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Seven days in which we will all discover which way the wind is blowing – off and on the pitch

18th November 2007 By Rick Waghorn Leave a Comment

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I will be the first to admit it. The phrase: 'A big week in Norwich City's history…' is one of those that has passed across my keyboard all too often in recent times.

It was, if memory serves, a very big week in the club's 105-year history when the board sat down to interview their latest set of managerial candidates – and all no more than 12 months since they all sat down and sifted through the last list of runners and riders.

So perhaps we better describe the next seven days as a big, big week in Norwich City's history. Or perhaps throw our old friend Prudence to the wind and describe the next seven days as potentially the biggest seven days in Norwich City's history.

For, certainly, come five o'clock next Saturday we will all have a far better idea of whether new Canary boss Glenn Roeder has a cat in hell's chance of digging out the 40-odd points he needs from the next 30 games to spare the Norfolk club from the drop.

Home to Coventry City is one of those fixtures between now and next May which has 'must win' written all over it. In fact, with Watford been and gone, it is probably only the day that the Canaries entertain West Bromwich Albion that hasn't got 'three points' written all over it.

Take one from the Baggies game and run.

So if next weekend's home clash is a game that could set the tone for much of what could follow, so there are one or two events between now and then that could, likewise, dictate in just what direction this football club is head.

The first, you suspect, will be the arrival of a new first team coach in Paul Stephenson.

He is, according to Roeder, 'a man who can light up a room with his smile' – which is no bad thing given the dark corner of the world that City currently inhabit.

Four years older than Lee Clark, there is another point that the 39-year-old's arrival highlights – the possibility that between the two, young and ambitious men at Norwich City's coaching helm the club might, just, have given itself the opportunity going forward to appoint from within – that the first small planks of a succession have been installed; that the kind of continuity which has seen Brian Klug manage the fortunes of Danny Haynes for the last ten years has started to be replicated north of the border.

Clearly, that is all a debate for another day; Norwich continue on their journey south and both Clark and Stephenson will, in every likelihood, go down with the good ship Roeder.

Ship steadies and sails into calmer waters and, over time, that picture might change. Might.

It is, howvever, Roeder's recent talk of his two, imminent loan signings that adds the real icing to this week of all weeks.

Not just for the message that it sends the rest of Championship – or rather the bottom third of the Championship for whom Norwich's possible revival may yet have a bearing on their own fortunes this season – but, more importantly, for the message that it sends out from the board to the supporters.

That's the fascinating one.

That's where the real kiss and make up has to happen – and, on the age-old basis of deeds speaking louder than words, who arrives this week may well start to tell everyone just how far this current boardroom intends to go in terms of righting a few wrongs.

The odd message is already seeping out. Roeder was a 'high end' managerial appointment; he wasn't the cheapest option in town; he was – once Paul Jewell opted to play silly b*ggers – the biggest 'name' left in the pot.

So, there's a dash of ambition there. Financial prudence might have demanded a Geraint Williams or a Simon Grayson.

The counter argument, of course, is that Roeder would have dropped his price to get his foot back on the ladder; maybe. Lee Clark is slightly more high profile than, say, whoever Grayson's No2 might have been.

But, if boardroom redemption lies in the realm of roughly pushing prudence to one side and showing some naked ambition in the pursuit of the kind of players that are needed to get Norwich out of this almighty mess, then the acid test will come in the shape of who follows Matty Pattison through the door.

Who is this young, hungry player who went for 'big money', but has yet to be given his chance in the Premiership?

Big money means big salary; means someone, somewhere, starting to bank-roll Roeder's escape plan.

Something they should have done with Peter Grant? That it is all too little, too late? That where was this ambition in the summer?

Well, talk to one or two people outside that boardoom clique and they will insist that that same ambition was always sat in the manager's coffer this summer – that it was his choice, not the board's, that the cash for a new No5 was never spent.

Which, as ever, will only beg further questions – above all, why weren't the board more robust in demanding that their cash be spent? That once Ryan Shawcross went elsewhere, why didn't 'Plan B' emerge from the woodwork?

Because that's the peril they face – that from the outside it looks as if Prudence was holding Ambition at bay?

But if a combination of the Turners arrival and Delia's return to the kitchen to teach the nation how to cook again had given new life to Ambition, the fact that they then discovered they had appointed a manager with this huge, prudent streak running right through him, must have been a nightmare.

Ot if it wasn't prudence in Grant's case, then it was a lack of confidence or connections in the transfer market – something, somewhere, that stayed his hand; that found him fiddling while Rome burned.

Either way, he was guilty of one of the great managerial sins – not spending every last penny a board gives you. Do something, anything, with their money; it's your name, your career, your reputation on the line – splash the cash before the axe falls.

And if you've splashed all their cash, go back for more… Question their ambition first in private and then in public. Those are the basics of dressing room-boardroom politics. Squeeze them for every last drop. And then squeeze some more.

That's why Roeder is on to such a winner. Grant's latter-day reticence in the transfer market left the assumption that it was all the board's doing hanging heavy in the air; it left them with a massive point to prove that the money was there all along – he only had to ask.

Don't ask and you don't get.

Roeder keeps asking and he'll get. He'll get because that's the way for the board to win back supporters' hearts; to win back season ticket sales; to win back City's disappearing Championship status.

It is, likewise, the way for the Turners to prove that they are in that boardroom for more than just the ride.

That's the way to quash all the talk of 'Where's our new investor ever going to come from? Where's our Marcus Evans?'

Big loan signing this week and it is easy to 'spin' that answer – that City's own Macus Evans lives in Taverham and sits in the boardroom.

The difference being, of course, that such 'spin' actually comes with real substance; that proof comes in the player pudding; that here comes 'a Huckerby moment'.

Like I say, big week. Big, big week.


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Filed Under: Column, Rick Waghorn

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