Rick Waghorn

Neil is not someone afraid to throw the kids in early – which is one, big reason Saints are where they are. And why Master McGrandles might have some fun before this season is out.

Should Phelan prove to be the chosen one, then his arrival was what Adams might have feared all along – that he was a manager in waiting; that Adams himself was a dead man walking. One more slip and he would be out.

The argument against Norwich is that they are seventh due to an inexperienced manager whose squad is under-performing given the ‘obvious’ talent that sits in that dressing room.
And yet there are vastly more experienced managers than Adams sitting in lowlier positions.

“It was a professional performance from the players,” added the City chief. “We got the tactics right – and we got the team right…

If a rocket was delivered at the break it didn’t fire too many people into life in the second-half. And come the final whistle – as Norwich made it just the one win in the last ten – the reaction of the paying public was wholly predictable.

As another international break looms, there is undoubtedly a large degree of navel-gazing afoot. Whether it is common to all clubs in this age of instant gratification and social media outrage, but poison and recrimination is never too far from the surface Carrow Road way.

It is funny how such slices of ‘luck’ can play their part in potentially determining the course of a season. Equally, it is a risky business running to snap judgements on the back of one game.

MFW has chugged along like the rest of us for the last eight years, recording every click, purchase, impression and occasional invoice. Eight years worth of local online advertising data. Enough to demonstrate there is still money in local advertising.

How do you replicate Championship-style hunger in the golden feeding trough of the Premier League – without resorting to the kind of pay-days a Loic Remy would demand to travel up the A11 on a full-time basis?

Getting back into the Land of Milk and Honey at the first time of asking was never going to be easy and, to my mind, today’s events might serve as a ‘welcome’ reality check for anyone who thought otherwise.

City fans can sleep easy knowing that no-one individual is going to single-handedly rip them apart with football off a different planet – making the ‘investment’ of say £100 in a day trip to Anfield worthless in the space of ten, first-half minutes.

Harry built himself an Old Lags XI. Literally in the case of Joey Barton. And Richard Dunne is no angel. He has had his moments. But was the rock upon which Rangers’ return was built.

Given what awaits in Adams’ in-tray in terms of player exits, every day that passes with a whiffy apple sat in his Colney barrel is a day that the club can do without.

Here’s another question. If Lambert and Villa were to part company this summer, which of the two men would be the first to be re-employed? Who would get the bigger gig?

To succeed in the English Premier League, you have to take your business brain out of gear; forget everything that 40 years of commercial life has taught you and throw enough silly money at someone and someone’s agent to make this thing work…

He might not have been able to do this – or that. He might more often than not plant the ball in Row Z when it came to that or a simple pass. But if the next three months in the life of Norwich City Football Club can be likened to a bar room brawl, I would put a pound to a penny that Andy Hughes would be one of the last men standing…

As Gary rightly points out, you put a Fox in against a first choice Fulham with a Parker or a Sidwell in yer face for 90 minutes and he hasn’t the muscularity to shrug one or either off and then play the telling ball.

Nigel Worthington’s last move in the transfer market was arguably one of his greatest – Dion Dublin had character seeping out of every pore. Now look at Fulham and Scotty Parker; West Ham and Kevin Nolan.