Archive for September, 2012

I guess there may have been a twist if Surman’s shot – in the first minute of the second-half – had gone in. As it happened, TV replays showed that Snodgrass’s intervention didn’t stop the ball going in, but instead probably just saved a photographer’s lens. And as bright spots go, that was just about it…

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“The Gerrard goal takes a big deflection – that’s how it was today,” he said. “But the goals before that were goals that we could have done something about. “The second goal is the one that hurts us. They’ve scored early, but we’ve got ourselves back into the game and while we would have liked to have been a bigger threat we were still very much in the game.”

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Having pulled one wide only seconds earlier, he robbed a dawdling Turner before delivering the perfect finish with a flick of the outside of his right foot and on, inside Ruddy’s right upright. As good as the finish was, the invite was again delivered by sloppy defending. Give Suarez and his Premier League ilk an inch, they’ll take a mile…

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“Sometimes I’m doing the hard part by getting away from the defender, but then I’m not finishing well,” added Suarez, who finished all-too well in the corresponding fixture last year. “But that’s what you work on in training and sometimes there’s a bit of luck involved as well, but by practising hard I’m sure that the goals I want to score will come.”

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The number of top level players that passed through his hands during his Carrow Road stint were numerous – too many to mention – but spoke volumes of Bondy’s standing and regard within the game that he got them here. Martin Peters is the obvious one – not too many World Cup winners will be calling Carrow Road home any time soon – but he was one of several…

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The second longest-serving manager in City’s history, Bond did so much much to instill the sense of ‘playing the Canary way…’ into the Norfolk club; an expectation that the beautiful game would be just that; that Saturday afternoon at Carrow Road would be one where entertaining football came before effective football…

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To date, little has been spoken of his fledgling City career, in no small part due to the quiet, unassuming and efficient way the real King of Spain goes about his business. No frills; no dramas; few errors; few misplaced passes and a left foot that can open a tin of beans…

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The first hiccup of the day arrived in the form of an injury to a key player. Sebastien Bassong’s return to Tyneside was short-lived when he pulled up following a forward foray for a corner, with what looked to be hamstring pull. Such has been the Cameroonian’s impact early on in his Norwich career, Hughton will be praying it’s not a bad one…

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In fact, I probably couldn’t tackle the task without the help of my wife. Yes, there are occasional differences of opinion – one man’s programme collection is another woman’s pile of waste paper, apparently – but she is very good at identifying and throwing out anything unlikely ever to be used again. Though curiously, I notice her wedding dress is still up in the loft…

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Right now, those two look the part. Whether Chris Hughton threw them together more by luck than judgement on the back of the Bennett-Turner misadventures at Craven Cottage is for the manager to know and the rest of us to guess. But they have pace, power and, certainly in the case of Bassong, presence.

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