Stanley

There comes a time when the excuses have to stop. The circumstances surrounding the game, the quality of the performance or apparent desire of the players cease to matter.

 
What matters is the end result; the points on the board; leaving the pitch as the winning team, not as glorious failures. Stan puts it to you that we are now at that point.

The crushing predictability of the Saturday's defeat and the familiar script spewed out once beaten almost drove …

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Oh well, Stan enjoyed it while it lasted. Three days of feeling chipper, happy in the knowledge that we have players who care; that we beat the old enemy; that we can actually win football matches every now and again.

So demob happy was Stan that the passing of Lee Clark did not really hit home.

Even the signing of …

Rubbish; not good enough; depressing; frustrating; fleetingly good; then concede from a corner; can't keep ten players on the pitch; no luck; but then not good enough to make their own luck; blah, blah, blah…

Stan is as bored of hearing about it as he is of having to watch it.

And as for trying to come up with a new angle from which to write something witty and interesting about City's dire efforts?just leave the old boy be at the bar, alone with his thoughts …

Another home game, another defeat.

 
While not quite 'Groundhog Day', watching Norwich at Carrow Road has now becoming horribly repetitive.

Start slow and then play OK witout really creating anything; concede a soft goal or two against the run of play; change the formation; improve somewhat but never quite have the wherewithal to overcome the mountain we have given ourselves to climb.

 
Last night, against a very average Palace side, …

Stan has always had a bit of a soft spot for Nottingham Forest. They were such an incredible footballing force during those European Cup and league title winning seasons when Stan was but a lad.

It was impossible not to be slightly mesmerised by them and their achievements.

From Shilton to Robertson; from Francis to O'Neill, they were wonderful to watch and impossible not to respect. What Brian Clough achieved on a shoestring, at an unfashionable provincial …

OK, Stan's going to come clean here – he hasn't managed England.

In fact all he's managed, football-wise, is a scratch seven-a-side team (unbeaten in ten!), so, in light of recent events he's not sure he is justified in procuring an opinion, but he's going to anyway.

Even by our own dire standards it's been a 'weekus horribilus'. An eight days in which we have picked up one pathetic point, conceded five goals, had our captain sent …

It's not easy being a Norwich supporter. No doubt, a passing Luton fan, or even a Leicester season-ticket holder, would tell Stan to think himself lucky.

But what do they know.

Of course, all things being equal, following our historic city home and away is better than, say, turning up at a half-empty Ewood Park week in week out, or dreaming – as all Rochdale supporters must do – of ever reaching the old Division Three/Division Two/Division One.

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Stan has had a lovely few days away from it all. Tucked snugly in an old mill in a beautiful village on the edge of Dartmoor he breathed in the clear Devon air and cleansed his body and soul as best he could during his short recuperative stay.

 
The mill's proximity to an excellent village pub undid some of the good work, but the intention of a Zen-like existence was there.

Unable to get a phone signal and with the TV reception equally fitful only …

Stan knew that it had been a topsy-turvy day when he heard the announcement that Dejan Stafanovic had been named man-of-the-match.

Not that The General had a stinker. But he had just conceded our seventh penalty in 13 games, almost doomed us to a humiliating defeat and, just for good measure, hit one of the most wayward shots towards the River End since Greg Downs used to try his luck in the early 1980s.

Somehow, out of such calamity, the big man walked away …

If anyone claims they saw that one coming, Stanley frankly doesn't believe them.

OK, maybe a '1-0 to the City' prediction Stan could accept. The kind of prediction which wouldn't be based upon having watched Norwich play over the last couple of months, but actually over the last three decades or so.

Based upon that eternal truth of NCFC, just when you cannot possible envisage any other result, the exact opposite happens.

Admittedly they have …

Stan should have known better than to have raised his hopes to anywhere above 'We're doomed…' However, as football fans around the world do, only a few short weeks back he began to imagine better times lay ahead.

Get this drivel, scribed by yours truly, a mere month back after what has proved to be the only decent performance of the season to date.

'Is this the turning point we have craved for so long? Is this where we begin the new phase in …

Ever since poor Ashley got the bird during England's triumphant thumping of Kazakhstan on Saturday, the national media have been tripping over themselves to bemoan those 'moronic' and 'ignorant' supporters who deigned to show their disapproval at Old King Cole's fluff of a back pass.

As always, media-hirelings such as Mark Bright have been wheeled out to accuse supporters of jealousy; broad-sheet and red-top hacks have waxed lyrical about Cole's …

So we reach the magical ten games in mark and we are only five points off the play-offs. If we win the next three on the bounce we could easily be in the play-offs.

Of course, we also happen to be two points off the bottom three and lose the next three and we will most certainly be well entrenched in the relegation places. So welcome to the bloodbath that is the Championship.

So which way to look, up or down? Well the division is so much of a muchness in many regards that …

The stage was set. Stan had hit a milestone birthday. City are playing 'oop north. In all 17 'Count me ins..' were received and the Stan Birthday Band-Wagon was rolling?.

Rolling off into the fog of the Fens carrying a motley crew whose foolish hearts were full of hope.

The mood was good, the beer and fry up at 'The Farm' was good; the company was excellent; the police escort was an exciting distraction?and then? and then came the …

Punditry, schmunditry! Stan is just rubbish at it!

Even by his own inept standards Stan was embarrassingly bad on Saturday. First was the, oh so insightful, 'Ha, ha, ha? if that back four keep a clean sheet I'll eat my hat…'

Followed closely by 'Sheffield have got too much up front for us today…'. Then there was this beauty 'We could sit here until midnight and we won't score…' And then Stan's piece de resistance on 80 …

Stan grew up watching Norwich in the midst of economic (and social) turmoil.

Back in the 1970s, when the trade unions had some clout, we put up a fight as inflation and oil crises ravaged Tory and Old Labour governments alike.

Then, in the 1980s, as Thatcher trampled over much that was good about Britain, mass unemployment fed recession, brief boom and further recession.

Remember when the Castle Mall first opened? All boarded up and empty units; …

On the 6th September in the year of our Lord 1620, from the relative safety of Plymouth Sound, aboard the holy (literally) ship The Mayflower, The Pilgrim Fathers left these craggy, hostile shores.

After a couple of aborted attempts the oft-persecuted chosen ones were embarking on a voyage to find a land to call their own.

And so began an exodus, the results of which still resonate across continents and moose herds today.

In the hour of our Lord …

Stan has to admit, he was not overly worried about midnight striking this time round.

 
There were two reasons for this: first, the loan system allows for transfer dealings to go on in between the official transfer window.

Given that we – as with many other Championship teams – now rely on loans to make up our squad, the workings of the window were thus rendered academic in our little world. This, of course, is not good for the game, but neither is much else at …

There's something about a sunny day and hoards of Blue-noses that brings Stan out in a cold sweat.

Presumeably it's that indelibly-etched memory of that wall of Brummy-generated noise cascading its way around the Millennium Stadium before breaking 30,000 Norwich hearts, a few short years back, that does it.

Whatever the reason was for his lily-livered demeanour, Stan wasn't flushed with confidence as he left Stanley Towers for the ground.

What a …

At approximately 4.25pm, on Saturday 23 August 2008, most of Stan's worst fears were coming to pass.

We were two-down against another very ordinary side. We had missed a penalty. Our players were huffing and puffing, but without any real sense that they knew where a goal would be coming from …ever.

The bottom of the league was staring us in the face, with only Derby competing with us for that coveted chumps of month award. Stan shook his head and sent a …