The perils of listening to the holiday CD; don’t stop believing, just have a little patience – ain’t nothing going to stop us now.

I’m definitely going to have a bigger say in the choice of music played in the car the next time we go on holiday.

It’s a relief that the kids have grown out of the nursery rhyme CDs, which I can now throw under the wheels of the bus.

But the stuff we listened to this year was a compilation of the disturbing, concerning and plain annoying.

Disturbing, because it doesn’t feel right to have your four-year-old son singing along to ‘Rehab’ in the back seat. (Apart from anything else, he hasn’t tested positive for Calpol for months now.)

Concerning, because my wife kept belting out the chorus of ‘Bad Romance’ just a little too enthusiastically.

And annoying, because if I hear Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ one more time, the journey will be terminated immediately. (I still can’t understand why I was bought a T-shirt at Disneyland Paris with a picture of Grumpy on the front…)

That said, there is a message in the latter song that the City players – and some fans – need to keep in mind at the moment. Not the line ‘Some were born to sing the blues’, obviously (*shudder*); I mean the title.

Bradley Johnson and Andrew Surman have both told the Press since Sunday’s defeat that the belief is still there in the squad; I hope that’s true, and that they don’t stop believing even if the win doesn’t come in the next two or three games.

Because I really don’t think we’re far away from cracking it. We certainly haven’t been taken apart and made to look naïve in the way that we were against Watford in the first game of last season.

(I’m discounting the MK Dons game, naturally, since the team appeared to. Travelling up for an early round match in the Carling Cup, like taking travellers’ cheques to France, is not a mistake I’ll be making again.)

We’ve dominated large spells of games – even at Chelsea, where I had my most enjoyable Saturday afternoon in a Shed since that day in my teenage years when a mate and I discovered his dad’s magazine collection.

There’s a good combination of steel and inventiveness in the side.

We’re creating plenty of openings, and (very encouragingly) in a variety of ways; we seem to have more options available to us than we did last season. And contrary to the views of some commentators, we do have pace in our forward line; it’s just that Lambert has opted to start with it on the bench so far.

We could very easily have three or four more points. All we need to do is cut out the individual errors and stop breathing on balance-impaired opponents in and around our penalty area. And I believe that our management team will ensure that these lessons are learned quickly.

Who knows, perhaps our slightly disappointing haul of points so far may even turn out to be a good thing in the long run, just as the Colchester result two years ago proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Of course we’d rather have more points on the board. But getting off to a flying start can present problems of its own; it’s like scoring too early in a match (itself a nonsensical notion to some, I know, but I’ve seen a few examples over the years).

As Hull and Blackpool have demonstrated in recent seasons, you can find yourself running on empty when the initial burst of adrenalin and euphoria wears off. A steady learning curve could prove preferable to rising like a rocket and falling like a stick.

Look, it’s just a hypothesis; time will tell whether it’s astute or asinine. But we can certainly cut it in this league.

We just have to keep believing. And have a little patience.

Oh great, now I’m quoting Take That. I’m definitely, definitely going to choose the holiday music in our car next summer.

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It’s not often that I find myself taking an interest in a player from another team, but I am intrigued by what’s happened to Fernando Torres at Chelsea.

Two weeks after our visit to Stamford Bridge, I still can’t believe how poor he was; so poor in fact, that I almost cheered when he stayed on the pitch after tripping Bradley Johnson when on a yellow card.

He’s by no means the first expensive striker to find goals hard to come by at Chelsea; two earlier examples were former City heroes, after all.

But when a £50 million striker scores only one goal in 23 games, having previously hit 50 league goals for Liverpool faster than any player in their history, it’s hard to avoid the possibility that he might just have lost it, whatever ‘it’ is.

No one at Chelsea would be prepared to concede that this is even a possibility, of course; too much money has been invested in him, for one thing. But it has set me thinking about whether strikers can ever recapture the spark at the highest level once they’ve lost it for a long period.

It strikes me that very few have managed it. Diego Forlan is the best example I can think of. Kevin Davies, at Saturday’s opponents Bolton, has rebuilt his career after failing dismally at Blackburn.

And as far as Norwich players are concerned, cases could be made for Chris Sutton and Mike Sheron – though it could be argued that they weren’t playing in the same standard of football when they started scoring again.

It’s notable that all of these players had to move to rediscover their form, though. The only striker that comes to mind who has come through a protracted slump at the same club is Wayne Rooney.

Or are there a load of others I’ve missed? All suggestions welcome.