Classic away trips - Blackpool v Norwich FA Cup fourth round, 2007

Blackpool and Norwich clash during the FA Cup clash at Bloomfield Road
on January 27 2007 

Five years ago today I made probably my strangest away trip to watch Norwich when they took on Blackpool in the FA Cup fourth round.
Having watched Peter Grant's side hammer Tamworth live on BBC in early January I eagerly awaited the fourth round draw - remember City were having a miserable season and had parted company with Nigel Worthington just three months earlier.
The fourth round draw paired City with a trip to League One Blackpool and within an hour I had already booked two Ryan Air flights from Stansted to Blackpool.
Being January, the flights were advertised at only a penny each way, and after tax worked out at something like £13 each. My FA Cup-tinted glasses quickly fogged over my vision as an image of a packed plane taking off from Stansted full of City fans entered my mind.
I contemplated buying more of these cheap flights to then sell on eBay as I was sure was being something of a pioneer by flying up to the game, rather than driving or taking the coach.
My decision not to buy loads of return tickets to Blackpool was vindicated when myself and my then girlfriend (thankfully now my wife) arrived at Stansted at 6am on the morning of January 27.
There was clearly not going to be any major rush to board the plane as the departure terminal at Stansted revealed no more than 10 other City fans.
We boarded at 7.25am bound for Blackpool.
To say it was a short uneventful flight was an understatement. Thirty minutes later we arrived with an announcement that we were now at "Blackpool International Airport" and the time was now "7.55am". It all seemed a tad bizarre seeing as we had hardly crossed any major international time zones!
Arriving in Blackpool before 8am on a Saturday in January is a tad grim. We took a bus to the town centre and by 8.20am we were kicking our heels in the town centre, which proved to be a theme for the weekend.
An hour or so later we popped into the grimmest greasy spoon ever and had the most appalling fried breakfast - everything apart from the toast was deep fried - the eggs, the mushrooms, you name it. It was horrific.
We meandered on to our guesthouse around midday - the chintzy Hotel Bambi, just a five minute walk from Bloomfield Road. I took the chance for a nap in front the lunchtime kick off with a two foot cuddly Bambi on the bed for company.
By half two we decided to head to the game and there were still 20 minutes to go before the game started when we already standing on the terrace. It was freezing and already getting dark. I bought one of those half and half scarves for the first time ever and wore it during the game, standing on the temporary terrace the length of the whole ground. Bloomfield Road only had two sides, the rest of the ground was still being built.
I don't recall much about the game. City played in white and green and took the lead through Darren Huckerby just before the break. Wes Hoolahan was booked for falling over in the box and Lee Croft played well.
Blackpool's Ian Evatt equalised towards the end and debutant Chris Brown was sent off in the last ten minutes and the game finished 1-1.
The thousand or so City fans made all the noise, but just as surreal as the surroundings were, it was over far too soon. By ten past five we were back at the Bambi with a warm drink,
That night involved plenty of pub time and loads of food but worse of all, the return flight to Stansted wasn't until 7.45pm the following day.
After a long drawn out Sunday of wandering around Blackpool on a cold January Sunday we couldn't wait to get back to East Anglia.
The return journey was pretty uneventful but we had a shocking landing. The plane came into land and just as it was about to touch down shot back into the air. We think the pilot had misjudged the entrance as it shot back in the air at a crazy angle.
It seemed an appropriate end for a bizarre weekend and incredible that it was five years ago. City won the replay 3-2 with a Chris Martin brace - but the game against Blackpool was the last time City have played in the fourth round on a Saturday - until tomorrow's game against West Brom that is.

Norwich 0 Chelsea 0 - Ten Things We Now Know

Norwich have come on leaps and bounds since Stamford Bridge in August
1. It's always hard to find 10 interesting points to make about a game that's been watched live on TV around the world, and even more so when a game ends 0-0, but first and foremost, what a huge transformation from when we faced Chelsea in August.
We probably played better at Stamford Bridge, but so much has changed in five months with Lambert's team, not in terms of personnel, but mainly in terms of confidence.
It's amazing to think Chris Martin started that game back in August and now finds himself on loan at Crystal Palace. Manager Paul Lambert has instilled something in the side that means a team like Chelsea can turn up at Carrow Road and City can fairly comfortably take a point off them.

Morison has to get stuck if he's to really win the fans over.
2.Chelsea away was the first away match I went to this season and as such they've now featured in two of these post-match analysis bits. So there's plenty of oppportunity to track City's progress since August. Back then I wrote of Steve Morison: "He's strong and physical, but I just can't see him scoring and I don't have the same faith when he's on the ball as I do with Holty."
Morison's impressed at times since then but against Chelsea at Carrow Road I thought he was far from at his best. Sometimes the communication between him and Holt breaks down and usually it's Morison who is at fault. Sometimes he just doesn't seem to want to chase lost opportunities, although it was telling that everytime Petr Cech had the ball on the deck, Morison steamed in towards him. It's a tactic that Holt and Simeon Jackson seem to use a lot and I think if we saw more of Morison getting really stuck in he'd win a lot more favour. For me he reminds me of Dimitar Berbatov, in that he's never going to run around like a headless chicken, which some people, myself included, could interpret for laziness.

Chelsea's stars once again failed to impress.
3. Back in August I wrote: "Chelsea were really poor. In particular Drogba, Torres, Lampard and Terry were shockingly average and substitutes Juan Mata and Romelu Lukaku did more to impress in their brief time on the pitch." Well, not much has changed it seems, although Mata is now a first choice starter and certainly the most creative player in their side. Mata's a little like David Silva and Luka Modric for me. The big teams seem to have this kind of small player in their sides, a tad like our Wes. But as for the big names, they once again failed to show up.

Love him or hate him, you can't take your eyes off of David Luiz
4. Chelsea went four years without a home league defeat in the mid-to-late 2000s and that was largely down to a solid defence. Cech looks far from full of confidence when the ball comes back to him and the four in front of him have been error-prone all season.
It was a shame we didn't get to see Gary Cahill in action but we did get to see a first at Carrow Road -  a player appearing in blue tights!
I though David Luiz was excellent and didn't put a foot wrong against Norwich. He sometimes struggles against better teams, but I rate him. It's certainly never dull when he's in the Chelsea side, even though, as Gary Neville famously said, he defends like a 10-year-old playing on his PlayStation.

I'm starting to get annoyed by my fellow fans.
5. There were predictable boos when John Terry came out and the predictable chanting of "One racist captain" and "John Terry, you know what you did". I cringed throughout.
Fellow fans are getting to me at the moment in my Jarrold Stand seat, from the stupid Terry chanting to the continual slagging off of the referee to the continual slagging off of any decision that involves Grant Holt not winning a free-kick when he's rolling around on the floor.
Far be it for me to appear like a snob or a football anorak but it doesn't half amaze me when people turn to their mates and say "Who?" when a substitute comes on. When that sub is Florent Malouda, who has 73 French caps and has played in a World Cup final, I sometimes wonder just how little knowledge other football fans have.

Maybe we need to cross the ball in the box more.
6. Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa had fairly quiet games on Saturday and that was all down to the lack of width we found. Andrew Surman and Anthony Pilkington saw plenty of the ball early on but didn't really try and play the ball out wide. It struck me just how rarely City cross the ball in the box, they tend to work it back to the edge of the box rather than fizz balls in at head height from out wide in open play, which when you consider the aerial options up front we have and the fact we've scored so many headed goals is surprising.

Zak Whitbread was simply awesome.
7. The sponsors got it right, Zak Whitbread was the man of the match and he was just superb from start to finish. Some awesome headed clearances and he had the measure of Fernando Torres all afternoon.

First clean sheet of the season actually felt like a win.
8. Way-hey, my Fantasy Football goalkeeper John Ruddy picked up his first clean sheet of the season and that was the main reason for the loud cheers from all around Carrow Road as the game finished. Ruddy was never really troubled by Chelsea's long-range shooting, but a save in each half really impressed me.
His second half save from Mata at the near post on the hour was crucial, but save of the match had to be the fingertip save from Torres' toe poke in the first half.
I had the perfect view of that shot and it was definitely going in.

Torres just needs to start shooting on sight.
9. Fernando Torres missed possibly his second worst sitter in a Chelsea shirt when he flicked the ball past John Ruddy's left hand post and into the cinders in front of the N&P Stand.
That miss will grab the headlines but it's part of a confusing balance for Torres - on one hand he has a really poor return on the pitch, on the other, he's continually praised by his manager and fellow players for the shift he puts in. They usually cite his all round team play and I watched him closely on Saturday.
For me, he tried to do too much, a bit like Barcelona when they try and walk the ball into the net. The old Torres at Atletico Madrid would shoot on sight and that was what made Liverpool fork out all that cash for him in the summer of 2007.
On Saturday when he picked the ball up he first tried to beat a man to create space and usually ended up losing the ball. His instinct doesn't seem to be to head for goal anymore, rather to find space and set up a team mate. That's fine by most players' standards, but when you're a £50m striker and you've only scored three goals all season, you should be looking to shoot on sight from anywhere around the box.

So if Torres is so poor, why don't we see more of Romelu Lukaku?
10. I am a tad biased having seen him play for Anderlecht a couple of times on trips to Brussels, but big powerful Lukaku did more in 15 minutes than Torres did. His bullish run down the right which ended with a shot into the side netting showed his eye for goal. I hope Chelsea don't loan him out in January, he's good enough to be starting week in, week out.

John Terry, racism and Norwich City

Chelsea skipper John Terry

So, are you going to boo John Terry when Chelsea come to Norwich this Saturday?
Before you answer 'yes' or 'sure will' to that, have a think whether the reason you feel duty bound to heckle the England skipper is simply because you think he is a racist.
Following the game between Chelsea and QPR at the end of October, comments allegedly made by Terry to Anton Ferdinand were reported to the powers that be and the result is that he'll face CPS criminal charges in February. As fate would have it, the two teams clash in the FA Cup next week.
The build up to a possible showdown between Terry and Ferdinand will build and build in the media next week. Before that, Carrow Road is in the strange position of hosting Terry's last game before that big Loftus Road fourth round clash.
Should he play next week, he's likely to be in for one hell of an afternoon from the home crowd, just like he was when he played at Tottenham after is was announced that criminal charges would be brought.
Back then Tottenham sent out a warning to fans that any derogatory chants would be punished and Metropolitan Police officers wore headcams to detect perpetrators.
But up in Norfolk there have been no warnings. How will the Norfolk crowd respond to Terry before the game starts and how have the club dealt with racism in the past?

Labels that stick
Google the name John Terry and the next word that suggestively comes up in the search engine box is 'racist'. A combination of his less than glorious off the field history and the fact that football fans don't need much ammunition to give a player both barrels, means he's already been convinced of being a racist by the average fan.
That's the same average fan who thinks Frank Lampard is 'fat' and Graeme Le Saux was 'gay'.

Tottenham's Gareth Bale had the last laugh after
he was abused by the Snakepit at Carrow Road

At Norwich we've given top Premier League players a bit of a special welcome on occasions this season - Gareth Bale was embarrassingly taunted by the educated minds of the Snakepit for 'looking like a chimp' and Connor Wickham was reminded of his previous club in no uncertain terms.
The abuse for Wickham was predictable, the abuse of Bale was maybe just banter. But change the word 'chimp' for 'ape' and direct it at a black player and it's not so funny.
But booing Terry before Saturday's game, such as when his name is read out, could be a case of, pardon the pun, the pot calling the kettle black.
I'd argue that the average Snakepit knucklehead who'll brand Terry a 'w****r' or boo his every touch on Saturday, is or has probably actually been a racist in their own life at some point.

Welcome to Norwich - A White City
The average Norwich fan comes from Norfolk and anyone over the age of 30 has probably had relatively little exposure to black people in the past.
I'm 36 and went to school in the Norfolk countryside in the early 80s. The first black kid I came across was when I was 11 and at my high school, The Hewett, here were maybe five black kids out of 1,500.
Norwich was, to quote the BNP, the 'last white city in England' and that was something that was commonly said when I was at school.
I remember in the late 1980s a robbery at a jewellers in London Street, Norwich. It was carried out by three black men and, such was the shortage of similar-skinned police staff to play the role of the criminals in the reconstruction that white police officers were issued with black boot polish to darken their faces.
This was Norwich less than 25 years ago.
Football wise, when I was born in 1975 a black player still hadn't played for England and I remember around 1982 reading Match magazine and them having an article on Watford's coloured attackers Luther Blissett and John Barnes - the headline to the piece was 'Black Magic'.
That wouldn't happen now, but Norwich were among the first teams to have black players in the late 1970s with the Fashanu brothers, who were actually adopted by a family near Attleborough where I grew up.

Monkeys and bananas
At Carrow Road the first black player I recall seeing apart from Dale Gordon and Louie Donowa was Sunderland's Howard Gayle and I clearly remember hearing monkey chants coming from Canaries fans directed at him.
A couple of years later when Ruel Fox burst onto the scene at Carrow Road, visiting fans would make the 'ooh ooh' noise when he touched the ball and the quick-thinking Barclay would cover it over with a louder "Ru-el, Ru-el".

Shocking: John Barnes kicks away a banana, thrown at him
by an Everton fan in the late 1980s

This was around the same time of the infamous picture of Barnes kicking that banana away in a match at Goodison Park.
In the late 1980s, a racist chant was seen by many as just a bit of fun and of course it was in no way punishable. I remember going through the Barclay turnstile circa 1989 with an unopened can of Coke that was taken off me straight away by a policeman as it was a potential missile. That was not on inside Carrow Road, but making a monkey chant was.
Fast forward 20-odd years and those rules have both been turned on their heads.
Thankfully at Norwich we've generally been free of racist incidents. When Adrian Forbes started playing for Norwich in the same position as Fox, the City fans would chant 'Ru-el, Ru-el' at him in partial homage to Fox, but also because he was, well, also black.

Monkey chants: Ruel Fox was one
City player who had them from visiting
fans

That's not exactly racist, and it was never proven that the spat between Pape Diop and the QPR fans at the end of December 1999 was either when the Senegal man allegedly launched a gobful of spittle at the Rangers fans for some reason or other and never played for the club again.
Perhaps the most alarming incident I've witnessed in supporting Norwich for more than 25 years was just over a year after Diop's swift Carrow Road exit and it came at Hillsborough in the FA Cup clash between City and Sheffield Wednesday in January 2001.
The Owls fielded former City striker Efan Ekoku in their starting line up and, with the game merely a few minutes old, a City fan stood up in front of me and addressed Ekoku, who was standing close to the City fans with the words: "Efan you c**n c**t."
He was thrown out immediately by a couple of South Yorkshire Coppers and rightly so. Since then as, Britain moved into the more politically correct 2000s, incidents like that are rare off the pitch.


The situation now
Norwich has never been a more multi-cultural city than it is now but the attitude of some City fans still borders on the Neanderthal. Last summer, when City signed James Vaughan from Everton, Norwich fan Luke O'Donoughoe was banned from Carrow Road for life after posting Twitter comments about Vaughan.
O'Donoughoe triggered a huge outcry from fellow Twitter users, including media pundit Mark Bright, following a post on May 27 in which he is said to have used the racist word 'n****r'.
At the time club chief executive David McNally said no form of racism is tolerated. He added: 'It's a shame as we are a family club. We were made aware of an alleged racist comment via Twitter and we had to investigate. We have a zero tolerance approach."
This season, though, with the Terry case, the Luis Suarez/ Patrice Evra incident and that of Oldham's on-loan City midfielder Tom Adeyami at Anfield, racism has reared it's ugly head around football.
The majority of City's fans have no racist spleen to vent on the average Saturday at Carrow Road and thankfully we've moved on several generations from the dark days of the late 1980s.
I hope nobody decides to boo Terry on Saturday just because of his reputation. Terry said after City played Chelsea in August that he didn't enjoy playing against Grant Holt and that battle is sure to commence once the game starts. But there's no reason to boo Terry before the game.
I don't particularly like Terry and I'm not trying to defend him, but remember David McNally's words: "City are a family club and have a zero approach to racism."
Norwich are a fantastic club and most of our fans are the sort any club would love to have – just this week we’ve been praised through the roof for an impeccably observed tribute to West Brom’s Jeff Astle at the Hawthorns last Saturday.
By all means get on his case if he does something on the pitch, but let's keep things in perspective. Terry will be dealt with by the authorities and will be punished if there are grounds to do so.
So let's not drag our great club back to the grim days of the 1980s with idiotic booing or derogatory chanting on Saturday. We, as a club, are better than that.

Time to welcome back our away day heroes

Norwich City's away day heroes are back at Carrow Road this weekend and boy am I looking forward to seeing them again.
Not since the home game against West Brom on September 11 have I felt so low as I did watching Norwich against Spurs the day after Boxing Day.
I normally write a bit called Ten Things We Now Know afterwards, but I struggled to find anything positive about the performance. Spurs were excellent and Gareth Bale tore us apart.
My strange end of 2011 slump continued when we faced Fulham less than four days later. I thought Fulham were good and should have beaten us - quite how important that Simeon Jackson goal will become is unknown just yet.
If we'd have lost two in a row at home in less than a week I'm convinced we'd of lost at QPR.
But what a sweet success - a late win, Joey Barton sent off and Neil Warnock ultimately sacked.
I didn't go to the FA Cup win over Burnley out of protest due to the amount of cash I've wasted in recent years watching City turn in some truly dreck performances in the competition.
But I've been so impressed with City, particularly away from home since the 5-1 mauling at Man City in early December.
We could feasibly have lost our next four on the road at Everton, Wolves, QPR and West Brom, but we've taken a brilliant eight points out of 12 and remained unbeaten.
I was at Stamford Bridge in August when City put in their first sit-up-and-take-note performance of the season against one of the Premier League big boys, but I am sure we can give Gary Cahill a decent test in his first game in a Chelsea shirt on Saturday.