play every week.  Match fitness is key so don’t worry about too many games.  Some games against decent opposition but most against lower teams for target practice to gain confidence.

Player handling

Over confidence not an issue ensure that players are reminded to always do it for the supporters.  When a player comes to you with an issue such as squad status ensure you come out as king.  During the course of the season you will annoy at least one good player.  If you can rid yourself of them then do it.

Media handling

Cautious or no comment.  Simple.

Scouting

Get as many scouts as possible and keep them going all season.  Be sure to scout Brazil, Spain and France as the key countries.

This is a whistle stop tour of what I would do.  Once the new version of the game comes out I hope to blog about how I go about the task and if I stay anywhere near what I have put in this post.

In the 1999/2000 season there were shifting sands at Norwich City.  A promising appointment in Bruce Rioch came a ground this season to be replaced by perhaps our worst manager ever (an opinion to be debated in a later post), a moody Craig Bellamy was undoing all his good work on the pitch with his effect on team morale and from nowhere a loan comes along that is still remembered 12 years on.

My memory of watching Pape play as a 17 year old from the stand is one of a truly exciting full back player with some of the most attacking over-lap play I have ever seen.  Built on a wirery frame he looked very awkward and never comfortable on the ball.  What he lacked he made up for with sheer pace and gung-ho attitude. What was he like as a defender?  I cannot remember or even believe I considered it relevant at the time.  He would bomb on so hard at the opposition that everyone was unsettled because no-one (and it seemed Pape himself was included) would know what would happen.  With him playing you thought anything could happen and he was worth the value of the ticket alone.  In a side that had Chris Llewelyn and Paul Dalglish, struggling without an injured Craig Bellamy and too reliant on Darren Eadie he was welcome relief.

He was playing at the time where there was a real excitement about enigmatic foreign players coming into the game, a time unlike now where we roll our eyes at yet another import coming in choking off the small supply of disinterested millionaires who can play for the formerly loved national team.

He left the club very quickly under a cloud after being accused of spitting at some QPR fans in a volatile Xmas fixture.  He had signed for a French Club in a permanent deal despite being on a year loan with us.  I guess such international loans were quite new back then and there were not the rules we have now.  Of course this was not as odd as good old Harry “I don’t want the England job but keep talking about it as I am the only person who would support me getting it other than the lad Jamie” Redknapp loaning us Omar from Cromer who I think must have been scouted doing something other than play football for which he had no ability.

Pape became even more interesting after that.  When he left many stories about him playing all over Europe and for Senegal came out.  Pape become a Where’s Wally figure with fans trying to track down reports of his last known club or game.  This mysterious figure who played half a season for us appeared to be acting out a global career.  Lamentably however it was not him as he was confused with another, clearly more gifted, Senegalese player called Pape Diop.

To me he remains a real example of how a good player in a poor team can stand out.  The Leroy Lita of that season.

For a long time I have had a feeling.  It rarely get’s aired because I think it is based on my own rampant bias.  But some recent events have made me feel brave enough to put it too words.  Norwich City have fans that are generally better than most.

The first event that has prompted me to come forward on this one is the recent Twitter hashtag of #yellowarmy.  An idea was formed by some Twitter users and then backed by the club to use as as means of finding other Twitter users who support the Yellows and use it as a follow back mechanism.  The ultimate result was that you could make a connection with many more people who wanted to tweet on all things NCFC and build a much stronger sense of an online community.

This for me showed that we as a group are generally a friendly bunch without the vicious infighting and need for keyboard wars that afflict the online community of some other clubs.  This has been helped by our recent success (I am not sure it would have been such a success if the circumstances of two years ago were upon us).  But I have yet to see evidence of this happening at other clubs and shows how we are much more united than some other clubs.

The other incident that has made me declare my feelings is the recent handling of a racist City fan.  He used his account to put forward his racist viewpoint I am sure feeling pretty safe that he could hide behind the distance between himself and the account.  This was picked up by other NCFC Twitter users and he was hounded by legion of them.  This was raised with the club, the fan was banned for life and now I understand he is some bother with the law.  Other clubs and fans would have let it passed, not City, we made sure that no-one like that was associated with our club.  It was only slightly tarnished by the desperate posturing of Mark Bright to use the issue to seem more relevant than the sleep inducing and banal presence on the BBC Sport staff who will be moved aside as soon as someone with personality and half a brain turns up.

Exciting times to be a Norwich fan.

Let’s be honest, in the off-season period things are generally boring.  This boredom reaches a real pitch when you hit Saturday’s.  Usually the absolute highlight of the week they become time periods of drifting around lost, not quite knowing what to do, like an Ipswich fan caught in a discussion about playoff prospect (a feeling that usually starts about January for them).  You spend your time  like a lost pup, suddenly reduntant and almost catching yourself thinking work might be preferable (only almost though).

So what can we do to relieve the boredom?  Here is a list of alternative things to do on a Saturday:

1. Hang out with friends who do not do football.  I consider this a form a charity work aimed at those with life enjoyment impairment.  For just 1 hour a week you can help these poor desperate souls.

2. Do the jobs on your to-do list.  Teenagers may not understand this one but as you head through your twenties you end up with jobs that need doing and this only escalates with age.  The garden needs doing, clean some stuff up, decorate.  The only benefit here is they will not appear during the season.  They will not help your current boredom and frankly it is all together too sensible.

3. Exercise.  A good idea but will normally only last a short time given your level of fitness.

4. Drinking.  The answer is apparently not at the bottom of a glass.  But surely until you have reached the bottom of every glass this cannot be proven?  A summer of binge drinking could lead you closer to the glass that has the answer.

5. Goading local rivals on messageboards.  I would tend to take the high road on this one and not bother.  No need to troll the Binners, they have done a fine job of making a mockery of themselves last season and none of us can improve upon this job.  They are even setting themselves up again with comedy signings, it needs little comment from us.

6. Write a blog.  Maybe you too can write about why you are bored and hope that other’s too are bored enough to read why you are bored.

7. Go out and enjoy the summer sun. I could do (looks out of window) ah but I am not a canary who has moved to sunnier climes so shower watching from inside it is.

8. Start a family.  I am working on that one but that 9 month lead in time and many years of commitment means it probably should not be used as a way just to relieve summer boredom.

9. Football Manager.  Ah the drug of my life.  I have managed to get Norwich second in the league, in the Champions League and win the League Cup for the 3 successive season all in about 5 seasons on the game.  It does steal time away from you, make you a hermit and when you are meant to do doing something else like being gainfully employed you are wondering if you have set up your free-kick takers correctly.

10. Pour over the sports pages constantly hoping something has happened.  A desperate move I have resorted to several times.  They never seem to change enough though.  Even the ever changing boredom crusher that is Twitter never seems to move fast enough in the off season.

11. Start a rumour.  Provide your own entertainment in the lack of it coming up through the normal means.  One brilliant one in recent seasons came from the Pink’Un board where the poster set up a very elaborate set of posts about a take over.  He even set a time for the announcement and built it all up.  We all piled in and rubbished him but deep down I am sure a number of us were glad of the entertainment.  Can I do it this summer?  I am off to Asda this evening and will keep my eyes firmly peeled for anyone who is tall, thin and male that I can mistake for a footballer.  My bet is Rooney (who does not fit at least one of the criteria in the last sentence) as that is who most people in Asda look like.

12. Come up with a list of suggestions of things you could be doing.  Try and do eleven so its like a football team and then ruin it with a needless twelfth point. Bugger.

That is currently how I see my options at the moment.  Please feel free to add, as the summer continues and my boredom increases I am sure I will provide more in later posts.

So the fixtures are out and we know our fate for the season.  At first I only found out the first game, Boxing Day and the last game of the season.  The one that stuck out was the last game of the season.  As stated in the previous post this one took on special significance as the Wife and in-laws are Villa fans.  My heart sank when I realised they could relegate us from the Premier League for the second time.  But I ploughed on with the working day.

Now I have had a chance to review the full list I feel even more desperate.  The build up to the game is Tottenham, Man CIty, Blackburn, Liverpool and Arsenal.  Imagine heading into those games needing wins to stay up?  Others around us will have better run-ins because we could not have a much worse a run-in.

So I face the very real prospect that we could be relegated by Villa.  Something I am sure that I will stop being reminded of only when I expire.  It’s like knowing your killer a full year before he commits the act.

It could be different however.  Firstly we could be relegated by then.  Not fancy me expanding on that thought?  DIdn’t think so and I don’t fancy it either so will avoid it.  The second option, the one with hope which I cling to with a level of desperation that cannot quite match the tight grip at which Binners have on their history books is that we will have points cushion by that time needing a minimal return to stay up.  Even the delusion of escalating pre-season confidence leads me to truly believe this will definitely happen.  But it is all I have so let’s go with it.

So boys, it’s points on the board early.  A Blackpool-esque run that lasts a month longer.  A tall order.

In Lambert we trust.

It is a funny time of the year to be a football fan.  A limbo state between seasons where not much happens.  You are stuck between boredom and not quite knowing where you are.  Indeed some of the odds stories in football tend to come out around this time which are largely caused by the boredom of the football fraternity.

One of the landmarks in this football desert is the release of the fixture list.  A simple list of dates and times for the games for the upcoming season is greeted with a real fever.

I have to admit it has never real captured my imagination. Perhaps it’s my refusal to plan too far ahead or my lack of imagination.  But puting my reluctance to one side this is how the fixtures would fall in an ideal way for me:

-First game:  Villa (H)

Club looking in turmoil but I would say too big to be real relegation candidates.  Later in the season they may resolve the messy manager situation and be much more of a threat.  Also the in-laws support them so any victory welcome.

-Boxing day:  Spurs (A)

Our new derby due to the dire football coming out of Suffolk and East London.  So we get to play ‘arry’s boy’s and as the closest fixture I consider this the most likely date.  I for one would love it if we won this one.  Spurs fans think they rule the world and years of school surrounded by Spurs fans whose families had never set foot outside Norfolk have built this hate up.

-Last game: Fulham (A)

We head into this one safe, turn up and try to play like Brazil, lose and laugh about it .  It would be a cathartic experience considering the last time at Craven Cottage which has caused great pain for years.

My big hope for the fixture list is as many Saturday 3pm kick-offs as possible.  You want to be in the top flight but the watered down, Rupert Murdoch tainted, plastic fan centred, disinterested millionaire playing experience does tend to remove you from football’s traditions.  Turning up 4pm on Sunday is something I would like to avoid.