Ah, Norwich. Having cast themselves succesfully as one of those clubs that would perpetually remain in Coca-Cola Purgatory, they gailly waltzed out the back door through the tried and trusted technique of two dire managerial appointments on the bounce.
Apparently their first game in the League of the Damned didn’t go entirely to plan, and they now find themselves in the midst of a fortnight of unemployed managers who wouldn’t lower themselves to managing anyone below the Championship hinting at an interest in the job, like a gaggle of increasingly desperate ageing dowagers secretly hoping the local squire will whisk them away to a life of leisure and privilege, while hedging their bets by flashing their garters at the down-on-his-luck local turkey farmer.
Saturday’s too-early-for-any-significant-conclusions-but-still-bloody-tedious yawn-off with Brighton has hopefully dampened the laughably unrealistic hopes of back-to-back promotions which had begun to fulminate. Improved performances from the midfield and strikers will be sought.
For Norwich Grant Holt seems set to assume Pawel Abbot’s mantle as our perpetual striking foe, and after their goal-each-off with Exeter at the weekend it seems hard to predict particulalry goal-laden fare tomorrow.
Anyway, here is your fact stat attack pack:
- Norwich have a squad of 33 professionals to choose from, none of whom are particularly good.
- The University of East Anglia has a Sainsbury’s on the campus. The number of recent graduates manning tills is currently unknown (to us).
- Craig Bellamy is their most famous ex-player. Just about.
- Norwich was home to the ‘New wave of Nu Nurridge” movement in the mid 90s, focussed on about five crap local indie bands getting gigs at the Waterfront which got written about in the NME.
- Norwich City’s website features an entire page devoted to their 1958-59 cup run, in which they got to the semi final and did not win any trophies.
- The Club is the focus of utterly mental lo-fi 1974 film “The boy who turned yellow”.
- Striker turned central defender Gary Doherty survives on a diet exclusively of rice cakes. In a 2006 interview Doherty estimated that he eats in the region of 1,400 rice cakes a day “the small ones, not the big ones, as I don’t like biting into the big ones when I can eat the small ones whole”. His favourite flavour is rumoured to be plain.
- There are six long articles about the Club’s history on Norwich’s website, and Beesy is damned if it’s going to read them.
