So we've got the Sheriff and a Crook. All we need is the loan arranger to sort us out a biggish striker…
Bryan Gunn has not earned the job of managing Norwich City on the strength of the second-half of his one match in caretaker control. It is because of his 22-year association with the club.
From the days when he used to try to head the crossbar, through an era when he could be spotted quite often at away matches as a fan (with a flat cap that was as much a disguise as protection from the elements) to the time when he worked as an ambassador for the club, it was always obvious that Gunny cared.
He “got” Norwich as well. As the ethos of the place was altered after the unlamented departure of chairman Robert Chase, Gunny embodied the new policy of trying to engage with supporters.
For instance, the Big Man was simply an excellent, attentive host at the Gunn Club on matchdays and although there will be some who think that is the least important entry on his CV, that task was just one of the many little details which transformed the experience of going to Carrow Road.
Gunn's later roles ? as 'liaison officer' under Peter Grant and head of recruitment under Glenn Roeder and occasional stand-in goalkeeping coach ? were gambles. Once you hitch your wagon to the football bit of the business, you never know when the wheels might fall off.
Now he has taken another huge step ? but the history of the club offers encouragement. Three of Norwich City's most successful managers were promoted from within.
Kenny Brown was John Bond's avuncular side-kick. When, for instance, Bond told me after one match (I was a Pink Un hack back then) that he had fined striker Viv Busby two weeks' wages “for not trying”, Brown asked me not to write the story until he'd had a chance to mollify the situation. The fine never happened and so the story did not appear.
When Bond left for Manchester City, few rated Brown management material, but he pitched up at the Newmarket Road home of the chairman, Sir Arthur South, made his case and got the job. He won the Football League (Milk) Cup and signed a raft of exceptional players (including Gunn and Crook).
Brown's purchases formed the basis of the team that Mike Walker took to third place in the Premier League and led on that swashbuckling UEFA Cup adventure. Walker had been a little-appreciated reserve team coach at Carrow Road before his elevation to manager.
And, although I can hear the howls of derision starting, I'd say Nigel Worthington's achievements in steering City to the play-off final and then winning the Football League in glorious style earn him a place in the list of our best managers. He too was promoted from within.
So good luck Gunny.
I joined his daughter's Facebook campaign for him to get the job at about the time on Tuesday night that, unbeknown to most of us, he was being appointed.
On Wednesday, as his new position was being announced, I was just about to go in and make a presentation to the board of the Football Foundation. Those present, who included many of the game's seriously powerful folk, were much more interested in the news about Gunny and, without exception, spoke well of him.
A word of warning, however. When managers win a few football matches they are hailed as geniuses. When they lose a few they are condemned as idiots. The truth is always somewhere in between.
I am probably last man standing who thinks Glenn Roeder did a good job for Norwich, but I do. His faults and flaws were part of a package which also included qualities and strengths. Gunny will be a similar amalgam, because all managers are. All people are.
It is to Gunn's credit that he has pointedly not joined in the deriding of Roeder, nor added to all the stories of players being scared of him.
Whenever a team are on a losing run, reporters hear about discontent in the dressing room. When the same players and the same manager put together a winning sequence, all is peace and light.
It is true that Roeder can be caustic with people. It was a mistake to adopt that tone with and about supporters.
But I can think of several managers who have been abrasive, even frightening, with their players and yet enjoyed huge success. Brian Clough was one and another is that Scots bloke whose club are the current English, European and World champions.
Roeder's refusal to recall Jamie Cureton was shown to be folly by the striker's goal on Saturday, but there were also goals by Roeder's best two signings, Wes Hoolahan and Sammy Clingan and the superior fitness which carried City clear of their tiring opponents was also a tribute to a manager whose last gift to the club was the admirable Jonathan Grounds.
I shall always be grateful for Roeder's role in The Great Escape. But that EDP poster of him as Steve McQueen was not a great omen. In the film, McQueen's character was shot by the Germans.
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My piece in the Daily Express, reprinted on this site, about the scenes in the boardroom on the night Glenn Roeder was sacked offended a lot of City fans.
I realised that was a risk, but the Express, Sky, the BBC, TalkSport radio and sundry others pay me for my opinions and I have regularly upset supporters of other clubs. I think I am still the subject of a Geordie Fatwah, for instance.
So it would have been hypocritical to remain quiet about the club I support.
Two of three times a season Delia Smith and Michael Wynn Jones invite my wife and I to eat with them in the Gunn Club before a game. I shall not apologise for that. At the Charlton game, that privilege allowed me a very different view of an extraordinary night and my article was intended as a factual account.
But there is nothing to be gained now by prolonging the argument.
So I shall take my lecture from the deputy business editor of the Eastern Daily Press without further comment, and not respond to the Pink Un postings of people with whom I probably cried in Cardiff in 2002 and danced at Sunderland in 2004 when City became Champions.
My wife and I shall simply take our place in the Jarrold Stand for Tuesday's game against Southampton and just do what we have for three decades ? cheer as loudly as we can.
We are all in the Gunn club now. On the ball, City.
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