It was a couple of lines that I stumbled upon quite by chance, but it reveals much as to the change in thinking that this summer has brought to the corridors of Colney – in that big is the new small.
The lines in question followed City's 2-1 defeat by Derby County last season; a game in which the Canaries went into battle with the towering centre-half partnership of Adam Drury and Elliot Omosuzi.
Both decent footballers; neither though of the tall and strapping variety.
But for then City boss Glenn Roeder, that mattered not. That was the beauty of football – that small could still beat big.
“I thought considering their lack of inches, they coped really well,” said Roeder.
“Even though we lost the game, I thought I was proved right to play Adam [Drury] inside,” he added. “I really thought he was terrific. Well-supported by Elliot.
“But as I said to the boys yesterday, one of the reasons that football's one of the best team games in the world is [the fact] that it's the game where the little guy can beat the big guy. If he's good enough and clever enough.
“You have all these American sports – Gridiron, basketball – unless you're six-foot ten, you don't get a game. But football is the beautiful game because if the little guy is good enough and clever enough then he can beat the big guy. And there aren't too many team games like that.”
Football can still be a beautiful game.
But in England, Beauty has long taken a pounding from Beast. For the vast bulk of English football clubs, money dictates the way that the game is played – and when faced with the kind of financial abyss that stares any run-of-the-mill Premiership club in the face come relegation, so people will play the percentages.
Back the bigger lad with the slower feet, to beat the little lad with the nimble mind and quicker toes.
It is an attitude of mind that underpins what Kevin Baldwin sees unfolding at The Reebok every season; dwindling interest in a team honed in the ultra-physical arts of brutal efficiency.
It is what kept Stoke in the Premiership; power ahead of poise; strength of purpose ahead of any beauty in the performance.
Stoke, Bolton, Watford in their Aidy days – these are probably the extremes. I would suspect that City's coaching triumvirate of Messrs Gunn, Butterworth and Crook still have too much football in their blood to go wholly down that route.
But, there is also a strong streak of pragmatism in their thinking; that when faced with a rugged, six-foot defender of a Michael Nelson ilk, you are not going to go through them if you're Arturo Lupoli, Jamie Cureton, Cody McDonald or Wes Hoolahan.
Ditto in central midfield. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the whole Mark Fotheringham era, for me the bottom line was always quite simple. He wasn't big enough. He was brushed off the ball too easily.
Darel Russell is less of a pushover, but he is still not the strapping six-footer that the game invariably demands in that position.
Which is why the arrival of Owain Tudur Jones is interesting. If he does what it says he should do on the side of the tin, then Norwich have a classic example of the modern midfielder breed in their midst. A six-foot plus athlete. Albeit one with a rebuilt knee.
For some, of course, there is this sense that Norwich are moving away from their 'traditions'; that, by obvious implication, if you slam a six-foot four-inch forward of a Liam Dickinson ilk at the tip of your team, so the ball will follow – it'll be slammed high, long and direct towards Dickinson's head with little or no thought for the demands of the paying punter.
Who have, after all, just forgone their season ticket rebate in the hope of seeing a football match, not a basketball game.
That's the danger; that's what the management will clearly have to 'spin' against; that they are just going all 'long ball' on everyone; playing the same percentages that both Bolton and Stoke bring to the party.
As ever, results will do most of the spinning for Gunn; you can get away with 'style' murder if you're winning games.
All the available evidence, however, would suggest that the City chief is not about to throw both baby and bath out of the window; that there is a happy medium to gun for between being both effective and entertaining. If nothing else, a team that has a spine built around Tudur Jones, Matt Gill and Michael Nelson should prove rather harder to beat than a central 'core' of, say, Fotheringham, Omosuzi and Drury.
Yes, of course, the three can play; put a football at their feet and it wouldn't be a contest.
But that's the point – in the frenzied, frantic world of both the Championship and League One, no-one puts the ball at your feet.
Or if they do, then someone in an opposition shirt is smashing through both ball and ankles before anyone ever has time to sweep the ball forward in the best traditions of the beautiful game.
Nine times out of ten, however, the ball is not at your feet. It's coming straight down onto your forehead – with a six-foot plus striker in tow.
And it's now you play the percentages; that more than often than not, the best way to beat a six-foot striker to a high ball is to have a six-foot two-inch defender waiting for the ball to drop. Which is where a Nelson at centre-half will beat a Drury at centre-half every time.
One final point as Gunn starts to build a team that – on paper – could well do him a job. I like the sound of Tudur Jones. The kid's got a good story to go with a great frame and, by most accounts, a great attitude.
He is, in short, the kind of arrival that would light my fire were Norwich starting the new season in the Championship, let alone kicking off their new life down below.
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