Rick Waghorn

More importantly, he gives a side a focal point. Something strappy and stroppy to punt at in true Championship-style. As importantly, he must already live relatively local; his Mrs probably shops in Norwich…

“We need to bring in a striker to give Cameron [Jerome] a hand,” said the City chief afterwards, speaking to Canaries TV. “That’s not news to anybody, we just need to try and get that work done as quickly as we can…

Those that travel to Ewood Park on a Saturday in August will not be the first to grumble. They might be the reverse – they might be the last to grumble if events don’t go quite to the Neil plan…

What intrigues me is what flashed through Josh’s mind the moment his bro let fly. Or, indeed, the moment when Alex Neil pinned the team-sheet to the door of the changing room. And it wasn’t the J Murphy he had hoped for.

David McNally’s rise to fame and considerable fortune came on the back of a spell as Commercial Director at Celtic. Where, one presumes, his awareness of Paul Lambert started. Celtic Park and Glasgow’s tribal divides is a School of Hard Knocks.

Going forward, of course, in my little world if you deliver free and ubiquitous wifi across a city such as Norwich, not only could Phoebe have pushed out a pic off her mobile, better still she could have broadcast a live, video update.

Get a ‘Message’ from the Coach & Horses that they have got an offer on – as you read a match preview en route to the ground on a new and free MFW mobile app. Or an offer from the East of England Co-Op as you read the same preview pulling into Thorpe Station.

You can meet various politicians – of every hue – and be struck by just how shallow and simple they are; that their sole purpose around the Cabinet table was to be the court jester – the one that was always good for a whoppee cushion moment.

For 40,000 City supporters, it is a day that they can now treasure for the rest of their lives. Not just for the eventual outcome, but for the whole manner in which it was achieved. They walked it. 

Wembley and 39,000 of your kith and kin make sure that it will be a one-off occasion like no other for a generation of Norwich City supporters. For whom a trip to Wembley is a dream come true. Far more so than it will be for, say, an Arsenal supporter making another return visit for yet another FA Cup final appearance.

His substitutions invariably appear well-reasoned and timely; equally, they tend more towards the positive than the negative. This is a man and a manager that would rather be hung for a sheep than for a lamb – an attitude that will win him many a fan amongst the Canary faithful.

Should the video replays confirm that he had, indeed, thrown a sneaky punch in the midst of a tangle with a Millers’ defender, he would be well advised to stick a cushion down his trousers on Monday morning as Neil prepares to deal with matters ‘interally’.

Why the kid is there putting pen to paper on a ‘long term’ contract. Aged 15? The interest was sparked by the story of Patrick Bamford. As in the 19-goal England Under-21 striker short-listed as the SkyBet Championship Player of the Season who rocked up in Norfolk on Friday night with Middlesbrough.

“As a group, we’re doing well – we’ve put ourselves into contention,” said Neil this afternoon, as goals either side of the break from the unstoppable Bradley Johnson and the tireless Lewis Grabban confirmed Norwich’s premier status locally.

To pick up a seventh win out of his first nine games at the helm – and all at the expense of the neighbours one point above Norwich in the Sky Bet Championship – is the sort of opportunity the footballing fates offer up only very rarely.

In short, next Sunday’s encounter might be tailor-made for the Neils of this world. I would expect him to rise to the occasion. If his team does too, that’s another big moment on our famed back bend.

He was still offered the gang plank with the Norfolk club in seventh; that’s no mean feat in your first season out of the Premier League. And, in particular, with arguably your best player having sulked off to Vicarage Road for the autumn.

Walker’s tenure on Merseyside didn’t pan out as well as everyone hoped. Or, indeed, maybe expected. There is no doubt that in that autumn – in Munich and Milan – Walker’s star was firmly in the ascendant. He had something. He had presence in front of the cameras; made friends in the media easily. And, of course, the shock of white hair helped the image.

The more the Neil regime stutters a la Brentford, the more the Adams reign starts to shine. Not perhaps as the brightest star in the managerial firmament, but it will beg ever more pressing questions as to why, exactly, the former Youth coach was pointed in the direction of the gang-plank.