LEE PAYNE

Tag: liverpool

  • Ok, now you have permission to panic | Norwich Nuggets: Watford (h)

    Four games into the Premier League season and with four defeats, the home game against Watford was as close to a must win as it is possible to be at this stage of the campaign. Sadly, Norwich didn’t have any answers on another dreadful day. Here are some thoughts on Norwich City 1-3 Watford.

    Norwich had another bad day at the office against Watford

    Running out of answers

    It doesn’t seem to matter how much money Norwich spend, what team they put out, or what formation they play – the Premier League is a nut they just can’t crack. I was pleased with the team news before kick off today. New signings Ozan Kabak and Mathias Normann were given their debuts, and there were two recognised strikers in the eleven in Teemu Pukki and Josh Sargent – rare to say the least in a Daniel Farke side. Both of the new boys were brought in to try to strengthen our rather leaky defence, Kabak as part of the back four and Normann in a defensive midfielder role acting as an extra barrier. Kabak was good in places, read the game well and looked comfortable on the ball. Normann showed only a glimpse of his passing ability. There will be much more to come from both of them, but today it was the same old story for City.

    Just as they had done against Leicester, the Canaries conceded an early goal. When you’re always having to chase the game, it’s really tough to get anything out of it. In the first half they actually looked quite bright going forward and Teemu Pukki’s lovely finish was a reminder of what the team are actually capable of – but it was all too fleeting as more needless mistakes at the back saw Watford run out pretty comfortable winners.

    For the first time, Farke hears the boos

    It’s been four years and four months since Daniel Farke was appointed Norwich City manager. Today may well have the been first time he’s ever received boos from the Carrow Road crowd. It was sad, but not unexpected, as the frustrated City fans told the boss exactly what they thought of the performance as he manfully acknowledged each side of the ground at full time. It really isn’t easy to turn the atmosphere in a football ground around once it’s turned toxic. Only goals and wins will get the boo boys back on his side.

    Daniel Farke has work to do

    Watford are nothing special

    Towards the end of the game the Watford players were literally running rounds around their Norwich opponents. It was actually quite embarrassing. You can sort of take losing to the likes of Liverpool and Man City, but being taught a lesson at home by a team as ordinary as Watford? The Canaries have got serious problems. There really doesn’t seem much that sets Watford apart from Norwich, they just showed a bit more guts on the day. I can see it being a relegation battle for the Hornets, but given how easy it was for them in the end that really isn’t a good sign for Norwich.

    A good cup result is important

    With Norwich’s 38 game battle to stay in the Premier League now reduced to a 33 game one, some fans might think it right to put out a second string against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday so we can ‘concentrate on the league’. With confidence as low as it is, however, a decent performance and a good result against the Reds could do wonders ahead of our next league assignment at Everton next weekend.

  • Looking through my box of comics and feeling old

    In my younger days, I loved The Beano and The Dandy and my mum had both comics delivered to the house each week. I thought the smell of a fresh comic was one of the most intoxicating imaginable and was sold on their bright colours, gentle humour and simple charm.

    I have a large, very heavy box under my bed right now containing pretty much every comic that ever came through the letterbox of my childhood home. When I feel like adult life is getting on top of me, which happens more often than it really should, I open the box and spend a while indulging myself in the innocence of youth.

    It seems that my ‘golden’ period of receiving The Beano and The Dandy was between 1999 – the year I turned 7 – and 2003, when I was 11.

    My box of comics

    There’s a sort of running joke I have with a friend from when I was at university. We often talk about how we’re getting old and that our youth is well behind us. Well, we will both be 30 next birthday (him before me, I must add) which feels like something of a milestone but our chat about pipes, slippers and bowls of mashed up apple might be somewhat premature.

    Still, looking back through my old comics, it’s hard not to smile at how dated these dear old things are. Here are a few examples.

    This issue of The Beano, from December 2002, was giving away a free pack of stickers for your FA Premier League album. Collecting football stickers is still very much a thing, so nothing too bad so far, but look at the players used to advertise this brilliant giveaway! Dennis Bergkamp of Arsenal (retired in 2006), Paolo Di Canio of West Ham (now 53 years old) and Michael Owen of Liverpool (who left the Premier League to join Real Madrid two seasons later).

    A 9-year-old can’t just fill his football sticker album up on an empty stomach, though. He’s got to have breakfast first. How about some Mornflake Oats? You can still buy them, though heaven knows when I last saw an advert for them. The bit that caught my eye was the statement that they are available at Somerfield. That particular chain of supermarkets was taken over by the Co-Op in 2009, and by 2012 all Somerfield stores had been rebranded to that of their new owners.

    I’ve written before about how I’m not into films, but Disney’s Tarzan was one of the few that I have actually seen in the cinema. The film was released in October 1999, but by Christmas 2002 the character was back in an exciting new video game for… the GameBoy Advance. Released in the summer of 2001, the GameBoy Advance took games away from the bedroom and made them portable – for as long as the battery would last, that is. I never had one (I had the original GameBoy, which was in black and white).

    I may not have had a GameBoy Advance but I did have a PlayStation 2. Pretty much everyone I knew who was my age between 2002 and 2006 had one, actually. There was one boy at school who had a GameCube – we all thought he was weird. The PS2 is still the best selling games console of all time (more than 155 million of them have been sold worldwide) but anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to own one in December 2002 had the chance to win one in this competition. Note how you can’t enter online, you’ve got to send your entry in by post.

    Speaking of brilliant competitions, here’s another one. I don’t know if this still happens, but when I was a kid it seemed nearly everyone – boys especially – went through a stage where we’d spend that bit between getting home from school and going in for tea whizzing about on skateboards. I had one myself, but I was utterly useless at it and never did manage to pull off a single trick on it. Here the comic is giving away a skateboard. What could possibly make that prize better? By the skateboard having a photo of your favourite WWF wrestler on it, of course!

    Yes, nowadays it’s the WWE that does wrestling, but until 2002 it was called the World Wrestling Federation. They were forced to change the name when they lost a court battle with the World Wildlife Fund. I swear I’m not making this up.

    Those are just a few examples of how the last 20 years or so have changed the world, seen through the prism of British comics. Wow, does it make me wish I was 10 again. The comics still even have the little sticker on them that the newsagent would use to let the paper boy know where to deliver them. Simpler, happier times.

    If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.

  • 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.

  • 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.