Well, that was a Saturday to savour. And they don’t come along too often. To get your business done early is usually a phrase we associate with the transfer window but a win on a Friday night before all of your opponents take lumps out of one another on the Saturday feels even better. Even […]
The January transfer window: for others to embrace and for Norwich City to observe
I know I shouldn’t harp on, but is anyone else a little envious of those teams for whom January is an opportunity to strengthen their squad? When it’s those against whom you are battling to stay in the Premier League who are making signings it stings a bit. Like the cool kids at school with […]
A win! We only went and done a bloomin’ win! Please let this not be a one-off, lads
Whoa! We’ve not experienced a feeling like that for a while. Felt good, right? It’s all too easy to get carried along on the tide of emotion on days like yesterday and before you know it we’re all proclaiming “WE CAN DO THIS” a few hours after resigning ourselves to City being the worst team […]
A slightly improved performance but still nowhere near good enough from a flat City
And so it goes on… You know it’s bad when you no longer get fired up or angry when City concede a goal. Even worse is when that final whistle goes to signal another defeat and it gets greeted with no more than a shrug. But that my friends is where we are. Or at […]
All the #NCFC faithful wants is a team that makes us proud and which is competitive
I didn’t go to Charlton on Sunday but was aware in the days leading up to the game that a Delia Out protest was planned by a small group of City fans. This was confirmed when a picture of said group with said banners appeared on Twitter. I trust it’s not being ageist to say […]
A win’s a win, especially in the FA Cup and especially when they’ve been so so rare
It wasn’t pretty by any stretch but if the object of the exercise was to ensure we were in the hat for the next round of the FA Cup, it was mission accomplished. If the purpose of the exercise was to entertain and offer hope going forward… at least we’re in the hat for the […]
CHARLTON PREVIEW: TalkSPORT’s ‘finest’ brace themselves for an upset at The Valley
Do you remember that time when Charlton Athletic FC was the model we were either following or recommended to follow? (I can’t recall which). Either way, it was a plan we ended up following rather too rigorously. Charlton dropped from the Premier League to the Championship and then League One. We missed out the Premier […]
What happens when the yo-yo becomes just a single Championship yo… ?
As tends to be the case when things go awry in the hallowed halls of Colney and Carrow Road, much of the focus turns to how this club is run and, hand-in-hand with that, how it is funded. MFW pages aplenty (including yesterday’s) have been filled with the rights and wrongs of the current self-funding […]
Another day another disappointment as City’s season lurches from crisis to crisis
You have to feel for Dean Smith. He knew he was signing up for what many deemed a mission impossible, but his own professional pride and some carefully chosen words by Stuart Webber were enough to convince him that there was enough quality in this squad for it to achieve 17th place or better. There […]
It wasn’t just Farke who was sent to war without a gun… Webber too was unarmed
Shambolic… woeful… outclassed… pitiful… pathetic… Take your pick. Personally, I’m inclined to hone in on ‘outclassed’ because the one thing that wasn’t lacking yesterday was effort. No one stopped running, no tackles were shirked and the heads didn’t drop on the pitch as they did off it. But my god did City come up short. […]
Battle over the Old Farm bragging rights is never far away… even after 4627 days
It doesn’t take much for the City/Ipswich rivalry to spill over and ignite. Not in the physical sense of course – let’s hope those days are gone – but in its modern-day, slightly less bruising, equivalent: social media. This weekend all it took was the unveiling of a statue, a good crowd and an appearance, […]
Another tough ol’ night at the Carra as Gerrard’s Villa cruise past beleaguered City
If Saturday’s performance against Manchester United offered hope that survival is not beyond us, last night’s tame offering against Villa was a salutary reminder of how and why we are rooted at the foot of the Premier League. And why survival probably is beyond us. There is of course mitigation in the form of a […]
VILLA PREVIEW: Familiar faces for Smith and Buendia but no revenge mission
And so we move on swiftly to the visit of Steven Gerrard’s Aston Villa™, an evening loaded with so many sub-plots it could have been written by David Lynch. Dean Smith is, of course, not the kind of guy to hold any grudges, and Villa is his club, but he’d not be human if this […]
A stirring effort from a depleted City but Mr Ronaldo and United have the last laugh
I’ve mentioned plenty of times that the key element of my post-match ritual is a phone call with my dad to dissect what did or didn’t happen at Carrow Road or beyond. He no longer attends games due to his health but the Norwich City fire in his soul still burns and his two penneth […]
A painful afternoon in north London as Spurs cruise past our wasteful Canaries
Okay, so it wasn’t the pitiful no-show of Man City or Chelsea proportions, but there was still a horrible inevitability around what unfolded at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium yesterday. An inevitability borne of simply not being quite good enough; of not having enough top-level quality when top-level quality is needed. This was the Norwich City […]
A point when it should have been three but City unbeaten in the whole of November
Most of us would have taken a point before a ball had been kicked – goes without saying. It also goes without saying (even though I am) that in end it was two dropped. Ciaran Clark’s ninth-minute brain fade ended up impacting both teams negatively. Newcastle for obvious reasons but City too because, armed with […]
Only a point when it could have been three but City now appear Premier League ready
First of all, they came after us because we were “uncompetitive”, “woeful” and apparently weren’t even having a go at staying in the Premier League. Now that we are competitive, are not woeful and are clearly giving it a proper go, we’re “boring” and “drab”. Anyone would think that a club that espouses careful financial […]
A new Carrow Road dawn begins with a stirring, nerve-shredder and three points!
It didn’t take long for Dean Smith to be afforded a demonstration of why City’s goal difference was -21 going into the game. Hesitancy, missed tackles, missed opportunities to clear, ball-watching, you name it… the full gamut of defensive cock-ups Norwich City-style were on show as Che Adams bundled his way through the Keystone Cops […]
SAINTS PREVIEW: A new era dawns in NR1 and a chance for Smith to get off to a flyer
It’s going to take a bit of getting used to. No more Parklife. No more celebratory olés. No more ‘topics’. No more being ‘greedy’. No more trendy parkas. Life is about to change in NR1 and for some, that’s going to be a toughie. And I get it. Despite being the club’s first continental manager, […]
After a funny old week, is a new era about to begin in Norwich? The Dean Smith era?
The ups and downs of being a City supporter are supposed to pertain to events that occur on the pitch – not when we’re ‘between managers’. Yet rarely has there been a week when a ball has not been kicked when the emotions have so fluctuated. First, it was Knutsen, definitely Kjetil Knutsen, the number […]