The matches are hitting us like a rivet gun at the moment and the latest quick turnaround pits us against Birmingham City at Carrow Road tomorrow night.
I rather insensitively described the Brummies as “dung” recently when I suggested on these very pages that everyone, coaching team, players and supporters alike, would benefit more from David Wagner holding a weekend’s training than from facing the Blues – they were “enjoying” a Fourth Round FA Cup tie against Blackburn instead at a time when they couldn’t buy a point.
Since then they have beaten Swansea 4-3 in an amazing match in Wales and West Midlands rivals WBA at St Andrews, as well as contriving to give Wales some pride back by letting Cardiff waltz off with three points they maybe shouldn’t have had. Colin’s Huddersfield Terriers came from behind with two late goals to beat them once again on Saturday while we were sleep-walking through a 0-0 at Wigan.
Like us, they have been through a poor patch, and like us again you cannot be too sure what you might get when John Eustace and his lads roll up for any given fixture.
One thing we can guarantee is that having condemned John Etheridge to the bench in the twilight of both their careers, former Carrow Road favourite John Ruddy will be between the sticks for the Brummies. A hearty Norfolk welcome for big John is equally guaranteed.
A couple of names to look out for in the Blues midfield will be Tunisian international Hannibal Mejbri, who is on loan from Manchester United, and Jobe Bellingham who is of course the younger brother of England and BVB star Jude.
Up front, we can perm any two from three of the ageing triumvirate that is Scott Hogan, Lukas Jutkiewicz and Troy Deeney. Whoever is selected it is very likely that fitness concerns will ensure that, one way or another, all three will share the striker/target man berths between them over the 90 minutes.
Deeney is well-known as a local Birmingham lad who grew up in Chelmsley Wood. He has the club badge tattooed on his calf and can also claim to be one of their most famous supporters as these are otherwise a bit thin on the ground.
Jeff Lynne*** was in The Move for a while before forming the money-spinning stadium band ELO, becoming outright leader when Roy Wood quit to form Wizzard in the early 1970s. That was probably the worst financial decision in rock and roll history after Decca Records declined to sign the Beatles!
The other two are geezers called Bob Davis and Mike Skinner, which shows the paucity of prominent Bluenose fans.
Only joking – Davis is of course the real name of former Birmingham director and sometime comedian Jasper Carrot, while Skinner enjoyed a successful musical career as the creator of and driving force behind the now defunct The Streets, who did rather nicely for themselves in the previous decade.
When it comes to footballers who have plied their trade for both clubs Nathan Redmond would be the best-known of these for that goal against Boro at Wembley in 2015 alone and, of course, Onel Hernandez and Pepe Placheta have both experienced very recent injury-ruined loan spells at St Andrew’s.
The past 50 years throw up an interesting selection of players who have worn both the Yellow and the Blue, some of whom I had forgotten also played for Birmingham until Google aided my recollections:
These are Trevor Hockey, Roger Hansbury, Keith Bertschin, Greg Downs, Kevin Drinkell, Louie Donowa, Paul Peschisolido, Kenny Brown, Matt Jackson, Steve Bruce, and Tony Cottee.
Birmingham’s current record reeks of a safe lower mid-table final position in the Championship but, like us, they have defensive mistakes in them aplenty.
We won 2-1 at St Andrew’s on August 31 with Hogan scoring just after the break before Andrew Omobamidele scored his first and, thus far, only Norwich goal and Hernandez snatched all three points deep into injury time. A Carabao Cup encounter ended in a 4-2 win on pens after the game ended 2-2 after extra time.
We have only “doubled” Coventry so far this season, so it would be great to send the Blues back to BR9 with their tails between their legs having suffered the same fate. As ever we’re more than capable of doing just that, but will we? After that display against Wigan I simply dunno.
*** For anybody who thinks Jeff Lynne’s megabucks band ELO were merely purveyors of highly-polished, top-quality pop music it’s time to be persuaded otherwise. This is absolutely bonkers and shows a normally bland band can sometimes go double ape$hit to great effect when the mood takes them:
Hi Martin.
I am far less confident than I was when the fixture was originally scheduled.
Having both Teemu and Sarge missing is a big blow.
There was to my mind a lot of unfair criticism on Canary Call for Adam Idah on Saturday with figures of 6 goals in 60 games given as reasons for that crticism . That doesn’t at all tell the whole story as many of those appearances were coming on as sub.
I think it is something like 9 goals in 23 games in reality which is a lot better than 6 in 60.
In my mind I really don’t know if Adam Idah will make it as a Championship or EPL striker, the poor lads injury problems have been awful and we must give him a chance. Let him have a consistent run of games and then we can see.
He certainly made a positive change during Dean Smith’s first couple of games in charge and while I do not think his subsequent injury which put him out for the season would have miraculously kept us up it would have helped that’s for sure.
He comes across as a really nice lad so lets all get behind him.
And as Mark Twain famously said or didn’t say ” reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”
The reports that Teemu is finished I would say the same, greatly exaggerated.
I for one hope he is bloody fit. It is going to be very hard to replace him when that day comes that’s for sure.
Hi Tim
I swerve Canary Call for a couple of reasons so I wasn’t aware of the distorted figures regarding Adam Idah’s performance stats.
He seems relatively quick for a big lad but I think Dean Smith said he’ll have to carry a “handle with care” label for life. He comes across very well when interviewed and if he stayed fit that would be a huge bonus like you say.
Mark Twain came up with some great lines, he really did – the one about golf is my personal favourite.
Cheers
On famous bluenoses i give you Jasper Carrot.
Bet you won’t put his version of the magic roundabout on here.
Hi Bernie
He got a mention, as did his alter ego, Bob Davis.
If you mean the bit about Zebedee looking at Florence in a lascivious fashion and pondering *time for bed* in a dubious manner MFW most certainly will not making any reference to it whatsoever.
Or, indeed, his funky moped.
Cheers 🙂
Trevor Hockey, the bearded warrior. He was brought in by Ron Saunders at the end of the 1972/73 season and despite playing only a dozen or so games played a major part in saving us from relegation. What a player for us. mind you he would only last 10 minutes in todays game.
Hi Alan
I only saw Hockey the once [maybe twice at best] but saw enough of him to agree with your last sentence!
Cheers
While I’m here:
CONGRATS TO MAX AARONS ON YOUR 200th APPEARANCE FOR NORWICH CITY FC!!!
I watched the Watford-WBA game yesterday. Good and entertaining game, Watford deserved their 1 goal win, no matter the 3-2 goal was lucky. I just cant see it possible that Watford would not be in the playoffs, also WBA should be there too.
ELO was my oldest sister favorite, I suppose also Slade, Alice Cooper, Uriah Heep and so on…..ELO was a strange one, its very possible that I didnt like it much. I still remember some of their songs and actually its not been a long time a go I listened. It was ok but not something I would listen to regularly. Always interesting to hear how you see your bands. It was impossible to know much, you were able to listen but didnt have a clue how they perform live or do they carry guns and bombs or flowers with them and what are their opinions in general?
Mikael Forssell scored 17 goals for Brum in 1 premier league season. Its something that Teemu has surely targeted and would still want to break. You see, its important to us. Trevor Hockey sounds like a fantasy player, I would have thought its someone who would have never existed like Billy Dane. In here he is known as Benny Dane ( Benny Kultajalka = Benny Goldenfoot).
Hi 1×2
Our fantasy equivalent of Benny Dane is Roy of the Rovers!
https://downthetubes.net/british-comics-reference/british-comic-characters-profiled-roy-of-the-rovers/
I too think Watford will make the play-offs. For me it is probably them, Sunderland, WBA and most definitely Boro. All four of them would be very likely to beat Norwich in a semi-final, but that won’t happen anyway.
Teemu needs a goal every other game to beat the record of Forssell, which I was not aware of but can see how important it will doubtless be to him.
As for the music I always thought of ELO as a fine pop band, but nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll, although they had their moments.
Uriah Heep were/are interesting. I have played darts with Mick Box a couple of times [he knew my friend’s elder brother very well, this was East London] and he is the only surviving member of the original band. A really great guy – and very small in stature!
I saw them several times, particularly at Walthamstow Polytechnic around the Salisbury era. They’ve always been massively popular in Europe, especially Germany.
Of the heavy bands Purple, Zep, Sabbath, The Who and Maiden were all amazing live and even better than on record. Early Queen and Dark Side era Floyd too.
Other favourites included Rod & the Faces and art bands like Roxy Music and whatever Bowie was doing at the time although regrettably I never got to see David perform live. Dunno why really, many of my friends back then did.
More modern bands I like are really just the Manics and Oasis and for New Wave The Clash, Rich Kids, the Ramones and Elvis Costello. All great live.
A very special protopunk band I saw loads in the 70s, the Pink Fairies, recorded a live album in your country and called it *Finland Freakout*. I’ve still got it 🙂
Kiitos
Great stuff, Martin! Uriah Heep is indeed massive in Europe, or lets say that they are a band whose understanding tells something about a person. Iron Maiden is likely the biggest heavy metal band in Europe, probably Metallica is the other one with the same popularity level. German band Accept is something I have often listened to. It has been at least claimed that they started singing in english without much english knowledge. Finnish band Nighwish also has a massive fan base around the world. I have seen them once live and how to explain its very impressive kind of movie like experience where quite many people go to extreme emotional mode. It can be called symphonic metal, they have female vocalist who have opera singer background. The first singer was finn, second one swede and now the singer is dutch. Their fans are very fanatic. Basically differences between singers are just what I have learned in life. With a finn it went very dramatic and intense, so they were on the edge that it goes too far. With swede it became more poppish and mainstream. Dutch is like Xena, she is clearly taller than those 2 before and is an impressive female figure. They have kicked out quite a cruel way those 2 singers. To finn they left a letter and finnish singer has called those guys as cowards who didnt dare to tell it in her face. The swede was in hospital and the guys didnt ever go to see her and just informed her that there is a new singer now. They have never even talked to the first singer after that. I dont see those guys doing much wrong, its their songs and it became obviously impossible to work with those women. They are karelians and its surely a big reason for what kind of music they make.
Roy of the Rovers is here too. Its known as Melchester Rovers. Harjumäen Sisu (Åshöjdens BK in Sweden) its another known football comic series here. It was swedish football comic series and in the story line they kept losing but won physical fights. Then their playing changed and they started to win because of skill.
Good luck to the game against Brum!
I didn’t realise Roy of the Rovers had reached Europe. I suppose it’s pretty much a pan-European concept and I know there was one episode where Melchester played a friendly against Real Santana!
I saw Swedish band Opeth two summers ago and lead singer Mikael Akerfeldt’s English was so good he was telling jokes in between songs and everything. I really like them – they are what the UK calls *stoner* or *sludge* metal, a bit like my favourite band of the last 15 years, Mastodon.
I love Maiden and Metallica [not seen the latter] and I’d add Slayer to make the best thrash bands I’ve ever heard.
Symphonic means Dream Theater and Pendragon to me, both of which I quite like but couldn’t listen to all the time.
Nighwish sound interesting and I’ll look them up sometime.
Thanks for the good luck wishes – we’ll surely need them 🙂
Opeth I have not heard before, Sabaton comes to mind first about swedish metal. They do have all kinds of musical genres bands/artists, but people just picture them as a pop music country. Slayer surely must be nr 1 band in their music genre.
Within Temptation and Evanescence are described as the same genre bands with Nightwish. I suppose there are more and more of those types of bands because obviously it sells. Just like Nightwish they usually have plenty of female fans. I suppose music is softer and more melodic than regular metal bands are.
England is so brilliant in music overall, there are so many great bands/artists that it does not even make much sense.
You took 3 points vs Birmingham. From highlights 1 thing again comes to mind, when opponents do not press much and let you take ball possession it fits to your squad well. Battle of the top 6 places are very tight and of course that is a great thing for the whole league.
We had a very dodgy 25 minutes in the second half before and after Birmingham scored – you could feel the confidence draining from the team but we deserved it in the end.
As you say it’s a most interesting battle at the top of the Championship, and the same at the bottom.
It’s the most compressed league table I can recall in a very long time.
You missed quite an important player who played for both Birmingham and Norwich. A player who had a massive impact during our play-off winning season; Cameron Jerome!
Hi Daniel
How I wrote about Nathan Redmond but didn’t even mention Cameron Jerome is as unbelievable as it’s unforgivable. Whoops!
Cheers
It will be interesting to see how tonight goes Martin.
I particularly liked Hockey, Bertschin, Downs, Drinks, and Steve Bruce (maybe not so much after Dave Watson left us), and of course Cameron Jerome, as Daniel reminded us all.
Toss up as to what my favourite City central defence pairing has been…
Forbes & Skinner versus Watson & Bruce.
Personal opinion, I don’t think West Brom are good enough for the play-offs or the Prem.
DW could throw Birmingham a real curve ball and put Sorensen up front from the start, playing next to Adam Idah.
Lets hope its a good match anyway.
COYYs !
Hi Kev
It’s Canaries TV for me but it’s usually quite a good watch with Chris G on the commentary too so although it’s not the same I’m looking forward to watching it as well.
I won’t ruin it by mentioning the time I saw Simon Charlton and Thomas Helveg in tandem in the middle at the back. You would have been there too I’m sure!
I enjoyed the last ten minutes against Bolton about 10 years ago when Grasshopper Norton had to fill in. All things considered he didn’t do a bad job 🙂
Cheers
I didn’t realise that downs, drinkell and hansbury played for Birmingham martin.
I do however recall Andrew Omobamidele thundering in a header against Leeds last season! Hopefully he repeats the act tonight.
Hi Chris
You’re quite right of course and I googled it to have a look, as you do.
The assist came from Rashica of all people!
I was actually there but have no recollection of it. My tantric methods of erasing the whole of that season from memory appear to have worked 🙂
Cheers