Edward Couzens-Lake

There are still a fair few of us Norwich City fans who sparkle at the thought of one John Frederick Bond. After a period of what might be best described as agricultural football under the stentorian watch of Ron Saunders, Bond converted the metaphorical playing surface of Carrow Road from a clay-riddled heavy ooze into […]

Football is a simple game. That’s what everyone says. I’m not so certain. To start with, I don’t think it’s a game played by professional footballers anymore. At least not in the traditional sense. Seeing a footballer out of his natural habitat used to be, not that long ago either, a little strange. An almost […]

Do you remember Liverpool Are On The Tele Again! ? It was one of several celebrated Norwich City fanzines of the ’70s and ’80s, which celebrated the club and its players in a rather more unorthodox manner than that adopted by the national and local media. Produced and printed on a meagre budget with production […]

City’s official 2024-25 team photo was taken and released yesterday. On it, there were 28 players and 25 coaching and related staff. Now translate that to a matchday… It doesn’t seem all that long ago that you could have fitted everyone who sat on the bench for the duration of a football match into one […]

My recent piece about how we all used to consume our football in pre-Sky et al years seems to have touched a chord with a lot of MyFootballWriter readers, not that, maybe, I should be too surprised. After all, this is a site that is very much a retro way of reading about and commenting […]

Bob Dylan was right. The times they are a-changin’. Life, football. And how the latter is reported, dissected, and discussed. It doesn’t seem so very long ago that I might not have known the result of a midweek game involving Norwich until the following day’s newspaper dropped through the letter box. Then, joy of joys, […]

I don’t know about everyone else out there in MyFootballWriter land – but I really, really don’t enjoy the ‘close season’. Thank god it’s nearly over. There was a time, not that long ago, when football really did stop in May. You’d have the FA Cup Final followed by the Home International Championships – which […]

Viv Busby had as hard a task as any Norwich player has ever had in modern times: charged with stepping up and into the team to replace one Ted MacDougall, scorer of 52 goals in 112 league appearances for the Canaries and a candidate still, for many, of a place in an all-time Norwich City […]

We’re nearly there. The international football is over (for now) even though the break isn’t, so for one final time (also for now), we return to our Ed for some retro thoughts on those magical moments that make football so special. Usual rules apply … this piece was written in 2013, so please bear in […]

Following on from yesterday’s 2013 retro column, here’s Ed’s follow-up piece in which he gave us his, let’s call it, ‘Disappointing’ City XI’… *(The piece has been 2024-proofed where possible, but please bear in mind it was originally penned over a decade ago … much has changed since then). *** 1. Michael Theoklitos Michael was […]

It’s going to be a long fortnight. Mid-season international breaks are veritable nightmares for editors of football websites that stick to the domestic scene. Even more so when there is no imminent transfer window. So, to an old friend I’ve turned, who has kindly given us the nod to resurrect some of his classic columns […]

Let’s consider the term ‘self-funding’. We’ve all heard it said. We’ve all said it ourselves, either in defence or in attack of the club’s proud policy of stating, publicly, that it is, and always be ‘self-funded’. But wait a minute. What exactly IS ‘self-funding’? How is it defined? It is, simplistically, a business policy of […]

I tend to keep my counsel these days regarding all things Norwich City. It’s not that I no longer care about the club or what it purports to stand for. Far from it. I care passionately and excessively. I sometimes wish that I didn’t. That I could switch off my support and that, instantaneously, Norwich […]

Paul Lambert could very easily not have been a football manager. Not for very long anyway. After he left Celtic in 2005, Lambert, then still only 35, took time out to study for his coaching qualifications, applying himself to both the practical and theoretical side of the course with all the forensic levels of diligence […]

The sad and premature death of Norwich City great Martin Peters in 2019 yielded, inevitably, a nuée ardente of sympathy and sadness from all around the footballing world, including a very genuine outpouring of sorrow and sympathy from many Canary fans. Peters had been, in the years leading up to his death, suffering from Alzheimer’s […]

Highbury, London N5. 2:50pm. Mike Walker is giving his chosen XI some final well-chosen words. Delivered with all the passion and belief, which his players are already finding is core to his character. “You’re here to win. They might have the names and the glamour but you have the heart, the energy, the work rate. […]

The scene was set. ‘A whole new ball game’. Even the act of writing those five words makes me shudder. Sky really did think they were re-launching the game of football with their hijacked coverage thirty years ago. Were Norwich City ready? A new manager was in place. Mike Walker had replaced Dave Stringer after […]

As I write this, it’s thirty years since the opening day of the very first Premier League season ‘A whole new ball game’ was how Sky Sports opted to brand the game and league at the time, showing, even then, their wish for football to have had its very own reset to year zero on […]

It’s Friday, it’s a pre-season no-fresh-content kind of day, it’s going to be a warm one and it all feels a bit rubbish, so it’s to the archives of an MFW legend I turn. And, for once, it’s not Kevin Baldwin. Instead, today we revisit a piece our Ed Couzens-Lake wrote in the summer of […]

Why are so many of us so very angry at the moment? Post-match demonstrations, accusations flying around social media and various club-related message boards a’ plenty and tantrum fuelled rages wherever you look. There’s not a lot of love in the world of Norwich City just now. Another May, another relegation from the Premier League. […]