Christoph Stiepermann

I find a morbid fascination watching clubs panic buy while spending huge amounts of money. As a Norwich fan it's usually quite dull (which is a good thing in terms of how we're run) but if we are linked with players a lot on deadline day it can alleviate some boredom checking this website every now and again to see if anythings happened. If there were lots of rumors about our star players though I'd be hating it. Even if we don't sign anyone today keeping Sara is a big win. I have no idea why lower PL clubs haven't come in for him, he scores goals from nothing and is a set piece specialist, that's so valuable. But I'm delighted he's staying.

Hoping it'll be at home to a lower league club that we don't play very often but my guess is it'll be a boring away tie to a mid table PL side either Palace or Villa.

Losing your main striker who's in great form 4 games into a season is an utter catastrophe. I know we're all pretty numb to this now due to our injury problems in the last few years but ffs this is grim. Imagine if we lost Holt or Pukki for months 4 games into those promotion seasons, we wouldn't have gone up automatically in those seasons. Feels like we can't catch a break right now and every time one of our key players gets tackled I get really nervous. We have a clear first 11 and those players are vital to making our style of play work so any injury is devastating to us but there are 4 players who we can't do without for me (Sara, Rowe, Barnes and Sargent) and to lose one already is such a kick in the teeth.

Who do we think we'll get in the next round? It'll definitely be away to a PL team just depends which one. I'll go for Palace away.

I don't have the stats to hand but I'd be surprised if his running stats weren't around the lowest in our team. He's a clever defender so doesn't need to sprint often and Gibson is usually the one who carries the ball forward. I'm more worried about Idah and Sara to be honest as our forwards and center mids get through a hell of a lot of running every game.

Can't risk Idah or Barnes for me now so I'd go with Placheta up front with Nunez just behind him. Not ideal but we get through a lot of running in games, particularly the forwards and Barnes is 33 while Idah has had injury problems, it's just not worth it for the second round of the league cup. Same team as ZLF for me.

Whittaker, Bassong, Turner and Garrido were excellent in Hughton's first season. Bassong and Turner in that season were the best CB pairing I've ever seen play for us in my 23 years of supporting the club. I know it was dour to watch at times but we were rock solid at the back and that was in the PL. The back 4 you listed were excellent as well but it was at a lower level.

Barnes has never had a lick of pace so he's still going to be very useful for another 2-3 years so long as he doesn't pick up an injury. I love him already, he's everything we've missed since Holt left, he makes everyone around him better, the opposition dread facing him, he gives everything, massively improves morale in the team, he's good in our build up, the ball sticks to him and as a bonus he can score goals. For me Sargent and Rowe wouldn't have played as well and scored as many as they have this season without him in the team. I like Duffy too but he's the archtypical Norwich defender in that he has a clanger in him so he makes me nervous at times. It's a trade off though, if he didn't have a mistake in him he'd have played his whole career in the PL and wouldn't be with us now, you've just gotta hope those rushes of blood to the head don't cost us too often. He's another leader though and I have no doubt he's played a big part in turning the teams mentality around.

That goal was Holt-esque. I really hope it's not serious. If he's gonna be out for a couple of months we need a striker in on loan, I don't want Barnes playing further forward he's perfect in the role he's playing now and Idah has a history of injuries so if a top PL club wanted to give a promising young striker some game time they might get it here. Fingers crossed though it's just a couple of weeks tops.

I was more optimistic than most going into this season but bloody hell, this is a bit good! I didn't get a chance to watch the game today but what a start and scoring 4 goals away to a Warnock team in the Championship isn't an insignificant feat.

At work, has anyone got just the radio commentary? Thanks

Reminds me of the Gary O'Neil signing and he was good for us, hopefully we can keep him fit.

Others have alluded to it before but it's because when we spend 'big' by our standards it's on players who are all known to similar sized clubs who have more money than us and the reason they're on the cheap side for PL signings is because they've been scouted and deemed not good enough for our competitors. I think we're honestly better off carrying on trying to sign cheaper gambles whenever we reach the PL and trying to be more creative. Go for flawed players with potential who suit the system and strong characters who want to play for us over much more expensive players who are only 5-10% better and probably feel like we owe them something for coming here. Our best PL season in my lifetime was our PL season with Lambert where we spent 1-3m on players from lower leagues but they were all good characters who fit the managers way of playing, I know you can't do that anymore as L1 players now cost much more but it's just an example. If we go up this year, try to sign the same type of players we would if we were in the Championship except use the extra financial strength to get our top, first choice targets.

I agree. The only issue I have with this when talking about the worst and most abhorrent offenders is that once you get accustomed to it life in prison in this country can be pretty comfortable and I think for people like her there should be a more severe form of incarceration where amenities and entertainment are much more restricted, the cells are much more basic, outside communication is forbidden etc. I get the human rights argument against this but there has to be a point with people like her or say for example Ian Watkins where these protections are simply too good for them and the life they live in prison is too comfortable and not enough of a punishment for the crimes they committed. I'm not advocating for anything completely inhumane or any form or torture but I don't think the life she'll be living in prison will be a proportional punishment for the crimes she committed. Even in a category A prison there are less privileges but it's not as awful as you'd imagine, here's an interesting quote I found "According to a survey undertaken by the Ministry of Justice in 2014, a large proportion of category A prisoners don’t even see their sentence as a punishment. In HMP Frankland, just under two thirds of inmates said that they felt punished. The same was reported at HMP Full Sutton, and in HMP Belmarsh, one of the UK’s most notorious high-security prisons, 1 in 3 said they didn’t feel punished when incarcerated there" I think for the vast majority of offenders rehabilitation should be the priority. But for people like her I think a different and much more punitive approach is needed, not the death penalty, but a harsher form of imprisonment. A homeless person is probably a lot worse off than she will be and would love some of the amenities that she'll be getting.

I completely understand that the whole model revolves around attracting good young players by promising that we'll allow them to move on after we develop them but this is not the right time. The 'right offer' might come along but it's the worst time possible for us to sell a key player. We've only just turned around the negativity and against all odds look like we have a promotion capable team again. Can you imagine how demoralized everyone including the players would be if we sold Sargent? It would kill our season before it even started. I don't think Sargent is a world beater but he's absolutely perfect for how we want to play and can score goals at this level and we're not going to replace him for the percentage we'd be willing to spend of any up front fee we'd receive. The damage it would do to the club wouldn't be worth it. It would tell everyone including the players that we're not that bothered about trying to go up this year and so the likes of Sara and Gunn might start talking to their agents to get a move before it turns toxic again. It wouldn't be the catastrophe the selling Buendia after getting promotion was (although selling Sara would equal that in my view) but it would kill all the momentum we've built up and would severely effect our chances of going up. I'm just talking hypothetically here, I don't buy the paper talk but after supporting this club for 20 years I'm conditioned to expect the worst when stories like this come out and I'm just dying for the window to close.

Sara MOTM for me for the 3rd league game in a row and he's had some stiff competition from Rowe and Sargent in that time. Barnes and McLean deserve a mention as well, both have been superb this season. I wouldn't sell Sara for any price that any team would be willing to pay, he's the heartbeat of our team and can score and create goals from nothing, that is invaluable. Not to mention how selling him would completely demoralize the players and fans and kill all the momentum we've built up and the positivity around the club. Losing him isn't worth 20m or possibly even 30m when another promotion push looks to be on the table. Losing Sargent would also be a massive blow and we couldn't replace what he does for any fee we'd be willing to pay, again I couldn't see any club paying more than 20m for him and I don't think we could get an adequate replacement for the percentage of that fee that we'd be willing to spend. This feels like a pivotal 11 days for the club, lower PL clubs are going to start to panic buy soon and we might be tempted with offers. I wouldn't sell either of them for any price. Keep them and I think with our history of usually getting over the line in a promotion push we might do something special again this year, lose one of them and I could see the momentum we've built up and positive atmosphere quickly fade and find ourselves going backwards. I know we're a selling club and I understand the model but this would just be the worst possible time to sell any of our key players.

This is exactly the style of football I've always wanted at Norwich and what I hoped we were going to get when we appointed Webber. With hindsight I now obviously wouldn't trade the Farke years but I prefer this type of football to the slow possession stuff and as a bonus I think it'll serve us better in the PL if we get promoted again. We still knock it around well and play short passes in clever patterns but we're also so much more aggressive and organised off the ball, we play at a high intensity so we out work teams, we chase teams down, put in tackles and on the ball we have some strength so we can hold onto it now under pressure and have some players who can run with the ball and beat a man. Not every player needs to be technically excellent at one touch pass and move either so we can have some big lads who help us defend and give us a threat from set pieces No style of football is perfect otherwise every team would play one way, we're always going to look vulnerable when teams beat our press but this is the style of football that I personally prefer and it's why i stuck with Wagner even though we were terrible under him last season because what he's known for is how I want us to play. I'm so happy it's finally clicking

We look the better side so far but we're working harder than Spain are, if this goes into ET I hope we don't tire.

He's only just turned 20. Who here wasn't a bit 'above themselves' when they were 16-18? I know for an absolute fact that if I was a good footballer and was doing well in youth teams when I was a young teenager I'd have gone completely off the rails due to the praise and attention. It surprises me more when footballers turn out to be good people as opposed to being shocked when they turn out to be flawed people. The law considers an 18 yo an adult but when I was 18 I was basically a tall child and it's the same case for most people around that age, I can't imagine how much being a promising footballer must screw with your head at that age.

Super Johnny Rowe!

I'm just gonna go to CR and then watch the final on iPlayer when I get home. I'd do the same if it was the mens world cup final and England were in it as well. City>Every other team or sport no matter how important. If they want to move the game move it to later the same day. Why anyone thinks we need to cancel everything that day is beyond me. I can kind of see why people would want to move anything that clashes, but just move the time instead of the date or if the date has to be changed we'll play Saturday. I don't want it postponed and then be playing catch up with the rest of the league.

Still a really good keeper but it takes him 3 or 4 games to get back into form if he's been out for a while so makes little sense keeping his as a backup. You want him as your first choice or not at all. I wouldn't mind an experienced backup if he goes though, Gunn doesn't have much of an injury history but anything can happen and I wouldn't want to have to rely on a young keeper for an extended period of time. People will probably say we might as well keep Krul instead but he'll be on a huge wage for a backup gk at this level, im sure we could find someone to warm his place on the bench for far less than we're paying Krul and like I said his tenancy to be rusty when he comes back in worries me.

Didn't Darel Russell play up front for us a couple of times during the dark Grant/Roeder era of did I just imagine it that? Just had a look at Russell's wiki, it's on there and said it was during Roeder's era. I know it would have been Roeder's way of telling the board that he needs signings but that really was a strange one.

I think in recent years at this level we've not been particularly hard done by in terms of how we've been officiated and the balance between positive/negative/correct/incorrect decisions. You see a lot of poor officiating but it never feels to me like it's ever drastically in our favor or against us over a season. We don't get a lot of pens but that's more because before this season we've not really been a team full of players who like to run with the ball and take players on in the box, we used to pass to feet and it's easier to win it back off us without fouling anybody. We also tend to sign clumsy defenders who make stupid decisions which doesn't help us at the other end. I always thought Duffy was the archtypical Norwich CB for years, brilliant most of the time but then all of a sudden....Doh! Gibson and Hanley very much the same, Godfrey and Zimbo could be rash in challenges as well. I think these two factors are why it always seems like we get hard done by with pens. How we're reffed at PL level is a different question though. Things absolutely do not even themselves out for us when we play in that league and anyone who watched most of our games in our last few attempts at that level will know that.

There's nothing we can do. We as in the UK government and ordinary people. Looking at it from a government level whatever we do would be a drop in the ocean compared to the US, China and Russia and on an average person level there's nothing we can do because we can't influence anything, if we could change anything we wouldn't be allowed to vote for it. We just have innate and irreconcilable flaws as a species and we've doomed ourselves as a result. You can talk all you want about green energy or technological advances or whatever, it's not going to make a difference. Even if we did develop clean energy there's no feasible way to distribute it around the planet quickly enough to reverse the damage we've already done and the general consensus is that we're now approaching the point of no return anyway and no new magic science is going to change that. How are green energy policies meant to suck the excess carbon out of the atmosphere? The next few decades are going to be really interesting to say the least. People tend to think of climate change as just warmer summers or damage to ecosystems but when it starts causing global instability due to the financial impact as well as mass migration, crop failure and a greater frequency of natural disasters I'm sure it'll suddenly hit really close to home for everybody. But the damage has already been done.