City taking the Michael giving man of the match to Hoolahan

Norwich dodged a bullet today with a 4-2 home win over Sheffield United in a game that could and probably should have ended in a draw at the very best. Credit to City though who turned a 2-1 half-time defecit into a 4-2 victory in an exciting second half that more than made up for a dismal first 45.
Whoever it is that decides the Man of the Match can’t have had too hard a job giving it to Wes Hoolahan, after all it was just a few seconds after he’s tapped home City’s fourth to end the growing Sheffield United pressure in the last 15 minutes or so of the game.
Somewhere in the world of football rules that don’t actually exist is the rule that means if you score a hat-trick you get the match ball and almost certainly get the man of the match award, but I am sure I am not the only Canary fan who tonight thinks it should have gone to Michael Nelson.
City’s number five had a superb afternoon in a makeshift defensive line – no Elliot Ward and no Leon Barnett meant starts for Nelson and Jens Berthel Askou and it wasn’t only Sheffield United that must have been rubbing their hands at the thought of facing that paring.
I gobbled up the scarcely believable even money on over 2.5 goals in this game before heading up to Norwich today and when I saw that pairing I was pretty confident my £200 would easily be doubled.
Betting on Norwich and watching them is not always easy. While I’d always prefer City to win above all else, cashing in on them is also a great feeling and after a woeful opening quarter of an hour I was gently pumping my arm in my Jarrold Stand seat after Andy Reid gave United the lead. Now the stage was set for a Norwich 2-1 win and a nice little festive win.
There’s something about Norwich this season, particularly at home that means they play much better when they’ve gone a goal behind. In some games – such as Leicester and Burnley they’ve needed to concede to come out and attack a team in their normal way and today was similar. Thankfully within two minutes of going a goal down, that man Nelson had headed home an easy goal and it was 1-1. Game on.
A word about Nelson then. This was the last game of 2010 and it’s been an amazing transition for Norwich. A year ago they were about to go on that fabulous January run of five straight wins which included that awesome 5-0 revenge thumping against Colchester.
I was at the first game of this year, the 1-0 win at Wycombe and so was Nelson. He had a bit of a stinker in that game and I can recall several occasions when Fraser Forster rolled the ball out to Nelson in the centre of defense and he looked up and just could not do anything with the ball. He just didn’t look like a footballer.
When Gary Doherty left in the summer and new recruits were signed in defence, most City fans probably thought that was Nelson’s lot, but credit to the man who scored some vital goals for City last term, he’s not put a foot wrong this term in his four league appearances and his goal was another really big one today.
Nelson’s goal all but guaranteed a winning punt for me but the payout came quicker than expected as within ten minutes of the equaliser, Richard Cresswell had found time and space in the box to slot past John Ruddy. Managerless Sheffield United were 2-1 up. I was £200 up.
I must have been the only City fan with a smile on their face at half-time, but thought naturally turned to how Norwich were going to get something out of the game. What had started as a three-man attack with Grant Holt, Chris Martin and Simeon Jackson changed at the interval to a two-man strikeforce – Jackson making way for Wes Hoolahan.
Did Hoolahan change the game? Well not really. There was little between the teams for much of the second half but a stumbling Grant Holt won Norwich a penalty, converted by Wes for 2-2 and then a handball in the box made it 3-2 with another penalty.
I felt sorry for Jackson again – he did little wrong, but you could argue he did little right. He certainly was no better or worse than Chris Martin who was hardly in the game in my opinion.
Still with four in midfield it gave City far more width and when Anthony McNamee came on that was really exploited. Our midfield has been immense this season, but today, Korey Smith apart, it was two pretty poor performances from David Fox and Andrew Crofts.
That Norwich won 4-2 does little but put a nice gloss on a good match but not the greatest City performance. Make no mistake, The Blades were in this game right until Hoolahan tapped home Holt’s pass deep into stoppage time. Seconds later it could and should have been 3-3 with Daniel Bogdanovic going close.
But the history books will show a 4-2 win with half-time sub Hoolahan scoring a Carrow Road hat-trick one month to the day that somebody else did against another team struggling near the bottom!
They’ll also show that on a day when Leeds and Cardiff threw away leads and points, Norwich end 2010 just a point off second place, albeit five places off the top.
Yes, we’re a point off second place and automatic promotion to the Premier League at the halfway point of the season. That’s us – Norwich City. Last year we were relegated from this division! Last year we were losing 7-1 at home to Colchester! This term we were supposed to struggle!
But no. We’ve got QPR and Cardiff at home in the next two home league games and I for one hope Michael Nelson plays and performs like a rock in both of them.
Happy New Year everyone – let’s hope the next six months at Norwich City are as great as the last six.

Grant Holt's festive Norwich City dilemma

I guess it’s a sign of how well our season is going that has given rise to rumours circulating about the Norwich City future of Grant Holt.
Despite The Canaries this week releasing a short and succinct statement saying ‘He’s not for sale’, our Captain Fantastic has been linked with possible moves to Wigan, West Ham, Bolton and Blackpool when the transfer window opens in just over a week.
Trying not to be biased for a minute, I’m not sure this is the right time for Holt to move.
I know he’s a Carlisle man and it is believed he spends a fair bit of time going back to that part of the world to see his family. This would make a move to the north west ideal for him. But is Wigan or Blackpool in January 2011 the place he really wants to be?
Not since Dean Ashton departed from Carrow Road five January transfer windows ago has such a key player left the club and a move to the top flight right now would be quite remarkable for Holt.
For a modern day footballing journeyman, Holt’s career has really taken off in the last 18 months. A year and a half ago he was a Shrewsbury player, filling his boots with goals galore in League Two.
Bryan Gunn signed him in the summer of 2009 and he starred in League One alongside Wes Hoolahan and Chris Martin before returning to the Championship where he’d previously played for Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday.
I remember seeing Holt for the first time in a Norwich shirt against Wigan on the final day of July the summer before last in a pre-season friendly.
Norwich beat Wigan 3-2 that day and Holt looked great getting stuck in against Titus Bramble just seven days before the 7-1 home demolition by Colchester that pretty much defined our League One campaign.
This season, well more specifically, in the last four weeks, Holt’s stock has really risen. That treble against Ipswich on the telly, how we missed him against Portsmouth and that brace at Coventry have underlined how massively important a player he is for us to keep.
Should Norwich fail to make it to the Premier League this season it is likely that we will either be knocked out in the play-offs or fall just outside the top six. That would be a remarkable achievement given where the club was when Holt joined.
I don’t think any Norwich fan would begrudge Holt moving on in the summer to pastures new , I am sure we would all do the same in our late 20s having never played in the Premier League.
But is a certain relegation fight at the likes of Wigan or West Ham really the right move for a man valued at £2 million?
I’m sure Holt knows that he’d be thrown in to the deep end and there’s a huge chance he’d end up back in the Championship next summer. He certainly won’t get as much joy up front against the likes of Nemanja Vidic as he did against Damien Delaney.
So why not wait? Fair enough, City don’t make it up and he goes and joins a team like QPR in the Premier League. That would be a good move for him. He’d be there from the start of the season and I for one would wish him all the best.
But for the skipper to leave in January with Norwich poised for a potential shot at the Premier League? It makes no sense.
Holt is loved by this club and I am sure he’d have far more pride captaining Norwich in the Premier League than being booed next autumn at Carrow Road in the colours of someone like West Ham.
Games against QPR and Middlesbrough at the start of January could shape our season. Lose them both, slip down the table and Holt could be left out of the side against Leyton Orient which would be ominous.
But a New Year’s Day hammering of QPR and something from Middlesbrough would send out the message that in 2011, City are promotion contenders and, more importantly, Grant Holt really is not for sale.

Hornby, Rennick, Imlach, Kuper and er, Richards!

David Rennick’s book on Muhammad Ali, King Of The World, was named the best ever sports book in The Times this week, but I’m hoping to knock it off its next year.
While that probably won’t realistically happen, I’ll be joining the list of great sports novelists in the new year with the release of my first novel, Memorabilia.
The Times list of the top 50 sports books sadly excluded my first book, Touchdown UK, which I’m sure was number 51 (they have to cut the list of somewhere I naturally told myself), but looking down the list at all the great books I’ve read was really comforting.
My bookshelf at home and that Times list share some great reads, Simon Kuper’s, Football Against The Enemy, Eamon Dunphy’s A Strange Kind of Glory, Full Time The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino, My Father and Other Working Class Football Hero’s by the great Gary Imlach, The Damned United by David Peace, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and All Played Out by Pete Davis.
I though Duncan Hamilton‘s Brian Clough memoir Provided You Don’t Kiss Me should have made the list, but I was really pleased that my favourite sports book of all time is sitting on there at 23.
That book is David Winner’s book Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football which was published in 2000. As a man with a Dutch influence in my family it’s a great dissection of the Dutch psyche, and analyses why the country as a whole is transfixed by the idea of glorious failure as opposed to the Germanic way of victory above all.
It’s almost a decade since I first read that book, and I’m hoping that people will take to my sports-based novel Memorabilia in the same way.
While Nick Hornby wrote about being a football fan and we’ve had a plethora of books on being a hooligan, watching football around the world and following individual teams, my book is one of few out there based around the sporting themes of gambling and sports memorabilia.
It’s set mainly in East Anglia in the summer of 2010 and involves two main characters at different stages of their careers as collectors and being sports fans. It’s being release in February through Grosvenor House – watch this space for more info!

Golden fail on the Golden Goal

It was while reading the excellent Norwich City blog Sing Up The River End the other week that got me thinking back to the golden days of the Golden Goal cards at Carrow Road.
As a kid I used to watch the games and then wonder why they always read out the goal times and why, a couple of minutes later a couple of old boys in white coats would trudge around the ground holding up a board with the exact time of the goal displayed with plastic numbers on hooks. Fast forward a generation or so and I’ve got to say I’m hooked on the Golden Goal cards on sale at Carrow Road. Forget the punters gathering around the various outlets of Ladbrokes trying to guess the first goalscorer and correct score, I’d rather invest some cash in these rather addictive little scratch cards.
For the uninitiated, you for £1 you get two goal times, one in each half. Match the time of the first goal and you win £500. The prizes tail off dramatically after that – goal two secures a Freeview Box, goal three a signed football, and then it’s down to a £25 voucher, followed by a tenner if there’s a fifth goal or more.
But you also get a lucky number which wins you the man of the match’s signed shirt. That’s the bigger draw for me and I’ve developed a mini-obsession with trying to win it.
Normally I pick up a couple of cards – at £1 each, they make the perfect use of the £7 change I’d get from buying a programme with a tenner. I don’t eat or drink at the football and, rather than burning my lips on a Cornish Pasty (Ipswich at home, 2006) or scorching my mouth on a pie (Nottingham Forest away, 2001) or buying a beer (can I be the only man who at the age of 35 has never had a beer at a football match in England) I’d rather spend the cash on Golden Goal cards.
I’ve been so close on so many times – against Colchester last year (the 7-1) I was six seconds away from getting the opening goal time correct and twice this season I’ve missed out on the shirt by less than three numbers.
Last Saturday against Porstmouth I decided to go for it. I invested £20 in the cards, which I picked up from four different sellers around the ground. I made a note of the goal times and lucky numbers in my phone and scratched them off after the game.
I knew the lucky number was 0772 and that would win Wes Hoolahan’s signed shirt. After 19 unsuccessful cards I came to the last one, scratched it off really slowly and the first three numbers were ‘077’. My heart started to thump. From a one in a thousand chance I was down to a one in ten chance.
In more ways than one, I just needed a number two!
With one big brave scratch I scraped a way that last bit of silver foil to reveal a number.... four.
Damn you Golden Goal cards, you’ll be the death of me until I win, but I’ll keep on going!

Jackson blows his big chance in poor home loss to Portsmouth

Norwich lost 2-0 at home to Portsmouth today, and while the result was hard to take given the euphoria around Carrow Road 13 days, ago, I think it’s important we remember how far we’ve come in the past year.
Twelve months ago tonight I was sitting in a Travelodge in Somerset watching the X-Factor final while my missus was wolfing down a box of Tofifee (boy do I know how to party!) and I myself was digesting Norwich’s last minute 3-3 draw at Yeovil.
Yes, Norwich were relying on a last minute Gary Doherty goal to earn a point against Yeovil, a team now facing the cold reality that they could be playing League Two football next season.
Today we lost at home to Portsmouth, a team that were playing in the FA Cup final last season, a team that won the FA Cup two years ago, were locking horns with AC Milan at Fratton Park two winters ago.
When you think of it like that, this loss isn’t really that hard to stomach.
And, when you think that in the last 13 days we’ve hammered our nearest rivals, and gained a brilliant three points at one of our promotion rivals, to lose this game wasn’t that bad. To take six points from three games is a good total, and I don’t think there was a City fan at Carrow Road today who would rather have lost to Portsmouth than either Derby or Ipswich.
Back to today’s game – with Grant Holt suspended Simeon Jackson started up front with Chris Martin and it was the Canadian’s big chance in the spotlight. Could he provide the same threat in front of goal as the Carlisle-born striker Holt?
Well, not really.
And I have sympathy for Jackson, who was given a pretty poor service from midfield. He kept on making those runs and there just wasn’t that killer pass that he needed to get a decent shot on target.
When he did find himself in acres of space in front of goal in the first half it was no surprise that he fluffed his lines.
This game reminded of me of when Hull came to Carrow Road in September. City were all over the opponents in the first half, they really were, but despite winning loads of corners and piling on the pressure, Pompey’s defence was pretty solid and kept Norwich out.
Portsmouth created nothing at all and when Liam Lawrence won a corner in added time at the end of the first half, the limit of their intent was pretty clear. Lawrence took so long to take it that the ref gave up and blew the whistle for the start of the interval.
Pompey seemed like they were only at Carrow Road to head back down south with a point, but when David Nugent suddenly burst into life 20 minutes from time and slotted a pacey pass across the box for Dave Kitson, it was a case of déjà vu for City.
Just like the Hull game, we pressed for an equaliser but Jackson and Martin saw less and less of the ball and when Jackson was hauled off with 15 minutes and Oli Johnson made a rare appearance from the bench, you kind of knew that the Canadian had blown his chance.
David Nugent burst through in stoppage time, won a penalty, Leon Barnett was sent off and Greg Halford tucked away his spot kick. It finished 2-0.
Credit must go to Portsmouth – I mean how else do you play when you come to Carrow Road in 2010? Ipswich came and tried to play and got thumped. Teams like Hull, Pompey, even Middlesbrough, tried to nullify Norwich and that’s what teams have to do if they actually want to get something out of the game.
It works though – if you defend deep, play on the counter attack and frustrate Norwich you’re always going to stay in the game and that’s exactly what Portsmouth did.
Yes we missed Grant Holt badly today, we missed everything that his game brings – but Norwich need to realise that without him every move doesn’t have to consist of 15-20 intricate passes before fizzling out. It is actually OK to lump it into the box every now and then – other teams do it and it works.
When City ping the ball around the pitch, at times they’re as good as Arsenal or even Barcelona. That may sound a ridiculous comparison, but is there anything you see Messi, Wilsihere, Fabregas, Xavi and co do that City don’t produce?
Of course those other two teams are producing football at a far higher level, and they do it for much longer than Norwich, but sometimes the movement and energy that Paul Lambert has instilled in Norwich is that good.
And just like Arsenal and Barcelona, Norwich do sometimes slip up in their home games.

Family four-tunes on the day City shined on the telly

WOW! What a day. My Nanny turned 84 and told me she needs to get up twice in the night for a slash and I had to explain to my Grandad who Kasabian were. Between that and other family nuggets was a certain game of football that will live long in the memory.
Beating Ipswich 4-1 is obviously brilliant, but today, for me, it was all about the bigger picture.
This was the first one at Carrow Road for almost two years and the fact that both sides had made fairly good starts to the season was one reason it was chosen to be shown live on BBC One.
Norwich playing Ipswich live on the Beeb and we had the window to show the whole of the nation just what a great club we are.
I left my family in the comfort of their warm homes to tune into the match. None of them watch Norwich regularly, indeed my grandparents have probably never actually watched a Norwich game on telly, but today, they tuned in and as I trundled down to Carrow Road I thought that there was possibly a whole new audience about to watch a Norwich league game live for the first time.
Such is my route down to Carrow Road that for half the 25 minute walk I don’t really see any other Norwich fans. As I wind my way through the sleepy suburban streets in the south of the City I often have chats over fences and hedges with people who don’t really take an interest in football but who seem to think spending the afternoon in their gardens is worthwhile instead.
They often ask the score on the way home or on the way to the ground look at me in my Norwich scarf and mutter something about The Canaries.
Today on the way down to the ground as the snow crunched beneath my feet, two blokes in their garden shouted out “Make sure you throw snowballs at the Ipswich fans.”
Inside Carrow Road the biggest crowd in 16 years and thousands more on television screens around the country watched a simply brilliant game if you’re a Norwich fan.
Henri Lansbury made his debut on the right of midfield, Simon Lappin continued at left back and David Fox and Andrew Surman held their places in the middle.
As for the action well, we got a bit lucky. Grant Holt was booked in the first few minutes, we took the lead with a goal that could have been cancelled out for handball, conceded a soft equaliser, Holt added a second, he could have been sent off for deliberate handball, he did well to go down under Damien Delaney’s lightest of touches and we didn’t know what to do for the first half the second period.
But as a Norwich fan, and wearing those yellow-tinted glasses, we were awesome and at the break I was confident we could have been heading for a serious romp.
Thankfully Holt completed that hat-trick, Wes Hoolahan knocked in a fourth and it was all happy days and all of a sudden being a Norwich fan never felt better.
But the real verdict was to be had when I got back to my parents house. I love Norwich. I will be at every home game for the next I don’t know how long.
But I love to think we won some new fans today. My grandparents said they watched it all and enjoyed it. They picked up on Grant Holt scoring a treble. My granddad asked if he was from Norfolk given his surname, my Nanny picked up on the fact that Norwich have players called R Martin and C Martin which by coincidence are same names as my grandparents.
I haven’t got parents called Russell and Chris by the way!
I’m sure there are Norwich fans all over the country who will be getting texts and phone calls from friends and family tonight saying they saw their team whip Ipswich 4-1 on the telly.
And for that reason, it was so good to share our success in such a public spotlight.

Norwich v Ipswich betting tips

My fabulous weekend of sport started last Thursday with the NFL Thanksgiving triple header and shows no signs of slowing down. The Ashes are on to keep cricket fans happy, there’s rugby everywhere, loads of great football matches on, a big clash in Spain and a local derby to look forward to – there could be some very tired people come Tuesday morning!
Lets’ kick off with the Norwich v Ipswich derby this lunchtime. It’s a 1.15pm kick off and it’s live on BBC One if you can’t make it to Carrow Road.
It was only May of last year that the two sides last met – but that was so long ago that Bryan Gunn and Jim Magilton were in opposing dugouts. Ipswich will go into Sunday’s game with a run of three straight defeats, while Norwich have four straight draws.
So both teams are hardly picking up the points after relatively good starts – and that suggests the derby is probably heading for a draw. I’m certainly not going to back either side to win as they’re always so hard to predict and I don’t want to start making statements about form books and windows.
Norwich are 6/5 favourites which is unsurprising as they’re at home. Ipswich are around 5/2 for the win, with the draw at around 12/5.
What it is safe to say is that recent derby games have turned up some unusual scorers. In the last ten derbys we’ve had a brace from Malky Mackay, goals from the likes of Jimmy Juan, Jonatan Johansson, Luke Chadwick, David Wright, Ched Evans, Matty Pattison, David Mooney, Alan Quinn and Giovanni dos Santos.
Loan players and unlikely scorers often become derby day heroes, so instead of predicting the score in this one, it’s better to enjoy the game, cheer on your side and have a wager on some players to get on the scoresheet at long odds.
Norwich are sure to give a debut to loan signing Henri Lansbury who netted for Watford against Town last season. Take him at 5/1 with Paddy Power to net at anytime and also go for on loan centre half Leon Barnett to net at 10/1 with Bet 365. He netted last week against Leeds and is a real powerful presence at corners.
For Ipswich, I’d take Jack Colback at 13/2 and Tommy Smith at 20/1, both with Bet 365.
The last derby game to end 0-0 was the last one of the 20th century, in the 13 meetings since then there has been an average of 3.27 goals in these games, so take the over 2.5 goals at evens with Bet 365.
Enjoy the game.

* Article originally appeared in Evening Star on Friday. Find my betting tips in there each Friday.

Deion Branch nearly broke my foot!

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans out there - I had a great night tonight celebrating the big day with my wife at home.

I made a pecan pie and then settled down at 5.30pm to watch the Patriots take on the Lions sitting in a freezing Bury St Edmunds with the fire and my Pats 1985 Irving Fryar throwback jersey on.

There's something about seeing the Pats wearing that red outfit that makes me go all warm inside - I guess it simply takes me back to being ten and getting into the NFL for the first time.

It was bad enough watching the Pats struggle in the first half of the game but worse still I had to watch the second half while eating the lovely meal my wife had made, turkey and all the trimmings, but with New England 14-3 down, it didn't taste great.
The Pats got back into it and then came the moment of the game, a massive bomb hurled by Tom Brady into the arms of Deion Branch for a 79-yard touchdown.

Watching Branch twist the blood of poor Lion Alphonso Smith was awesome. So much so that I got up, punched the air several times and then kicked my armchair.

The wife was not impressed.

The Pats won, the food was lovely and the chair survived - but with the Jets at home next week, I'm not so convinced for it's long term future.

Norwich can't start becoming badly drawn boys

Norwich v Leeds today and what a game.
Indeed it was such a big deal for me that last night I couldn’t actually sleep. Seriously, it felt like Christmas Day and it was only November and Leeds.
God imagine what it would be like if there was an actual local derby or something!
My over excitement started last weekend when I was in Turin in the Olympic Stadium waiting for the Serie A clash between Juventus and Roma to start.
I sat in the lovely ground with about half an hour to go waiting for texts to come through with Gordon with an update to the score from the Madejski Stadium. Although part of me was waiting with anticipation for the Serie A clash,a big part of me was wishing I could watch the Reading v Norwich clash.
Since returning to England on Monday, I really couldn’t wait to welcome Leeds to Carrow Road. Given what happened last season and the fact we took the League One title from them gave the clash extra needle – and arriving in a foggy Norfolk a few hours before kick off really gave the game an extra edge.
This winter is going to make or break our season – and this was to be one of those games played in the murky, cold grey Norfolk autumn that could prove crucial to our hopes of making the play-offs.
City’s one big change was the return of Andrew Surman who took the place of the injured Korey Smith but, to be honest, he looked way off the pace. Simon Lappin filled in at left back in place of Steven Smith who had recently been playing instead of Adam Drury.
City started well enough, but within five minutes, Leeds were clearly here to play. Robert Snodgrass and Max Gradel ran the show for the entire first half. Snodgrass had so much time on the ball and Gradel gave Russell Martin a torrid time down the left.
Indeed it was no surprise when Gradel netted the opener after just a quarter of an hour. It looked like a repeat of the Burnley game, but thankfully, Leeds failed to build on their lead and Norwich started to get back into the game as the half-time break neared.
Gradel reminded me alot of Martin Paterson in the Burnley game. Not the most obvious comparison, but both have pace to burn and frightened the life out of our defence. As good as City have been at the back on occasions this season, players blessed with pace are always going to have a field day.
When Grant Holt hit the post with a header five minutes after the restart I really thought it was going to be one of those games. But credit to Paul Lambert. Wes Hoolahan and Simeon Jackson came on for the last half an hour or so and gave City just what they needed.
Thankfully we have the resources to have players of this ilk on the bench now and Hoolahan tore the Leeds midfield apart.
The pint-sized number 14 was instrumental in creating all the chances that could have given City something out of the game and, although he didn’t score himself it was his super skills that helped City back into the game with Leon Barnett heading home his first goal for The Canaries.
Norwich looked for that winning goal for most of the last quarter of the game, but despite constant pressure, I don't recall Kaspar Schmeichel actually having that much to do between the sticks.
So, the spoils were shared in a 1-1 draw and Norwich have now drawn four games in a row. Since beating Bristol City away at the start of October they’ve just the win at home to Middlesbrough to their name, which, if the Championship wasn’t so tight, would be a bit of a disaster.
But November has to spawn a win – a draw at home to Ipswich next Sunday would be a poor result. If we’re to do anything this season, we’ve got to get the win over an Ipswich side who lost again today.
I'd hate to look back on November 2010 in six months time and see that it was those five successive draws that cost us a place in the play-offs.
Roy Keane’s side have been nothing special this season and as we can’t cave in and fail to beat a side who routinely lose to far worse sides.
A win against Ipswich, something from the trip to Derby and a home win against Portsmouth are vital for us now.
We've got the players, we've got the boss, we've just got to start picking up those three points again.

Oh no! Sampdoria v Chievo is a no go

It was up early after last night’s Juventus v Roma game to get a train to Genoa to watch Sampdoria take on Chievo, but sadly the day was to end in a bit of disaster.
Not quite the disaster levels associated with Genoa in 2001 – for it was here I first learned of the horrors of 9/11, but something close to it on a trip abroad to watch football – we couldn’t get a ticket.
It’s not that surprising that the Italian authorities have clamped down on ticket sales after Genoa was the scene of the riots during the Italy v Serbia game last month.
Gentile Sampdoria fans are hardly in the same class as those Serb fans who smashed the place up, but rules are rules and the rules here are that tickets stop being sold two hours before kick off.
We’d arrived at the ground with about 45 minutes to go and it was great to be back. I’ve seen Samporia before – at home to Ancona in 2003, so it was not really that much of a disappointment that I couldn’t get in, just a tad frustrating.
After confirming with a steward that Gordon and I would not be watching the game in the flesh, we trundled back into Genoa against a stream of Samp fans to drown our sorrows.
Today follows on from trips to Ajax and Anderlecht in the last decade when I’ve been refused entry to a game for similar reasons – these things happen I suppose.
We holed up in bar to catch the end of the football and joy of joys the game turned out to be a real stinker – and there were hundreds of empty blue seats there too.
Samp favourite Antonio Cassano, the former wonder kid of Italian football had, according to a woman in the town’s Bar Mario, called the president a “dickhead” and been axed from the club.
Said woman, who claimed she was American, turned out to be incredibly irriating and as we stood watching the rest of the game she told us that everyone in the bar was “routing for the guys in blue” who of course were Sampdoria.
Yeah right, thanks love.
She was busy pretending to be upset by Samp’s inability to find the net and in between taking the piss out of us for being English she was getting tips on understanding the offside rule by a lovely old Italian gent, who was sure there was a phrase in English football called ‘Franking’. We figured he may have been on about ‘Marking’ but all of remained confused and that didn’t include the woman behind the bar.
With no live football to watch and a train to catch back to Turin we sat down and had a meal to finish off a short trip to Italy. As I tucked in to delicious saltimbocca and chips I decided that it didn’t really matter that we hadn’t managed to get in, it was just really nice being back in Italy once again.

Friends reunited at Juventus v Roma

Just got back from Turin and the superb all-action Serie A clash between Juventus and Roma that ended in a 1-1 draw.
It was the first time I’ve seen Juventus at home since 2001 – that time was the Saturday after 9/11 and they beat Chievo 3-2 in the Stadio Delle Alpi.
Fast forward nine years and much has changed about Juve. Back at the start of this century their ground which they share with Torino was a vast and impressive cauldron of a ground that suffered from one major minus point – the atmosphere sucked.
A running track around the ground meant even the closest fans had to have decent eye sight to see

the action.
But after a period of consoltation, Juve moved out the of the Delle Alpi and into the Olympic Stadium which they share with still share with Torino while the Delle Alpi is knocked down and a new, smaller, compact ground is open in time for next season.
So this is the last season Juve will share with Torino and a last chance to see them at this temporary home, which itself made the game something special. Few Italian teams have moved, there are very few new stadiums and next season it will be possible for me to watch Juve at home in their third stadium in under ten years.
One man who was in action against Chievo on that chilly Saturday at the foothills of the Alps nine years ago was Alessandro Del Piero who made an appearance on the touchline early in the second half to a superb reception from the hardcore Juve boys in the Curva Nord.
Del Piero has been around so long that he’d be in the same school year as me – and although he’s often used as a sub these days and came on for an ineffectual half hour period, he’s still adored by the home fans.
Those Juve fans really were great. For an Englishman watching a game in Turin there’s always the watchword of Heysel to consider. Many home fans still bear a grudge against the English for what happened in Brussels back in 1985. But having seen three Juventus games now, I can only say that they seem to have no malice towards us.
Despite that, I still don’t fancy having a night in the Curva Nord just yet.
We picked up tickets for the game form a ticket shop in the centre of town, ironically on Via Roma – and for 40 Euros got a decent view eight rows from the front near the corner flag.
Before the game there was a good atmosphere which I took in while learning that Norwich had let slip a 3-1 lead at Reading. The noise inside the ground steadily got better and better and just as the team ran out, AC/DC’s Thunderstruck rang out around the ground and the teams entered after being announced in English: “Introducing Juventus Football Club”.
A strange touch, but given their links to England – they were formed by Notts County fans – that was understandable
Roma dominated the early exchanges. Francesco Totti, a man who has never disappointed when I’ve watched him on two previous occasions (scoring in both) was everywhere and I was impressed by Daniele De Rossi in the Roma midfield who was involved in everything early on.
Juve played a cat and mouse game, getting men behind the ball and just using Vicenzo Iaquinta and Fabio Quagliarella on the break. Two former Liverpool players in John Arne Riise and Alberto Aquilani were also eye-catching in the first 45.
Juve, playing in their gorgeous white away kit with red and green flashes (to celebrate a new sponsorship deal) took the lead against the run of play on 34 minutes when a cross from the right was beautifully volleyed home by Quagliarella
Juve could have had more before the break but wasteful finishing meant Roma were always likely to get back on level terms, and that they did right on half time when they won a penalty and Totti converted it.
The second half saw few chances and what pressure Roma excerted was easily snuffed out by the impressive Giorgio Chiellini, who is rapidly becoming one of my Serie A favourites.
He can’t defend for toffee sometimes and could easily have been sent off twice, but the shaven-haired centre back, who ended the game with a bandage around his head and a face-full of claret, is great to watch with his over the top gesticulation and dirty tricks.
A 1-1 draw was a fair result and both sides were great to watch – I hope Del Piero and Totti are still around next time I watch these two great Italian teams.

Ten years of watching football in Italy

Getting excited ahead of this weekend, as myself and good chum Gordon are off to Italy again, for the first time in a couple of years.
This trip is a special one - not only are we revisiting old haunts of Turin and Genoa to watch Juventus and Sampdoria at home this weekend, but it's actually ten years next month that we first set foot in Italy together to watch a football match.
In that ten years there have been some incredible highs of seeing the likes of Zidane, Davids, Ibrahimovic, Maldini, Del Piero, Totti and Adriano in action, watching Gordo get chased by a wasp in Parma and the superb cuisine served at Da Da Umpa in Turin - and the lows - freezing out tits off in the Della Alpi on two occasions and hearing about 9/11 while we were in a youth hostel in Genoa.
Ten years on from that wet December in 2000 though, we're still good pals, still footie mad and still incredibly excited about going over to Italy and coming back with good memories and no doubt some Italian football stickers!

Norwich v Burnley: Best home game this season so far

Considering the way I felt at half-time at today's Norwich v Burnley clash, this match turned out to the be the best at Carrow Road so far this season.

City were pretty awful in the first half as Burnley ran the show with the impressive Chris Eagles and Martin Paterson tearing our back four apart. Not much complaint about the two goals, they just exposed our weakness at the back at times.

Going forward it was just as frustrating. As I sat and watched Steven Smith hit poor cross after poor cross it occured to me that when City attack at home it's always the same.

Balls are pinged arcross midfield until Wes Hoolahan or Andrew Crofts spies either Russell Martin or Smith trying to burst down the flank and then they're expected to whip in a cross for Grant Holt or Simeon Jackson to try and get something on to.

Last season we attacked down the middle far more and I don't think it took a genius to work out that going for Burnley this way would reap reward.

Step forward Chris Martin and Anthony McNamee who changed the game - the former Watford man was easily the best thing on show and gave Danny Fox a torrid last half an hour on the right.

McNamee's direct dribbling and crosses were just what the game needed and the rousing second half performance was a credit to him.

Had City lost 2-1 I'd still have said this game was great to watch and I don't think even the biggest Clarets fan would dispute that City didn't deserve a point.

A great start to a great football month for me: two home games against Leeds and Ipswich to come later this month and a trip to watch Juventus and Sampdoria at home next weekend to look forward to.

Three stadiums and hanging out at Fritz Walter's house - my pre 2006 World Cup tour in Germany

Germany 2005 revisited: Ten years ago this month I started working as a journalist at The Evening Star in Ipswich. One of the perks of that job along with free newspapers and a generous vending machine that often gave away free Mars bars was the press trips.
For those that don’t know a press trip, often known as ‘jollies’ within the trade is a short vacation provided by a PR company who want to plug a tourist attraction. Normally theses are part of the advertising the destination will do and they work out a whole lot cheaper than paying for a straightforward advert in a paper.
They often dazzle the reporter with great food and drink and leave them with a head-spinning experience that will result in a stream of high praise and flattery. I had some great trips – to Florida, to an £800 a night stately home in Leicestershire, but the perhaps the best was exactly half way through my Star career – in October 2005 in Germany.
Billed as a ‘football and wine’ trip I was lucky enough to join three other reporters from England to go over to Germany ahead of the 2006 World Cup. It was a simple itinerary – three stadiums, three cities, loads of wine and vineyards and a chance to snoop around Fritz Walter’s house.
First of the stadiums I got the chance to look around was the Gottleib Daimler Stadion, the impressive home of Vfb Stuttgart.
This lovely old ground hasn’t changed much for years and is a great old fashioned European ground. Shaped like a bowl with a running track around the outside, it instantly became one of my favourite European grounds – especially when I was fortunate enough to tread on a few blades of the hallowed turf and roll a ball into the goal.
There was plenty of work going on in terms of putting in new seats for the start of the World Cup and a tour inside the stadium gave an interesting insight into the life of a footballer.
The changing rooms were huge featuring a massive communal bath, and cute little tactics board. Walking down the tunnel and onto the pitch was great and I’ve to say Stuttgart is a lovely city.
A couple of days later after some top food and wine we pitched up in Kaiserslautern, a compact little town dominated by the memory of Fritz Walter.
Walter was the German star of the 1954 World Cup winning team – the first time West Germany lifted the Jules Rimet trophy and he’s certainly the most famous person to hail from Kaiserslautern.
Walter gives his name to the great stadium which is tucked away in beautiful woodland surroundings.
Again the stadium was having a pre-World Cup makeover and new seats were being added. Inside the Fritz-Walter Stadion we were allowed to walk on the pitch and it was great to do this as I’ve not seen many stadiums from the point of view of the centre circle.
As the sun was setting in Kaiserslautern we had a really memorable trip to Fritz Walter’s former home in the city which is now a museum full of memorabilia from his glittering playing career.
It’s amazing – it literally is just a normal home, albeit at the end of a road and is open all year round.
A German flag and picture of Walter in action during the 1954 World Cup is outside the house and once inside it’s a massive cavern of memorabilia – you name it, it’s here.
Behind glass doors are loads of trophies and awards, many of them are pottery or plaques – there are even commemorative bells. Walter certainly managed to attract a lot of honours during his career.
A plate depicting the victorious 1954 World Cup side sits pride of place in one cabinet, and there are Olympic medals, a replica of the Jules Rimet trophy, autographs from players such as Pele, a picture of Walter and German team mates giving the Nazi salute before a game, certificates, photos and newspaper clippings.
The following day we ventured towards Frankfurt and had a look around the fabulous Commerzbank Arena.
England were due to play Paraguay in their World Cup opener in this ground so it had extra interest and there was an international table football championship going on when we were there.
We had a look around the executive boxes and behind the scenes areas and we weren’t the only ones playing the tourist game - none other than the Afghanistan national football team were also there looking around which was a tad strange to say the least.
The ground is the home of Eintracht Frankfurt and inside the ground is a huge canopy that covers the playing area as well as an American ice-hockey screen that has four sides giving everyone a view of replays and scores etc.
Three grounds in a little over three days was great. The weather was stunning and the only regret was that there was no live football to watch.
But returning to Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern and Frankfurt remain high on the agenda of things of places to go and watch a game.

Super Brian still playing at 51

American football is a tough sport known for its big hits and frequent injuries. Nick Richards meets Suffolk’s own Brian Jelley who tells how and why he’s still playing the game at the age of 51.

FOR the third summer in a row the big sports story in America was whether veteran quarterback Brett Favre would continue playing.
Favre, probably America’s third most famous man in his forties behind Barack Obama and Tom Cruise, retired from American football’s National Football League in 2008, but has now reversed that decision three times to keep on playing.
The 41-year-old attracts plenty of attention from the NFL media circus, mostly due to his age and incredible record of starting every game since September 1992. Once again his detractors believe his delayed decision to play another year was all an act.
“I think he enjoys the publicity that he gets,” says Brian Jelley, who is a decade older than Favre and still playing the game at 51. “It’s almost becoming an American institution, the will-he, won’t-he play at the start of the next season.”
Brian, who lives in Elmswell, has played for five sides in Britain since taking up the sport as he turned 30 and, like the amazing Favre, just keeps going despite enduring similar questions about just when he’s going to pack up the physically demanding sport.
“I’d love to retire,” he says with a smile.
“I’ve said next season will be my last, but my wife Emma is taking that with a pinch of salt because I’ll get to the end of the season and I’ll think I can still perform. The yardstick I’ve always given myself is if I’m standing on the sideline for most of the game and not participating as a player then I will call it a day.”
Brian plays in the centre of the offensive line for the Cambridgeshire Cats. His job is essentially to protect the quarterback and during the game he can expect to come face to face with the beefiest defenders on the opposing team.
Standing at 6ft 2ins and topping the scales at 20 stone makes Brian the ideal figure to take part in the rough and tumble sport but, despite his imposing frame, he’s used to taking a battering during and after games of gridiron.
“At my age it does take longer to heal when you get injuries and that’s something I’m aware of too. It’s usually the Tuesday when I get up and find my legs aren’t working after a game on the Sunday. “During a game there are points when you feel pain, like in any physical sport, the game has the ethos of hurting and being injured. If you’re injured you come off, if you’re hurting a bit, you carry on and play.”
Recent studies in America have equated the ‘hits’ or collisions in the sport to be around 100gs, the equivalent of driving a car into a wall at 25mph without a seatbelt on, but for anyone who plays American football, that adds to the appeal.
“I expect it to be painful. You’re trying to inflict as much pain on somebody else really as they’re trying to inflict on you. You expect that you’re going to get some problems.
“I’ve not really had any bad injuries although I did break both bones in my forearm in 1993 during a game for Cambridge. I tackled the running back and held him up and didn’t drag him to the ground. My colleagues came into the pile to hit us down and somebody’s helmet went straight in the side of my left arm. The outside bone was shattered in three parts. I had both sides plated.”
Serious injuries in the sport are thankfully rare and kept to a minimum due to a ruling that makes on-site medical care mandatory. Brian, who works for Hewlett Packard as a business developer, says this is an essential if costly aspect of the sport.
“There is a requirement that you have to have proper medical cover which the home team pays for. Without it the officials won’t start the game. It costs £250 per game to have an ambulance at the ground which is the biggest expense to putting a game on.
“At our standard I think that’s enough cover. If you look at senior rugby games they’ll have a doctor there as well but then that’s really for the blood injuries. In American football it’s more bone breaks and knee injuries. But all sports have an element of risk – you can break your leg playing football or break your nose trying to catch a cricket ball.”
Avoiding serious injury is one key reason that has enabled Brian to keep playing into his fifties, the other is a tough regime leading up to a match.
“From Thursday night onwards I won’t drink any alcohol,” says Brian in serious tone.
“That can be tough if you’ve got something on. I might occasionally have a glass of wine if we’re at a party or I’m going for a meal, but I never drink to excess. In American football, when you’re getting blows to the head, you cannot do it.
“Because we play in the summer it’s hot and when you’ve got a 40lb kit on, it’s heavy and hot and you sweat a lot.
“I start hydrating on the Friday, drinking five to six pints of water a day which again isn’t easy. By lunchtime I should have had another couple of pints, and then again in the afternoon and again at night.
“You feel fresher and you’re able to last longer if you do that. I’ll have an energy drink before the game and one at half-time and on a Saturday night I’ll have some pasta, followed by porridge or scrambled egg on the Sunday morning. They’re all slow release foods. I’ll have a couple of bananas before a game too.”
Brian’s Cambridgeshire Cats play ten games on Sunday afternoons in the regular season which runs from April to August in a division with the Ipswich Cardinals and teams from Peterborough, Colchester and two from Kent which makes for plenty of local rivalry.
“Peterborough are the main rivals but we always enjoy the games against Ipswich. I wouldn’t say Cambridge and Ipswich are big rivals, but the Cardinals are a very nice club. They’re run well, have an excellent head coach and they’re a hard team, the hardest we played this year in the regular season.
“They’re fair and clean and it’s a very good set-up there at Northgate and they’ve got a good future. They ran us very close this year even though we beat them twice. Both times they could have gone either way. They give you more bruises than any other team – but in a fair way.”
The Ipswich Cardinals and Cambridge Cats do share one key factor with other teams in East Anglia – they both tap into the plentiful supply of talent from the USAF airbases at Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Alconbury.
“The big difference with us and the Americans in the team is their skills. Typically they’ve played at a higher level and because they’re in the military they have a level of fitness – they’re not allowed to get fat!
“In the UK you can only play five American nationals in your squad so the emphasis is very much on UK players. Some of them have to travel far from their bases to get games with some teams. Typically a team will have around ten Americans on their books, but only five can be named in each game.
“The one problem is they don’t stay for long. Our best running back for example is being transferred to Spain for two years, so losing him is a massive blow.”
It was on a Saturday in Suffolk in the late 1980s that lead Brian to get into playing the game after he mistakenly thought he saw US servicemen training in Newmarket.
“I first started playing for Newmarket Hornets, who played at Newmarket Town football ground. I loved watching the game and got to understand a few of the rules. I moved to Newmarket for work in the late 1980s from Rushden in Northamptonshire
“I was travelling to Newmarket one Saturday afternoon in 1989 and saw a number of guys on The Severals doing some training in full kit. I thought they must be from one of the airbases and later a neighbour who fell out with the rugby club in Newmarket was advised to try out for the team and we got talking about the team and he asked me if I fancied going.
“So I went along, got given some old pads and helmet, got told to stand still while someone hit me and that was it!”Brian played on for Newmarket for a couple of seasons before they followed the path of many teams of that era and folded. Some of the players went on to form the Cambridgeshire Cats.
Brian left the Cats in 2005 and played for teams in Peterborough and Bedfordshire and bizarrely, had a season with the Newquay-based Cornish Sharks in 2007.
“The team from Cornwall wanted some help and experience so myself and a couple of other players went down to help! We had five home games and five away games – the nearest of which was in Reading so I spent the whole summer travelling to Cornwall, Bristol and Wales!
“The irony was that after the season was over we played Norwich Devils in the play-offs in Norwich.
All the players had to come up here and realised how far we had to travel. We ended up putting up about ten players in the house, in tents in the garden and on the living room floor.”
Brian shares his detached Elmswell home with wife Emma, 41, who also helps out with marketing and fundraising for the Cats and their children Laura 18, William 16, and Megan 14.
“My daughter Laura has grown up with me playing American football and comes to watch. They’re interested in it as they’ve got no choice really. William played for the youth team but he’s moved on to Welbeck Military College in Leicestershire so he’ll be playing more rugby than anything else in the future.
“Emma’s role at the club is to generate money and look after the publicity. The club is run on a tight budget and we’re always looking for sponsorship.”
The support of his family has been key in a 20-year career in the game that has peaked on a couple of occasions when he played games in Las Vegas in 2006 and in Miami this year at semi-pro level for a select minor league all stars side.
Brian will take part in his third game in the US in Dallas early next year – and he’ll have turned 52 by then.

* Article appeared in November 2010 edition of EADT Suffolk magazine

Below par City labour to key win

Well that was a hard earned three points if ever there was one! While I applaud Norwich City’s 1-0 win over Middlesbrough this afternoon, I’ve got to say that it worries me that a team as poor as today’s visitors were effectively still in the game until the last minute.
On Tuesday City took the lead against Crystal Palace a couple of minutes before half-time and then wilted after the break. Today, City finally took one of several chances to open the scoring in the 44th minute – and then did exactly the same thing – they wilted.
After handing Crystal Palace their first away goals and first three points on the road this season on Tuesday, a better side than Middlesbrough would have sniffed out at least a point at Carrow Road today.
Thankfully though, Middlesbrough where really, really poor and no ambition about them at all – yet the fact is, City switched off after the break yet again.
Twitter king Stephen Fry was introduced to the crowd before the game and he along with every City fan would have been surprised to see the big changes in midfield.
Paul Lambert mixed up the men across the middle, resting Wes Hoolahan and Korey Smith from the midfield and giving starts to David Fox and Anthony McNamee.
Elliot Ward was thankfully back in the centre of defence and both he and Leon Barnett easily had the measure of Leroy Lita and Kris Boyd.
Boyd, in particular, was very disappointing – and to think I wrote in my betting column at the start of the season that he was the man likely to lead Boro back up to the Premier League.
That looks like being a million miles away now and under the temporary stewardship of Steve Agnew, Boro have plenty of immediate problems to address.
For City though, our spine is really solid with Ward and Barnett a couple of rocks, John Ruddy doing little wrong between the sticks and Grant Holt his usual battering ram.
Simeon Jackson’s pace was really noticeable today and against powerful centre halves like David Wheater who lack a bit of pace, he really does shine.
In midfield, though, City are a mixed bag. McNamee was given the man of the match award and caused plenty of blood-twisting in those Boro defenders’ legs, but Fox is certainly nowhere near as combative as Korey Smith.
Simon Lappin continues to look solid on the left and I don’t know how Glenn Roeder or Bryan Gunn ever overlooked him, but Andrew Crofts often looks like he’s working all on his own in midfield.
I really rate Crofts – the best player in a City shirt by miles this season, I don’t know what we’d do without him. When I think of the volatile indiscipline of Darel Russell, the limited talent of Mark Fotheringham or the ineffectiveness of Matty Pattison, all of whom have graced the Carrow Road midfield in the last three years, Crofts is in a different world and I for one am so thankful he’s there in midfield pulling the strings
Crofts is the best City midfielder since Sammy Clingan and that’s saying something. I rated Sammy for the way he took City games by the scruff of the neck and I rate Crofts for the same reason.
He should have opened the scoring a few minutes before Jackson’s goal, but hit the inside of the post. I saw the replay of Jackson’s goal at half-time and I’m still convinced he was offside.
All in all though, today was a much needed win after the collapse against Palace. We’ve won four and lost three at home, kept three clean sheet in the last four games against three teams who were pre-season favourites for the title, yet still I’m convinced we’re punching above our weight.
October ends with a tough trip to Cardiff and November just looks gruesome however you look at it. City could get 15 points from games against Burnley, Millwall, Reading, Leeds and Ipswich.
Or they could get 0.
I guess that what makes following this team so unpredictable.

Operation Edgar is an out and out success

There aren’t many footballers I would wait around for in the driving rain for half an hour to get their autograph.
And there are even fewer in the Championship.
Apart from perhaps Craig Bellamy, the only other person I would get soaking wet trainers and soggy jeans for is one Edgar Steven Davids.
Davids was at Carrow Road tonight with his pay-as-you-play club Crystal Palace, surely his final stopping off point on a glittering career.
For a player that has played for an amazing array of teams – the biggest three clubs in Italy, Barcelona, Ajax and Tottenham, his arrival in Norwich was understated to say the least.
He didn’t play against Millwall last weekend and as his name was read out in the starting line up, there was hardly a whiff on anticipation about seeing one of the greatest players on the world stage for the last 20 years.
Although there was with Gordon and me.
Ten years ago this December we both saw Davids play for the first time – back then he was at his real peak. He was 27 and starring in midfield for Juventus along with Zinedine Zidane. We were at the San Siro to see Inter play Juventus and after a slight mix up with our seats we emerged into the smoke-filled cauldron with a couple of minutes on the clock.
The first thing I saw was Davids and Zidane in the all grey Juve kit running the midfield show. Zidane scored a cracker within a few seconds, the game finished 2-2 and Davids was awesome.
The day after that game Gordon and me had a tour of the San Siro. I’d just started a job as a trainee reporter and perched in the Press Box for a photo while on the tour. I imagined I’d be back in a few years covering big Champions League games, and possibly watching Edgar on a regular basis.
That never really happened, but I always maintained soft spot for the man nicknamed Pitbull.
He couldn’t really go wrong being a Dutchman, but to then join Inter and return to Ajax; well that ticks some serious boxes for me.
There can’t be many players that are so recognisable on the world stage as Edgar and for me it was just as big a deal as having Zidane or Ronaldo (the fat one with buck teeth) at Carrow Road – it doesn’t happen every week, put it that way.
Davids took to the field and played in left midfield right in front of me. He made for compelling viewing and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He didn’t touch the ball for the first few minutes, but when he chased the ball and turned towards the crowd, his unique look was picked up by a few casual Canary fans.
“Eeeezz got glathuth orn,” said one chap behind me, who’d clearly never seen Juventus, Inter, AC Milan or Holland play.
Davids was involved quite a lot in the first half, playing plenty of smart, neat passes without getting overly involved. A couple of times he was beaten by Russell Martin and Korey Smith, but you could tell he is still a class act.
City took the lead just before the break with a Grant Holt strike in a pretty uneventful first half. As the teams came out for the second half, Palace had only ten men. Davids was last out, scurrying down the tunnel just before kick off.
I’m not sure if he was injured or feeling unwell, but within five minutes of the restart, he was taken off and sat in the dugout for the rest of the game.
From that point on thoughts turned to the Ajax shirt I had stuffed in my coat pocket and getting it signed after the game. To my right, Gordon was sitting in the lower Barclay with the Juventus shirt he’d appropriately picked up on that same weekend we both saw Davids first play.
Norwich switched off in the second half, as Palace took a 2-1 lead with two scrappy goals that should have been prevented.
The rain started to howl down towards the end, and I didn’t really care that Norwich lost 2-1, I just cared about getting up close and personal with Edgar.
As I walked around the back of the Jarrold Stand, past the Barclay to meet up with Gordon, thoughts back to the last time I’d got an autograph outside Carrow Road. I was ten and Edgar was 12.
Just goes to show it’s not every day you feel compelled to ask a footballer for their autograph – and something I could only do now to a player that’s older than me.
I don’t think it feels right going up to the likes of Chris Martin or Korey Smith and requesting their signature – I’d feel like a right weirdo!
But at the age of 35, there aren’t many players left that are older than me still playing. I remember a time around 1993 when I first saw Bruce Dyer play for Watford and realising that he was actually younger than me. Now virtually every professional footballer is older than me – but at least Edgar is still that touch older!
Waiting for Edgar to come out was great. The Palace coach rolled up at about 10pm and we stood with a dozen or so others, mainly Eagles fans, waiting for the players. I leant against the bus with my Sharpie marker poised – I could have left some mean graffiti on the headlights while I waited!
And then he emerged.
Wheeling out a small suitcase he was courteous signing autographs and having his picture taken. Gordon got his Juve shirt signed, but as a steward was blocking my access, Edgar went over to four fans on the other side of a small yellow barrier.
Fearing he was getting on the coach, I squeezed my Ajax shirt under around the steward and Edgar paused and scribbled his signature next to the Ajax badge. It wasn’t the clearest of autographs but it meant a big deal to me.
He then got on the coach and smiled.
If he never comes back to Norwich again, it gives me a warm glow that the last person he had contact with outside the bus was a thirtysomething who really should have known better.

England kids shine at Carrow Road

Well done Norwich!
That was the verdict tonight after the England Under-21 international against Romania in which Stuart Pearce’s side gained a 2-1 semi-final first leg win to qualify for next year’s European Championships.
I’ll be honest and say I’m not the biggest England fan there is, especially the bunch of talentless monkeys that recorded such an epic fail in South Africa a few months ago.
I’ve only ever seen two full England internationals and this did have the feeling of one. By that I mean there were loads of kids around and loads of Londoners.
It definitely didn’t feel like a Norwich game – not only was there hardly a City shirt on view, but the crowd didn’t get behind the home side in the same way they do The Canaries. What noise there was came from air horns carried by the type of children that should have probably been in bed.
Two kids near me aged about eight took great pride in blasting a horn in my ear for most of the game to which their pre-pubescent cohorts answered ‘England.’
Give me grown up swearing any day.
As for the game itself, it was excellent to have a look at Jack Wilshire. The Arsenal wunderkind is in both the Under-21 squad and the full squad for next Tuesday’s clash with Montenegro.
Wilshire and Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson ran the midfield with Danny Rose and Tom Cleverley on the flanks, Fabrice Muamba playing a holding role in front of the back four and Danny Welbeck up front on his own.
At the back, Blackburn’s Phil Jones partnered Chris Smalling with Ryan Bertrand and Michael Mancienne the full backs and Frankie Fielding in goal.
Not much happened in the first half, Romania hit the post and should have taken the lead a minute before the break.
The second half was a different story and England relied on corners to get the job done. A Cleverley corner early in the second half was cleared only as far as Henderson who volleyed a superb opener.
That goal changed the game remarkably from the cat and mouse scrappy first half to an open second half.
England could have gone 2-0 up minutes later, but when Romania pulled a goal back, Stuart Pearce became more visible on the touchlines.
Rose impressed down the left, but England needed something extra – that came in the form of Aston Villa’s Marc Albrighton.
Albrighton changed the game remarkably down the right with his pace, but the key was his corner with 20 minutes to go that was bundled home by Smalling.
Of all the England players, Smalling, Cleverly and the sub Albrighton impressed. Wilshire is obviously a massive talent despite his diminutive size. I just hope he plays at Carrow Road again one day.

New PES2011 is video game heaven

The biggest day in this Sports Junkie’s gaming calendar is here today – with the launch of PES2011. It’s 13 years since at the ripe old age of 22, I realised I needed to have a PlayStation in my life and popped down to what was then called Electronics Boutique in Hounslow to buy a brand new PlayStation with a copy of International Superstar Soccer.
Konami’s ISS series evolved into ISS Pro, and ISS Pro Evolution and now we know the game they call Winning Eleven in Japan as Pro Evolution Soccer. PES to some, Pro Evo to most others.
Pro Evo is the connoisseurs’ choice – the elderly brother to the whistles and bells FIFA series from EA Sports which used to be crap, is now a bit better, but still nothing like playing Pro Evo.
The last couple of Pro Evo games have been pretty duff, and as Fifa has improved, many have said it’s the defining football gaming experience on today’s consoles.
Fifa to me is all that’s bad about modern football.

The design of the game is great, but it really is for a younger generation who think it’s what playing football is all about. Scrub away the shiny veneer of the game and the playability factor is feeble. Pro Evo is the opposite.

Perhaps some may say it’s not the prettiest to look at, but in terms of true gameplay, it is unrivalled.
My pal Tony, who doesn’t buy football games, and myself played demos of both the new FIFA and Pro Evo games a fortnight ago. Even he agreed. “FIFA’s just so boring,” he said.
So what’s the new Pro Evo like?

Well after popping down to my local Tesco to pick up my copy and realising they didn’t actually have it on their shelves (that just wouldn’t have happened to FIFA which was launched last week in a blaze of hype), I had to go to on the ball ASDA who sold me a copy of the new game for £32.97.
Only Manchester United and Tottenham have the official licences in the Premier League with the rest of the 18 teams given names such as West Midlands Village and North East London Whites.

Detractors often laugh at this. Those who love Pro Evo know the names can be changed.
So I settled down for a clash between Manchester United and Tottenham and what a treat.

The old Pro Evo magic is back. It actually does feel a little more like Fifa in terms of gameplay and the menus. The match action itself is solid with the default camera angle similar to the broadcast camera in Fifa.
The camera angle does look a little like watching highlights from a Portsmouth home game to start with, but within a few seconds it gloriously elevates itself to a traditional overhead view.
Nothing is majorly different in terms of gameplay, it’s still solid and reliable and best of all and unlike Fifa, you actually have some confidence the buttons you press will relate to something on the screen.
As ever with these games, they take a bit of time to get used to and I played out a hard-fought 1-0 Spurs win with Jermain Defoe getting the only goal - that's him knocking it in on the picture on the right. The more you play the game you notice new things – there’s a lot more on pitch sounds. Take a corner and you’ll hear the defenders yell “concentrate”.

Players do tire easily and more realistically than Fifa and that means that adding three new players in the last few minutes really does have a benefit. The game also opens up more towards the end, again true to real life.
One real highlight of the game is the in game menu. Substitutions and tactics are well handled in a simple Game Plan option which allows you to make changes and tinker with positions with a drag and drop function. It makes a mockery of Fifa’s cluttered strategy boards.
All in all, it’s a great game and one that will see me through those cold winter nights.

The mouth-watering master league begs to be played and great to see teams like Bayern Munich and Valencia are back on the team list.
Right, time for some more football. Let’s see how Anderlecht get on against Saint Etienne...

It's clearly going to be a crazy season at Carrow Road

Finally I’ve ended my awful jinx of seeing Norwich City not win this season thanks to a 4-3 win over Leicester that put The Canaries third in the Championship.
You’d think I’d be chirpy as the club emblem right now, but I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed a seven goal game so little as tonight’s Carrow Road clash.
And, given the fact we’re now in our highest spot in something like five years, you’d think I’d be positively buzzing.
But I’m not – I’m really worried that Norwich are in for a mid-table finish as I just don’t think this squad is good enough to mount even a play-off push.
I know we’ve just gone third in the table, and I know it all looks rosy on paper, but take away the smoke and mirrors and you’re left with a team with many problems in a division where nobody looks that great.
There are an awful lot of teams bunched up in the top half of the table and tonight was a brilliant night results wise for Norwich – everyone else who mattered seemed to slip up, which adds to the argument that we’re very lucky to be where we are.
Let’s start with the positives. We scored three top, top quality goals, while Leicester’s three goals were all really, really poor. I don’t think even the most hardened Foxes fan will disagree with that. Adam Drury scored the pick of the bunch, his fourth for the club, and probably the best moment at Carrow Road since Lee Croft scored against Ipswich almost two years ago.
Andrew Crofts and Korey Smith ran the midfield – both players get better and better and Smith in particular looks like an awesome prospect.
Leon Barnett looks a great addition. I like him alot.
Now the negatives.
John Ruddy pulled off a couple of decent saves in the second half, but conceding a goal like that so early in the game won’t get us very far.
The defence was so poor in the first half, nobody wanted the ball, it was just long ball after long ball hoofed in the air and aimed at Grant Holt. That’s not going to be very effective against better teams.
Russell Martin and Elliott Ward don’t look up to the job, every time either goes near the ball I wince. As for sub Steven Smith, I will quite happily say now I hope he doesn’t ever play for the club again.
He doesn’t seem to be a natural footballer – every time he had the ball he got rid of it straight away.
Up front Hoolahan scored a great goal, but didn’t really do enough. Holt didn’t really come close to scoring and Simeon Jackson, quick as he is, just doesn’t seem to get in goalscoring positions.
What was so bad overall for me was the first half showing. We were dire. Fair enough we turned it round after the break, but this was against Leicester. Leicester who got hammered 6-1 last Friday.
Never has defending a 4-2 lead against the bottom side in the league been so tough.
We should have had the game sewn up at 3-1, but until the final whistle blew, Leicester, who conceded four goals, were still in with a shout of getting something from the game.
I’d love to write a gushing report saying we are world beaters and it’s only a matter of time until we’re back in the Premier League, but any intelligent football fan knows we flattered ourselves tonight.
As David Brent once said: “If he landed in a barrel of tits, he’d come out sucking his thumb.”
I think tonight we’ve got a pair of 36DDs all to ourselves, but next time we fall in to that barrel, I don’t think we’ll be quite as lucky.

May the best man win

It's not often I go to a Norwich home game with a fan of the away club, but fittingly, in the my first appearance at Carrow Road as a married man, my best man Tom was in the away end.

Tom was there back in 1984 when I first went to see City at home against Everton with my primiary school, and again was there later that season when we were both ball boys against Sunderland.

So it was highly appropriate that Tom, wearing the special Hull shirt I gave him as a wedding gift, came round to my mum and dad's house with girlfriend Sara to chow down on toasted sandwiches, like he would have done in the late 1980s.

Tom was convinced Hull would run out 3-1 winners, I told him it would be a 1-0 home win, although on the way down I told him I hadn't seen Norwich win this season.

The weather was, to say the least, shocking and nothing of interest happened in the first half, although Tom sent a text midway through the second half suggesting The Tigers would nick the win.

To be fair, both sides had no cutting edge about them and the game was really there for the taking.

Fair play to Hull, they wanted it more and performed the perfect smash and grab raid. Jimmy Bullard pulled all the strings and Tom Cairney, who scored a stoppage time free-kick caught they eye.

After the game Tom was full of smiles and regardless of the result, it was great to go to the game together.

On this, my first home game as a married man, it was fair to say the best man won.

Honeymoon in Doncaster

New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talk about Pop Musik!
Well sort of.
After an American themed wedding and the start of my honeymoon in London and Paris it was naturally off to...Doncaster!
It was coincidence really that meant I was at the Keepmoat Stadium last night as we’d booked four days camping in a forest close to Stamford Bridge – not Chelsea’s ground but the famous battleground just east of York.
That camping trip was all booked before the June fixture list came out and with Norwich playing 40 miles down the road it would have been rude not to inject a little On The Ball City into the honeymoon.
I had tried to take my new wife Lorraine to Paris St Germain on Saturday night, but what with it being our last night in the French capital, I was persuaded to take her for a romantic meal in a cobbled Parisienne street.
The Yorkshire campsite is certainly the most unusual place I’ve been to after a football match – it’s about an hour north of Doncaster in the middle of nowhere, down a long track off the road and then a five minute walk by torchlight through the woods into a permanent tent complete with sofa, kitchen, bathroom and proper bed.
Enough of the luxury and back to the game.
Doncaster’s Keepmoat Stadium is one of those awful modern grounds, lacking in style, substance, atmosphere and character. It reminded me of a smaller version of Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium.
It’s on an industrial estate, surrounded by car parks, I popped my car in the visitors car park which had the same kind of surface as the moon and paid £5 for the privilege.
For a Tuesday night game there were a good 1,500 Norwich fans in, around one sixth of the measly crowd of around 9,000.
It’s just typical that Norwich come to these grounds in midweek and get turned over. I was trying to explain this to Lorraine in the car and made the prediction that “we will probably get dicked 3-0”.And how accurate that was.
Doncaster took the lead early on through James Coppinger, a player who I have known about for some time, he’s one of the most underrated players in the Championship and unfortunately for The Canaries, we found him on top form last night.
City hardly mustered a shot in the first half and when we went 2-0 down, the game hung in the balance. I say this because Norwich always seem to play better when they’re behind and after dominating for much of the second half got back in the game with a Russell Martin header from about two yards out.
Game on then, and a 2-2 draw looked the most likely outcome, but to be honest, I couldn’t really see City scoring.
The picture on the right I took of City skipper Grant Holt really sums up the whole night.
Coppinger’s third with ten minutes left was the nail in the coffin.
So the first defeat on the road and after a good run of four games, a second loss.
Due to two weddings already this season, one my own, I’ve seen three of Norwich’s six games. They’ve not won any of the three I’ve seen and guess what?
They’ve won all the other three!