Tim Allman

After seeing this thread, I listened to Canary Call when I got home last night. Can’t see what the OP was on about unless he’s got some sort of agenda against Rob Butler. I thought last night’s show had one excellent caller (Jim) and a few ok and not so ok ones, and then we had stats man (Peter?) at the end. But Rob can’t control who calls in can he, so he has to do the best with what he’s got. I think after a shaky start Rob Butler’s improving on Canary Call and although I don’t agree with everything he says, at least he’s prepared to give an opinion.

As Neil Doncaster loved writing his emails I''d have thought twitter would be the perfect medium for him. More replies and less words to do.

I think it was twitter that did it, and this theory was originally posted on WotB by Watford Canary very shortly after the story broke early on the Sunday morning. The confusion arose as we use #ncfc hashtag although they are really #notts we see quite a few posts with #ncfc which relate to Notts County. http://www.wrathofthebarclay.co.uk/interactive/board/message.php?pid=1239841 Apols if you have to cutnpaste the link.

I’m still undecided on Rob Butler, but I thought he made a very valid point about JH on Canary Call, although he did go on about it a bit. That sort of “pleased to be here” attitude was exactly the one we had last time in the Prem and it got us relegated. He’s also in credit as my tweet was read out about how Morison will respond after spending 90 minutes watch from the sidelines today. Holty did not get on the pitch at Old Trafford after a very indifferent performance as a sub vs Sunderland in the Monday night game before Man U and responded brilliantly.

A City supporter I know bumped into Steve Walsh a few years ago on a train back from a game. They had a conversation about how SW joined City; I understand at the time he joined us he had not played many recent games due to injury and had trained with a non league club for a while. Tamworth rings a bell here, but only as we played them a few years ago. I’m sure it was a midlands club. Anyway, Hamilton recruited him to be the skipper, and at the time of signing SW was quite a few weeks away from match fitness and informed Hamilton as to this. I think this was as SW had not played many games the season before. Despite this Hamilton threw him straight into the side and he wasn’t very good, but due to any real match fitness. I understand that Hamilton was certainly aware of this. I didn’t go to the 0-4 Wolves away game but it was on TV at lunchtime (Sunday?) and it was obvious that SW was very slow and not ready to play I recall one of the goals when he was turned on the edge of the box and from a standing start the QE2 could have accelerated faster. So, yes, Walsh was poor but he was nowhere near fit.

One for GRD to think about; and not maybe this backs ups or disproves his interesting post about how many season ticket holders were or were not in attendance and where they might have been sitting We’ve been getting around 50 on the Capital Canaries train for most home games when we can travel direct from Liverpool Street. I’d say the vast majority of the travellers are season ticket holders. Yesterday we had 24 of which a larger percentage were not season ticket holders but took the chance to go a City game; three examples were one who was the girl friend of a season ticket holder, one who has recently become a father and was allowed out for the day. Another who lives on the south coast who gets to a couple of games a season. Of our block of four I didn’t go yesterday as I was working; there was a possibility that could have got out of it but didn’t, Gemma was golfing; John and Adele had booked a holiday knowing it was a cup weekend. It’s not that we all didn’t want to go but it worked out that we had other things which were fitted in to our own diaries at the expense of a game which would have been more expense. Of course this is a completely random attempt at working out how many season ticket holders went so I know it’s not an accurate representation etc etc but I thought I’d post as it might be of interest (or not).

@paintmeyellow “Does seem abit odd that health and safety suddenly plays its part and means they can only have about 2000-2500 tickets, yet teams like Leeds etc brought alot more fans than that last season and nobody cared. Am I missing something?” The Leeds away attendance as reported in the NCFC programme was 2250 in the 2009/10 League 1 season and 2256 in the Championship season. A similar attendance despite there being trouble reported after the game in the League 1 season. The number of tickets that Leicester have been allocated appears to be very much the same as Leeds were.

I''ve eaten there a few times and never had a bad dinner. Good grub and plenty of it.

I wrote an article about this very subject for the Capital Canaries Magazine last year. Have a read if you can stay awake until the end   Sweating our Assets   “Welcome to the AVIVA Arena for today’s Barclays Premiership match between The Norwich Canaries and The Newcastle Zebras. Our two teams today, who are sponsored by Waitrose Fresh Food and Sports Direct line up as follows, No 1, in goal John Ruddy..... roared the stadium announcer who was keen to point out that his words were  sponsored by “PA’s R Us”.   For those that might not be aware Mike Ashley, the owner of Newcastle United and majority shareholder of Sports Direct, is planning to rename St James Park, to the Sports Direct Stadium. According to press reports there will be no immediate benefit to the Toon, but it appears to be an opening salvo for invitations to tender for the naming rights of the ground.   The response from Newcastle fans has been generally one of outrage. Maybe this is due to tradition, animosity to the owners or for other reasons unknown. But if the selling the ground name makes a whole bundle of cash for Newcastle United is it a good idea or not?   I’ve no idea what the real value to the naming rights of St James Park are really worth, maybe up to £8 million per season according to the rumour mill. That’s a huge number of bar-coded shirt sales and an even bigger number of bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale. Or perhaps two and a half players at today’s inflated wages.   Supposing, just supposing that Norwich City went down this route. What would we think of playing the Aviva Arena? What would we say to an extra £5 million per season coming into the coffers at our football club? For the fag packet accountants amongst us, that works out at £250,000 per game based on twenty home fixtures a season. Looking at this in an even simpler way; my method of doing things, it’s around £10 per supporter per game additional income throughout the season.   “We can’t possible sell our heritage to the highest available bidder”, I hear you all gasp. “That’s just not right it will always be Carrow Road to me”. And it will always be Carrow Road to the writer of this article. For the record I consider myself to be a “RiverEnder”, and not an “N-and-P-er” but I like to think that, rightly or wrongly, I would appreciate the benefits and commercial realities of the mad bad world of football finance if such a name change was proposed.   And now; fast forward a couple of months.   A thick envelope lands of the doormat in early January. It’s season ticket renewal time. The Canaries are safely tucked into to mid-table and the Lancashire Hot-Pot trio of Blackburn, Bolton and Wigan appear to be cut adrift in the basement battle. Retention of our Premiership status is now looking more likely than not. Objective one, survival in the big league may well have been achieved.   Prices will be going up no doubt; this season we have paid Championship Prices for Premiership football. But by how much will prices rise? For arguments sake, would we accept a big rise in our season ticket prices in exchange for playing at a re-named stadium?   Assuming our survival is secured, we would need to improve our squad next season. It’s looking like the two main promotion contenders in the Championship have both ambitious boards and owners prepared to invest in the team. Southampton and West Ham are looking good and if a club such as Leicester finally hit some form there’s a good chance that their owners will get their hands on Murdoch’s millions next season. That could mean three heavy hitters joining the big league next term.   Norwich City also are ambitious in paying down their current debt and becoming self sustainable in less than a few years. The current lenders are keen to see their money back, whilst the owners and us fans are also keen to see the team strengthened to keep the hottest young managerial prospect in the country at our football club.   To sustain our ambition we have Murdoch’s millions but they only goes so far. Something might have to give.   If there is a huge untapped revenue stream waiting to be exploited would it not be prudent of the board to explore the possibility? Or is the emotional pull of the stadium name too important to discard and the idea discounted forthwith?   Other clubs have gone down this route but in most cases there has been one vital difference; they have moved from their old ground to a new one and the emotional attachment to their old home, and the name has already been broken.     Arsenal moved to the Emirates Stadium, Doncaster now play at the Keepmoat and Colchester are at the Weston Homes Community Stadium. Leicester moved to the Walkers Stadium and have just renamed their ground to King Power Stadium. Manchester City have also recently been in the news for proposing that their ground is re-named the Etihad Stadium but this was more contentious due to the huge potential (over)value of the sponsorship deal.   So it has been done elsewhere. Should it be done at Carrow Road? The board have made a number of shrewd decisions on most things NCFC related and I’m sure they will make the right call on this, whatever it may be.      

And as for Nathan Dyver, when we played Swansea at home every time he was tackled he went bleating to the ref. He had a couple of very theatrical fall-overs (Dyves?) in and around the penalty box in the first half when they were attacking the River End, the end we sit in.   He is a very good player but he needs to remember to screw the studs into his boots before he goes out to play football.  

I’ve lost count of the number of teams that have had their worst performance of the season against Norwich. Anyone think it might be due to (a) City being quite a decent team now and (b) Lambert and Culverhouse getting the selection / formation / tactics / substitutions spot on (almost) every week?  

An interesting selection of swipes, brickbats and almost a bouquet or two for Theo. I’ve defended him on here before and will do so again. He was not a great keeper, but not that bad a one either. Yes, the 1-7 was a shocker and he didn’t have a good game, and his flapping that day was the start of something huge for NCFC although we didn’t know it at the time.   One day the real story behind 1-7 story will come out and we’ll all understand more about that day in August 2009.    

(the quote option is rubbish in chrome) @Shankslad “I was very startled when I saw Fergie had made Evra capt for this game - he probably thought it would be psychologically beneficial for him but with the passion surrounding this some people will have seen it as inflaming and provocative.” Er, hasn’t Evra been the MUFC captain since Vidic hurt his knee in one of their Champions League games much earlier in the season? And he’s hardly likely to change the team captain for this game is he? What sort of signal would that send out?

The way the MotD experts talked about our game this evening, I bet a quid of my hard earned cash that all they had seen were the few minutes of coverage that we saw.

The Carrow Road from the Air snow screensaver pic is the one I have have a work, and its on both screens that are linked up to my desktop.

Ah ok, sounded credible to me. Maybe that''s why the kids always beat me at Cheat.

I''ve read this on a Leicester City Forum, posted by NCFCDave whoever he (she maybe) which might go some way in explaining the decision. The real reason for the low allocation is Norfolk Police, renowned for being ridiculously heavy-handed when it comes to footy matches. Although it''s a big derby with potential for trouble, Norwich v 1p5wich games aren''t in the same league as Millwall v West Ham or Birmingham v Villa when it comes to trouble, yet they''re played on Sunday every year thanks to Norfolk police. As a couple of posters have pointed out, this goes back to the trouble Norwich fans caused when you beat us 4-0 at your place 3 years ago. We went down that year so didn''t play each other the following season, but upon our return to the Championship last year, Norfolk police requested both games involving the clubs were midweek, which would guarantee fewer travelling fans. Now we have you in the cup you should quite rightly get 15% and it''s Norfolk police who are putting pressure on the club to give you a reduced allocation. Admittedly, the club probably won''t put up much of a fight as they know we''ll sell out with home fans anyway, and as there are lots of Norwich fans unable to get tickets for Premier League matches, it gives them an opportunity to please more fans. Personally, I think it would add to the occasion if there were 4,000 Leicester fans there. Would enhance what will already be a great atmosphere. If it was the other way around, I''d be absolutely livid. But as for the posts about Norwich fans being arrogant and thinking we''re a top 4 club, come on!! Norwich has more than its fair share of stupid fans but even they don''t think that. We''re similar sized clubs and we''re just enjoying a rare period of success.

And Block K is the problem here as far as I am aware, not J

I like the podcast and listen every week.

http://www.canaries.co.uk/page/ProfilesDetail/0,,10355~30208,00.html Says June 2012 in this article; of course there may be an option which we don''t know about. Or I''ve missed some news which is more probable.

Sammy Clingan

I think David Fox is also in the last year of his contract. If there are any announcements about contracts I expect they won''t be until after 31st January.

We went to the Black Eagle, decent grub and a good selection of ales. We tried most of them.   http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/17/17369/Black_Eagle/Hockley  

[quote user="TIL 1010"]Good job kick off is no later than 4pm as i would have to miss Countryfile on BBC 1. [;)][/quote]   Especially as a member of the Capital Canaries is one of the presenters of the show!  

Even though we didn''t know it at the time, John Ruddy''s penalty save was the most important on the field moment of the Championship season; a potential six point swing in that game, second to Russell Martin’s late equaliser against Cardiff.   And for those like reading about bad old memories about how we did our transfer business and the reasons for David Cotterill slipping through our grasp please click the link below:-   http://www.canaries.co.uk/page/NewsDetails/0,,10355~890943,00.html   If we had signed him, I wonder how we would have turned out.