I’ve never been much good at ‘media management’. I called a halt to my short career as a Norwich City Councillor when I got fed up with being misquoted in the local press, most painfully when we were accused of ‘banning conkers’ (we weren’t, just chopping down a couple of dead trees in Bluebell Road).
Personal experience of journalists has given me a healthy disrespect for a ‘profession’ that ranks higher only than politicians and estate agents in public esteem.
So I try to keep my distance from the media, traditional, social or otherwise. Donald Trump can only blather on about ‘fake news’ because there is in fact plenty of it, including most of the cr*p he makes up on Twitter. But this last week I may just have been responsible for a little bit of ‘fake news’, via this wonderful website, MyFootballWriter.
We are of course in the twice-yearly silly season known as the transfer window, so Dave from Chepstow keeps spotting Ronaldo at Watford Gap service station, while Colin from Crewe has a mate who works at Manchester Airport and saw Gareth Bale waiting for his suitcase at the baggage carousel. Oh, and a bloke looking just like Stanley Matthews parked his Morris Minor in the Portman Road car park… (not forgetting George Santyana – Ed).
The whole thing is a load of nonsense, especially the January transfer window, whose only real beneficiaries are Sky Sports News’ under-employed presenters and viewers.
But when I spotted the EDP’s latest ‘transfer rumour’ earlier this week I allowed myself a little chuckle. There it was – ‘Canaries tracking non-league striker Reise Allassani’, along with several other Championship clubs and ‘Scottish giants’ Celtic and Rangers, according to ‘Sky Sports Pundit’ Kevin Something-or-other.
For once, dear MFW reader, I can verifiably say you read it here first, in a comment I made on last week’s Chelsea preview. Well, I actually said (accuracy is important in these matters) that I hoped NCFC were looking at Allassani…
For the record, Allassani is an ex-Palace youth player getting his career back on track after a serious knee injury. He’s 22, small but quick and powerful, and with that uncanny striker’s knack of making time stop still when he gets the ball anywhere near goal.
The only Norwich player I saw do that was Dean Ashton, another tragic victim of early (career-ending) injury. Allassani has scored 17 goals in 15 games for Dulwich Hamlet so far this season, in the ‘7th-tier’ Bostik Premier League, including two hat tricks (one, gloriously, in the first half against the Metropolitan Police) and several ‘braces’.
I’ve seen most of those goals – put him through on goal and he will score, as coolly and clinically as you like, an attribute which a good footballer can apply at any level.
Now, I’ve no idea whether Allassani will turn out to be the ‘next Jamie Vardy’ or even Grant Holt, but it would be lovely if he did.
He’s also equipped with a full head of dreadlocks, which only adds to his appeal for me. I’ve no idea either whether he really is being ‘tracked’ by Norwich City, but don’t forget that if he does rock up at Carrow Road and Costa Colney in the next few weeks, you read it here first!
I hope you’re right Andy and we do manage to get him. Sorry to bring the positivity down though.
Unfortunately he’ll be seen as a future cash cow if it all works out.
It’ll be enough to secure a few renewals to see if he can “bang them in” that’s about it…
The thought of NCFC managing to progress again to the nasty money driven premier league is clearly abhorrent to the Carrow Road polit bureau. Ambition is not part of their latest five year plan.
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Do you think we’ll get him AND Santyana or is that just living a dream?
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Ha! I was in Fosters Solicitors this morning for my own purposes while a giant with “RJ” on his NCFC tracky top was delivering shedloads of papers to them. As our official legal partners, I wondered what the papers were about.
He (RJ) remained schtum. As did the lady on the counter, who is usually very conversational.
Oh well, I completed my business and left.
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I reckon Ryan Jarvis is back as errand boy 😉
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Good one! It certainly wasn’t Ryan and that’s for sure:-)
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Can one of you Norwich old timers tell me who is this George santayana? Any relation to the bloke who attacked the Alamo?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana … Spanish, cultured and classy.
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My goodness, Gary. There was I thinking he was a Mexican international once spotted with a frothy coffee at Ipswich railway station…
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Santayana has long been rumoured to be about to join Norwich City, Andy. In fact at one point the wikipedia entry that Gary has referenced carried that rumour too….
There have alse been references in the national press to this rumoured signing.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/01/13/will-norwich-city-sign-anyone-who-is-not-a-dead-philosopher-this-transfer-window-5619828/
http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/4160/extra-time/2016/01/12/19266532/norwich-admit-defeat-in-santayana-transfer-bid
The club itself also carried news of the potential signing… saying they had backed off because of Santayana’s failed medical…
https://twitter.com/norwichcityfc/status/686968100969922560?lang=en
We still continue to live in hope….
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Thanks for the elucidation – nothing to do with the Alamo then…
In amongst the cheerful ‘banter’, there is a serious point here about just why Norwich city’s ‘recruitment and release’ record is so awful. Two names to make the point – Matt (not Ryan, or Rossi or Ron for that matter) Jarvis, and Korey Smith, seen the other night giving Man City a run for their money. Is Norwich just too out of the way to attract and keep good footballers? Is there something just a bit odd about this football club? Just asking…
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Korey Smith we simply let go, I think in the PL under Lambert. At the time I did not really understand why we just released him.
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Now that the name Matt Jarvis has cropped up, aren’t we as fans entitled to know exactly whats going on with him .Either he’s terminally injured ,which I would’nt wish on anybody, but if he is can we not terminate his contract early in some way. Alternatively if he is expected to return to action -when ??
We seem to be kept in the dark about an “asset” who has probably cost the club a five figure fee for every minute on the pitch.?
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At the risk of getting really boring I “can report” that according to the South London Mercury- a normally reliable source on Dulwich hamlet- “Norwich City made an offer for Reise Allassani a number of weeks ago”…
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