Taxing

[quote user="Delia''s recipie for disaster!"]Sauce???   No wonder your username is Delia''s recipe. Anyway, I like a bit of tabasco on my baked beans although Worcester''s pretty good too.

[quote user="chicken"][quote user="Lord Snooty"] Looking at the players listed under The Squad on the Pink Un homepage and deleting the players who have gone or who were on loan this is the list of what we have left (not including the reserve players). Marshall and Croft look certain to go probably follwed by Clingan so the list does look pretty stark ! One thing that stands out for me is the need to keep Matty because he is tough, aggressive and has lots of energy and therefore perfectly equipped for the third division. However, given that he obviously fell out with Gunn it looks probable that he will go too. I have to say that our psopsects for next year don''t look good ! Jon Otsemobor Stuart Nelson, David Marshall, Declan Rudd, Lee Croft, Darel Russell, Adam Drury, Dejan Stefanovic, Gary Doherty,  Wes Hoolahan,   Matty Pattison, Jamie Cureton,   Sammy Clingan, Cody MacDonald [/quote] At the moment our priority must be Lee and then to assess the recovery of Cort because for me last season we saw that unless you have some height upfront then set pieces and crossing is an altogether futile act. Lee as first choice with Cort as his back up - if nothing else the one player who deserves a new contract for sheer sweat and blood Cort is that man - coming from forgotten obscurity and needing fitness he has done bloody well. In some games I believe he showed what he can give and at least he has a genuine reason for being a bit rusty at times. Our team will be decimated over the next few weeks. We will be lucky if we don''t loose at least four players - one of which is rumoured to already be practically gone in Marshall. Any from Clingan, Cureton, Russell, Pattison, Stefanovic, Doherty, Hoolahan and Semi. Not to mention Croft who is yet to declare his intent and is probably talking to other clubs. That''s not even including the fact that we have also lost the loanees from the last few months - Gow, Lee, Bertrand, Mooney, Shackel and Carney. We are already very short all over the pitch. bu = back up, not their first choice position - p = possibly leaving. GK - Nelson, Rudd. RB - Semmi, Spillaine(bu) CB - Doherty, Spillaine, Stefanovic LB - Drury RM - Daley, Smith (bu), Martin (bu) CM - Clingan (p - more than likely), Russell (p), Pattison (p - more than likely), Adeyemi, Smith, Spillaine. LM - Hoolahan (p - more than likely) STR - Cureton (p), MacDonald, Martin, Daley. So there you have it. If wages are a problem then Cureton will jump up to the even more likely to go list. We will essentially become what Southampton were last season but in L1. The sorry truth of the matter is that we could need players for every position - what is the likelihood of that happening. Its enough to throw you into disspare. [/quote]   Yes, securing the services of Lee is a must IMO. I agree regarding Cort. I only saw him play "in the flesh" on one occasion, 2nd half against Reading, and he won virtually every ball in the air and I think it''s fair to say that Duberry couldn''t handle him. In fact, Duberry ended up being booked for a hacking tackle on Cort which obviously stemmed from frustration. Interestingly, Lee was less effective against Reading the other week than Cort was away at Reading before Xmas but maybe the difference was that Bikey was unfit for the away match. Cureton - I was always a fan of Cureton but now I am undecided. I think it true that Roeder did completely undermine Cureton''s confidence and that consequently JC also lost his fitness and self-discipline. I suppose the theory is that League One is now his level so he could be an asset. Fact is I prefer MacDonald over Cureton and the first 5/6 matches will show whether MacDonald will be good enough at league One level or whether what we have seen so far has been a case of "flattering to deceive". I suspect he will do well in League One and Cureton, if he can get himself properly fit, will be an excellent sub. Having said that, I am sure you are right that the club will be hoping to unload Cureton because of his wages............. but who is going to take him ? I can''t see any Championship club being interested. I think we will be able to retain Russell and Stefanovic but I guess that Pattison will go if only because he fell out with Gunn. That will be a shame because Matty is a player for whom I have a high regard and I reckon he would be excellent in league One. I can''t see us buying Shax and I am not sure if I want that anyway. I am sure that Doherty will stay. All that having been said, unless money is made available for players, and I can''t see that happening, the reserve team players you mention will have to step up to the plate.

That''s useful, thanks Pete. How come I didn''t find that ! Of course, I forgot about Hoolahan and as our resident Wise Owl from Essex has said, he will probably be off too. The future''s looking less than bright.

Looking at the players listed under The Squad on the Pink Un homepage and deleting the players who have gone or who were on loan this is the list of what we have left (not including the reserve players). Marshall and Croft look certain to go probably follwed by Clingan so the list does look pretty stark ! One thing that stands out for me is the need to keep Matty because he is tough, aggressive and has lots of energy and therefore perfectly equipped for the third division. However, given that he obviously fell out with Gunn it looks probable that he will go too. I have to say that our psopsects for next year don''t look good ! Jon Otsemobor Stuart Nelson, David Marshall, Declan Rudd, Lee Croft, Darel Russell, Adam Drury, Dejan Stefanovic, Gary Doherty,  Wes Hoolahan,   Matty Pattison, Jamie Cureton,   Sammy Clingan, Cody MacDonald

[quote user="First Wizard"]Good, bugger off![/quote]   Seconded.

At the end of the Charlton match Gunn told the players to go and acknowledge the fans. Marshall, in particular, was extremely reluctant to do so but was cajoled into coming to the "Norwich" end of the ground. He threw his shirt into the crowd (not sure but I think Gunn told the players to throw their shirts to the crowd) and the fans immediately responded by singing "you''re not fit to wear the shirt". He did receive a helluva lot of flak during the match and at the end so I am not surprised that he is keen to get the hell out of Carrow Road and, like I said on another thread, it''s the best solution for all particularly given that IMO he is not a poor to average goalkeeper anyway. The defence appear to have no confidence in him. The shame of it is that we let Joe Lewis go, I know, get over it and move on etc etc but it still hurts that Roeder offloaded a young goalkeeper who the club had been carefully nurturing for years and who was clearly good enough to occupy the number two keeper position.

To be honest, the way the crowd jeered him during and at the end of the match against Charlton I wouldn''t blame him for wanting to get away and I think this would be the healthiest solution for all concerned. Personally, I think he''s a poor goalkeeper anyway.

[quote user="Lupo Loop"]We were very unlucky against Reading. Trevor Kettle gave a ridiculous penalty decision. Kennedy also got injured in that game which was disappointing cos I thought he was decent. If Roeder had of played a recognised striker we might have won that game with Russell missing two sitters. [/quote]   It was Russell and Pattison wasn''t it ?

[quote user="NXCanary"] Betrand, Shackell and Lee are musts. We were lost without Bertrand at left back against Charlton, Shackell has been excellent since his return and Lee has got more fire in his belly than most of the team combined. We also desperately need a replacement for Otsemobor he was awful at Charlton and totally exposed by Kebe against Reading; two identikit goals from crosses down our right flank. Another thread suggested we could try him on the wing which I don''t think is actually too bad an idea, he certainly has no defensive ability whatsoever but his pace and the freedom to go forward could improve his contribution to games immensely.  With the three I mention above plus Doherty, Cody, Russell and a few youth players, such as Smith (not Delia ;-)) and Daley we could actually have a fairly decent League one team. [/quote]   Is it me, or am I the only person who thinks that Shax is pretty poor quality ? A combination of Shackell and OhIamsopoor in a back four which already "features" the Doc is scary, even in the third division . Look at those two goals we conceded in that critical game against Reading. Shax and Otsemebor at their finest.

I have only just read this so apologies to all if this subject has already been covered. I saw the title and thought to myself where do I start ? Ironically, Tim''s article was written just before the Charlton game which of course provided the most depressing day of our season. News of the Plymouth goal sent us Norwich supporters wild although I must admit that I looked at my watch and thought that there was a long time to go yet. Sure enough, as if scripted by a god who seems to have it in for Norwich fans and some terrible sin we must have committed in a  previous life, within minutes on cue Charlton scored a goal. The Norwich defence was as clueless, as helpless and as incompetent as it so often was during 2008/09 that it was nothing but consistent. So, we needed to get two goals and, again as scripted, we capitulated to a second goal. By that point 99.999 % of us knew that it was "Good night Delia, time to put the cat out" but just to rub our noses in it Charlton pop up for another easy goal. I could barely contain my indignation, 3-0 in thirty minutes, I was on the verge of leaving there and then but mindful of the distance I had travelled I decided to stay until the bitter end. Another 6-0 Capital humiliation was staring us in the face but in the end we made it to the final whistle with only another goal conceded. So for me and most of us I guess The Valley, a week ago yesterday, wasn''t the just the lowest light it was the day that the lights went out completely on the worst season in my life as a Norwich City supporter.   I didn''t go to the Watford game but was interested to read Tim''s observation that Roeder had Lupoli warming up for the whole of the second half as this is exactly what he did away at Reading whilst "standing impassively with his arms folded on the touchline" wilfully and seemingly arrogantly deaf to the chants of several thousand Norwich fans to bring Lupoli on. That was a game that could have been won but Roeder''s inaction, for whatever reason, backfired, Reading got their dubious penalty and whilst our players were still reeling with the injustice of it all, Reading sucker punched them with another goal. Coppell had rung the changes during that crucial second half when the players were rapidly tiring on a very muddy, quagmire like surface and was rewarded with a win and three points. In life, you make your own luck and if ever there was an example of that it was Reading away on a cold, wet, miserable, December day !     The lowlights of a terrible season TIM ALLMAN, CAPITAL CANARIES AS we approach the wake that is Charlton away, where our demotion to League One may well be sealed, I thought it time to reminisce on one of most dreadful seasons I''ve ever had the misfortune to endure. For my sins I will have been unlucky enough to have attended 35 of our 49 games; the highs of which I can count on the finger of one hand. Of the bad days out, there are far too many to mention all at once, but here are my five personal lowlights of the season, in reverse order of course. The FA Cup loss to Charlton was nearly as depressing as it gets. We lost to a team who had not won in three months, to a goal scored by one of my least favourite players in a morgue like atmosphere. The only consolation was that Roeder was history. One of the Capital Canaries was privy to a comment from the City chairman after the match saying "he''s gotta go", but did he let us know the good news? No, he didn''t. Reading - a plastic new ground, built on a rubbish dump, accessible only by bus and these are some of the better qualities about the Madjad. Inexplicably, Roeder had not selected a forward in the starting 11 so we played a 4-6-0 formation on a swamp of a pitch. We missed some early chances, were stuffed by a dubious late penalty, and got soaked in the rain. A truly dreadful day, at a place I don''t want to visit again. The home loss to Derby. I could have easily picked any one of a raft of mediocre home displays, but as I completely lost it after the game on the way to Morrisons, I''ve picked this fixture. We weren''t very good, could have got a point but gave away a dreadful goal to lose 2-1. In the second half, perhaps distracted by thoughts of managing England, Roeder decided to bring on Fotheringham and move Clingan to right back and we surrendered control of the game, and I almost surrendered control of my senses. A couple of weeks later I bumped into Roeder during a ground tour and to my eternal regret I bottled asking why he made that change. I could have included either of the two Southampton games but I''ve gone for the away loss. Another half empty plastic ground at which we should have taken the lead, didn''t and surrendered meekly. The starting 11 featured one of the most dubious selections I''ve ever seen a Norwich manager make. OJ Koroma, who had hardly featured at all in the previous few weeks, was mysteriously selected and coincidentally it was the closest away game to his parent club, Portsmouth. That selection summed up everything that was wrong with Roeder''s loan player policy. Losing at Watford wins hands-down as the worst moment of this season. City should have been three up in the first few minutes as Watford resembled a Sunday pub team after a heavy Saturday night. After missing several chances, we gifted Watford two goals and then watched Arturo Lupoli warm up for the whole of the second half. Roeder stood impassively on the sidelines with his arms folded and chose to make a grand total of zero substitutions. Vicarage Road is a horrific place, but to lose that game in the way we did was the stuff of nightmares. I finally calmed down at 2.30am and fell asleep on the sofa after having had a post match row with Neil Adams on Canary Call. It was awful.

[quote user="Lord Horn"]I wish everyone would get his name right....it''s Otsemepoor![/quote]   No no no, it''s OhIamsopoor

I thought your Ferguson missing the bus clip was hilarious but please get the Mods to remove this Beaker. This is one of the most enduring and shocking images from the Vietnam war and shouldn''t be used in some twisted attempt to cause a laugh. Talk about bad taste.

The sacking of Mike Walker was shocking and unforgivable. My memory of Mike Walker was the 4-2 victory over Arsenal at Highbury. Ruel Fox ran amok that day and the delicious memory I have is Mike Walker bringing on a sub on the 90th minute. The Arsenal supporters were baying with frustration at the temerity of  Norwich manager playing brinkmanship. I remember thinking , finally we have a manager who is a winner. God, looking at the sorry state of our club today it makes me want to cry.

[quote user="Sports Desk - Pete"] [quote user="Lord Snooty"] The timing of the supposed interest was also not clear. [/quote] Evening News first ran this story back in September 2008. Father-of-two Mr Tweed, who lives in Saham Toney and whose nephew Jack is the on-off boyfriend of Big Brother star Jade Goody, told the Evening News: “I am back for two weeks from America and I am talking to a football club. “If people who run clubs are prepared to be a bit less stringent and more flexible to opening up grounds for other uses so the money is not just running down the drain, then I might be interested.” [/quote] Thanks Pete. The timing of the supposed interest in the interview wasn''t clear in the Heart interview but on the basis that the Evening News ran the story last September we''re talking about a time when the atmosphere at the club was very very different from what it is now - there was a great deal of optimism at the time, Roeder had "saved" us from relegation the previous season, new players brought in, the normally reserved Roeder was talking up our prospects for the season ahead. Delia was still talking about being receptive to incoming investment but only from the "right people". Therefore, I doubt that Mr Tweed, whose claim to fame seems to be that he was the uncle of the man who was boyfriend to the late Jade Goody, would have come across as being very credible and I very much doubt that he would have had or still has anything of real or deifinite substance to make the Club and its owners take him one bit seriously.

[quote user="Barclay_Boy"] very interesting stuff. I can''t believe why people aren''t going absolutely mental over this thread (and to be fair some of us are) if ever people wanted proof that there is now and has previously been significant interest in investing into Norwich City FC then all you have to do is thread this thread, click and read the link posted by Moanin Riverender, click and listen to the Heart FM Broadcast and you have the proof. Well and truly nails the myth that "nobody is mad enough to invest in football clubs these days" And why oh why isn''t the EDP running this as a front page story????????????????? [/quote] Yeah, proof positive, I don'' think. I just listened to the Heart FM interview. and as I said on another thread it all seemed a bit too vague to be honest. The timing of the supposed interest was also not clear. Tweed would not give any information at all on the Indian investors but said it was common knowledge who they were because they are already on the brink of completing the purchase of a premiership club. Anybody know which club he is referring to ?! If true then it would have taken months to get to that point so this indicates that Tweed is referring to putative interest from an anonymous group of Indian investors to buy a club in Norfolk some time last year and when they were "rebuffed" they said "well, we really wanted to buy Norwich but we''ll have to go off and buy a premiership club now". All extremely unlikely in my opinion.  

[quote user="Jim Kent"]I have emailed Cullum to ask if he has been told to shut up, but he hasn''t responded.[/quote]   Why do you expect him to respond ?

[quote user="Graham Humphrey"]Did you listen to that interview that is linked to in the thread I linked to above? (Well put, I know.)[/quote] Just listened to it. All seemed a bit too vague to be honest. The timing of the supposed interest was also not clear. Tweed would not give any information at all on the Indian investors but said it was common knowledge who they were because they are already on the brink of completing the purchase of a premiership club. Anybody know which club he is referring to ?! If true then it would have taken months to get to that point so this indicates that Tweed is referring to putative interest from an anonymous group of Indian investors to buy a club in Norfolk some time last year and when they were "rebuffed" they said "well, we really wanted to buy Norwich but we''ll have to go off and buy a premiership club now". All extremely unlikely in my opinion.

[quote user="Graham Humphrey"]Did you listen to that interview that is linked to in the thread I linked to above? (Well put, I know.)[/quote]   No, I didn''t because I don''t have speakers on my office computer but I will listen over the lunch time period.

[quote user="Graham Humphrey"][quote user="Lord Snooty"] [quote user="Graham Humphrey"]They could try to at least show some willing to talk to people for starters.[/quote] That''s in the past. I don''t think there''s any doubt that they have been receptive to selling for some time now but, as I have said before, who on earth would want to buy Norwich City unless it was a mega wealthy lifelong Norwich supporter ? No businessman with any modicum of commonsense would regard Norwich City FC as a good or wise investment. [/quote] Well clearly these Indian people must have had some sort of interest but we''ll never know to what extent they would go to if no-one is willing to talk to them. [/quote]   I didn''t believe that one. I think my normally reliable cousin sparked that rumour because he saw a group of Sikhs approaching Jurgen Klinsmann at Asda. I mean, I ask you, why would a consortium of Indian businessmen want to buy NCFC ?!

[quote user="First Wizard"] I expect no announcement on Gunn, until after the club have fooled the fans into waving their ST refunds...........Don''t get caught out! [/quote] Thanks for the heads-up Wiz. How''s your bubbling bowl of bile today then ? Slipping down a treat, no doubt !  

[quote user="Graham Humphrey"]They could try to at least show some willing to talk to people for starters.[/quote] That''s in the past. I don''t think there''s any doubt that they have been receptive to selling for some time now but, as I have said before, who on earth would want to buy Norwich City unless it was a mega wealthy lifelong Norwich supporter ? No businessman with any modicum of commonsense would regard Norwich City FC as a good or wise investment.

[quote user="Soldier on"]for the good of this club SELL UP and GET OUT NOW[/quote]   Don''t you think that Delia would love to sell the club if she could ?! She must be rueing the day that she bought NCFC. Do you have any suggestions for suitable purchasers ?

[quote user="jc7"] if anyone apart from a Norwich City man like Gunn would have had a second half of the season like he''s had 99% of people would have called for him to be sacked. We needed a man with experiance to guide us away from relegation and now even more so we need a man who knows the lower leagues. I fear for us if the current managment team stays. [/quote]   I suppose you must have gone to the school of "if I repeat my demand loud enough and frequently enough it might just happen". I can''t be bothered putting the opposing point of view any more , I''m all Gunned out.

Aayo Gurkhali ! Watch out or we will get that national icon Joanna "horseface" Lumley on your case.

[quote user="Loan City Fc "]Took over a team 2 points above the drop zone and took it to 5 points adrift Shipped out Lupoli and brought back Cureton Most of the players at the club were his finds anyway he was head of player rcruitment Lost more must win matches than most people have hot dinners Is tactically inept Could not get HIS team to play for HIM had as many no shows as the previous two managers After match interviews consisted of theres x amount of games left we have to keep hoping Bryan Gunn is not a manager and should go back to putting posters up instead of making this club look like a laughing stock . [/quote]   Like I said, he took over a team that was nosediving, in freefall. IMO, had Gunn not taken over at the point he did we would have been relegated well before Charlton. Anyway, it''s a fatuous discussion because you have your opinion and I have mine and neither of us is going to change them. My only disappointment is that so many on here are not capable of giving their own constructive reasoning as to why they have a poor opinion of Gunn, instead they resort to plain and simple unpleasantness and nastiness. That''s me done for the day.