The last few days at work have been the first time in a long time that I’ve felt on top of everything. Last night, in particular, we got everything done with time to spare. It felt good. I also really like nearly all the people I work with, and don’t want to leave them right now, so for the moment I haven’t applied for any more jobs. Project Happy continues in other areas, which I will explain at another time.
What I’ve been up to
The other Saturday I went to the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich for a former colleague’s retirement/birthday afternoon tea. I love the fact that I’m still invited to these things despite leaving two-and-a-half years ago. I was the only bloke there, surrounded as I was by 13 women, but then that’s kind of my life isn’t it? (That was a joke)
It was a good afternoon, actually, even if this photo makes it look like I’ve nodded off with my finger up my nose. The food was good, the company was good. Hopefully they’ll keep inviting me to their social events!
Fast forward a week, and I went to Norwich’s game against Bristol City with my friend Gavin – the one who made me walk 7 miles. I’m actually giving up my season ticket at Carrow Road after this season, and with this the penultimate home league game we sat in the River End, opposite my usual position in the Barclay, for the 1-1 draw. Norwich didn’t really turn up against a side that had nothing to play for and missed the chance to move up to 5th. Never mind. It’s Swansea at Carrow Road this weekend. Here’s me and Gavin looking like a couple of hunks:
The faces were deliberate. Well, mine was, anyway…
I had forgotten how good these songs were
Here are a couple of songs that I recommend to you this week, two that I hadn’t listened to for a while and had forgotten just how good they were.
First, Soft Cell’s 1981 no.4 hit Bedsitter:
And second, The Jam’s The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow) from 1982.
This year has been one to forget for Norwich City. In fact, it’s been the club’s worst year since… well, last year. David Wagner was appointed as head coach in the first week of January, and I had a good deal of optimism about him, although I would have been optimistic about anyone after the horrors of Dean Smith. He started well, too, with a fitter squad banging in the goals – most notably in a 4-2 win at Coventry where they were 3-0 up after 18 minutes. Looking a good bet for the play-offs, the Canaries faded away badly, failing to win any of their last six games. The talisman that was Teemu Pukki played his final game for the club on the last day of the season at home to Blackpool; when he was substituted in the second half most of the crowd left well before the conclusion of the 1-0 defeat.
A decent start to 2023-24 saw Norwich get three wins and a draw from their first four games (the draw being an incredible 4-4 at Southampton) but defeat at Rotherham and a serious injury to striker Josh Sargent set things on a negative course. Now, the club’s fans are divided, with occasional boos accompanying the frustrated sighs in the stands. Many want Wagner to be sacked, but the sporting director Stuart Webber has been the one to depart instead. Having announced that he would be leaving the club in June, there was a potential for him to remain in his post until March next year, but he left in November.
Away from Norwich, Manchester City became only the second English club to win the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and the Champions League in the same season – although the other team to do it were their cross-city rivals United, back in 1999. Erling Haaland had been brought in to push City to the next level and boy, did he deliver. The Norwegian scored an incredible 36 league goals in his debut season. The celebrations after the 1-0 win against Inter Milan in the Champions League final were so raucous that Jack Grealish is probably still nursing his hangover.
England’s women made it all the way to the final of the World Cup, just a year after so memorably winning the Euros on home soil. They were narrowly beaten by Spain in Sydney, but their victory was overshadowed somewhat by the controversy over the non-consensual kiss from the chief of the Spanish FA, Luis Rubiales, on the lips of captain Jenni Hermoso. So, after a month of showcasing the very best of the women’s game, all anybody could talk about was a creepy white bloke in a suit. Sigh.
England’s cricketers, fresh off the back of a 3-0 victory in Pakistan, started the year on the other side of the world, where they drew 1-1 with New Zealand. The “series” was the best advert yet for two-Test tours being banned – an epic finish in Wellington saw the hosts prevail by just one run. It was only the second time a Test match had been won by such a tight margin.
By mid-June, the long-awaited Ashes were underway. England could have won both of the opening games, but Australia took a 2-0 lead to Headingley. Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins stood tall to see Australia to their target at Edgbaston, then the tourists embarrassed themselves by throwing the stumps down to remove Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s, when everyone knew the ball was dead. Still, Ben Stokes almost pulled off a miracle. After that, Bazball well and truly came to the party. Only a day and a half of rain at Old Trafford prevented there being a decider at The Oval, but England made it 2-2 there anyway and saw Stuart Broad off into retirement on a high note. The Ashes are still with Australia, but having thrown away a 2-0 lead and still not won a Test series in England since 2001, we came out of it the better.
The less said about the World Cup the better. England’s defence of their 2019 title was as unexpected as it was feeble – they lost to New Zealand, Afghanistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, India and Australia and finished 7th in the group stage. Their only victories came against Bangladesh, the Netherlands and a consolation win against Pakistan when both sides were already out. The hosts India won all nine of their group games and then the semi-final against New Zealand, only to lose to Australia in the final. The Aussies took home the World Cup for the 6th time. No one else has won it more than twice.
I have never been much of a rugby union fan, but I did enjoy watching the World Cup during September and October. The respect for the referee’s decisions from the players, and the clarity of the Touchline Match Official system, made a refreshing break from the vitriol and incompetence of football. England were unlucky to lose to the eventual champions South Africa in the semi-finals, though the quarter final between the Springboks and hosts France was the best game of rugby I have ever seen. Have a look at the highlights of that one below.
Again, tennis isn’t one of my favourite sports but I do enjoy watching it now and again. Highlights from this year were Andy Murray, 36 years old and with a metal hip, battling through a number of five-set epics at the Australian Open in January and Carlos Alcaraz beating Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final.
Above is something I imagine your nan would have put in your Christmas stocking in 1978, if football was the only thing she knew for definite her grandson liked. 45 years after it was published, I was fascinated to see the sort of thing that made it into such a book and how it differs from today. Just as I had been with a 1964 edition of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly that I found last year.
Information about the Score annual is irritatingly scarce online. Its publisher, Fleetway, was also responsible for well known comics such as Tiger, Eagle, Roy of the Rovers and 2000 AD, with the name disappearing in 2002. It seems the football annual we are looking at originates from Score ‘n’ Roar, a short-lived weekly comic.
The 1979 edition is a mixture of black and white and colour pages, not uncommon for the time. The first few are full-page colour photographs of notable contemporary football players – the yellow and green of the Norwich City kit catches the eye here, with captain Martin Peters the focus. Peters had been part of the England World Cup winning squad in 1966 and, as the caption marvels at, was still playing top division football twelve years later. That, too, for the Canaries!
Another of the featured players is Trevor Francis. Francis sadly died last month aged 69, having spent much of his life carrying around the tag of “Britain’s first £1 million footballer”. That transfer, from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest, had not happened by the time this Score annual was published, however, so instead the caption talks about him as a potential star for England at the 1982 World Cup. Francis was picked for that tournament, scoring against Czechoslovakia and Kuwait, but England were knocked out due to goalless draws with Spain and West Germany. He scored the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup final for Nottingham Forest, played for ten clubs, managed four, and later forged a career as a co-commentator with Sky Sports. A life well lived. May he rest in peace.
The transfer fees in the game of football these days are, quite frankly, ridiculous. Seven of the twenty most expensive deals in the sport’s history have happened in 2023 alone, and all of them in the last 14 years. A club spending £100 million on a single player is becoming increasingly common.
It raised a smile, then, when I read this article about goalkeepers in the annual. The caption under Peter Shilton’s right leg says he is demonstrating “just why he’s worth more than £300,000”. Adjusted for inflation, that would make Shilton – capped a record 125 times by England and a two-time European Cup winner – valued at just over £1.5 million. That would only get you a half decent third division player these days.
The 1970s may have been a time when what we would perhaps call ‘old fashioned’ views were prevalent. It’s important to say that the Score annual from 1978 is neither racist nor sexist, however. Some of the content does feel a little clunky to modern eyes but, as you can see, it does try to celebrate the black players who were around. It just does it in a way that kind of feels like they are animals in a zoo.
The double page spread features Laurie Cunningham, Viv Anderson, Vince Hilaire, John Chiedozie, Phil Walker, Trevor Lee, Cyrille Regis and Ricky Hill. It refers to these players as “coloured” throughout. It is hard to imagine such a feature ever being given the green light these days – thankfully.
Brian Clough is surely one of the most famous football managers of all time. Admired and despised, depending on your view, for his witty comments to the press (“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one”) and apparent arrogance, Clough won league titles with both of the fierce East Midlands rivals Derby County and Nottingham Forest – the road linking the two cities is called Brian Clough Way. The story of his 44-day stint as manager of Leeds was told in the book and the film The Damned United, in which he was portrayed by Michael Sheen. A familiar sight on the touchline in his trademark green jumper, as statue of him stands proudly in the centre of Nottingham. Clough died in 2004.
The feature in the Score annual focuses on Clough being the joint-manager of the England Youth team. Little did the writer know, Clough would soon achieve something that would leave a far greater legacy. He guided Nottingham Forest, astonishingly, to back-to-back European Cup triumphs in 1979 and 1980.
As I type this, it is the afternoon of the day the England women’s team beat Australia in the World Cup semi-final to reach their first final. This comes just over a year after they were crowned European champions at Wembley. The match was watched by 75,000 people in the stadium in Sydney and by millions of television viewers on BBC One. Women’s football, and women’s sport in general, has never been more popular.
It was quite an eye-opener, then, to see a feature in the Score annual with the title “Is it a girl’s game?”. It describes football as “one of the fastest-growing women’s sports” (they had no idea how far they had to go!) and says “already there are women’s teams in leagues up and down the country – and even international matches”. There is a slightly patronising tone to the “even” that gets me in that sentence.
It’s not a big feature. That block of text is accompanied by only four photos, depicting the English, Swedish, French and Italian women’s teams. The France side are only shown in the dressing room, and the Italy squad at Heathrow airport, but the match action is between England and Sweden. A bit of digging reveals that this is likely to have been the friendly between the two nations at Plough Lane in Wimbledon in 1975. Sweden won 3-1. It is interesting to see a small but interested crowd in the background, with plenty of men in attendance.
The final thing I’ve picked out from the Score annual of 1979 is this feature on the rising popularity of football in the USA. Aside from claiming that the Americans refer to fans as “fannies” (really?), it explains the slightly different rules used in the North American Soccer League. A line was drawn on the pitch, 35 yards from goal, and a player could only be offside if he was goal side of it. That’s not a bad idea actually…
The concept of a draw was, and in some ways still is, hard for Americans to get their heads around, so matches in the NASL determined a winner with a shootout. But not a penalty shootout. The ball was placed on that 35 yard offside line and the player had 10 seconds to score. Essentially a one-on-one situation, the player could dribble as far as he liked towards the goal and the keeper could come as far off his line as he wished. That sounds fairer than a penalty shootout, doesn’t it? A truer reflection of the players’ skills? Maybe the Americans had it right as far back as 1978.
Searching on YouTube, it seems these shootouts remained a part of the game for several years. One video shows San Jose Clash against Chicago Fire from July 1999, where the only thing that’s changed from the 1978 rules is the player now has only 5 seconds to score.
Teams in the NASL were awarded a whopping 6 points for a win, three times what you’d get in the English leagues in 1978. You would also get an extra point for every goal up to three, so a 3-0 win would see you add 9 points to the table. The losing side would also get a point for each goal scored up to three, so an agonising 4-3 defeat would still see you pick up 3 points. Quite a neat way to encourage attacking football really.
Phil Woosnam, a former Wales international, was the Commissioner (the boss) of the NASL in 1978 and is quoted as saying “America would like to stage the World Cup Finals and the national team is looking to make an impact in the tournament”. This dream would, of course, be realised in 1994 when the USA hosted the World Cup and the final was played in front of 94,000 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The national team has not gone beyond the quarter finals since 1930, however. They will hope to do better in 2026, when they will once again host the World Cup, alongside Canada and Mexico.
The feature excitedly tells us that “some grounds have action-replay screens, where supporters can see a goal again in slow motion seconds after it’s been scored”. A novel idea in 1978, now commonplace in just about every top level football ground in the world. Norwich’s Carrow Road has a screen that rotates!
Score credits the great Pele for sparking football to life in the US, with his three years at New York Cosmos. It mentions “there are moves to expand the League”, which of course they did with Major League Soccer (MLS) in 1996, and now the world’s greatest player – Lionel Messi – turns out for Inter Miami, a team founded by David Beckham. Fair to say the writers in 1978 were right about the potential for the game in the States. The annual comes across as slightly worried about the prospect of players in the English leagues being tempted to go to the US – an eerily similar situation to the one we have now with Saudi Arabian clubs paying colossal sums of money for Premier League stars.
Lionel Messi in action for Inter Miami in the MLS
If you’ve made it this far, thank you very much for reading, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip back into days gone by.
I can remember hearing the news that Norwich City had signed Teemu Pukki.
It was just a cursory midsummer look to see what was going on at the club. Norwich’s first season under the management of Daniel Farke had seen a fairly dull mid-table finish, and with star player James Maddison leaving to join Leicester City, I was looking for something to get excited about. Pukki’s signing was presented in a matter-of-fact way, no cringeworthy unveiling videos or social media teasers to be seen.
The name rang a bell to me because of a pretty uninspiring spell at Celtic. His career trajectory gave me no reason to be particularly enthused by his arrival. I remember sharing the news of Pukki’s arrival with my Leeds-supporting friend, who had no doubt also sent me something inconsequential that was happening at his club.
Here is what Daniel Farke had to say about signing Pukki:
“I’m very pleased with this signing. We got the feeling that Teemu is a good fit to our ideas because he is a technical player with really smart movements.
“We were speaking about how we need to make more runs in-behind and runs from deep and he’s a player who has the smart movements.
“He also has lots of speed which is also important. Wherever he plays, he was always able to be there with goals and assists.
“He’s a brilliant character as well so we are very pleased to have him with us.”
I realise that there’s nothing out of the ordinary here. Managers often say things like this about their new signings. But what strikes me, reading these lines back now, is how right he was.
Because Teemu Pukki will leave Norwich City next month as a club legend.
That isn’t hyperbole. Pukki has scored 88 goals for Norwich and still has a bit of time left to add a few more. He has been voted the club’s player of the season twice, and in 2019 he was named the player of the season in the whole of the Championship. For four seasons he was Norwich’s top scorer. He has scored a Premier League hat trick. He has scored in the East Anglian derby.
His imminent departure, another piece of that wonderful Farke era moving on, will make those glorious days feel ever further away. There will be more City heroes to come, and they can come from the most unlikely places, as Pukki himself did. But the Norwich City of 2018-2022 will always be fondly remembered, and leading the line was Teemu Pukki.
Let’s pick out a few memorable Pukki moments.
The first goal – Norwich 3-4 West Brom, 11th August 2018
Norwich didn’t start the 2018-19 season particularly well, drawing 2-2 at Birmingham in Pukki’s debut and then losing 4-3 at home to West Brom. But the second Norwich goal that day was Teemu’s first for the club and a sign of things to come.
Last gasp winner against Millwall – Norwich 4-3 Millwall, 10th November 2018
Following Norwich was anything but boring in 2018-19, with a plethora of great games and last minute winners to enjoy. One of the first was this 4-3 victory over Millwall in November 2018, when Norwich had actually gone into stoppage time losing 3-2. Jordan Rhodes equalised, and then Teemu did his thing.
Scoring in the derby – Norwich 3-0 Ipswich, 10th February 2019
A sure-fire way to endear yourself to the Norwich fans is to score against Ipswich in the derby. In his first Carrow Road meeting with that lot from the other end of the A140, Teemu scored twice as City stamped their authority on the old enemy.
A Premier League hat trick – Norwich 3-1 Newcastle, 17th August 2019
With his goals helping Norwich to the Championship title in 2018-19, the Premier League returned to Carrow Road with a 3-1 victory over Newcastle and Teemu scored the lot. The volley for the first one was an absolute beauty. Pukki’s flying start to the campaign saw him named the Premier League player of the month for August 2019.
Sealing a win over the champions – Norwich 3-2 Man City, 14th September 2019
What a night this was – Norwich sent the Premier League champions Manchester City packing on an electric early evening at Carrow Road, with Teemu calmly finishing the third goal after Emi Buendia had picked Nicolas Otamendi’s pocket. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Carrow Road louder.
A great strike on the volley – Newcastle 1-1 Norwich, 30th November 2021
Norwich faded after that great start in 2019-20 and ended up finishing bottom of the Premier League, but Pukki banged in another 26 goals in the Championship to ensure they bounced straight back. It was another tough, ultimately doomed season but this strike from Teemu to rescue a point at St James’ Park was one of the few highlights.
Those were just a few of my favourite Pukki moments but, really, there was a lot to choose from. For someone who has only been at the club for five years it has certainly been an eventful period. This video, produced by the club on the occasion of his 50th Norwich goal, demonstrates the variety of finishes the Finn is capable of.
As Dr Seuss once said: don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened. Thank you, Teemu, for everything you have done for Norwich City. I wish you every success wherever you go next and you will always be a welcome guest at Carrow Road.
My latest musings on Norwich City Football Club are in today’s Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News.
You can read it online here. I know I’ve posted this rather late to encourage you to buy a paper, but in further I’d urge you to consider it – local papers are really important and they won’t be around for much longer if everyone keeps getting all their news online for nothing.
Here is what my column looks like in print. I’ve no idea who the bloke in the photo at the top is – it’s definitely not me but I can assure you they are my words! They must have made a mistake at the paper.
In the column I talk about Norwich’s 1-0 defeat to Sunderland on Sunday, how irritated I was at the result and how I feel it’s the final nail in the coffin for our hopes of making the play-offs. I also make my feelings clear on the use of pyrotechnics by the crowd, an offence for which three City fans have now been banned from attending matches.
The events of the last week will, I think, prove to be a watershed moment for Norwich City Football Club.
Former Huddersfield manager David Wagner is the new man in charge of Norwich City
The displeasure and the disconnect felt by the fans was not only about the club’s repeated inability to put up a fight in the Premier League. It was deeper than that. We felt like we were being taken for granted. The people in power had shut themselves away and lost touch with us. The head coach just didn’t seem to ‘get’ Norwich.
I found myself in the unusual position of directly calling for the manager to be sacked. Norwich isn’t a club that is known for wielding the axe. A manager tends to be given enough – some might say more than enough – time to make their mark and see out a tough time. The end comes when a natural conclusion is reached.
Only thirteen months into the job, however, Dean Smith had to go. Many were sceptical about his appointment in the first place. He would have had to hit the ground running to get those people on board. It wouldn’t have taken much to turn the atmosphere toxic.
On the pitch, Smith failed. It is as simple as that. He was given the job to keep Norwich in the Premier League and they were relegated with a whimper, rock bottom. Then it was to get them straight back up. He left with the automatic promotion places a long way away.
These players haven’t become bad all of a sudden. Several of them have won the Championship title twice with us before. It’s unrealistic to expect them to stroll to a third, but for that squad to be in mid table, looking average at best, is not good enough. Teemu Pukki is a striker with a proven record at this level who would be picked by any other team in the division, yet he is having a quiet season by his standards. Max Aarons had been touted for a lucrative move to some of the world’s biggest clubs, yet his form this season has seen him at times unable to get into the starting eleven. Marcelino Nunez arrived in the summer with a legion of fans in his native Chile, excited about their man showing the English game what he was capable of. He displayed his skill and flair early on but has gone off the boil as time has gone on. My only explanation for this is the way these players have been coached. Dean Smith (and his assistant, Craig “Shakey” Shakespeare) have taken good players and made them worse.
The fans became bored of the ponderous, directionless style of play. As the situation came to a head, they would boo when the ball was played back to the centre halves or goalkeeper. We actually did a lot of playing out from the back under the much loved Daniel Farke, but it always felt like there was a purpose to it. We have memories of many beautiful goals, a culmination of tens of passes, to prove it. The football under Smith was too predictable, too easy to play against, too lacking in entertainment.
When planning to write this, I looked up the records of Norwich’s previous managers and discovered that the percentage of games that we won under Smith (28.57%) was the worst for a permanent coach since the 27 game spell of Gary Megson (18.5%) in 1995-96.
On the pitch, Smith was a write-off. He might be a ‘good bloke’ and a ‘good coach’ – the Aston Villa fans showered him with love when he first came to Norwich, but months down the line admitted that he didn’t really have a plan for a Villa side that didn’t have Jack Grealish in it. He will probably get another job soon (he has already been linked with the vacant position at Portsmouth) and enjoy some modest success. I don’t have any ill will towards the guy now he’s gone. Some managers fit a club and some don’t.
The dull performances and bad results on the field made me refuse to go and watch our home games for two months. I saw the defeat to Luton on 18th October and didn’t return until the draw with Reading on 30th December, the first game after Smith’s sacking. But it wasn’t the actual football that hurt me the most.
The relationship between a football club and its fans is special. Mess with it at your peril. It isn’t about eleven men or women trying to kick a ball into a net. Your football club represents your home. It represents you. For a lot of us, the team’s achievements are our achievements. We feel personal success when they do well.
Norwich is special. The people of this fine city, this fine isolated city, are fiercely proud of it. That is reflected in the football club. We are a club that has always done things differently, where the fans have not been treated as customers but as the lifeblood of the whole thing.
Daniel Farke completely got that. It might seem shallow, but the way he would always applaud every section of the stadium at the end of a game made us feel valued. I was never expecting Dean Smith to wave his arms around and give it the full “olé” to all four corners of Carrow Road, but the bloke never even came on the pitch. It was just a small sign that he was there to work with the players and not with us. He probably never saw it that way but that’s how it felt. That approach never had a long term future at Norwich City.
Daniel Farke always showed his appreciation for the Norwich fans
Smith didn’t seem to like us and his uninspiring press conferences didn’t help either. I became resentful. I didn’t want to look down from the Barclay and see him on the touchline as the face of my club. I used my platform, a column once a month in the Eastern Daily Press, to say the club needed a new manager. I did it twice, actually, and the second time I was stronger. Strong enough that I wondered if they would print it without toning it down. To their credit they did. I obviously had no part to play in Smith leaving, the tide was already going that way, but a week after the second column he was sacked. I could look at my club with optimism again.
The most pleasing thing, for me, was something that the sporting director Stuart Webber said in an interview with Sky Sports on Monday:
“I’ve been here for six years. I’ve had a great time here, a great fanbase with great numbers that turn up. But I probably didn’t appreciate quite how important that connection between the head coach and the fanbase until it wasn’t there.
I’d only known that with Daniel (Farke). We finished 14th in the first season but ultimately the fans wanted to believe in him because the fans had that connection.
It’s not about having a happy clapper that walks on to the pitch to keep the fans happy because that doesn’t work if there’s no substance behind his work.
We as a football club have to be aware that it’s important we get someone that really understands the community, the fanbase because it’s a little bit unique in that respect.”
— Stuart Webber
It seems that, at last, the penny may have dropped. It is not enough to just bring in a manager with strong footballing credentials, they have to be able to connect with the fans.
A shiver went down my spine when I heard the names of Steve Bruce and Chris Wilder mentioned. Two men I certainly don’t want leading my club. But it would appear that they were only rumours, and rumours that were always wide of the mark.
In the end, Webber has returned to someone he has worked with before. Someone he has had success with before. Someone born in Germany. Someone who has previously managed Borussia Dortmund’s reserve team.
Alas, it’s not a stunning return for Daniel Farke. It’s actually a friend of his and his predecessor in that Dortmund job. It’s David Wagner.
Wagner is best known in this country for his time in charge of Huddersfield Town, where he led them to a surprise Premier League promotion via the play-offs in 2017 and then, even more impressively, kept them there with a successful battle against relegation. It was the first time Huddersfield had been in the top flight since 1972. He left in the January of Huddersfield’s second Premier League season with the club eight points adrift of safety, but he remains well liked for his achievements in West Yorkshire and for the Gegenpressing style of play he implemented.
In Wagner, Norwich have a manager in place who is hungry for success after a couple of short spells at Schalke and Swiss side Young Boys. He is likely to have a clear plan for how he wants his team to play, and that plan is likely to have Pukki licking his lips. He will also have the backing of the fans.
This feels right. It feels like it might work. We might just have the manager we need. And if out of all of this we have a hierarchy that will never again underestimate the importance of the fans to Norwich City, these are good times indeed.
It’s going to take some time for the relegation hangover to clear for this Norwich City team. The first home game of the new season, with its warm sunshine, fresh kits and sense of optimism, was met with a performance that lacked quality and coherence. Back in my seat in the Barclay for the first time since 23rd April, here are a few thoughts I had from the Wigan game.
Some of these players have got a lot to prove
I may get shot down in flames for this but every Ben Gibson error at the back and every failed Milot Rashica cross made me wonder: do these players have a future at Norwich? Gibson, Rashica, Todd Cantwell and Josh Sargent all failed to inspire and they have a lot to prove in the games ahead. Dean Smith will be aware that a poor start to the season would put his job on the line so he can’t afford any passengers.
We still can’t take a corner
Back in June, Norwich appointed Allan Russell as the club’s first ever dedicated set piece coach. Whatever he’s been doing at Colney, it has yet to translate onto the pitch. It’s extraordinary how Norwich never look like scoring from a corner, and they don’t look assured when they are defending them either. This is nothing new but with someone in place purely to work on them, it’s something you’d expect to improve going forward.
Between a rock and a VAR-d place
No one likes VAR. No one likes the way it takes half an hour out of the game and then they still get the decisions wrong. But then, the referee at Carrow Road was really rather poor and Norwich should have had at least one penalty. If we’d had the dreaded VAR, maybe we’d have got what we deserved.
Wigan’s behaviour should be seen as a positive for Norwich
The time wasting from Wigan in the second half, which saw multiple players booked, should be taken as a compliment by Norwich. Clearly, for last season’s League One champions, a point at Carrow Road is a great result. City need to get used to teams that defend deep and waste time like they did today and learn how to break them down.
Two games down, forty-four to go. Norwich are yet to register a win – they go to Hull next Saturday – but these are very early days. With the new players bedding in, patience is the order of the day.
The topic of why we invest so much of our time, money and emotions into this sport is one I’ve tried to tackle before without coming to any real conclusions. I think it’s a bit like searching for the meaning of life. If you start to think too deeply about it, you realise you have no idea.
My last newspaper column of the season for the Eastern Daily Press is available to read online now.
Garden centres are usually my idea of hell but a few days ago I went to one that was a bit different. It had all the boring things, of course, like pots and plants, but it also had what they called a ‘retro shop’. An eclectic mix of items for sale with the only thing in common with each other being that they had spent years unused in someone’s house/shed/garage. There were old radios, guitars, weird wooden ornaments; it would take hours to go through it all.
As a former collector of The Beano and The Dandy, my eyes were drawn to a pile of comics and magazines. While neither of those were anywhere to be seen, there were several Marvel and DC Comics titles, including a couple where the ‘new hero’ Doctor Strange – a character first seen in 1963 and recently played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a film – was mentioned on the front cover. Eventually, I stumbled upon a copy of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly.
The August 1964 issue of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly I bought at the retro shop
I love this sort of thing. Just like the comics, a magazine is like a time capsule. They quite literally document the time they were published. I have to admit, I’d never heard of Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly. The issue I found in the shop was from August 1964, a full 28 years before I was born.
The first thing I noticed was that it was in colour. I doubt many people will have seen colour photographs of football matches in 1964. Newspapers were still very much black and white and on the rare occasions a game was televised it would have been in monochrome too, as colour television did not begin broadcasting in Britain until 1967. You can really see this standing out in a newsagent’s.
I’ve always found something charming about old adverts. They were usually straight to the point and back then there was little regulation of the advertising industry, so the claims made in them were bold to say the least. Look at these two, for example. ‘Actual Tests’ (what actual tests? Who did the tests? What were they testing? How did they do the tests?) prove you can increase your strength 20% in 1 month (how do you measure strength to such degrees?) with astonishing new 6-second exercises! This company even offers to give you your money back if you don’t ‘get the kind of physique girls admire super quick’.
This one promises to ‘enable to gain up to 6 ins. in height’. I’m pretty sure I get emails about this kind of thing nowadays, but they are usually pledging to help me gain six inches somewhere else.
I suppose once you had become 20% stronger and 6 inches taller you might then have had the physique that the Manchester City Police were looking for.
Now for some of the actual football content. As this was a summer issue looking back at the previous season and ahead to the next, the team photographs of the champions of all four English leagues were featured. The Liverpool photo is notable for the presence of both Bill Shankly, who was manager at the time, and Bob Paisley, who was merely ‘trainer’ (first team coach in modern terms) then but would of course go on to take the top job and win six league titles and three European Cups in charge of the Reds.
Below them are second division champions Leeds, promoted to the top flight under Don Revie. This was the start of a golden period for the club, in which they would be league champions twice and win the FA Cup in 1972. Several of the stars of that side were already present – Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter and Johnny Giles.
This might have been my favourite page in the whole magazine. Readers would write in, offering to exchange, for example, ‘Man. Utd. [programmes] for Sunderland and Arsenal’. Charmingly, many would also seek pen pals so they had someone to talk about their interests with by letter. When you think about it, this was an early form of social media. People have always wanted to reach out to others, it’s just that these days you simply write a tweet and can be bombarded with abuse just seconds later. The best one on this page, for me, was from S. Baird of Accrington, who was offering ‘200 First Division Autographs’ in exchange for ‘Screaming Lord Sutch Wig and Top Hat’. So many questions.
With my beloved Norwich City dropping like a stone towards the Championship once again, I scoured the magazine for mentions of the team in the hope that things might have been going slightly better in 1964. Alas, the second division table has us sixth from bottom.
Now we come to the letters page. Paul Carter from Liverpool wanted football to do more for charity. The Charity (now Community) Shield had been going for decades by this point, so he can’t claim the credit for that, but football is certainly used for fundraising purposes on a frequent basis now.
Finally, I give you D. Kilbride, who doubted Bobby Moore’s suitability to be the captain of England and suggested Jimmy Armfield be given the job instead.
As you probably know by now, I write a column for the Eastern Daily Press. It’s about Norwich City FC and there are four of us who write one to be published in the paper on a Tuesday during the football season. We rotate, so I have one every four weeks.
When I realised that it would be my turn on Tuesday 1st February, thoughts turned to my dear old dad. On 1st February 2014, he passed away at the age of 69 from Alzheimer’s disease. He was a mad Norwich fan and is largely responsible for me supporting the club, so I thought it would be nice to dedicate my column to him.
Click here to read it now, and if you happen to be in a shop tomorrow you can read it in the paper as well.
LEE PAYNE 