LEE PAYNE

Tag: league

  • With each VAR decision, a part of football dies | Norwich Nuggets: Leicester (h)

    Some thoughts on Norwich City 1-2 Leicester City, as the Canaries go into the first international break of the season winless and without a goal from open play in the Premier League.

    Trouble getting a pre-match coffee should have been a warning

    I met my mother and her significant other for a coffee and a muffin in the Morrisons café opposite Carrow Road before the match, only to have my dream of a refreshment break having raced down there from work thwarted by mum being told that ‘they had no cups left for hot drinks’. Excuse me? It’s 1.30pm on a Saturday, a matchday, and a big shop like that has run out of cups to have a hot drink in? Mum was furious, but thinking about it now it’s so hilariously rubbish. We left and found refreshment elsewhere but, Morrisons, you really have to plan ahead for when Norwich are at home. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you that you’re extra busy when there’s a match on. I guess it should have been a warning of what was to come on the pitch.

    The Morrisons supermarket opposite Carrow Road, who had run out of cups for hot drinks by 1.30pm on a matchday. I didn’t call the police on them – this photo is from when the store was subject to a bomb threat.

    VAR just isn’t worth it

    The dreaded Video Assistant Referee (VAR) played its part in two major incidents in today’s game, having been virtually absent from Norwich’s first two Premier League matches. First, they were awarded a penalty in the first half when Leicester’s Turkish defender Çağlar Söyüncü went to ground clumsily near the byline with Pierre Lees-Melou. The referee gave only a corner, but after a lengthy delay with his hand to his ear was advised by the VAR to go and look at the screen next to the pitch. Teemu Pukki sent the goalkeeper the wrong way to get Norwich back into the match.

    Having gone 2-1 down, the home side looked like they had equalised when Kenny McLean headed in from a corner. The whole of Carrow Road, barring those in blue and white at one end of the South Stand, jumped up in delight and it took some time for the crowd to notice the awful sight of the referee with his hand in the air, disallowing the goal, seemingly based on something seen by his assistant. After what felt like an age, VAR had decided it was indeed offside – 5ft 8in Todd Cantwell was standing in an offside position, apparently blocking the view of 6ft 2in goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel. The mind boggles.

    Both of these, as far as I’m concerned, are further proof that VAR has to go – I’m not just saying this because Norwich were on the rough end of it today. Supporting a football club is about those moments of joy, those roars of delight, that greet a goal. Especially an important equaliser like McLean’s would have been. The VAR took so long to look at it that it surely cannot have been a cut-and-shut decision. Is this really worth destroying the soul of the game for? VAR doesn’t solve an issue, it just creates a new one. Norwich fans are still haunted by the perfectly good goal Pukki had disallowed for offside by VAR against Spurs in 2019 – to this day I cannot fathom how anyone could think he was offside.

    Teemu Pukki was apparently offside here against Spurs in December 2019

    Lees-Melou and Söyüncü came together at the opposite end of the pitch to me in my Barclay seat, but it looked like one of those incidents where everyone shouts for a penalty but no one really expects to get one. If VAR hadn’t been there, and the referee had just given the corner, I would have been fine with it. As it is, the system is ruining the experience of being inside the ground. With each VAR decision cutting short scenes of joyous celebration, a small part of football dies. Get rid of it.

    Williams looks a useful addition

    Brandon Williams is on loan from Manchester United for the season

    I was slightly surprised at the signing of Brandon Williams on loan from Manchester United when it was announced on Monday. I had been impressed with Dimitris Giannoulis at left back in the first game of the season against Liverpool, and thought that a club like United wouldn’t be sending one of their players to us if they didn’t think he’d be playing a lot. I saw him for the first time against Bournemouth in the cup on Tuesday night and he caused plenty of problems down the left, though I found a right-footed left back to be rather odd. On another difficult day for the Norwich defence, I thought he was really good against Leicester. He is able to think quickly, put in the perfect tackle, and has a knack of nipping in just when needed. He could be very handy for the Canaries this season and it shows that there’s quality out there if you look for it in the final days of the transfer window.

    We might be too nice for the Premier League

    It’s fair to say that the step up in class from the Championship to the Premier League is huge, but there’s more to it than pure ability on the pitch. Leicester finished 5th last season, and for all their talent, were still time wasting, diving and getting away with sneaky little fouls all over the pitch today. If Norwich are going to stay up they should think about taking a leaf out of Leicester’s book – they won’t be the only ones who play like that. We’ve got to show more of a nasty side.

    Disappointing to hear the taking of the knee being booed

    There were audible boos when the players took the knee before kick off, and it was incredibly disappointing to hear. I can’t speak for any Leicester fans but I definitely heard jeering coming from the home supporters. What is it about a simple anti-racism stance that gets some people so worked up? The more they boo it, the more it shows that a stance like the knee is needed. If you boo it, you’re not the sort of person we want supporting our club.

  • Norwich Nuggets: Liverpool (h)

    A few thoughts on Norwich City 0-3 Liverpool, Norwich’s first game of the Premier League season.

    It’s good to be back

    The last time I, and most of the others at the ground today, had been inside Carrow Road was on 27th February last year. Norwich beat Leicester 1-0 with a driven half-volley from left back Jamal Lewis. 534 days on, almost all coronavirus related restrictions have been lifted and Carrow Road was back to full capacity. Having swiftly got through a long queue outside the ground, I took the familiar route to my seat in the upper tier of the Barclay end, where I saw familiar faces all together once again. It was as if we’d never been away – the masks on those faces the only sign that the pandemic had ever happened.

    Carrow Road, ten minutes before kick off against Liverpool

    It was quite emotional when a video was played on the big screen with the message ‘Welcome home, Canaries fans’ and the welcome the players received as they came out onto the pitch was something to behold. It’s good to be back and hopefully we’ll never be forced away again.

    We’re not as good as Liverpool

    Really, the main thing we learned from this game is that Norwich are not as good as Liverpool. We knew that already, so there’s no reason to be too downbeat about the result. Champions League winners in 2019, Premier League champions in 2020, Liverpool can put their slump in form last season down to the injury crisis they suffered in defence. Jurgen Klopp has a settled side that he has spent several years building and with Virgil van Dijk back from ten months out they look good for another push for the title. They also have a spell over Norwich, having beaten us in 13 of our last 15 encounters, so anything other than a Liverpool win would have been a major shock.

    Positives to take

    If you’re a pessimist, you might point out that Norwich starting brightly, fading away and then conceding goals is very much what they did on a regular basis when they were last playing at this level two years ago. It was the first game of the season, though, so let’s be lenient. All of Daniel Farke’s new signings did well and look like they will fit in just fine – when Milot Rashica and Teemu Pukki have played a few games together and developed an understanding their link up play could prove very fruitful. Billy Gilmour can pick one hell of a pass and Josh Sargent looked threatening in his brief substitute appearance. After a disrupted pre-season due to Covid-19 (which forced two friendlies to be cancelled) and players away at Euro 2020, things will get a lot better in the weeks ahead for City.

  • Aston Villa!? Norwich City are taking a risk selling Emi Buendia

    On Saturday, the news broke that Emi Buendia would be sold by Norwich City.

    Less than a month after the end of the season, they were no longer rumours. My first reaction was disappointment. I was desperate for Norwich to keep their most creative player, believing him to be crucial to our hopes of staying in the Premier League.

    My second reaction was surprise at his destination. This brilliant, skillful, tenacious midfielder with most of his career still ahead of him. One of the best players Norwich have ever had, one who can make things happen and do things that other players just can’t. One who has just made it into the Argentina squad for the first time, surely to hang around for a long time to come. His new club? Aston Villa.

    I felt sure that, with Premier League football now on offer at Carrow Road, were Buendia to leave it would be to a club in a European competition. When Arsenal (who will not play in any of the three European competitions next season) were touted as his next club, I said he could do better than them – and I meant it.

    Buendia is rough around the edges, not the complete package by any means. He can win games on his own but if he’s having an off day he can quickly get frustrated. When that happens, he can be a bit of a passenger. Also, he tends to be so much better than his opponents that the only way they can stop him is by kicking him around the pitch. Occasionally, Buendia will react to this harsh treatment and more than once got himself sent off.

    The talent is undoubtedly there, however, and I am convinced he will reach the very top. Which is why I am rather surprised that he has chosen mid-table Villa, and their not exactly inspiring manager, as the next step in his career. Having said that, I wish him every success (apart from when he plays against us) and I am grateful for the three years we had him.

    From Norwich’s point of view, Buendia’s sale has come relatively early in the summer and the club have plenty of time to invest the transfer fee in new players to replace him. It’s a sizeable fee, too. City have an irritating policy of labelling all of their transfer dealings as ‘undisclosed’ fees, but Aston Villa are reportedly paying an initial £33m with another £5m potentially coming if certain, though unspecified, performance criteria are met. Should he move from Villa to the big club I expected him to in the first place, Norwich will benefit once again from a 10% sell-on fee.

    This makes the 24-year-old comfortably Norwich’s biggest sale. Until 2018, the club had never sold a player for £20m or more. They have since sold three – James Maddison to Leicester, Ben Godfrey to Everton and now Buendia. In an interview with the BBC last week, sporting director Stuart Webber said that if the club sold one of their top players the figure is ‘probably going to start with a number three in front of it’ and ‘we’re really relaxed on that front’. He has been true to his word.

    It is reassuring that this doesn’t appear to have come as a shock to the people in power at Carrow Road. While I was hoping they would stick their heels in, refuse to sell Buendia and build the team around him to take on the Premier League – like Villa did with Jack Grealish – the relaxed response from Webber suggests that new faces are already being lined up. I thought it would be worth our while spending a fair bit convincing Buendia to stay for just one more season, and that it would be much easier to replace Max Aarons if the club needed a big sale. For the size of the fee, we could potentially buy three players to replace the one we have sold. Speaking of Grealish, I imagine Villa must be expecting to sell him this summer now and have bought Buendia to take his place.

    I do think Norwich have taken a risk in selling their star man. Buendia created an incredible number of chances in the Premier League last time, considering he was in the side that finished bottom. It will be difficult to find someone with as much creativity in midfield as him. It’s hard for me not to believe that our chances of staying up next season have taken a hit. However, if we’ve learned one thing in the four years since Webber and Farke took over, it’s that they know what they are doing and to question their judgement often leaves you looking a fool.

  • 7 Tests, ODI tri-series and get rid of The Hundred – my ideas to improve cricket

    The T20 Blast has the excitement and the crowds, so there’s no need for The Hundred

    In a concerning development this week, The Guardian reported that the England and Wales Cricket Board could be asked to move or even cancel the scheduled fifth Test match against India this summer. Due to take place between the 10th and 14th September at Old Trafford, it is believed that the Indian board may want the game shifted to make space in the calendar to complete this year’s Indian Premier League. The T20 tournament was suspended earlier this month due to an outbreak of Covid-19 amongst players and staff.

    Given that The Guardian claims the remaining 31 IPL matches are worth £200m in broadcast revenue for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), it’s not hard to see why they would be keen to squeeze in the remainder of the tournament in a packed calendar. To me, however, it feels like a pivotal moment in the sport’s history – if an international fixture was moved or cancelled to accommodate a domestic franchise tournament, it would send out a message of cricket’s priorities and there may be no going back. It cannot be allowed to happen.

    This comes as cricket in England is also at a crucial stage. The Hundred, a whole new format cooked up by marketing men and despised by almost everyone with a passing interest in the game, is set to start in July. I’ve been thinking about ways to improve cricket and here are some of my suggestions.

    England should play 7 Tests every summer

    Test matches. The purest form of the game. The best form of the game, in my opinion. A prolonged examination of a player’s skills, a test of their concentration. There is nothing like the ebb and flow of a Test, the way the story unfolds over the course of five days. You can dip in and out of it, coming back to a match that has changed dramatically in the few hours you’ve been at work.

    England is one of the few countries that can still fill a ground for Test match cricket, a sad indictment of the world’s shortening attention spans. But, with this privileged position, we should make the most of it by playing seven Tests every summer. One series of three, one series of four. The only exception to this would be an Ashes year, in which the battle against the old enemy Australia would have to be over five and the other opponent would have to come over for two matches.

    Bring back the ODI tri-series

    The last ODI tri-series in England in 2005 featured a memorable Bangladesh victory over world champions Australia in Cardiff

    Up until 2005 the English summer would include an ODI tri-series, where three teams – usually England and that year’s two touring sides – would compete for a place in a final at Lord’s. The demise of the tri-series was down to money, of course. The matches that didn’t involve England would understandably generate less interest, making it harder to sell tickets for them and broadcasters to question why they were paying so much for the rights. But as such a multi-cultural place, I think there is still the opportunity for a highly successful tri-series to return. Imagine England playing a two Test series with Pakistan and a four Test series with India, with the meat in the middle of that sandwich being a tri-series including three India v Pakistan clashes at grounds such as Edgbaston, Headingley and Trent Bridge – cities with large British Asian populations.

    The T20 Blast is everything the ECB want The Hundred to be

    As a cricket tragic I find The Hundred a bit of an insult. This sport that I love so much is apparently too complex and too boring to attract new fans without it being pulled into a shape I don’t recognise first. And that’s according to the governing body! I refuse to believe that the concept of 20 overs of six balls would be too much for the general population to understand. And the idea of changing the term ‘wickets’ to ‘outs’? Do me a favour.

    What about the county cricketers of this country, professionals who ply their trade for clubs that have existed for over a century? For them to be told that they are no longer relevant and that the focal point of the summer will now be crass, made-up teams with names as risible as ‘Oval Invincibles’ is just offensive. The fact is, the ECB already have the answer to attracting new fans to cricket right in front of them – it’s called the T20 Blast.

    According to a brilliant Elizabeth Ammon column in Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine, in 2019 all eighteen county teams reported that ‘between 20% and 50% of their ticket sales [for the T20 Blast] were families, and a quarter were people who had not previously bought tickets’. I went to a Blast match that year which had a crowd bigger than most international fixtures around the world. Give it a window so the best players in the world have the chance to come and play in it, get some of it on primetime terrestrial television, and the game of cricket will get the popularity boost the ECB craves. And they won’t have alienated most of the existing fans in the process.

  • Newspaper column – Tuesday 21st July 2020

    My latest column for the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News Fans’ Zone page is published today.

    It’s about what a terrible season it has been for Norwich City and how the end of it can’t come soon enough.

    You can read it online here, but if you do happen to be in a shop, do buy a paper!

    The Norwich players will be as happy to see the back of this season as the fans

  • This week, I’ve been on a podcast

    This week I was a guest on The Pink Un Norwich City Podcast.

    It’s a fairly long running podcast (I was on episode 398) by the people who do the sports pages of the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News. The topic is all things Norwich City.

    As I’ve been writing a regular column for those papers for the last five years they asked me to appear, and I was both delighted and terrified to be asked. I’m very comfortable with the written word but actually speaking with my voice fills me with dread. I knew I’d regret it if I turned them down though so I said yes and I’m glad that I did so.

    Alongside the host – journalist David Freezer – I was on with the chairman of the Canaries Trust Robin Sainty and ex-Norwich player Darren Eadie. Esteemed company!

    We discussed the proposals to resume the Premier League season that is currently suspended due to the coronavirus epidemic and our memories of our first Norwich City games.

    Darren Eadie had something of a bee in his bonnet about the way the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) have been handling the crisis, and the things he said in the podcast turned out to be newsworthy enough to make the board outside my mum’s local shop!

    You can listen to the podcast below, by clicking the link in the first sentence of this post or by searching for ‘The Pink Un’ where you usually get your podcasts (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

  • Newspaper column: Tuesday 12th November 2019

    With Norwich City bottom of the Premier League, my column for the Eastern Daily Press and Norwich Evening News this month is a rallying call to the more fickle fans of the club to stick with the team through a difficult period. You can read it online by clicking here.

  • Norwich’s unlikely triumph is why we follow sport

    Norwich City 3-2 Manchester City

    ‘I would accept 5-0’.

    It’s fair to say us Norwich City fans weren’t expecting much from the game against Manchester City. The above is something I overheard a lady in a yellow and green shirt say at the station as I waited for the train.

    I had been referring to the game as ‘the massacre’ as it approached. You always hope for the best but the fact that our defence has not exactly been watertight so far this season, Pep Guardiola would be bringing one of the best squads ever assembled and our injury list was so horrific that Stephen King might consider writing a story about it, I honestly feared it could be anything between 6 and 10 nil to Manchester City. The heaviest defeat in Premier League history was suffered by Ipswich, of all clubs, when they were thumped 9-0 by Manchester United in 1995. I hoped that record would not come under threat.

    Dereham-born academy graduate Todd Cantwell doubles Norwich’s lead against the champions

    What followed was surely one of the most unlikely results ever in football. I wonder if the Norwich players had seen how they were being completely written off and thought ‘we’ll show you’. We were confident enough to play out from the back, not frightened to play the same intricate passing football against the reigning champions as we had played against Rotherham and Millwall last season, we were utterly determined not to let Guardiola’s superstars walk all over us and we ended up playing the Manchester City way better than Manchester City.

    With so many injuries that Daniel Farke had to name two goalkeepers on the bench to make up the numbers, it didn’t bode well for a game against a club that could afford to bring world class talent like Kevin De Bruyne, Gabriel Jesus and Riyad Mahrez off the bench. But from those who were fit enough to take the field for Norwich, new heroes emerged. Sam Byram would have been highly unlikely to play had Max Aarons not been injured on England Under 21 duty, but he was fantastic at keeping the daunting Manchester City attack as quiet as possible. Ibrahim Amadou, making his home debut, was so good he picked up the man of the match award. Usually a holding midfielder, Amadou lined up alongside Ben Godfrey at centre half and put his body on the line for the cause.

    Ibrahim Amadou was immense for Norwich City

    Of course we needed some luck. Aymeric Laporte’s knee injury before the international break meant that the visitors were forced to partner John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi in central defence. The pair played as if they had never previously met and Norwich were able to capitalise with the superb Emi Buendia pinching the ball off Otamendi in the penalty area to set up the third goal. When Raheem Sterling crashed a free header against the post when it looked easier to score, I sat in the Barclay beginning to wonder if something special was happening below me.

    This match will live long in the memory and reminds us all why we follow sport. We all make our predictions. We all have an idea of how things are going to play out. Then sport surprises us. A series of events occurs that simply shouldn’t happen. That’s what we got at Carrow Road on Saturday. Write the Canaries off at your peril.

  • Newspaper column: Friday 9th August 2019

    My first column of the new football season was published in the Pink Un pullout, inside the Norwich Evening News and Eastern Daily Press, on Friday.

    I tried to call on my fellow Norwich City fans to stick with the team this season, even when life in the Premier League is tough. I also made my predictions for the season.

    The column can also be read online by clicking here.

  • The pain at the Arsenal

    I have just returned from a brilliant trip to London, where I went to my first Norwich City away match at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

    The plan was to make an event of it, so instead of going straight there and straight back on the coach with other fans I went on the train on Tuesday morning, stayed in a hotel in Finsbury Park and came back on Wednesday lunchtime.

    I was aware that my hotel was within walking distance of the ground, but I didn’t expect to be able to see it from my window!

    2017-10-24 16.02.56
    The Emirates Stadium was visible from my hotel room

    2017-10-24 16.03.07
    Zoomed in

    I walked to the stadium well before kick off, to properly take in the atmosphere. I had been outside the Emirates once before, but that was during the day when there was no one around. It was a different sight all lit up with thousands of people there.

    2017-10-24 18.23.03
    Outside the Emirates

    2017-10-24 18.27.22
    Near where the away fans go in

    I made my way to the end where my fellow Norwich fans were going to be sitting, and immediately felt a warmth come over me seeing yellow shirts and hearing familiar songs – I was amongst my own people! With an hour to go before kick off, I went inside and found my seat, giving me my first sight of the pitch.

    2017-10-24 18.43.33
    The view from my seat

    Before long the Norwich players came out to warm up at our end, to great applause. There is a real feeling of togetherness about the club at the moment. The fans are right behind the players, the players are putting the effort in for the fans and they are buying into what the manager is trying to do. It’s lovely to see. There were particularly loud cheers for James Maddison, who scored the winner in the derby on Sunday.

     

    Norwich's goalkeepers Angus Gunn and Michael McGovern warm up
    Norwich’s goalkeepers Angus Gunn and Michael McGovern warm up
    The Norwich players preparing for the game
    The Norwich players preparing for the game

    Arsenal have a sort of TV show on the big screens inside the stadium for pre-match, half time and post-match. I don’t really think it works. I’ve seen it done at cricket grounds, and often it’s hard to hear the presenter and a lot of the time you don’t want to because they are really annoying. Arsenal’s presenter didn’t win any friends amongst the Norwich fans by introducing us as Ipswich! That’s pretty much the worst thing you can say about us.

    2017-10-24 19.14.54
    This bloke introduced us as Ipswich!

    Then it was the match itself. You probably know that the game went all the way to extra time, with the eventual score being Arsenal 2-1 Norwich. The Norwich players put in a very good performance, going in front in the first half when Josh Murphy finished nicely after running onto a great Maddison pass and defending excellently until the 86th minute when a young guy I’d never heard of called Eddie Nketiah tapped in from a corner 15 seconds after coming on as a substitute for Arsenal. He then scored the winner in the first half of extra time. Norwich had come agonisingly close to pulling off an upset – one they would have deserved – but it wasn’t to be.

    I was proud of the team, though, and very proud to be in the crowd. The nearly 9,000 Norwich fans that were there put the Arsenal fans to shame. Boxer and City fan Anthony Ogogo says he was racially abused by one of our number last night, which is totally unacceptable and that person is merely a sad individual who has nothing to do with this wonderful football club. I certainly didn’t hear anything untoward, and I think we represented the city brilliantly.

    2017-10-24 22.19.30
    The Norwich players in a huddle after the game

    2017-10-24 22.21.25
    The Canaries thank the fans for their great support

    My first experience of seeing Norwich play on another team’s turf was one I’ll never forget, and one I hope to repeat in the future. We may not have won, we may be out of the cup, but I got a real sense that the club is in good shape at the moment and that if we can carry on performing like we did on Tuesday night then we can achieve something in the league this season.