It’s time to take a step back and look at the facts. City’s form is simply awesome

Sometimes you can be so busy just getting on with life that you don’t give yourself a moment to pause, take stock, and appreciate how good some things are.

For those of us who care about Norwich City, now is the time to make that moment. Now is the time to savour and relish this extraordinary season and the utterly remarkable achievements of the team we support.

As the long, impressive run has continued, there have been so many last-gasp triumphs and narrow victories that there has been a sense, at times, that Norwich have been lucky or do not deserve their exalted position in the division.

That guilty belief, along with the natural caution and pessimism of many of us, has stopped a proper appraisal of just what has been going on.

But look at the facts. After taking ten points from the first nine games of the season, City have harvested a truly astonishing 65 from the subsequent 26.

That is an average of 2.5 points a game, and that is more than a geeky stat. It is a valid measure of excellence.

An average of two points a game is normally regarded as promotion form. When Nigel Worthington’s City won the Football League in 2002-04, they averaged 2.04 points a game.

The buffoon sitting next to my brother-in-law in the Jarrold Stand for the Southampton defeat could not have been more wrong. When City conceded their second goal, he stomped off into the night complaining loudly: “They are so inconsistent!”

Inconsistent? Only a handful of teams have ever managed to be as consistently successful as Norwich have been in the last six months.

Are they perfect? Of course not. Would some of this season’s heroes find the going tough in the Championship? Undoubtedly. But if you cannot understand how well Norwich have done and enjoy it, then you need to give up watching sport completely.

And all those late goals? There have been far too many for them to be a co-incidence and so, instead of being an indication that City have been fortunate, they are incontrovertible proof of both an unquenchable desire and of the quality to succeed.

For me, that resolute durability was epitomised by a couple of away draws: at Southampton in November and at Yeovil the following month.

At St Mary’s, Wes Hoolahan had equalised Adam Lallana’s early goal and City were playing well. Then David Connolly spanked in a long-range thunderbolt. There were only 25 minutes left and some of us thought: “Fair enough. City have been beaten by a decent side and a spectacular goal”.

That is not how Paul Lambert thinks, and so it is not how his team thinks. After 72 minutes he made a double substitution – sending on Cody McDonald as an out-and-out striker in place of Hoolahan, who had been playing as a provider, and Stephen Hughes for the tiring Simon Lappin. It was a statement of intent. Three minutes later Hughes plundered an equaliser.

At Huish Park, Jonathan Obika headed Yeovil into a 3-2 lead in the second minute of time added on. Cue abject misery on the packed away terrace. Cue urgent gesturing from Lambert as, again, he simply refused to accept defeat.

And so, in the 94th minute, the mighty Doc grabbed his second goal of the game and City had seized a draw. Arithmetically, City were only a point better off after each of those spirited finishes. But psychologically those points were immense.

When Ken Brown’s team won the Milk Cup in 1985, I had no sense that I was witnessing a watershed moment in Norwich City history. I did disgrace myself at Wembley, mind. I was working for The Sun. The Press Box at the old stadium was close to the roof on the Royal Box side and stretched from level with one penalty area to level with the other.

I contradicted the accepted media etiquette by running along behind the seats and repeatedly jumping up to punch the air, as if it had been me, rather than Asa Hartford, who had scored the only goal.

But nobody present knew how the football landscape was about to change in the coming decades. Back then it was perfectly possible for a relatively small provincial club like Norwich to win any of the major trophies.

So, although Norwich only won three more games all season and were relegated from the top division, they bounced straight back as champions of the old second division and there was no hint that a quarter of a century would pass without City winning another Cup.

In November 1992, when I drove my young family home from a fabulous Premiership 3-2 win at Villa Park and we sang “We are top of the League” for a couple of hours, I did understand that what was happening at Norwich was something special and probably transient.

The following season, as my sons fell asleep on the trip home to Hertfordshire from watching the second leg of that epic triumph over Bayern Munich, I did acknowledge that “this is as good as it gets”.

And in May 2004, when I was on my own in my car, driving around Sunderland with my scarf out of the window and hooting my horn like a mad man, I was utterly certain that securing the Football League Championship that night had been an event to lock away in the memory and hold dear.

And now, I have the same feeling. This has been an awesome season. Awesome.