Martin Penney

I’m a great fan of The Jam. Always was, always will be. They were more of a singles band but on, I think, their third album *Setting Sons* [the one with The Eton Rifles on it] there was a track called *Saturday’s Kids*. Obviously, it featured trenchant Paul Weller lyrics about said kids living in […]

Queen’s second album and in my opinion their most progressive and certainly the best, the eponymous Queen II, didn’t have a side one and a side two. It had side white and side black instead, possibly for artistic reasons or more likely gimmickry. It was the 1970s after all. I very much doubt Emi Buendia has […]

*We are top of the League, said we are top of the League*. Well, we haven’t heard that in a while and of course our loyal band of regular away supporters weren’t at the Riverside to sing it, but would have belted it out with gusto had they been allowed inside the ground. Plagiarism isn’t […]

On this chilly, miserable November Monday morning, I thought I’d cast my eye back on the events of a week without EFL Championship fixtures to pontificate about in a kind of That Was The Week That Was [TW3] style – and it’s not all doom and gloom by any manner of means. We saw the departure of […]

One of my favourite film creations back in the day was Cool Hand Luke, immortalised by Paul Newman as the title character in the movie. Well after Saturday I reckon Daniel Farke could play the role – with a slightly different accent of course. What a brave decision, which Daniel himself described as a *hunch*, […]

I honestly cannot remember the last time I wrote about a 0-0 involving Norwich City and neither can I recall a match in which we had 27 shots without scoring, which must be some kind of record I suppose. But I’m quite prepared to be pragmatic following the events at the Carra on Tuesday evening […]

Goals win games. That’s what “they” say, isn’t it? And we came up with three pretty damn good ones at Ashton Gate at mid-day on Saturday. A classic through-ball to Teemu Pukki from Marco Stiepermann early doors and our Finnish friend did his stuff. It was a privilege to see it hit the net really. […]

If you hadn’t seen or listened to the game and looked online yesterday morning to see Brentford 1 [Toney 28], Norwich City 1 [McLean  87] I’m pretty sure you’d have been happy with that. A point away against what appears to be a genuine candidate for the promotion mix ain’t half bad. And I was […]

Many folks are preparing their Hallow’een cauldrons for the weekend. We’re not doing it this year cos of Covid and actually refer to it within the family as All Hallows Eve cos we’re not fans of premeditated American stuff designed for the supermarkets to make yet more money. But if neighbourhood trick or treaters come […]

Please Daniel, is there any chance of this becoming a regular experience? You surely know what I mean – winning by the odd late, late goal and keeping up the improvement in performance levels on a virtually game by game basis. This grinding out of results is becoming very popular with us supporters, you know. […]

At half time on Saturday, I had both my kriss and kukri out, sharpened and most certainly ready for theoretical action against our current management. What an abysmal first 45 minutes it was and I defy anybody to argue against that. We were awful. Tim Krul?  What can you say? If first goalscorer Freddie Ladapo’s […]

In the late 1880s some well-intentioned Polish scientist invented Esperanto. You know, that pan European theoretical language that not a single one of us has ever assimilated – because we’ve never needed to. We have football. That is our common language and has been throughout my adult, working lifetime. Fess up time: I am unusual […]

We’re riding along on the crest of a wave and the sun is in the sky. There are chips, chips, as big as battleships in the quartermaster’s stores. And Jesus wants me for a sunbeam along with all of my colleagues in the 4th Goodmayes cub scout pack. No I didn’t want to join – […]

Do you get the feeling you’ve been cheated? One of the most famous quotes from one Johnny Rotten who said it somewhere in the USA after the final Sex Pistols gig in 1978. He then reverted to his given monicker of John Joseph Lydon, enjoyed a successful career with PiL and sold out any credibility […]

What a difference a couple of days makes. As rumours float around concerning Max Aarons’ *collapsed* £20million plus move to Barcelona and how the lad’s head might drop, I’m kind of thinking along different lines. We carried out a pilot match with 1,000 supporters against Preston as recently as Saturday, and gathering from the account […]

A good game for the neutral? An overall fair result? Or merely an indicator of how our performances are likely to ebb and flow until this wretched transfer window is laid to rest? All three in my book. Gary G summed up the game itself perfectly yesterday so I’ll just add a few observations. Nothing […]

Cometh the 81st minute, cometh the young Irishman. That selfless cutback from *old-stager* Teemu Pukki to Adam Idah, which was put to bed with aplomb slowed the over-beating hearts of the Canary Nation. It was just sheer bloody relief for surely almost all of us as in… what 12-game losing streak? What inability to win […]

That was quite a weekend for Norwich City. The excitement of landing Ben Gibson from Burnley, the gathering storm around what must surely be the imminent departure of Jamal Lewis to Newcastle and an uninspiring exit from the Carabao Cup at the hands of Nathan Jones and his physical Luton Town outfit. Reactions to the […]

The only time I have ever played on a professional football club’s pitch was back in the early 1990s at Kenilworth Road Luton when, together with Preston and QPR, they had an AstroTurf surface that they were prepared to hire out to just about all and sundry during the off-season. My then company BASF took […]

When I was around eight or nine one of my favourite attractions was Woolies in the High Street. In my case, that was Ilford High Road but I guess for many MFW readers the equivalent would have been on Rampant Horse Street [which Mrs P remembers but I do not] and later St Stephens Street […]