My Football Writer Norwich City news… comment… analysis
Norwich City – news, comment and analysis
To be fair, it's been one of the biggest 'Who-is-it's?' of the summer.
That No 5 shirt. Just lying there. Empty.
Today the gaffer dropped the biggest hint yet that it will be filled come August 31; the lad concerned might even make it in time for August 11 and the trip to Deepdale.
Well, just.
“I've still got a defender on the list,” confirmed the City chief, as Rusty signed in at Carrow Road this lunchtime.
“I've …
Pre-season results matter not a jot once you get down to the real business on the first day of a new season.
You can look like Real Madrid and smash teams all over the park in friendly games, only to be left with red faces when you find that it isn't quite as easy once the action gets competitive and really matters.
Similarly, pitching yourselves against a higher standard of opposition during pre-season to really test yourselves but continually being …
So pre-season friendlies are upon us once again. Not one of Stanley's favourite things, if he's honest. Whenever Stanley peruses the match reports of City games at this time of the year it always reminds him of Tosh.
Tosh was a fella Stanley used play football with when Stanley found himself, for a brief period of the 1990s, exiled in London. Stan would always play 7-a-side football on a Friday night at Coram's Fields on a three-quarter sized pitch but with full-size …
Never go back, they say (whoever 'they' are), but are they right?
Probably, in the case of a lit firework. Then again, what about Take That, who have reformed after a break of several years and are once again bringing their particular brand of music to millions and millions of people?
Actually, they're still right.
And the same goes for two other groups who have recently reformed: the ironically-named Verve and the Spice Girls, although the latter at …
A couple of my mates are Manchester City fans.
I'll never forget the look on their faces the day they suffered relegation to the old Division Two back in 1998.
Naturally, this woeful moment was even worse than the humiliation than the day earlier in the season when they were whacked 3-1 away at Stockport, the team situated just six miles from their home but always too tiny to consider as rivals.
I guess it was a bit like Norwich being beaten …
Granty's anger was understandable; these days it seems it's always the club that is last to know when a player – or a coach – is about to get away.
And, likewise, as soon as anyone reveals that their mind is elsewhere, then fair enough – get them away.
As much as anyone tends to distance themselves from any Worthy quote these days, he had a thing about bad apples in barrels; picking it out before the rest of the barrel festers. And Granty is of exactly the same …
Truth be told, Stan began his trip to the seaside in a bit of a foul mood.
Hucks, Dickson and Doncaster had combined to burst the bubble of pre-season optimism that had briefly floated up above Carrow Road with the arrival of six new faces.
It was not so much the fact of Etuhu – as a player – leaving. Stan had always rated the big man's potential and thought he was beginning to show signs of that all-important consistency in the latter half of the season; on his day …
Canary chief executive Neil Doncaster this afternoon found himself firmly in the supporters' sights as he sifted through some of 250 questions posted online on an hour-long webchat hosted by the club's official site.
Inevitably given events of recent weeks, two names figured large – Dickson Etuhu and Robert Earnshaw . That and their respective get-out clauses of ?1.5 million and ?3.5 million respectively.
Richard Chilver led the Dickson charge asking: “One, why …
As midfield powerhouse Dickson Etuhu makes his way up the A1 to complete his ?1.5m move to Sunderland, it seems that Darren Huckerby is the one person at the club who has delivered an opinion that is surely shared by everyone.
Never one to hold back with his feelings or unduly concerned with the consequences for that matter, Huckerby fired a verbal volley across the bows of the club yesterday after seeing another of City's key players leave for pastures new on the eve of the new …
Exeter, Schmexeter? who cares? Pre-season friendlies are for goodie-goodies anyway!
You'd never have caught Mickey Channon busting a gut or Flecky sweating cobs on a summer jaunt in Devon. Taking that sort of nonsense seriously is much more the territory of Jerry Goss or Gary Holt.
Mind you, they'd have run around like 'Yifter the Shifter' if you'd set them loose in a game of indoor bowls!
Losing to Exeter? It doesn't matter, it really …
And so it starts.
OK, so it doesn't officially start for another four weeks or so. But for those of us who, for professional or personal reasons, find our lives dictated by where Norwich City Football Club are at any moment in time, it all starts again tomorrow. Courtesy of FlyBe, in Exeter – 300-odd miles from home.
Look out of the hotel window now, at a little after six o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and it is a dank, drizzly early evening in Devon with precious …
It was plain enough for virtually the whole of last season; namely that the Canaries simply didn't have a good enough squad to achieve the consistency and standards required to give themselves an opportunity of challenging for one of those coveted top six places in the table.
On paper though, and assuming that Peter Grant was able to field his strongest XI, City should have had more than enough talent to have given any team in the Coca-Cola Championship a run for its money.<br …
Our old pals at The Mirror this morning suggested that the 'Safs to Baggies…' story wasn't quite as done and dusted as everyone might have assumed.
According to them, there was a three-way tussle for his services going on with both Southampton and Charlton now locked in battle for his services.
All of which comes as news to one or two people behind the scenes who have yet to hear a peep out of either club.
No surprise there, to be honest.
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Is there anything worse as a football fan than being out of the loop?
I returned from holiday the other day and switched on my mobile phone for the first time in a week. I quickly found myself under a barrage of text messages from fellow Canaries.
Within 30 seconds I was informed that Rob Earnshaw had gone, we'd signed Jamie Cureton and my mobile phone provider could have offered me cheaper calls had I needed to phone home while I was abroad. It's a lot of …
It's one of those stories that just niggles away under the surface. That every now and again, pops up. It never goes away. Always ringing in old Ferret's ears.
Usually, to be fair, it appears in the pages of the Birmingham Evening Mail and this weekend was no exception.
“Meanwhile, Norwich are expected to pave the way for Youssef Safri's move to Albion early next week,” was the Mail's verdict on a story that has bubbled quietly away for much of the …
What a week! Ten days ago little seemed to have changed around Carrow Road and Colney since the season limped to its inglorious end at Hillsborough in early May.
Then – all of a sudden – it's a full-scale changing of the guard.
Five major signings – including David Strihavka – join the already sealed signature of Jon Otsemobor, Earnie bows out, and a summer that was lacking what Stan has already noted as the necessary sense of momentum needed to hit the ground …
Delia Smith has started filming her new television cookery series and, at the same time, Andrew and Sharon Turner have begun stirring things up at Carrow Road.
So, as the Turners scrutinise every aspect of the football club's business, and Delia apparently turns her concentration elsewhere, are we witnessing the end of one era and the start of another for Norwich City?
The short answer is 'No…' But the longer answer is certainly significant for the club we …
So what signal does allowing your top scorer to leave for only a marginal increase on the fee it cost to bring him in send out to supporters of a club intent on making its presence felt in the Coca-Cola Championship this season?
…And especially so after what can only be described as a nightmare campaign last term?
Well, hold on, just hang fire a little and let's look at this from a realistic viewpoint.
First things first, and Robert Earnshaw himself made …
So at last the 'phoney war' of speculation and idle internet chatter is over and the rebuilding of McCity in Grant's image has begun in earnest. Granty has started bringing in the new pieces he needs with which to build his promotion jigsaw.
At one point Stanley was convinced that Grant would be forced to look down the back of the settee for the those frustrating missing pieces, but it now seems that McCinders will go the ball after all, thanks of course to …
This must be the worst time of the year.
Having to put up with Wimbledon, when the start of the new football season still seems light years away. Sorry, but Federer and Nadal just don't do it for me.
And as much as I love to see a young British driver on the podium, Hamilton just isn't in the same league as Huckerby. You can keep your Formula One; football's the real deal.
Maybe it's me, but the last football season seems ages ago. I just wish I …