Thetford Canaries

What tha hell?

2006-07-19T10:09:00.000+01:00

Norwich slapped Livingstone, of Scotland’s second tier, last night 2-0, putting us in the unusual position of having won three pre-season friendlies, lost none and conceded none. I for one find it quite alarming – aren’t we supposed to lose all our pre-season games?! I thought the deal was that we would lose pre-season and at Christmas and do well apart from that. If we do well before the first game proper against Leeds, what the hell is going to happen in between now and December??

No shit Sherlock

2006-07-15T12:08:00.000+01:00

Well, that was a flash in the pan – Walcott’s agent says, surprisingly in some people’s eyes, that “I am in regular touch with Arsenal and there has never once been a suggestion of Theo going out on loan”. Who’d have thunk it??

Silliest silly season story. Ever.

2006-07-12T09:40:00.000+01:00

I haven’t been following the speculation over who Norwich are or (more likely) aren’t going to buy this summer, but one news story certainly did catch my eye on the Pink Un this morning. “Worthy eyes young Gunners” makes the claim early in the piece that, “Theo Walcott could be pulling on a Norwich City shirt next season”. Nice start. Unfortunately, we can’t even pretend there is any evidence for it.

What Worthington actually said was, “We have spoken to the people at Arsenal asking to be kept aware of any of the young players who might be available on loan. There are no really definite names I can mention. I spoke to Pat Rice just to be aware of anyone they might have."

I am not sure how “no really definite names” became “Theo Walcott could be pulling on a Norwich shirt”, but that’s local sports journalism for you.

Back to life, back to reality

2006-07-10T13:11:00.000+01:00

Right, now the so-called World Cup is over, we can get back to the important side of football: getting Norwich back to a position where they don’t lose all the away games I go to.

I have tried to order the new EDP guide to the 06/07 season (its not out yet), hesitated over buying the new home shirt and decided not to (I will buy it after too many beers at Strikers hen I go to a home game), and I have scanned through the fixtures list to decide which games to go to (Coventry away for my birthday is unlikely to be my favourite present of the year).

I think July 10 is too early to be getting back into the football. I am still too jaded, but what am I supposed to do for the next two months??

One piece of good World Cup news

2006-07-03T11:11:00.000+01:00

I am still too gutted about the World Cup finising to bother writing about anything. However, one piece of good news was the absence of any violence in Thetford following the game. And when you think of all the provacation from the likes of Ronaldo, that is actually quite an achievement.

What’s the point?

2006-07-02T23:46:00.000+01:00

I was going to write about the ref, the tactics, the crowd, the TV coverage, the performance straight after the game. I put it off. I couldn’t sleep last night. It was like I had a piece of really bad family news to mull over and couldn’t get it out of my head. Every time I started drifting off, I got Wayne Rooney’s snarl appearing in my mind.

For so long, for months and months, I have been waiting for the world cup. It was probably stupid of me to think we could do anything, to think that Sven could change his tinkering ways, or that Beckham would start performing, or that referees would manage to not send off our star player. It was probably idiotic to even pay attention in the first place – to think that the more I cared, the better we’d do. To think that if I avoided slagging off the performances in the first round, even in my head, we might do better. To think that at some point, the expectation wouldn’t be met with pain and disappointment.

When I couldn’t sleep last night, I got up and watched a couple of hours of the Ashes highlights DVD. I sat in front of the TV in my room with tears in my eyes watching Vaughan and Flintoff celebrating the Edgbaston last minute win and remembered that actually sometimes things do come off.

When I was very young, I think I was 10, I stopped playing in the garden and went to see my dad in the living room. He was watching the cricket. I think it was the ‘89 series but am not really sure. I obviously didn’t have a clue what cricket was, or what the ashes were, but I just wanted to sit with my dad and watching the cricket was what he was doing, so watching the cricket is what I decided to do. I don’t remember what match it was, or what happened, but I remember we lost the match very, very badly – by an innings I think, it was a proper shocker. So began my life as a cricket supporter.

Thinking about that while watching the Ashes highlights last night, and remembering as if it were yesterday, the sheer elation and every wicket were taken, I wondered how much happiness those wickets and runs brought to people that watched that series as first time cricket fans. I also wondered whether any of the annoying non-football types that have got so excited about the World Cup over recent weeks actually felt anything today. I bet some of them are even looking forward to the semi-finals. I couldn’t give a toss who wins now.

This last year, football wise, has been an absolute shocker. It couldn’t have been much worse. But I think the will to push on, despite the horrible feeling it could, and probably will, bring, is the mark of a real supporter. The willingness to accept loss, and build the usual feelings of pain and anger into the joy of winning when it happens, is the most essential part of any supporter. What person can know joy without knowing sorrow? I don’t doubt for a second that many people will think that sounds idiotic. Well, I say fuck them. Damn them to watch celebrity love island with their lives. Some things matter. I’m off to watch the third test.

And by the way – here is the fixtures for next season. Who’s coming to the Annual Crystal Palace Horror Show?

I’m wearing black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside

2006-07-01T22:09:00.000+01:00

I was about to sit down and write how I feel now England are out, who I want to win, how I think England have fared. But a mix of shuddering anger, and pitiful sorrow means it is probably best to wait for a while before doing so.

So I thought I would relive the game itself as I recorded it. My mate Richard, who usually lives in Bruxelles, was in Kent for a wedding today. He had no access to a radio or TV so asked me to send him update texts. I thought he’d be sneaking looks at them under the dinner table, but apparently he was shouting them out, and they were in fact updating c. 200 people! Not sure what the Bride made of it.

Here is what I said…

To: Ricardo
Sent: 4.52
Msg: phone chimp out, normal txt service now resumed. 0-0 at ht, very much even game. Lots of attacking on both sides, no clear chances either side tho

To: Ricardo
Sent: 4.58
Msg: Beckham off injured, (lennon on) 0-0 55mins

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.04
Msg: Cheating dives from ports, great chance for cole, hit over 0-0 63mins

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.04
Msg: Rooney has been sent off 64m

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.13
Msg: Crouch upfront, cole off. Gone a bit queit bit of a stalemate 69mins (69)

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.18
Msg: Ports coming fwd in number England coping and countering quite well. Things fucking tense! 0-0 77mins

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.24
Msg: very very very tense. Some close shaves, good defending, bits of luck 0-0 81mins

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.28
Msg: Crouch playing well on own, but ports still coming at us. Fans are fucking loud! 0-0 86mins

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.36
Msg: Its gone to ET (extra time, not the film) Terry had good chance but good defending from ports. 0-0 at ft, 0mins of et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.43
Msg: Ports have us back foot big time, horribly tense. 0-0 4mins et I presume youre getting these?!!

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.49
Msg: Amazing chance for Crouch, great clearance from ports. Can’t articulate how tense this is! 10mins et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 5.56
Msg: Great chance for us, three for them. Meltdown. Am in agony. This is fucking horrible – 0-0halftime of et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 6.01
Msg: Big shout for a pen for us – looks 50-50 on replay tho. Heart attack moment, ports goal, but disallowed for offside. 19mins et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 6.06
Msg: Good chance for lennon – him and crouch are doing v well considering. Ports still coming at us. Getting nervous. Horrible 0-0 24mins et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 6.13
Msg: Lots and lots and lots of pressure. The beeb commentators are being total dicks, driving everyone nuts. 0-0 29mins et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 6.14
Msg: Its pens. I’m not going to text you after each one. I’ll just text you the result when its over. 0-0 after et

To: Ricardo
Sent: 6.34
Msg: We lost 3-1 on pens. We are out.

What to say?

2006-07-01T21:19:00.000+01:00

I don't really know what to say at the moment, but given Scolari's friends in high places, I definitely won't be missing Mass tomorrow.

The guiding hand of God

2006-07-01T12:06:00.000+01:00

It turns out that Big Phil Scolari is a devout Catholic. He prays daily to the Virgin of Caravaggio, who has a shrine in his home state of Rio Grande de Sul in Brazil. The Saint appeared to a farmworker in Italy in 1432, and has been cited as performing miracles for those who have asked for her intecession since then.

Apparently, before the 2002 World Cup he prayed to Our Lady of Caravaggio, and promised that he would make a pilgrimage to pray at her shrine if Brazil qualified. When they did so, he walked the ten miles from his house to the shrine in bare feet.

During the 2004 Euro championships, when his Portuguese team knocked England out, he asked the Brazilian FA to send him an icon of Our Lady of Caravaggio after Portugal’s opening game loss. They made it to the quarters. Another suspicious omen is that Pope Clement III was born Paulo Scolari. Could count against England this afternoon.

However, I bet he doesn’t go to an Opus Dei church for mass like I do. Big girl’s blouse.

World cup predictions

2006-07-01T10:30:00.000+01:00

Every world cup that I have watched since 1986 has had a similar pattern to this one – massive, almost painful anticipation, followed by a nail-biting first round where we proceed despite not deserving to – and then on to a knock-out round where the tension gets unbearable. I am less optimistic than I have been in the past, but I think that’s more down to the way I got excited about the World Cup around 2 years ago rather than the facts on the ground. So I thought I would have a look at what the fine upstanding members of the press were thinking.

The good

Thankfully, many members of the press are optimistic. Oliver Holt in the Mirror is ready for action: “The England we all know is hiding in there somewhere. And there is another England. There really is. A different England to the one that has crawled through the competition on its hands and knees so far. There is an England that could yet be a threat in this World Cup if they can just begin to play to their potential against Portugal here this afternoon.”

The bad

Other commentators are playing it safe by being the ultimate pessimists. Roy Collins on the Telegraph blog is a good example. “How can [Sven] think England can win the World Cup playing such dross?” he writes. Going on, he says: “If he fails to reach the semi-finals of a major tournament again, he will have betrayed the country's so-called generation with his negative tactics.”

The miserable

There is still a lot of miserable football professionals determined to knock the team come what may. They are of course joined by people who don’t know anything about football at all – you know the people, they shout “we’re shit” every time a pass goes slightly astray, and complain that we aren’t 5-0 up at halftime. David Lacey in the Guardian is one of these miseries. He thinks we will do well, but “On the whole England teams do not do performances”. David Bond over at the Telegraph is singing from the same misery sheet: “On the evidence of England's performances here so far, there is no great cause for optimism.”

I have predicted 2-0 for the world cup predictors, but seeing as I currently lie 11th out of 14, don't read too much into that.

How the world sees England

2006-06-29T11:57:00.000+01:00

Funny film here, via Fredrik, on Swedish TV about England supporters in a limo. Obviously you won’t get what the presenters are saying (although it is, of course, funny to hear English names interspersed into a foreign language, Fast Show style) but you can get the gist. We’re mad we are!

Blog updates

2006-06-26T17:21:00.000+01:00

There has been a massive amount of crap written about the world cup, a big proportion of it is below. However, there’s been some corking stuff written as well, and here are some recommendations:

1) Read this blog entry from America, which is either an amazingly clever pastiche of American republicans, or it is a horrible indictment of the American right from their own mouths. Best quote: “Basically, from what I could work out, this soccer is just American football for fags.”

2) Read this blog by someone taking the mickey out of Owen Hargreaves. I really like Hargreaves, but this blog is absolutely fucking sweet as fuck. Especially read this entry.

3) It went up a while back but I was reminded of this when I was watching the England game yesterday and my two (female) flatmates spent quite a bit of time talking about which England players were going out with whom. To be fair, at least one of my flatmates is quite knowledgeable about the game, but still.

The Battle of Santiago II

2006-06-26T13:56:00.000+01:00

In the words of Owen Hargreaves: “what the fucking fuck?!”. Last night’s scrap game between Portugal and Holland was a total farce. How many cards were there? Lets count, 16 yellow, and four red. That’s record equalling. Called a “fandango of cheating, skulduggery and rampant play-acting” by a Guardian journalist with too much time to hit shift+F7, the match was only interesting for the fighting, not for the football. When the game was actually played, I thought Holland were the better of the two teams and that bodes well for Saturday.

I have already said what I think of Figo below, but special mention should also be reserved for Costinha who seemed to be gong after tackles with the express desire of getting sent off. Some of his tackles were unreal. All good fun though, and both he and Deco will be out for the game at the weekend.

By the way - here is a great video of the actual Battle of Santiago. As you can see, they did onfield violence properly in those days. The commentary is in Spanish, but you can work out what's happening.

Figo is a cheat

2006-06-25T21:29:00.000+01:00

Just sat here watching the Portugal v Netherlands game and I absolutely shocked by how blatant the cheating of Louis Figo has just been. Not only has he just got away with head-butting a Dutch player (albeit in quite a half-arsed way), but he has just gone down like someone shot in the face with a magnum after a Dutch did virtually nothing but tackle him fairly. Absolutely shocking – the way he went down clutching his face when he was clearly wasn’t caught there is just disgusting.

UPDATE: Big Phil Scolari on Figo: "Jesus said we should turn the other cheek, unfortunately, Luis Figo is not Jesus Christ."

Burying bad news

2006-06-25T11:02:00.000+01:00

The News of the World has paid out damages to Ashley Cole for the story accusing him of being involved in gay romps last year. I banged on about this a bit at the time, but thought it had been swept under the carpet until after the world cup. Virtually none of the main papers have reported it, but it’s in the Pink News, Fox Sports and now on the BBC website.

First quarter final settled

2006-06-25T01:15:00.000+01:00

It’s all over for Sweden. To be honest, I was a little disappointed by their lack of fight. The shots stat says it all – 22 shots for Germany, 4 for Sweden. The Germans almost had the second half off. The second game was a lot better though, I hadn’t really realised how good Mexico are, they can really play! It’s a disappointment that Mexico couldn’t hold on for pens, but at least the Argies had to play out the extra time. Amazing games when you get to this stage of the World Cup – Argentina v Germany in the quarter finals!

Closer to UN than yesterday

2006-06-24T19:47:00.000+01:00

Things are moving on a bit, and I have now seen an Italian flag to add to the five world cup flags previously seen taking me to six - 1/6th of the world cup flags to be sighted! Yippee. I also saw a flag flying from a car of whose origin I am unclear. It was red, yellow and green stiped, with a green lion in the middle, but I can't find out its origin. Any ideas?

Graham poll eats children

2006-06-24T12:03:00.000+01:00

Graham Poll had a shocker in his reffing of the Croatia v Australia game. Giving a player a yellow card three times is clearly not going to be a referees finest hour, regardless of the fact that it happened at the world cup. It’s a problem for him and has ended his world cup and maybe his career. But the most annoying thing is not that he made the mistake, but that the mistake has allowed all these “bring in video replays” clowns to get back into the papers calling for football to be more like American Kickball with stoppages every two minutes.

What is football if it doesn't include the arguments and debates about refs, the frustrations at being on the receiving end of a dodgy decision and the gleeful joy of benefitting from one? I think commentators and people involved professionally in the game forget that many fans are the purists who want to see all decisions perfect, all aspects of the game running like clock-work. Sometimes it's fun to see things go a bit wrong.

Anyhoo, rant aside, have a look at this. It’s wicked.

I wouldn't usually but...

2006-06-22T21:55:00.000+01:00

....this article from the Guardian about England fans in Germany is really very good. All must read.

Few flags short of a United Nations

2006-06-22T13:03:00.000+01:00

This morning, sat in a bus in Shepherd’s Bush, I saw my fifth flag of the world cup. After double-checking, I have now added Ghana to England, Portugal, Spain and Brazil on the list of World Cup flags seen in London since kick-off. Five is not exactly a UN though – where have all the different nationalities gone?!

38 years and one month of hurt

2006-06-21T16:02:00.000+01:00

Well, well, well. I suppose we will have to wait another few years to get rid of the Swedish curse that has afflicted this nation since 1968. They might get a right-wing government in September, so it will be easier after that – but how fucking frustrating was last night? I think the only thing we need to beat Sweden is have FIFA change the rules to ban corners and bob’s your uncle!

Lots of people are complaining this morning, and the media coverage is decidedly mixed, but in open play, and for 70 minutes, we dominated the game, passing well, holding on to possession well, and creating a fair few chances. It wasn't perfection, and we’re not world beating yet – but we have won the group (a first since 1990), we have a slightly easier run-in, and we have improved. It is not something for people to get all antsy about.

Down sides from last night (apart from the fact that we have gone from having three and a half strikers to two and half) were defending at set pieces and Robinson’s general wobbliness, and Beckham/Lampard going AWOL for sections of the second half. But on the upside, we did actually cope with the pressure for most of the second half, Hargreaves had a good game, and Joe Cole really came to life. I am more confident about England today than I was before yesterday’s match.

Yet again, there doesn’t seem to have been much crowd trouble. The Guardian says that five English fans were arrested for being pissed, while the German arrest count was at 50. That’s not bad going when there were 60,000 English fans in town.

Bring on the Ecuadorianans!

Eton rifles

2006-06-21T12:26:00.000+01:00

I do so hate to be all political about the world cup, but… here’s a funny story about that slimey upper-class scum bag David Cameron – a person so eurosceptic, he refused to help the Swedish 'no' campaign out during their referendum campaign in 2003, and so right-on that he wants to be a parent first and Prime Minister second (which politician would say different?!).

Apparently, Cameron went off to the Sweden match last night, and tried to score a point over Gordon Brown (who was in the directors box as a guest of the German social democrats), by sitting in the stands “like everyone else” according to my old flat-mate, Cameron’s press officer.

However, it turns out that he flew to the game in a private jet, and had a ticket provided by someone in corporate affairs at ITV. Not sure that qualifies as “like everyone else”.

Brown’s people have got a bit carried away though. “It's utterly sad and pathetic that, having got a ticket to this game from his corporate friends at the last minute and travelled by private jet to get there in time, David Cameron is now seeking to make political capital out of a football match which should be bringing the whole country together”.

It’s not only Rooney that can throw temper tantrum, these politicians can do it too.

A rush and a push.....

2006-06-20T12:50:00.000+01:00

Ah well, it was nice while it lasted, but last night saw the first violence related arrests of the world cup. It sounds from the various articles (BBC, Reuters, PA, Telegraph and random blog here) that it was very minor and mainly related to drink and over-eager police. The shame is that it comes as most of the papers have started to pick up the England-are-well-behaved riff (ESPN, IHT and Independent for example). On the upside, a German and a Swede were also arrested in the trouble, which means (a) fans of various nationalities were drinking together in the first place and (b) it wasn’t just us Guv.

Swedes bullish ahead of their biggest ever match

2006-06-19T20:49:00.000+01:00

Here’s some of the thoughts of the Swedes ahead of tomorrow night’s game:

“We will try to stick to our way of playing, defend as much as we can” – Lars Lagerbäck

“We were better than them at the last World Cup” - Tobias Linderoth

“They are not exactly brimming with creativity” – Anders Svensson

“We ought to score two or three goals" - Lars Lagerbäck

“I left Sweden in 1982, so it's really a long, long time” – Sven

Dutch people in pants

2006-06-19T10:51:00.000+01:00

An amazing story in today’s papers (Seattle Times, Die Welt, UPI, BusinessWeek to name a few – BBC and Guardian also have it if you prefer a UK centric view of the world) about Dutch fans watching the World Cup in their pants. Now, we all know the Dutch are quite liberal, but I thought it was just weird that they wanted to cheer their team on without trousers. The problem was that the trousers – bright orange (obv) and with a lions tail attached (not so obv) – were given away by a Dutch beer company if you bought a certain number of cans and had the company logo on them.

Budweiser (the crap version, not the Czech version) paid £27million to be a sponsor of the World Cup, and got a deal whereby all rivals are banned from the vicinity of the matches. The trouser giveaway was clearly a popular offer, as over 1,000 Dutch fans turned up in the trousers with the logo and got stopped from going into the game. They were told that they could only watch the match if they weren’t wearing the offending garments. So they all took them off and sat in their pants.

FIFA have accused the Dutch beer company of “ambush marketing” – a plan whereby you get lots of people to wear your logo into a sports event and get free coverage when the camera pans across these people. But the Dutch had the logo on their trousers. How many times do you see a camera panning across fat Dutch people’s trousers? And anyway, everyone is now talking about how ludicrous FIFA is, and how shit Budweiser is to drink, and is also interested in the Dutch beer company Bavaria who came up with the cracking idea in the first place.

Bloody yanks

2006-06-18T17:29:00.000+01:00

Been a bit quiet since Friday, and I have been off at my parents in Chelmsford. A fun time was had by all, and Dad duly got his Ashes DVD box set for Father’s Day, despite insisting that I must never get him anything for this event (“Its invented by card makers, totally ridiculous” were his exact words I seem to remember). I also sorted out his car for the world cup, much to the bemusement of people at his church.

Anyway, I haven’t seen as much football as I would have liked to, but then again, I probably watched more than was sociable. I am particularly gutted to have missed the USA v Italy game, which according to the reviews was pretty amazing. I am writing this while watching the Australia game, and it is amusing to see just how violent the former British outposts are while playing the beautiful game. The New York Times report of the match is a real beauty for Americanism. “In a classic underdog effort, the United States kept its hopes alive in the World Cup with a redeeming and defiant performance against a three-time winner of the tournament. The Americans played the final 43 minutes with only nine players, two having been disqualified for committing harsh fouls.” Elsewhere in the same piece, it is reported that Italy had a player “ejected” for elbowing. And I thought that sort of language was only at use in Mary Whitehouse Experience sketches. It is impressive when players play on with an injury, and Brian McBride hasn't done his image any damage with the wide use of this picture of him Terry Butcher style, after being on the receiving end of some traditional Italy conversation.

Attention is now turning to the Sweden game. Most of the papers are interested in who will play and who will be rested, especially now that Rooney is back in contention. It seems to me that Owen just isn’t up to, so Crouch should play, but Sven is going to stick Crouch on the bench, and also rest Gerrard. It might actually me more of protective custody for them both, as the two of them are on yellows. People have been a bit negative about England so far, and as I have said, it is far for people to be a bit miffed. But both Trinidad and Paraguay sat very, very deep, having 11 men behind the ball for much of both the games. Sweden won’t be doing that, and space will open up much more. I think that not only we will win against Swedes who have poor morale to match their poor defence, but we will win in style. I think we will be much more attacking, and that both our wings will be free flowing. I expect a bore-draw now I have said that…

Football aside, the Swedish media is getting itself in twists over trouble with hooligans. SvD, via The Local, is reporting that the Swedish police view this game as the most likely to have trouble in the tournament, which is odd given the fighting before the German v Poland game. Maybe the Swedish police haven’t been reading the English papers, but if they had they would’ve heard from Gerhard Hauptmannl, from the Nuremberg police. According to him, it has been, “beyond our wildest dreams that supporters could behave this well.” He went on: “The message is clear to every German town and person. It is that the image of the English is good. They have come here as friends to enjoy sport and enjoy themselves. They have not come to cause trouble.” The funny thing though, is that I have just been looking for articles about this, and I could only find the one I have linked to above. But while looking I found over 30 articles from newspapers around Europe before the match expressing concern about English fans, saying we’d cause trouble and so on. Funny that none of those papers bothered to mention they were totally wrong to raise all those fears.

Ah well, the main thing is that there wasn’t any trouble to report. I still don’t know where I will be watching Tuesday’s game. It would be nice to watch it with a crowd, but its tough to find one where you can reach the bar more than once in 90 minutes.

Lycklig Sverige

2006-06-15T21:52:00.000+01:00

England were two minutes away from winning the group tonight, but lucky Sweden have just nicked a goal against Paraguay. That means if Sweden beat us next week we could end up second - but if we beat Sweden, and Trinidad beat Paraguay, Sweden could still go home early. All of this is pretty academic, because the way Ecuador are playing at the moment, I am not sure I would rather avoid the Germans....

Full time review: great ending, poor finishing

2006-06-15T19:29:00.000+01:00

Before we go anywhere else, I think we should think about two things – firstly Trinidad played very well considering where their players play their league football. Secondly, and most importantly, we are into the last 16. That’s all that counts.

But bloody hell, we – and Trinidad – made it hard. On the downside, we really struggled upfront, with Crouch and Owen missing really good chances. Lampard and Cole also wasted some moves, and in the first two thirds of the game we really didn’t make much of an impression.

But on the upside Sven actually made a good set of substitutions and things actually got sorted out as a result. I assume that everyone will be talking about Rooney tomorrow, but actually, I think it was much more about Lennon. He played a blinder on the wing and went past Gray with ease several times.

In the end it was pretty comfortable. More comfortable than it was for the Swedes anyway. They are up in 45 minutes, so I am off for a bit of pizza and back into the TV room to cheer on the nil-nil draw option…

Half-time report: “A run for your money”

2006-06-15T18:02:00.000+01:00

I’ve just had a cheeky text from Laurie, a friend of my Mary. He’s from Trinidad and it says “We’re giving you a run for your money”. He couldn’t be more right. Owen is just not ready for football, Beckham is hitting balls around like he’s being paid per metre kicked, and Joe Cole thinks he has to score a screamer from outside the box to secure his place in history. Thank goodness for John Terry keeping us in the game – and who’d have thought I’d be saying that at half-time! I feel bad for laughing so much at Sweden during their match with T&T now.

BTW those whinging fat cats muppets at the CBI have proved once and for all that they can’t take a joke by slagging off Amicus for their advice on how England fans can get to see the game.

Das Bootiful game

2006-06-15T09:59:00.000+01:00

So that’s the one round of round one matches over and done with, and I would have to say that England v Paraguay is up there vying with Switzerland v France for dullest game so far. I hope tonight’s match against Trinidad is better, and if not, that we at least getter a better result than the Swedes managed.

I feel a lot better about our chances since we got that win under our belts, but to be honest we have looked pretty poor when compared to Brazil (staggeringly good, bit lazy once in the lead though), Spain (I thought they were supposed to look good then lose?!) and Argentina (I always thought they were under-rated). The bad betting news is that my wager on the US of A has gone as well as the marketing campaign for a chocolate dogshit.

Big news story of the day is that crowd trouble has broken out in Germany, and that it wasn’t anything to do with England fans! Yippee! There was apparently fighting and bottle throwing before the Poland v Deutschland game, which given (a) Polish hooligans track record of fighting everyone in sight and (b) Germany’s track record for invading Poland, something was always going to happen. I say crowd trouble, but it does sound a little bit half-arsed. Newsnight has some footage here, and all seems to be a lot of running around. Still, either way, at least it wasn’t any England fans.

Silly season story of the day is clearly Amicus the union advising their members on how to take a sicky from work to see the game. Now that’s what I call representing your members!

World cup flag count

2006-06-14T11:51:00.000+01:00

One of the great things about watching the World Cup in London is range of supporters. In 2002, I think I saw at least a dozen flags of the countries playing in the tournament. So, I am going to keep a running count again, a bit like the car registration game you played when going on holiday with the folks. So far, I have seen flags from (1) England, (2) Portugal, (3) Spain, and (4) Brazil. Updates as I see them…

Sven can spin, but can Swedes win?

2006-06-12T12:19:00.000+01:00

The news coverage of England continues to be a bit stroppy, but clever old Sven has spun his way out of it with a ludicrously couched hint that Rooney might play on Thursday against Trinidad. He said he was “optimistic” that he could come on as a sub, but that, “I'm very optimistic, always”. That takes journalists minds off the striker problem nicely – but with Owen lacking fitness, Rooney’s foot and now young Walcott with a thigh problem, we only have Peter Crouch as a fit striker. Not ideal.

Across the North Sea, things are looking even worse. Reports from the Swedish media have suggested that Freddie Ljunberg and Olof Mellberg had yet another strop with each other in the dressing room after the Trinidad game. Reports suggest that they had to be pulled off before it all went too far. Apparently our Freddie “expressed his unhappiness” at the tactics of the Swedish defence. I would’ve thought Mellberg would have been within his rights to express some unhappiness at Freddie’s inability to score any goals, but there we go. Freddie has now even popped up in the English media to slag off Sweden’s performance. Poor show.

Today’s three games look pretty good, but I am going to give Italy v Ghana a miss and make dinner for my Mary tonight. Don’t want her thinking I like footie more than her. I still have Japan v Australia to look forward to, and the first outgoing for the might USA!USA!USA! against the Czech Republic.

I will be backing the yanks quite vociferously – I need them to progress if I am to see any return on my £10 at 200/1. I think both of these will be good games, but I am especially excited about the Japanese v Convicts match. The Aussies haven’t changed one bit, and are bound to have several players sent off – viz their friendly match against the Netherlands, when they managed to go down to ten men.

The only downside is that I am off work today, so don’t know how I fared in the office predictor stakes. I will probably cope though.

***********************************

6pm Update: thanks to a tip from Fredrik, we can now read a transcript of the row between the Swedes after their match against Trinidad on a Gothenberg supporter's blog here. Not as much as a row as when they got stuck in after a training argument in 2002.

A (slightly more) sober review

2006-06-11T17:46:00.000+01:00

I'm now back on the eurostar crawling back to blighty. I watched the England v Australia rugby in a Brux irish pub this morning and rather bullishly drank through that and the first half of Serbia v Holland. That's meanls I'm feeling a touch wobbly, but at least I can see what I am typing today.

All in all, I've had a corking time, and the world cup has really matched up to the excitement I've been feeling over the last few months. The thing I've enjoyed most has been the performance of the underdogs. Every right thinking englander must have been going loopy when Paolo Wanchope scored for Costa Rica against the Germans on Friday night. And I certainly enjoyed cheering Trinidad on yesterday, in a square packed full of ludicrously excited Swedes. Even Cote d'Ivoire got involved and ran the Argies quite close. That's the best thing about the world cup I think - having teams matched up that you'd never see outside the world cup.

As for England, I think the news coverage has been a little unfair. That we didn't play particularly well is a given, as is the fact that Sven is still totally unable to make sensible substitutions. The key worry is upfront. Peter Crouch is not just one of the ugliest people on God's earth, he is also a poor football player. He just doesn't have it. It was always, always going to be a big ask to have him as a main striker.

Having said that, the league table doesn't lie, and thanks to the rank haplessness of the Swedes, if we beat Trinidad on Thursday, we're through. We'd all have banked that last week if it was on offer, so let's not be downcast.

The other thing of note has been the TV coverage. The pictures themselves aren't the fault of BBC or ITV but they are absolutely piss poor. The cameras are so far back that you can't see who has the ball, and the replays are appalling. On top of that, both the BBC and ITV have made a poor start on commentating. Mick McCarthy on ITV is so bad I watched the first half the Holland v Serbia match on Dutch TV. The one bright point is MOTD2, very good highlights and (by definition) world class analysis.

It has been a great weekend, but there's so much more to come.

Day 2: drink drink drink

2006-06-10T23:59:00.000+01:00

I am writing this at midnight Brussels time, a good eleven hours after i started drinking. Therefore I am not going to write much, as every single letter is requring a good look on the keyboard. U am not very osber at all

I spent the day in the Place de Luxembourg in central Brussels. just by the european parliament. It was fantasitically nice, very hot, good beer, and a good bif xcreen for the footie. I thought England played pretty well, but i see from the websites that the consensus is that we struggled. We might have struggled but i am not sure. I think we did ok but I would have to have a think about whrn sober.

My impression from today's footbakll viewing is the difference between swedes and englanders in Brussels. I dont know if this is how it is worldwide but during the england game, england fans were relatively quiet. The swedne game saw absolute chaos with swedes roaring all kinds of incomprehensible suportive chants for their team. Maybe we've got more decorum. I think englland fans need to get more involved.

The only funny thing was that the screen where the swedes were watching was a good 15 seconds behind in the feed compared to the screen where we were watching nect door. Whenever Sweden went close we saw them miss a few second before the swedes themselves. We then stareted cheered GOALLLL! whenever they went close to get their hopesup and it went amazingly went, annoying them no end. All great stuff.

My word cup table so far:

Games avaliable to watch: 5
Games watched: 5

Hours spent in the pub since world cup started: 19
Pints drunk: 23

Reviewing day 1

2006-06-09T22:44:00.000+01:00

Kick off has happened, and the games were surprisingly good. The refereeing however has not been so hot. Germany v Costa Rica saw some reckless betting from me and Richard, which went down the drain within the first 6 minutes. However, from an England point of view, Germany winning was probably for the best, as we want them to win their group to avoid England.

Once all of the jokes about the war were out of the way we went to an Irish pub for the Poland v Ecuador game. By this time we were both a bit drunk, but Paddy Power had again intervened to ensure that we had interest in the game. We were after a 2-0 win for Ecuador or 3-1 to Poland. We must have looked a bit odd when the second Ecuador goal went in. People must have questioned why two English blokes were jumping around hugging over such a minor game.

It wasn't a big winning but it did lead to a dash across Brussels to see if we could catch a train to Frankfurt for the England game with our winnings. It was always going to be a big call, so we just went out to spend our winnings on getting even more drunk. I got home about 4, with a net loss overall. I now have to bet more to win more beer money. And I forgot my phone, leaving my Mary to wonder if I was still alive. Poor show from me.

It was of high quality football, high quality betting, and high quality drinking. Not sure I can keep it up for the whole cup though...

The waiting is basically over now

2006-06-08T18:52:00.000+01:00

The world cup is vitually upon us. It feels like it has already started, as I'm sat on the eurostar winging my way to our federal superstate's capitol city, Brussels (or Bruxelles if you're Welsh).

I've got meetings tomorrow but I'm basically warming up for the kick off now. And what better way to start but by getting stop and search'd by a young volatile copper at Waterloo. It's nice to know that I look tough enough to be an English thug on my way to get leathered and fight tha hun. The responses to his questions ("I'm going for several meetings at the European Parliament", "I'm staying with a journalist friend of mine in Brux and not actually going to Germany" and "no, I'm not a journalist, I work for a charity") put him straight pretty sharpish.

A few beers tonight in Brux, mixed with the painkillers I'm on, should put me in the right frame of mind for tomorrow's kick off, and then on to the big one on Saturday.

No more talk of who governs Togo or whether Haribo sweets are racist, its hammer time!

The World Cup: Passion. Diversity. Haribo.

2006-06-08T11:18:00.000+01:00

I used to get really annoyed when people read too much into the World Cup and tried to impose on it a much bigger meaning than it deserves. You know the sort of thing I mean – that the World Cup brings the world together in peace and harmony, that teams from around the world coming together for a month-long festival of football shows that we can all be one together in sport. That sort of bullshit.

But I don’t think its bullshit anymore. Oh no. Because I have been shown that actually, together we are stronger. I have been shown this by Haribo’s new World Cup ‘sweets of the world mix’, which I bought last night for my pudding at my Mary’s house.

I didn’t realise this (and I eat *a lot* of Haribo), but different countries get different types of Haribo sweets. You’ll all be familiar with the jelly babies that are the staple of the UK mix, but from the France/Belgian mix we are given the ‘Hari Croco’ sweet. From the Spain/Italy/Portugal mix we have the slightly unpleasant ‘Pico Balla’. The combination of Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Netherlands (insert WW2 joke here) brings us ‘Berries’, and the Scandinavians give us ‘Körsbär’. The Russian/Czech/Hungarian/Polish contribution is ‘Quaxi’.

Munching my way through them while watching West Wing last night, I thought to myself – this is the up side of globalisation. This is what it is like to be a citizen of the world. I now have a tear in my eye (calm down) thinking about the peace and harmony the World Cup will bring.

The World Cup mix haven’t made Haribo’s top twenty bags of sweets yet though, so I will be bulk buying for the duration of England’s involvement in the tournament. Until a week Thursday then…

FIFA tell racists stop being naughty

2006-06-07T13:43:00.000+01:00

Recounting how pathetic FIFA are when it comes to tackling racism doesn’t need recounting. And as for UEFA, their response to Spain’s manager’s outright racist abuse of Thierry Henry speaks for itself. But not FIFA has got a plan to make the World Cup racism-free. According to the Times, Sepp Blatter has said that he will “appeal that there should be no racism”. That should do the trick.

It’s a far cry from threatening to throw teams out tournaments and dock points, which was suggested, then dropped faster than red-hot dogshit. I wonder what will happen if England or Poland or Spain fans go rioting – England are always been threatened with exclusion for crowd violence (rightly), why is beered up thuggery worse than racism?

Jamaica? No, we won 6-0 of our own accord

2006-06-06T13:23:00.000+01:00

So, England are now safe and sound in Baden-Baden (which I always thought was a made-up place) following the 6-0 crushing of the mighty mighty Reggae Boys last weekend. I thought we played pretty well, and the midfield especially looked very solid. However the general consensus seems to be that actually, anyone can beat Jamica 6-0, and a Crouch hat-trick* against Bradford’s second choice keeper doesn’t make us odds on to win the World Cup.

Today’s news is filled with information about Rooney’s foot, and considering I am stuck at home with shoulder-knack, I am not that interested in it. Instead, I trying to find out more about an amazing study by some crackpot academic. I heard about it on the radio last night but cannot for life of me find any link to it. It is basically along the lines of Harold Wilson’s famous football quote: “Have you noticed how we only win the World Cup under a Labour government?” The study found that the countries that have won the World Cup since 1930 have on the whole been governed by left-wing parties when they won. So, looking down the list of qualifiers this time, some key favourites are set to be ruled out of the running:

Germany – Conservative-led coalition
Poland – Conservative led coalition
Costa Rica – Third Way social democrat President
Ecuador – Liberal president

England - Third Way social democrat government
Sweden – Social Democrat government (until September)
Trinidad and Tobago – Conservative government
Paraguay – Conservative government

Argentina – Populist left-wing president
Ivory Coast – Socialist-led government
Serbia and Montenegro – Conservative-led coalition
Netherlands – Conservative-led coalition

Mexico – Conservative president
Iran – Conservative president
Angola – leftwing dictatorship
Portugal – Socialist-led coalition

Italy – centre-left alliance-led coalition
Ghana – Liberal president
USA – Conservative president
Czech Republic – Conservative led coalition

Brazil – Socialist president
Croatia – Conservative-led coalition
Australia – Conservative government
Japan – rightwing Liberal coalition

France – Conservative government
Switzerland – bonkers coalition of all parties
South Korea – rightwing Liberal government
Togo – some kind of dictatoship

Spain – Socialist government
Ukraine – Liberal/George Bush coalition
Tunisia – authoritarian dictatorship
Saudi Arabia – theocratic dictatorship

So that’s Germany out of the picture, but it bodes very well for Spain who are usually the usual-rans. It doesn’t cheer me up, with my £10 on USA!USA!USA! at 200/1 though. And it does sort of leave Brazil in the running. We’ll have to find some sort of other omen to knock them off.

************************

* For what it is worth, Worthington thinks Crouch should start up front for England, because he is “a good fellow”.

World cup fever starts here

2006-06-02T15:15:00.000+01:00

I have been shamed into posting something by Fredrik – I have been quiet for a long time, and I doubt if anyone actually bothers reading this anymore to be honest. The truth is I have been too depressed to think about Norwich. For the frist time this century, I lost interest before the end of the season – even in 04/05 season where I didn’t watch us win once, we still had the interest factor of not getting relegated until the last day of the season. But the recent season has been too depressing on a variety of levels to bring myself to offer chit-chat about the collective end of season back slapping, transfer rumours or Greeno goal-kick horror show.

So – no more of Worthington, no more grumpy disgruntled fans – its world cup time! All mentions of Norwich are banned for the next 6 weeks. I am officially ready for the world cup:

All three of my England shirst clean and ready to wear in rotation? CHECK
Crate of 24 stellas out the back keeping cold? CHECK
Mini England flag stuck to the top of my office PC? CHECK
Office sweepstake (predicting an Argentina win) filled out and paid for? CHECK
Mildly xenophobic jokes about the war ready? CHECK
Girlfriend (just about) ready and willing to join in the fun? CHECK

Here's my predictions -

Winner - Argentina, beating Brazil 1-0 in a boring final
England placing - Lose in the 3rd/4th place playoffs to USA
Shock 1st round exit - Sweden lost out to Paraguay
German placing - out in the quarter finals
Tabloid jingoism count - sky high
Theo Walcott - to score two England goals

Any predictions from my remaing three readers?

Classic Worthy

2006-04-12T11:58:00.000+01:00

I have only just had a chance to read some of the match reports from the weekend, and came across this gem from Worthington on losing 2-0 at Preston: "I think that was one of our better away performances".

How anyone can say we're need new management is beyond me.

Worst headline of the year competition

2006-04-06T10:47:00.000+01:00

This week sees the start of the annual thetfordcanaries end-of-season awards. Nominations are now open for the “Worst Football Headline of the Year” award, sponsored by the EDP. Post your nomination in the comments page and we’ll have a vote at the end of the year. A new award will be open for nominations next week.

My nomination is from today’s Pink ‘Un:

“Jarrett sits a loan for Preston”

(The story is that Jason Jarrett, who doesn’t even get in the first team, has to sit in the stand for the game this weekend because of his loan agreement with Preston).

Neil Warnock is not evil

2006-04-05T11:21:00.000+01:00

Various papers have covered Neil Warnock’s plead of guilty as charged for his flicking of the v to Worthy at the Sheffield Utd game at Carrow Rd. It was hardly surprising given the video evidence. He has hardly helped himself by telling the FA, in advance of their decision how much to fine him, that “'If the same circumstances arose I would do the same again”.

Everyone I know really dislikes Neil Warnock, and people generally are quite jubilant when he gets into trouble. I am not so sure it’s a good thing though. I am not saying that Sheffield’s decline from being 20 points ahead to being caught by Leeds isn’t that funny – it is very funny, but don’t we need more people like Neil Warnock in football? So what if he told Worthy to fuck off – we’ve all been doing that this season. And what’s all this fuss about people being offended by the gesture. People are offending by swearing shouldn’t go to football matches.

Neil Warnock may be a bit of a twat, but he is better for football in this country than a clever arsed muppet like Jose Mourinho.

Fin de season

2006-03-31T10:08:00.000+01:00

Last time I complained about Norwich not being able to make the play offs, we stormed to ten points from five games, so I think its time for a moan again. Even with that, I think our season is pretty much over. Confirmation of sorts comes from the Pink ‘Un (where else) who have had an absolute spates of stories on the theme of “Norwich players couldn’t give a shit”. Viz: “Manager defends deflated Canaries”, “Drury: We won’t be throwing in the towel”, “Hughes: We don't lack motivation”, and “Nigel: We're not worthy of play-off place”. Well, they have the “doth protesting too much” nailed down.

At least there’s the world cup.

As I was saying.....

2006-03-14T15:38:00.000Z

Thanks to Tam for pointing out that I did suddenly stop mid sentence in my blow-by-blow account of Saturday’s trip to Leeds. You’ll see that my last mention was of a pub being high quality and that’s the bottom line I am afraid. Blackberry keys are pretty small at the best of time, and after five pints of Deuchars its just down right impossible.

Post the pub, we got a lift to the game by some random Leeds supporters who were very nice, but slightly uncomfortably over nice. They even offered us a lift back to the station after the match, which we were never going to come close to accepting.

Leeds’ ground is wholly unimpressive, being (as so many grounds are these days) resplendent of a mid-90s makeover. Cold concrete and windy alleys are the order of the day, and that massive stand you see on Match of The Day dwarfs the others. Add to that the fact that the ground was only just half full, and you have the makings of a sad and sorry looking stadium. The Leeds fans themselves were piss-poor and the ones nearest us only made noise when their goals actually went in and were quiet apart from that.

The game was a game of three quarters – in that the first 60 and the last 10 minutes saw Norwich (in all fairness) playing very, very badly. Only Green and Doherty were making any real effort, and McVeigh in particular looked totally hopeless. Usually when we play that badly we would be lucky to go in 1-0 down, but Leeds weren’t that much better. Many of the match reports mention that the stadium announcer tried to get the fans going by announcing that Sheffield United were losing, but I was having a piss (see bit about the Deuchars above) at the time, so I didn’t hear it.

The second half didn’t look like it would be much different but Hughes somehow managed to spoon home a shot about 60 minutes in and things suddenly turned up. Hughes almost missed it when he just had the keeper to beat, and how he almost fluffed it I will never know, as he about 6 minutes to slot it past the keeper. Its all effort and no skill with Hughes though. McVeigh then scored about ten minutes later and things really did look good. We were passing quickly and effectively, the support was very loud, and Leeds virtually gave up. But we took our foot off the gas (Worthy making substitutions every three minutes did help keep things smooth), and Leeds took a point with a brilliant free kick at the end.

It was a bit disappointing not to win, but to be honest if you are going to sit back on a one goal lead and let a team like Leeds come at you, it is a big risk – but that’s always been Worthy’s style.

I didn’t expect it to be a good day out at all to be honest, but actually, the pub was great, the ground was amausing, the football was (eventually) pretty good, and I had a great night out in Sheffield that evening, so can’t be too bad. Better than the visit to Luton anyways….

good pub guide to leeds

2006-03-11T14:10:00.000Z

Leeds is still good - anyone visiting here should visit the Adelphi near the station, just over the canal. The feeling in the mcgregor family is that we will do well, but we'll have to wait and se - only an hour to kick off now...

I wear black on the outside, because black is how i feel on the inside

2006-03-11T09:24:00.000Z

Thank you to the hundreds of people who emailed me to ask where I've been for the last few weeks. I've not given up or emigrated to Hammarby, I've just been ill with bird flu. I'm better now and racing north on a GNER train. I have a guardian, some breakfast and lemsip max strength, so everything's going well. The good news is that Mary is still incredibly understanding about me waking her up early on saturday leaving for the football, the bad news is that it looks I will have to endure sitting next to the stroppiest woman in the world all the way to Leeds. She's got the major hump about something and its v boring.

Anyhoo, what's been in the news? Virtually no football that's what. Non-stop Roy Blower and worthyout.co.uk in the pink un and now a 1000 word essay from delia on "Nigel Worthington should never be sacked. Discuss".

I'm not usually the one to say this but I find myself slightly stuck in the middle of this Worthy out debate. Yes, he should be sacked, but what are we supposed to do if the board won't sack him? Some want to accept it and 'rally round' a la delia. Some want to bring the house down a la worthyout.co.uk. I think most fans are of the grin and bear it variety. I'm quite fed up with the whole thing - I don't want to watch Norwich play crap football, but I don't want to spend £100 going halfway round the country to shout 'we want worthy out' for an hour.

I am looking forward to seeing Leeds though. I haven't been there for years and I remember it as a pretty nice town. Its always nice to go to a new ground as well.

Right, back to thos fucking crazy article about a school infringing a kids human rights by not letting him dye his hair (when did human rights stop meaning "don't torture people" and start meaning "let me do whatever the fuck I like"?)

Worthy puts his tin hat on

2006-03-03T13:42:00.000Z

Last night's meeting at St Andrews Hall seems to have gone well, and even gets a positive write-up in the Evening News which is a turn up for the books. Feelings seem to have been running high, and there seems to be a change in tone from Neil Doncaster – with an ominous “I don’t make prediction” response when asked if Worthy would be manager at the end of the season.

Worthy himself is battening down the hatches, telling the EDP that “I have got no intention of resigning,” he said. “I signed a contract with this football club. I am committed to this club, to my job and I will honour that contract.” Things at Stoke could get a bit messy tomorrow, with a protest before the game and a likely protest afterwards too. I wonder whether anyone will notice the football?

Anyone still not sure about what all the fuss is about should read this post from Wrath of the Barclay if you really want to know the feeling among supporters at the moment.

Cole suing NotW over "false privacy"

2006-03-03T13:27:00.000Z

For those that are as interested as I clearly am, you can read more about Ashley Cole’s decision to sue the Sun and NotW here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. His argument is that the papers offered “false privacy” in that they didn’t name him but they dropped so many hints that people on blogs and chat rooms were able to identify him as the person mentioned in the reports. It will be an interesting one if it makes to court.

Ashley Cole is not gay. Fact.

2006-03-02T16:14:00.000Z

I know I have been talking about things of a sexual nature a lot recently, but its interesting. The story rather than the bedroom shenanigans. Anyhoo, for those of you who don’t follow these things, it has widely been alleged on blogs and so on that one of the premiership footballers who has engaged in “homosexual orgies” is Ashley Cole. Cole has now thrown caution to the wind (given he has not been mentioned in any of the newspapers) and announced he is going to sue the News of the World for defamation. This one is literally going to run and run now…

Is Barry Skipper off his head?

2006-03-02T10:00:00.000Z

Barry Skipper is the deputy chairman of Norwich. He is also a non-executive-director of Norwich’s Harrods, Jarrold and Sons. His background in Cadburys and other such food corporations led to him getting a CBE back in the day, for services to industry – but given his role in saving the club from Robert Chase, it could’ve been for services to Norfolk. However, Barry is now in the process of throwing a lifetime of good(ish) work down the shitter with a barmy PR campaign against those fans who want the board to sack Worthington.

Following on from his interview with the Pink Un last week, in which he said he couldn’t understand why fans were getting upset with the board or the management team, he has now given a lurid interview to Radio Norfolk. As well as saying that Worthington is safe in his job, he says that “let's leave all the bother, if we've got to have bother, till we get to the close season”. Leaving aside that it could be too late for any ‘bother’ to make any difference, what does he expect people to do in the meantime? Just sit quietly as the team fails each game?

It is absolutely true that where we are now is totally different to what happened in 1996 with Chase and the chaos that existed them, but as Roy Blower says: “People pay good money to go to football matches and we are trying to give them the opportunity to express where they feel the club is at”. The club just trying to silence people is not going to work.

Just seen this as well: www.worthyout.co.uk. Bit OTT but that’s what its coming to.

Ing Ger Lund

2006-03-02T09:47:00.000Z

Watching the England game last night, there was only one candidate for Quote Of The Night. Here's Graham le Saux:

"The Uruguayan may have been speaking Spanish but the referee's Italian so he'll have known what he meant"

The price of failure

2006-02-28T14:23:00.000Z

The Pink ‘Un reports that season tickets sales are way down on last season, and given the performances people at Fortress Carrow Rd (how sarcastic does that name sound now) its hardly surprising. Eight wins from eighteen games is hardly a fortress style record. In ticket office central, they are putting it down to people being too busy to remember to renew their tickets: “People have busy lives and this may not be their top priority”.

I think it’s probably more likely that people have busy lives and don’t want to spend their spare moments watching a bunch of overpaid brats pissing about for 90 minutes. Its getting that bad – for example, I just virtually had to persuade my brother to let me buy him a ticket for the Leeds match for his birthday. Its not the money that’s the problem with fans, it’s the soul sapping horror of investing time and emotional energy into getting to games to have it thrown back in your face.

Still, its against Leeds, so we’ll have all the fun of the zoo looking round town before the game, so everything’s not lost.

Feedback from Saturday

2006-02-27T10:27:00.000Z

What the papers say

“Crystal Palace crushed Norwich” – Sun

“A convincing rout of Norwich” – Times

“Palace brushed a listless-looking Norwich aside“ – Observer

“Norwich … were nonexistent” - Mirror

“Norwich never had a foothold in the game” - Sportinglife

“[Norwich are] fading fast – the Guardian

“Rocked” – Sunday Times

“Norwich started looking really sorry for themselves” – Independent

“Norwich never defended with any degree of belief” – Pink ‘Un

What the club says

Nigel Worthington: “I wanted us to be compact, tight - but as a team the players didn't carry out their jobs properly today. You can take a horse to water - but you can't force it to drink.”

Director Barry Skipper: “This has been a disappointing season - no one denies that. But then every club that goes up and down - be it Premiership to the Championship or vice-versa - goes through a big change of personnel and it is difficult.”

Adam Drury: “It was from start to finish wasn't it? There was nothing in that that was good, we were all over the place.”

More gay stuff

2006-02-22T17:56:00.000Z

The News of the World followed up last week’s story about gay footballers with more sorry tales about orgies and so on. From the tone, it sounds a bit like they are back tracking a bit on the original story, and its now more of a run of the mill footballers-are-sick-and-out-of-control sort of thing. There is an amazing report on this America "news" website, complete with a picture of a woman’s cleavage for anyone in two minds about the views of the writer.

However, on the up side, the News of the World also reported that Tottenham have become the first club in the premiership to try and tackle homophobia in the ground. According to the report, Spurs will publish a warning in the programme telling fans that homophobic abuse and chanting is unacceptable, and even having a number you can text to alert stewards to the seat number of someone shouting such abuse. There is more coverage of this here, which says that other clubs are going to follow, and that one fan got arrested at a Brighton game earlier in the season for anti-gays abuse. It’s a start I suppose…

Mixed emotions

2006-02-21T16:29:00.000Z

Good result on Saturday, and a corking goal from Huckerby, not that it was easy to actually see it, thanks to the uselessness of ITV’s football coverage. Match reports in the Mirror, Times, Pink ‘Un and Sportinglife all say we ran Derby ragged, and particularly highlight Huckerby’s performance. But what did Worthington have to say about Huckerby’s man of the match game? “I am not happy about his Roy of the Rovers stuff”. What a clown.

That’s the problem with Worthington in charge now. His performance this season (and last if you want to be picky) has been so bad, and people want him to resign so we can have a fresh start so much, that it is virtually at the point where you are in two minds about being happy that we have won. Obviously it would be great if we carry on winning and sneak into the playoffs (which the club still insists in within reach), but the reality is that we won’t get back on track until he has gone. It is just so grim that we have to put up with following the club not being the highlight of the week until he has gone.

Is the Sun run by an anti-gay mafia?

2006-02-17T13:32:00.000Z

Sorry if this is a bit political, but I have lost my temper with the Sun. Serves me right for reading it in the first place I suppose, but there we go. What’s got my goat is the Sun’s campaign against two premiership footballers is one of the worst cases of outright hounding I can remember. For those not familiar, the News of the World published a racey story saying that two footballers, who they couldn’t name for legal reasons, had had a threesome with a gay popstar. The story is a pathetic schoolboy effort (viz: “On me bed, Sony”) and goes into quite a bit of detail.

Now the Sun is now running virtually daily stories repeating the racier bits of the story with more and more hints about the identities of the players. I think they are getting annoyed that no one else has outed them yet. They don’t want to do it themselves because they’ll more than likely get sued, but no serious internet outlet has run with it yet (not that it is stopping the emails flying round).

One of the players has now got their lawyers to write to editors warning them not to publish his name. It is very depressing. Not just because the Sun have slipped ten years back in their attitude to gays, but because the fear these footballers must be feeling is totally justified. The reality is that if they are outed they will be in world of trouble at matches, everyone who has been to a game knows exactly what reaction they will get the first time run out at a game after being outed. I wrote about the FA’s campaign against homophobia here, but I have seen no evidence of it at all. Its time they took homophobia a bit more seriously, otherwise footballers will continue to be under the pressure the Sun is putting these two players under now.

“Another indifferent performance”

2006-02-15T13:59:00.000Z

The EDP had a report on whether Norwich fans would spend Valentines Day with their girlfriends/wives/boyfriends (how PC am I?!) etc or go to the game. I spent it with my girlfriend as I am a nice bloke. However, she is an understanding enough person for me to look up the score on my phone several times during the evening and at 9.30, when 3-0 came up on the screen I had that warm feeling that maybe a corner had been turned in my absence. After all, you can’t win 3-0 without plying some good football. Can you? Apparently, you can.

Even the Pink ‘Un’s match report says that “Norwich supporters had been forced to endure another indifferent performance from their side” before Earnshaw popped up at the end to tap in a couple of goals. Robert Green told the Pink ‘Un that “It wasn't the best of performances - we're under no illusions about that”. Add to the fact that Brighton are an absolutely piss poor outfit, the sending off of one their players for making Huckerby dive over twice in about two minutes, its not exactly an encouraging result.

The way the Pink ‘Un tells it, supporters got “increasingly frustrated” by our inability to break them down towards the end of the game. Apparently, we were only really holding them back at points. Our Man At Carrow Road says that for “increasingly frustrated”, read “going mental”. He says that supporters, particularly from the Snake Pit and the South Stand starting up very loud “worthy out” chants – loud to the point that Greeno literally put his head in his hands. I am all for Worthington getting his P45, but there’s a time and a place.

Anyhoo, the goals sound goodish – especially Earnshaw’s last: “particularly satisfying” according to Sporting Life’s match report. And Darren tells me that Greeno, Zesh and Safri all played well again. As Green said last night: “So we've kept a clean sheet, scored three goals and all without playing well - what more do you want?”

The end

2006-02-11T22:28:00.000Z

Home just in time for match of the day. There were lots of chelsea fans on the train being gobby, sexist and generally superior. There hundreds of them at kings cross sining their mockney chav hearts out. Chelsea are by some distance my least favourite team in the country (and have been for years in case you think I've got something against russian mafiosi buying the league), but this time I enjoyed hearing them try and sing the blue flag through gritted teeth. I'm looking forward to seeing middlesbore's goals tonight. Its been a long day and it'll be a nice consolation.

As I am home, I have moved on from the crackberry to the laptop and can put the photos I took online - they here. Particularly look at this picture of Jon looking pissed off, and this picture of my breakfast. Also, not football related, but this shopping list Jon picked up somewhere in Nottingham is absolute class.

Homeward bound

2006-02-11T21:28:00.000Z

The worst thing about losing away from home isn't the loss of three points, its not enough the gloating of the home fans (much quieter in the second half). The worst thing is the trip home. I won't be in til half ten at the earliest and its crap being on a train trying to read or sleep after the disappointment of losing (added with the beers).

I have just noticed I've been saying 'losing' rather than 'drawing'. That's definietly what it feels like. We played very, very badly throughout the game. We had a lot of possesion but did nothing with it. Even after mcveigh and mackenzie came one and the tempo went up there still no imagination.

It is very frustrating at the moment. Its ok to lose every match in the premiership but to scrape a draw against hull, who were very, very, very ordinary - its just so frustrating. And the train I'm on is full of wankers....

full time

2006-02-11T17:28:00.000Z

I was about to banging on about how we thoroughly deserved to get beat when somone (its hard to tell who) nicked in to score at the back corner. The players went mad, like they'd won the game, but it really wasn't all that. We had an amazing amount of possesion again in the second half and didn't make any of it pay. Earnshaw picked up but the game only really sparked when leon came on.

One interesting feature of the second half was the outbreak of rows and arguments and in one case almost a fight, over whether the (large number of) fans who were calling for worthington to be sacked should wait til the end of the game to do it. Worthington's a joker and should be sacked if he won't resign, but I had some sympathy with those people saying we should get behind the team.

That this discussion was an interesting feature of the 2nd half says it all. We're in a pub getting some more beers in now. Waiting for the train and trying hard not to get carried away with being pissed off.

half time

2006-02-11T16:28:00.000Z

Well, it was cartainly worth the journey - one nil down at half time, the atmosphere of a labour party conference and the cold of a svalbarg islands winters day. We've had 75% of the possesion but its all been in our own half. Green and zesh are both playing well but no one else is doing anything. Earnshaw is playing he's worth £3.5m of fuck all and huckerby's playing like he's just been told off for being a very naughty boy. Top that off with some very very quiet norwich fans (including a couple of idoit 'you're in our seats' clowns, who looked like they'd left school with 25 tesco point between them) and you're looking down the barrell of a grim trip to the hell hole of east riding. Can't say I'm surprised.

kick it off

2006-02-11T15:28:00.000Z

In the ground now, only just made it for the kick off but here we are. Hucks is starting and zesh is playing so maybe we'll se something. Of note: the fround is good and the hull are pretty loud - best this season.

sitting on the dock of an estuary

2006-02-11T14:28:00.000Z

Now down at the docks having a sweet pint of bitter (yes, I sadi sweet). Beginning to get nervous about making it to the ground on time. Jon, as ever, is uber confident ('just 20 minutes away') but I bet we end up running there.

mystic jon

2006-02-11T12:28:00.001Z

Right, onto football at last and thr consensus seems to be that we're in for a hiding. Widespread concern that peter thorne is absolute shit accompanied by disillusionment with worthington generally. All in all we're not hopeful. Mind you, we'll not let it spoil the day - we're off to see the humber bridge now...!

class

2006-02-11T12:28:00.000Z

We're (me, jon and tam) are currently in preberry's, Hull (presumably only) tapas bar drinking coffee and eating nachos. Its a really nice place, seems very removed from the usual football experience. Beer's on its way with my chicken salad so its not too far removed. Starting to get the nerves now. Travelling all this way really does increase the desperation to see a win.

phillip larkin: what a wanker

2006-02-11T11:57:00.000Z

Three beers in now and things are starting to err on the side of degenerating slightly. However, we're still managing to have a relatively intellectual conversation. I say intellectual because we're discussing poet person philip larkin and his poetry, and I say relatively because we're discussing the fact that he had a "substansial" porno collection when he died and that he stipulated that his diaries be burned on his death. Oh, in case anyone's worried, we're discussing larkin because he's from hull, rather than because of his interest in porn. Obv.

beer me

2006-02-11T10:57:00.000Z

10.48 - first beer of the day. Jon has joined us on the train and is telling me about his daughters first words: 'mole' and 'hiya'. I'm feeling old but at least we're still drinking early doors. When its the first thermos of the day at 10.48 I'll get worried.

trains are boring

2006-02-11T10:25:00.000Z

I wish I lived in the future where trains took 20 minutes to get anywhere you wanted to get. 20 minutes is the perfect time for a journey. A nice sit down, one can, a flick through the paper. Perfect. It is worth reading christian o'connel's article in guardian sport though - its on football chants, inspired by a german team's fans buying inflatble willies and dressing them in their rivals colours. Great gag.

In other news, the pink un has printed the 93rd article of the week telling us how robbie earnshaw is about to score 12 goals in one game. Hmmm.

9.30 IN THE MORNING

2006-02-11T09:39:00.000Z

Getting out of bed in the morning is usually tough. Getting out of bed at 8am on saturday morning is tougher. And getting out a warm bed leaving a warm girlfriend alseep, well that's a really hard. But here we are, on the train out of kings x at 9.30. Uppercrust bagguette? Check. Copies of Sun, Times and Guardian? Check. Big coffee to keep me going? Check. Beer for elevenses? Check. Deep dark feeling of an impending day of depressing false starts? Check!

beer by beer commentary

2006-02-11T09:25:00.000Z

Using the technological aid of a crackberry, I'm going to try a invision commentary on today. It probably won't work but who'll notice?

To Hull and back

2006-02-10T11:18:00.000Z

What does a Norwich supporter need after a grim week at work, and a grim week reading about turmoil in the home country? Why – a trip to Hull of course! Famous for, erm, famous for a bridge and a fat Deputy Prime Minister, Hull is home to Hull City Football Club – a.k.a. The Tigers. According to Wikipedia, Hull has won such awards as the Crap Town’s of Britain award for being crap, and the Channel 4 “worst place to live in the UK” gong. The News of the World called Hull “hell on earth”, so maybe it’s not that bad there.

The Football Ground Guide to Hull’s stadium throws up some alarming things. Firstly, there apparently no pubs anywhere near the ground that serves away fans. In the past, this has meant a massive trek to some god forsaken place on the outskirts of a town, full to the rafters of thirsty fans in yellow (cf Bolton last year) or a traipse around town getting spat at by the locals (cf Rotherham in 2002). Secondly, the guide says, “there is an element of Hull support that feel the need to berate away supporters throughout the game”. Could be annoying, unless they are as thick as the Birmingham supporters a few years ago that sang the Ambrosia song at us. Yes, we were offended that they thought Norwich is in Devon. Lastly, the guide says, “Please note that the stadium has been designated a no smoking and a no standing area. The latter decree does seem a little ridiculous. This has led to some unpleasant confrontations between away fans and stewards, so you have been warned.” Great stuff. When we were at Derby, the stewards there were a joke, and threw some guy out for basically looking at them funny. It caused a right stink and although it took our minds off the shite performance on the pitch it is still a pain in the arse.

However! News that should cheer all Norwich fan boarding their horse and trap for the trek north: Worthington may put Peter Thorne in the starting line up! You’ve got to laugh, otherwise you might cry/riot/give up etc.

Drink feck drink

2006-02-07T16:18:00.000Z

As I was aptly saying yesterday, having a kick of at 11am does not stop proper football fans from getting into the mood before the game. Funny email from Darren last night…

We were going with a friend's sister who agreed to give us (Jermain, Willy
Morgan and myself) a lift for petrol money. (Vastly cheaper than the next
alternative of £65 taxi) got to LLoyds No.1 bar for about 9 in the AM, drank 3
pints of Stella Artois. Unfortunately for my sense of balance I hadn't eaten
anything so I felt a bit Tramp pissed when we left for the game and hence had
quite a laugh. Scum fans were loud, and I mean LOUD for about 5 minutes then
silent as we shut them up by being the loudest I'd heard the Barclay for some
time. Then came our goal and, for the first time since we scored the second one
against Man U there were proper goal celebrations . Running around like a loon
falling over on top of lots of drunk people. don't really care to remember the
rest though. The abridged version is: We were proper shite and although their
winner was a cheating hand ball they deserved it.

Clearly, having the game kick off in mid afternoon like in normal countries would be for the best.

£3.5million worth of insight

2006-02-07T12:19:00.000Z

Robbie Earnshaw has given his verdict on the way back for City. “The main thing is we need to start winning”, he told the Pink ‘Un. He didn’t go on to reveal that shit is smelly but he might as well have. As for the specifics, he told the paper, “I think we just need to play. With the players we have got, we didn't play. It was only here and there we played. We should have kept the ball a lot more and actually played and put people in when it's on.”

Earnie for player manager anyone?

Sunday bloody Sunday

2006-02-06T16:01:00.000Z

Things we learnt from yesterday’s horror show:

1) Worthington has forgotten how to manage. The team were a real mess yesterday, and – as much as it pains me to say – Ipswich deserved to win. In fact, it would have been a very lucky Norwich who came away with a point. Worthy threw Johansson and Earnshaw into the team, despite only having been at the club for a week, and they played accordingly. To be fair them both, van Nistolrooy and Michael Owen couldn’t have bagged too many goals with the service on show yesterday. But what do you expect if it is Fleming who is providing most of the crosses? The midfield looked very, very ropey, except for Safri, who continues to be excellent. The one bright spark from the entire shambles was Zesh Rehman. Apart from his piss-poor performance in front of goal, his defending and ability to get forward was really impressive. Hopefully he won’t lose his skills after being trained on by Worthington for a few weeks.

2) Some people apparently call the Norwich–Ipswich derby the “Old Farm” derby. Its like the old firm in Glasgow, but in the countryside – d’ya geddit?! What a nation…

3) Having kick offs at 11am does not, contrary to police intuition, stop fans from getting drunk before the match. I was in the pub at 11 sharpish and ploughed steadily through to full time and a nice kip when I got home. Darren on the other hand, stoically made it to the pub at 9am and sounded pretty well lubricated by kick off.

4) The term “bragging rights” can indeed get more annoying the more you hear it. The first time I heard the phrase, I thought it was the most patronising and irritating phrase – the kind that people who play hockey would use. I thought that it couldn’t get more irritating but each time I hear it, I do indeed get more annoyed by it.

5) There is an impasse at the top of the club. Worthington is quoted across the board saying he won’t resign, and Neil Doncaster is on the record saying that the board will never sack him. It looks a bit like there is a log jam – and it isn’t impressing the fans, as the 150-500 (depending on who you ask) who gathered outside the club after the game to call for Worthy’s head will tell you.

Still, not to worry – we’re all off to Hull next week…

BBC is interesting shocker

2006-02-02T11:22:00.000Z

BBC Sport online has an interesting article this morning. Yes, I know – not a sentence you read regularly. They have a week in the life of two agents, who look after Robbie Earnshaw. The interesting thing is that they say Norwich only fancied paying £3.5m for Earnshaw after we had sold Ashton – that we thought £3.5m was a rip off until we were desperate for someone to replace Deano. Apart from that, its not that interesting, but its better than talking about the inane, soulless drivel on the Pink Un site about Earnshaw.

How much for a striker in old money?

2006-02-01T13:10:00.000Z

Imagine how someone from 1910 would feel if they were transported a hundred years into the future and asked to pay 70p for a loaf of bread or £3 for a pint, instead of thruppence and a shilling. It’d be strange. They'd feel ripedoff. I imagine it is the same sort of feeling I get whenever I go to the cinema with the ladyfriend and get asked to pay £7 for some popcorn and a sprite. I feel like I am paying 2045 prices in 2005.

Well, that’s also how Nigel Worthington must be feeling today after he got mugged for a stonking £3.5million in return for Robbie Earnshaw. It’s an unreal amount of money for a player not good enough to make the West Brom first team. It is also a strange signing for Norwich to make in the first place. Worthington’s excellent impression of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (“Give me people that are young, poor and hungry – and have no feelings”) is spot on – why buy players over the hill or on their way down? Earnshaw is, according to West Brom fans, a lazy, arrogant muppet. Not exactly who we’ve been searching for.

For the record, we have also bought in a guy called Johansson from Charlton who is completely clueless by all accounts (although he scored a cracker against us at the Valley last year), and someone called Zesh Rehman from Fulham. He is one of those players labelled as a “utility player”, which for those not in the know means, “a player plays in whatever position is free but is shit in all of them”.

Things are not now looking too good for this season. We are lying ten points out of the play off zone, and even the ever-optimistic Pink ‘Un says that our “faltering play-off hopes suffered another body blow” after last’s 4-0 slap at Reading.

A complete and utter bastard

2006-01-30T12:40:00.000Z

Interesting article in this weekend’s Sunday Mirror about Leon’s home arrangements over the last few months. It doesn’t really need anything to be added, except that his wife now views him as a "complete and utter bastard". We also learn that he is currently earning a measly £3,000 every single week for being injured.

It is also an excuse to print a picture of Leon giving “something for the ladies” (his own words).

The economics of crazy offers

2006-01-23T10:31:00.000Z

When I was first went to University, I wanted to do some economics to add to my main degree. I went to the economics people and asked them and they were friendly and enthusiastic but when they stumbled upon my c grade maths GCSE, I was quickly told to piss off and never darken their door again. All this may explain why I don’t really understand how football markets work. I know there is some sort of demand thing going on – which is why West Ham wanting to buy Ashton contributed to the cost. I know that Ashton wanting to leave must have had something to do with Norwich agreeing to sell. There has been a lot of talk about long-term investment. Paul Aldridge, the West Ham managing director, talks the prudent talk – he is quoted in the Times saying, “We feel that, at 22, he represents an investment for years to come”.

However, all this talk of demand and supply and interest and investment still doesn’t really explain how, for the love of all that is holy, West Ham’s manager managed to persuade his money-men that Ashton is worth over £7million. It is a truly staggering sum of money for someone who has only ever scored seven goals in the premiership. The massively inflated cost of the transfer must be mainly down to West Ham’s desperation, rather than a real-value estimation of his worth. If Ashton settles in quickly and builds on the promise he has shown so far, then it will be a wise investment. However, it is more likely that this is a dead cat bounce from football’s turn of the century tulipomania.

To add insult to injury, Green decided to get everyone worried about him too – the Telegraph’s match report says that he threw his shirt into the crowd at the end of the game. However, rather than being a final farewell, he says he was frustrated by the last minute loss, “It was just pure frustration. I stand closer to the crowd than anyone else in the game - everything they feel I feel as well. I just wanted to say, 'I know how you're feeling'”.

We are where we are though (literally true), and the big issue now should be what are we going to do with that big fat cheque burning a hole in Nigel’s skinny fit tracky bottoms. Neil Doncaster seems pretty clear on the matter: “The only thing you can do in these circumstances is to make as much of the money as you can available to the manager to continue the long-term building process - and that is what we intend to do”. Too fucking right Neil. Let’s start spending.

Ashton’s school trip to London - dramatic update or possible bullshit

2006-01-19T13:42:00.000Z

The Daily Mail (before you ask, I found it on the train, I didn’t buy it) is reporting that there is a split on the board about whether to let Ashton go nightclubbing in the East End.

The report, gratuitously illustrated by a picture of a well-lubricated Delia, and with the headline “Let’s be keeping you!” (GFEDDIT??!!), says that “it is Norwich’s policy that no player would be sold without a unanimous decision of the Board” and suggests that it is Delia who is blocking the bid. The report also says that the block is causing apoplexy at West Ham, because they were told they could have Ashton for £7million at the Norwich – West Ham FA Cup match two weeks ago.

The last para suggests that Delia is taking the piss a bit: “West Ham … have been told that a further £1million of [scrap iron] may change the minds of the Carrow Road Board”.

When they come up with that £1million, hopefully Delia will find another excuse to put her foot down, even if it means pissing people off at West Ham and on the Board. After all, you can’t make a nice Victoria sponge without breaking some eggs.

Hearsay

2006-01-19T09:59:00.000Z

Nobody seems to have a firm idea about what is happening with Ashton, but here’s a full break down of the rumours:

Guardian – West Ham are offering £7million of gear off a rag and bone cart, but will “miss out” on signing him because Norwich are sticking to a price tag of £8million.

BBC – Norwich have already turned down a formal £7million offer and are trying to scrape together some old railings to up the bid.

Pink ‘Un – Worthington will buy Cardiff striker Cameron Jerome with £3.5million of an Ashton sale (the possible problem being that Jermome has the same agent as Damien Francis).

SportingLife – West Ham manager Alan Pardew will get the extra money off his old man to up the bid and prise Ashton to the delights of roasting and cheap nightclubs in London.

This isn’t getting any more fun.

Swedish update

2006-01-18T16:46:00.000Z

Literally everyone in Britain is talking about Scandinavia’s Royal League, so its time for an update on Hammarby’s progress through the tournament. Currently lying second in Group 1, Bajen need to take something from the game against Norway’s IK Start, but the big match will be up against Vålerenga, also from Norway.

Another three points will guarantee Hammarby a place in the quarterfinals, but they could still qualify regardless given that (slightly farcically) the top two plus two of the three best-placed third placed teams go through. It’s not much of a group stage when 8 teams go through and only 4 teams get knocked out, but these Scandinavians do things their own way.

It’s all a bit strung out too – the quarters are at the end of the month, but the semis aren’t until the end of March and the final is in April. I think I’ll lead a group of Hammarby supporting canaries if Hammarby make it through…

Worthy’s chance card – advance to “Go”

2006-01-17T11:17:00.000Z

All those coy eyes and wearing of tight tracky bottoms seem to have paid off for Worthington: today’s Guardian says that West Ham have offered him £7million worth of old scrap iron for Dean Ashton. It seems that there’ll only be one outcome. You do the math – what with Worthington consistently saying we’d only let him go for more than the £6million worth of heroin Man City offered us in the summer, Ashton muttering about wanting to perform at the highest level etc. It’s not looking good.

As for the rest of our season, if the deal goes through, Worthington said it all last week: “For us to have half a chance of working towards the play-offs, Dean Ashton needs to be at this club." The problem now is what will the club do with the cash. £7million can go a long way on the transfer market, but with Worthington the sole signatory on the cheque book it isn’t looking too good.

UPDATE:

Apparently, we are building a massive hotel complex out the back of Carrow Rd, so that'll clears up any questions about where the Ashton transfer money is going. At least Worthy won't be wasting it on any shit players.

Journalists on trial, exhibit 93f

2006-01-14T12:23:00.001Z

The pink 'un has the headline "It's Hucker-glee" on the Plymouth match report.

More on agents

2006-01-14T12:23:00.000Z

Mike Newell may well have done football a big favour with his rant on agents earlier in the week. I hope he follows it through. Given all the fuss, it is timely that the league has published the table of agent fees paid by the clubs over the year. Unlike in the league proper,Norwich have stormed into second place by racking up a stonking £438,000 bill.

Lots of people have had a pop at the club for spending that much, but its hardly their fault - its more the agents themselves. They create the transfers, the wage inflation, and the massive fees themselves. However the clubs don't have to just take it. They should be enforcing stricter rules and placing limits on wages and the fees agents take.

The thing that really winds me up when I watch Norwich lose isn't so much the loss itself, but knowing that the suits and scumbag agents take such a big slice of the overpriced ticket I had to shell out on. There's a great article in the Guardian today about FC United. Norwich is a basically good club, but what has happened at some premiership clubs makes you wonder how long the fans will put up with it.

(Apologies for the lack of links - I am writing this on a train to York and my technological ability, good as it is to be able to blog from a train, is not up to adding links. Use google if you're that interested!)

How football stories are related

2006-01-12T10:50:00.000Z

Today, there are two interesting stories in the papers:

Firstly, Eminem look-alike Robert Green’s agent says that he would welcome a move to Portsmouth. He told Sky Sports News last night that Green, “would be interested in resuming his career at the highest level”. According to the Pink ‘Un, the agent, one Andy Evans, “hopes they can come to a mutually acceptable agreement before the end of the January transfer window”. The Guardian and Sun also has pieces on the move.

Secondly, Luton’s manager Mike Newell has kicked off about corruption in football caused by the power of agents. He’s not messing about either. “The thing that annoys me is agents get paid for bringing a player to a club. If you buy a house, you don’t pay the estate agent, the sellers do that. I don’t understand why all the big clubs just let them get away with it.” He doesn’t stop there. “What you find, and I might be a bit near the knuckle here, is a lot of people involved with the agents are getting back-handers. That’s without question.”

Now, far be it for me to call Green’s agent Andy Evans a lying corrupt scumfuck – but it is time that agents in general were taken down a peg or two. Darren Huckerby’s famous sacking of his agent when he tried to block the move to Norwich is the model to live up to I think.

At least people have stopped talking about Dean Ashton leaving. Its only 445 hours until the transfer window closes…

FA Cup (sponsored by Mickey Mouse): Norwich 1 West Ham 2

2006-01-09T15:52:00.000Z

The well-worn path to early cup exit was stumbled along again yesterday, as Norwich tumbled out to West Ham for the second time in two years. With a half-arsed sigh, City went down to a 2-1 defeat with a McVeigh penalty (by all accounts totally unwarranted). The reports generally say that it was a dullish game, but the Pink ‘Un stands out for the way it ‘cleverly’ spins Worthington’s use of 5 teenagers in the starting line-up. According to the paper, this isn’t proof (if ever we needed it) that Worthington doesn’t give a crap about the cup – no, this was a clever way of “blooding” some of the academy players. Nice one. Earlier this year, Worthington tried to keep a straight face while telling journalists that he wanted to go far in the League Cup. This time, he couldn’t be arsed, and told SportingLife, “you asked me what I would prefer, a place in the play-off final or a place in the FA Cup final? I would say play-off final every time”. Well worth Norwich supporters shelling out their cash for cup match tickets then Nigel?

Cheap as chips

2006-01-04T12:18:00.000Z

Yes, its that tiresome, painful time of year again – it’s the transfer window. It is such a relief that in the dull down-time after Christmas, the FA has given us the gift of watching a bunch of middle aged managers wheeler deal their way to waste our money. This year is now different, with Norwich having signed tall but useless Dickson Etuhu from Preston for half a million of the supporter’s English Pound Sterling. We have also put pen to paper and agreed to spend cash on lining the pockets of teenage sensation Rossi Jarvis by rewarding his no goals from three starts this season with a professional contract.

It’s likely that we’ll a few more crap midfielders coming in to join the throng (is that the plural of crap midfielder?) already signed by Worthy last summer, but the real news of this joyful period of splurging is whether Ashton will go or stay. Wigan’s Paul Jewell is pretty clear, telling no-one in particular that “with the price they're asking, it's silly money as they don't want to sell him”. Now Portsmouth are sneaking into the act with an apparent offer of £7million for Ashton’s services. That’s a lot of money if you aren’t a Russian crook, and if we had a manager capable of spending it, it may be worth the club considering. But given we’d just buy 8 mediocre has-beens I think we be better off sticking with Deano.

Premature celebration

2006-01-03T12:18:00.000Z

I spoke too soon…

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!

2006-01-02T16:31:00.000Z

What a difference a holiday makes. Just two short weeks ago we were in such depths of despair that certain unnamed numpties where openly discussing going to see Nottingham Forest instead of the mighty canaries. Before Christmas I said I thought 7 points from the Christmas games would be nice but I couldn't have imagined that we'd take 15 points from a possible 15. But that's what happened. Over my Christmas sojourn out of London, city took Crewe, Southampton, Sheffield United and Burnley to bits. Then, while I was tucked away in snowy Manchester we dispatched Leicester city. It seems odd that the last time I saw them play we were in such a mess at Derby.

Christmas is not usually a fun time to be a Norwich fan and I busied myself making plans to enjoy Christmas in other ways - mainly in heading to the Lincolnshire badlands for a festive visit to my girlfriend's folks. [Speaking of which, M should from here on in should be known as statto for her Christmas observation that Norwich had won their first back to back games of the season, something I hadn't spotted despite being a lifelong football supporter and her being very much brand new to the whole thing]. It was a great trip and included some world class presents and some world class turkey cooking (if I say so myself) but the whole thing was made even better by the inability of Norwich to a lose game.Five wins on the trot has to bring us back to Worthington, who has copped a lot of stick this season. Five wins does not a great manager make, especially coming off the back of such terrible form.

However, the point should be that if he has managed to clear up the problems (which I thought were mainly of morale rather than tactics) then the need to remove Worthy is also cleared up. I don't really like Worthington, I don't think he has enough passion, or enough vision (especially in the transfer market) but credit where it’s due, we have turned the season around in a very short space of time. Let's hope 2006 is another 2004 rather than a 2006. Or something.

What the papers say - Christmas special

2005-12-19T10:39:00.000Z

“Norwich were wonderful” – The Guardian

“[Ashton] rediscovered his goalscoring touch with a vengeance” – Independent

“An inspired fightback” – The Sun

“Pure magic” – Pink ‘Un

“Stylish” – The Times

“The home side … dominated” – BBC

“would not be out of place back in the Premiership” – Telegraph

“Norwich produced a mesmeric performance” – The Observer

“[Southampton] collapsed in front of Ashton’s onslaught” – Sunday Times

Thanks to my comment on Friday pointing out how long it is (was) since Ashton had bothered to score a goal, the big lad was fired up on Saturday and put Southampton on their back with three apparently quite scrappy goals. Three goals there were though, and all of a sudden Norwich fans are looking forward to the traditionally barren Christmas season. Who’d of thought it eh?

Norwich have now reached the dizzy heights of 13th place. Over Christmas we will be facing Sheffield United (away), Burnley (home), Leicester (away) and Preston North End (home). Now, I am not Alan Hansen, but I reckon we can take 7 or 8 points from that little lot, putting is, potentially mind, up in 4th or 5th place come my next day at work on the 3rd of January.

Two other factors could mean that we could get the Christmas present of Deano being a Norwich player for the play off push. Worthy has been issuing tougher and tougher statements about selling Ashton (“But I'll say it again and again, unless there is a very substantial offer on the table he won't be going anywhere”). There is also the shock admission that Ashton has been seeing a shrink. Presumably referred to him by Mackenzie (allegedly, etc and so on).

Ho ho ho!

Chicken oriental

2005-12-16T11:13:00.000Z

Mackenzie is back fit and according to an interview he is, ahem, raring to go: “I am hungrier than ever and I need to be fed”. So those vicious rumours about him being a bit emotionally fragile were totally wide of the mark then. That’s good to see. It looks like he won’t be fit for the Southampton game tomorrow though, which means the mighty Peter Thorne (goals: none) will continue upfront with Ashton (goals in last 10 game: none, bids from big prem teams: 6). The bright news is that Huckerby should be back to amble around with his hands on his hips, so we should be ok.

A genuine bit of bright news is that Yousef has said he won’t be leaving in the tranbsfer window – and apparently it’s all down to status quo. “I don't know any Moroccan player in England who has got the fans behind them like this so I was glad to see something like that - things like the Moroccan flag in the stand and singing the song for myself. That has helped me to make the decision to sign”. I don’t know of any other Moroccan players in England full stop, but hey – I am not complaining.

You couldn’t make it up

2005-12-09T09:44:00.000Z

Being an inarticulate person, I am used to words failing me, but I am spluttering like a victim of a US army gas attack at this, which appeared on the official club site yesterday morning. Headlined “Ashton price must be right”, the club has set the lights to green for Ashton – our best player since Chris Sutton – to leave the club in the transfer window. Worthington is quoted in the piece denying that the club will be “forced” to sell Ashton. He goes on though. Gyrating in a sports casual v-neck, he issues a “come and get me, big boys” plea to the Premiership’s managers: “We will only sell Dean Ashton if the price is right for Norwich City. Everyone has a price.”

Unsurprisingly the reaction to this act of none too subtle capitulation has been less than warm and Worthy is sounding increasingly desperate in his mutterings to the local press, telling the Pink Un today that, “I will fight tooth and nail to keep my job”, and saying that, “I've got a good job and I love that job and I'll do anything I can to keep that job.” Before anyone who who had to endure Luton, or QPR, or Derby, or any of the other shameful scenes this season gets upset, Worthy has words of comfort: “There's no one hurting more than myself, the staff and the players and we will be doing everything we can to turn matters around on the pitch.” Well, fuck me – I feel bad for complaining now.

On a brighter note – I am taking the ladyfriend back to Norwich this weekend for a spot of civilised Christmas shopping. We may even take a bus round Heartsease so she can see where I was made. On second thoughts, that’s not a brighter note at all…

I’m a manager, get me out of here

2005-12-07T11:50:00.000Z

Worthington is looking down the barrel of his last few days in charge if people power works anymore.

A) In response to NCISA’s call for Worthy to go, Neil Doncaster said, “We continue to care deeply about what Norwich City supporters think”.

B) The Evening News’ online poll currently has 70.95% in favour him going, with just 20.75% opting to give him more time.

Vote here.

Dean “Keano” Ashton’s video nasty

2005-12-06T10:56:00.000Z

Following Saturday’s utterly, utterly dire performance at Derby few people are willing to listen to anyone leaping to the defence of Worthy. However, a Dean Ashton outburst in the EDP today is worth hearing out. Ashton has been the only player I have seen this season to work hard in every single game he has played in, so he deserves to be heard. And he doesn’t hold back.

Labelling the team a “soft touch”, he says, “It's getting a bit boring saying 'Oh, unlucky, it didn't quite go our way'. We have got to make it go our way. We have got to look at each other as a team … It was all too easy for [Derby] and we have got to start looking at ourselves”. On Worthy himself, he said, “You can't keep saying that the manager is not good enough, he's not doing this, he's not doing that. The players have got to look at themselves and we know that we have got to do better.”

That hasn’t done anything keep Radical Roy Blower of the Norwich City Independent Supporters Association down. He has issued a pretty tough statement calling on the Board to sack Worthy. Anyone who knows Roy Blower will be aware that usually goes out of his way not to annoy the Board. The full statement is here.

It is beginning to feel like it is only a matter of time before the Board makes a move.

Sweden update

2005-12-05T12:17:00.000Z

This is an update from this.

I know lots of you have been waiting with baited breath, but here, at last, are the photos from Sweden. Particularly look out for the fans beers (made by Hammarby supporters club for the profits to go on away trips), the pic of me drinking beer in the stand (while standing on a terrace), mass brawls and flare throwing at the ice hockey (see pic) and the great defensive tactics in play at the Bandy.

If anyone is interested in the non-football related Swedish parts of my trip (as if), then you have to look here. Particularly interesting (if you like that sort of thing is the bust of Tage Erlander, the view of Stockholm City hall and Sweden’s own tube decorations.

What is to be done?

2005-12-05T12:12:00.000Z

I have got to admit that I had written quite a long piece about how bad the Derby game was, how the inevitable piss-poor performance felt like a personal insult and how it is clearer than ever that the buck has to stop at the manager’s door, but then I went and read Wrath of the Barclay’s front page and thought it’d be far better just to link to it. So read this, and pray that Delia has the guts to do the right thing.

For what it is worth, the trip to Derby was pretty good fun. It included:

- going to a German market in the centre of town and had a tankard of German lager. Jokes about the war never do get boring do they?

- visiting one of my best mates who I haven’t seen in ages; he is a hilarious guy who also works in politics but for the other side. There’s not many people you can talk about US presidential elections ads from the 1960s while getting pissed up and have a laugh.

- laughing / shouting at the appalling, appalling stewarding in action. They threw some harmless (well, harmless enough) lads out, and threw out some bloke who was sat literally on his own doing nothing. It was the worst stewarding I have seen for years.

- eating three sausage rolls to cope with the poor lager (vegetarian based produce for t’brother)

- visiting my beautiful niece who has now reached the grand age of 8 months.

Having said that the weekend was good fun, it is obviously a bit sad to spend £60 on going to a football match but have nothing at all good to say about it.

Money, money, money

2005-11-30T13:17:00.000Z

Following Saturday’s heroic fight back against the mighty Coventry (read this for fuller rant from WOTB), Neil Doncaster has come out with a classic vote of confidence to beat all previous votes of confidence. Over the last few weeks, the board seems to have become a little agitated at the criticism levelled, which says that we can’t sack Worthy because he is on a 5 year contract and it will cost us nbig bucks to give him the heave-ho. Not so says Doncaster. In today’s Pink Un he cheerily says that Worthy is on a rolling 12 month contract, so all the talk of the big financial costs involved in sacking him are rubbish. Bet that cheered Worthy up no end over the breakfast table with Mrs Worthington. The contract was signed after we got promoted and effectively lasts 12 months from each day, hence the “rolling” – clever eh? Anyhoo – Doncaster says this is a good thing as it gives flexibility and doesn’t need to renewed all the time. However, he does say “When do we look at Nigel's contract again? Only if one party ever wants to take it out of the drawer and says 'I want to discuss the contract . . .'”. That’ll be after we thumped 4-0 at Derby then?

What’s new pussycat?

2005-11-25T13:02:00.000Z

I am happy to say that I missed my flatmate’s birthday to plaster on a smile and plough my way through 90 minutes of horseshit last night. And what low quality horseshit it was too. In his post match comments, Worthington said that we were unlucky not to win the game, but being a glass-half-empty sort of guy, I thought we were lucky to get ten minutes of high quality attacking football to go along with the 80 minutes of pathetic, lethargic, lazy football we saw in the rest of the game. Roll on Derby next week.

For what it is worth, Millwall’s ground is appalling. It was half empty, and the Millwall fans were about an intimidating as a star wars convention discussion group on tickling. I thought that in the circumstances, the Norwich support was pretty good. Not the best it has been this season but better than most teams take away.

The support continues to be pretty stoic, with the pink un claiming that we are taking 3000 to the Coventry at the weekend. Coventry, as people will know, is not somewhere I like going so I wont be one of the 3000. The best thing to say about Coventry is that it is the site of a nice cathedral and Warwick university. If that’s the best you can say about a town, you should steer clear.

In other, slightly more exciting news, Hammarby got off to a flying start in the Scandinavia Home Nations Cup this week with a 4-2 win over Norwegian no-hopers IK Start. As I don’t speak the local lingo, I am still struggling to discover the point of this league, but it is fun to follow anyway…

I have seen the future, and it works

2005-11-22T20:43:00.000Z

Usually when I come back from a holiday in Sweden it is not that fun to get back to blighty. But aside from the lovely chocolate cake I am currently feasting on made by my ladyfriend, the three points against Luton certainly softens the blow. From what I can make out from the match reports in the papers, and from Our Man At Carrow Rd, it was more that Luton were crap than Norwich were great, but hey, its three points and it puts us in 15th place.

The big news of the week was the sporting frenzy that took place in Sweden. They do things a little differently over there, and each sports club has teams playing football, hockey, speedway and so on. My friend Fredrik took me along to see a few matches for Hammarby, and it was a bit a of a rollercoaster…

Football: Lee Baxter

Hammarby IF have qualified for the Royal League this year (a sort of home nations cup) and had a warm up game against local lower league team Väsby. It was free to get in and around 500 people turned up. Things to know about Hammarby football include: 1) the supporters club motto is 'edere purgare vomere' (latin for eat, shit, vomit); 2) the supporters club have their own beer which is widely available and the profits are used to subsidise away travel; 3) they shout (in Swedish) 'bum, idiot, peasant, lee baxter' instead of our 'you're shit ahhh'. (lee baxter is the goalkeeping son of aik's former coach); 5) you can drink beer while watching the game, not downstairs in the bar, but actually in the stand. All in all, and given the small numbers there, the atmosphere was pretty impressive and really ramps ups for big games, I’m told.

Ice Hockey: I predict a riot

Next up was Hammarby IF in the ice hockey. I have never before been to an ice hockey match so didn’t really know what to expect. I don’t know how they do these things in other countries but Swedes go mental at ice hockey. Jumping around, fighting with the other fans, fighting with the police, drinking alcohol free beer, they've got the lot. It’s a really strange game too, very exciting but also strangely intermittent. The fighting was unreal, I've never seen fighting inside a ground before. It kicked off very suddenly down the front and then the on-stand-by-riot-police also appeared from nowhere. No one seemed to get too hurt which was nice but given I was expecting organ music and cheerleaders at my first match, a big brawl was a bit of a surprise. It all kicked off later in the game when a balcony overlooking us Hammarby fans started showering chairs, abuse and lunch trays on us. It wasn't that threatening though as crowd control lowered a big black theatre style curtain in front of them so they couldn't see the game. On the way out there was more mayhem with flares flying around, police dogs on the prowl and people fighting in a shopping centre. No wonder the beer is non-alcoholic. (There is a great film of some of the trouble here, including a shot of a policeman bundling a fan to the ground in a spot of community policing, Nordic style).

Bandy: ice, ice baby

Bandy, for those little Englanders unfamiliar with the sport of kings, is like football, but on ice. It differs from ice hockey in that it is played outside, without pads, and with 11 players. It differs from football in that it is played on ice with sticks. I haven’t explained that very well, so look here if you are interested… Anyhoo, the game was against some team from Gävle, who were as bad as the 13-3 score suggests (most games end in low, football style scores). There was no crowd trouble, being outside it was far too cold for that, but there was a flare incident, maybe one left over from the ice hockey match.

Back in blighty now, all focus is shifting to tonight’s game at Millwall. Frankly, I think they are a bunch of pussycats nowadays, but I will report tomorrow (hopefully not from hospital) about whether I am right or not.

* This is unfinished, as I am having trouble uploading photos, I will update it later in the week with some corking photos of police brutality, flares going off, an advert for Vanilla Ice’s Stockholm upcoming gig (no, really) and me drinking beer in the stands of a football ground.