Kevin Baldwin

I can’t remember feeling like this about the team at the start of any other season. There have been individual signings of whom I expected a lot – Darren Beckford, for example, who had been a prolific scorer at Port Vale and raised expectations even higher with a pre-season hat-trick after joining us in 1991.

I’d almost forgotten what that awful knot in the pit of your stomach feels like. The constant anxious scrutiny of different teams’ remaining fixtures. The self-torturing replaying of moments in recent games which, if they’d gone slightly differently, would have seen us safe by now.

There have been several highlights: our son, at two, refusing to play with a blue ball at his toddler gym club and insisting on a yellow one; our daughter making up her own Norwich chant to wind up Ipswich supporters on holiday (a real show of chutzpah, since this was just after we’d been relegated to League One).

For now, I don’t have a problem with our conservative approach if it keeps us up this season; we all know how much money is at stake. And without counting any chickens, I think Hughton’s current tactics are more likely to succeed than not.

If it weren’t such short notice, the forthcoming game with Luton would have been an ideal occasion for a retro day, with it being a repeat of the 1959 FA Cup semi-final. The club could have sold tickets at 1959 prices. (Some Luton fans have been complaining that £10 is too cheap; it would have been funny to see what they made of 2s 6d.)

You could argue – and I have – that the City board showed too much patience with Nigel Worthington in his last twelve months at the club. But as faults go, it’s not the worst one to have. And by contrast, how poor are they that have not patience…

The point is, since football is such a fantastic game that it has near-universal appeal, it cannot help but attract less desirable elements. It’s a broad church (broader than the Church, if this week’s events are anything to go by…) and there are inevitably sinners and reprobates within it. But as in life, it’s the unpleasant minority which attracts the attention…

Something doesn’t add up here. And my suspicion is that we’ll never get to the bottom of it; when this business is finally resolved, both parties will inevitably talk about ‘drawing a line under it’, ‘moving forwards’ and ‘looking ahead, not backwards’, leaving the supporters none the wiser…

In fact, I probably couldn’t tackle the task without the help of my wife. Yes, there are occasional differences of opinion – one man’s programme collection is another woman’s pile of waste paper, apparently – but she is very good at identifying and throwing out anything unlikely ever to be used again. Though curiously, I notice her wedding dress is still up in the loft…

I’ve made all sorts of resolutions during breaks away: to read more; to exercise more; to scrape the rust off my languages; to react more calmly to stress; to appreciate what I have; to be more considerate. In short, to be a better person. The whole country seems to be feeling like this at the moment…

It’s usually been the case over the years that you’re never sure which Norwich is going to turn up on any given day. That still applies, but these days it’s about tactics rather than attitude…

We should have high expectations. But they do need to be tempered with realism. The club is years ahead of the schedule mapped out by the new board after relegation to League One. Finishing anywhere above 18th this season will be a tremendous success…

Of course, we know very well after two and a half years that this public reticence conceals intelligence, astuteness, boldness and determination. In Lambert we trust to such an extent that while his team selections sometimes raise eyebrows before kick-off, they never raise objections in the stands.

With the passing of time – and a renewed enthusiasm for football engendered by the transformation at Carrow Road over the last three seasons – I felt able to give it another go. Fired by that enthusiasm, not to mention a large Mars bar and two Red Bulls, I stepped onto a pitch again last Friday evening…

I think the difficulty of comprehension may come from the fact that for many supporters, football serves as a relief from depression – even as a treatment for it. The idea that football can be a cause of stress and depression for those on the pitch is one that does not always occur to us…

In my time, I’ve looked out of hotel windows at oceans, mountains, lakes, valleys and vast cityscapes, but that view tops the lot. Of course, we didn’t watch the match from the room. But I did spend a fair proportion of the evening looking out of the window at the still-floodlit pitch…

Now where was I? Oh yes, Fernando Torres. I mentioned in last month’s column that I was fascinated by his complete loss of form, though I ran out of space in which to explain why and explore further. The reason is that I find myself identifying with his situation, albeit at a much lower and […]

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.

I thoroughly support his approach in buying young, hungry players, most of whom have come from the lower leagues. Signing established Premier League players would run the risk of damaging the collective spirit of the squad, and as we know, it’s that spirit which has got us where we are today.

The players appear to be absolutely nerveless; the calmness with which they coped with the pressure and atmosphere at Portman Road demonstrated that the play-offs wouldn’t have proved a problem if we’d ended up in them…