Old Shuck

Mourinho has made a few positive noises about Newcastle in the past-considering he is probably not a coach who would appeal to an elite club right now, I wonder if he thinks they are a club he can rebuild and refashion in his image *IF* funds were available?

Would much rather be running the risk of some hidings in the Premier League than coming out from dark places to champion a 1-0 win at Wycombe in front of 6,000. More to the point so would they. Epic straw clutching from our former rivals.

Got the book and yes, well worth it. But no sign of the DVD yet.

Like Fuzzar I switched to BT from Sky. Decent enough overall package but yes, Sky Sports Main Event is frustrating as their definition of 'main event' isnt always the football. Only got last 20 mins or so of Nations League final for example, as they focused on F1 presentation and interviews. Its £30 a month as well which is insane. Have dropped it for the summer for that reason. Chatted to BT about it in week, he said they charge Sky subscribers up to £32 a month for their sports channels. All a bit **** for tat but they're apparantly trying to thrash out a sensibly priced new deal for same in time for next season whereby BTsubscribers pay a more realistic cost per month for Sky Sports and vice versa.

This may be apocryphal but more than one person has said to me that we 'own' Carrow Road (ie) it isn't the preserve of the Highways Dept but a private road that belongs to the football club? Can anyone confirm this? A matching stand would be great-not only a statement of intent and ambition but a commitment to the current ground and location. But do wonder how the cost of a new stand compares with the cost of a new stadium altogether? I read that the final cost of Sunderland's Stadium of Light, upon the expansion of the North Stand there was £24 million. Now that's back in 2000 -a comparable price to around £28-£30 million now? This isn't even back of cigarette packet economics but might there be a school of thought somewhere that IF we move (and please, let this not be an invitation for that chap and his Royal Norfolk Showground theory) then the clubs might yet think about moving on completely, especially as they'd get a good wedge for the current land to use as a deposit on the new land and build. Tottenham's new stadium is going to give people a false impression of how much a new ground is going to cost. They are very much an exception and not really something that should be factored in. I'd prefer to stay where we are 100 times out of 100. But does the current infrastructure deal with 30,000 plus as well as it does 25,000 plus, is there a tipping point where Carrow Road and its confines struggles to cope with bigger crowds?

Well he's been compared to, else likened to Messi in recent years (just Google Patrick Roberts/England's Messi or similar) into Google, that's all he needs!! He shone at Celtic. All very well calling it a pub league but pub league or not, if you're crap and play in a pub league, then you look crap. I did and was. He is coming off that same 'generation X' as the lad we signed from Spurs, Ravel Morrison (now playing in Sweden) and Phil Foden. Big season for Foden coming up 19/20, he's pushed on a little last time out and Man City are adamant he isn't going anywhere on loan but if he doesn't break into their 1st team soon, he might want away-but then does he become another Jack Rodwell or Scott Sinclair? Remember Ched Evans when we had him on loan? Looked the real deal and then some-but whatever it was he had, he threw away. So many young players explode onto the scene and everyone hangs their hats on them. Aaron Lennon was another. Some fade away, some do OK, some implode. Roberts has, at least, been a little bit under the radar in Spain-maybe not quite so much expectancy and hype as there could have been had he gone to a Prem team after Celtic? Hope we sign him, he could end up being POTS this time next year-or he maybe another David Bentley. Them's the risks. But the fact we have chosen to put our faith in him and have faith he'll work into our club culture is encouraging.

Don't worry, they've already decided that last season and the one to follow was a triumph for them whilst it was, and will be, a disaster for us. Them-charismatic manager who loves and 'gets' the club and who has brought the fans and club together, owner who is going to make at least £5 million available for transfers this summer & a team of canny signings and exciting youngsters who will storm to League One success by May, charming everyone in the game & media en-route, a club re-born and revitalised. Us-Coach and DOF who will be off at the first chance they get, no money to spend, a squad that will have been cherry picked clean by the start of the season and many a thrashing to come as we tumble to an embarrassing relegation with accompanying administration and contempt all round from those in the game who wonder why we didn't do things the Ipswich way?

Embarassing for them to want to have a magazine title aimed at having a pop at their former rivals up the road rather than any relevance to the here and now. Still, flogging a few tickets for "A Night With Ian Cranson" will make them feel better about themselves.

Excellent news.

Like how they're consoling themselves by saying all the talk is about them and no-one cares about us. As if that bothers us!!

Thanks for that, Pete. Next...

Rodgers and Hammerstein must be mightily peed off with Liverpool fans then.

Rodgers and Hammerstein must be mightily peed off with Liverpool fans then.

Maddison all day long. Would be interesting, to say the least, to see the current team with him as an option.

Lambert puts me in mind of a few other young (at the time!) managers who have been tipped for greatness and, in time, have probably let the adulation not only distract them from their work but eat away at the hard work ethic that got them there in the first place. Lambert dragged himself up through graft and no little struggle, from a managerial perspective. He might have won a Champions League medal but he wasn't, back in the day, above himself so much that he wouldn't begin his managerial career at Livingstone where he felt compelled to resign, so bad was his record there. That might have been it had Wycombe not taken a punt on someone who might already have been considered the proverbial busted flush, a League Cup semi final and play off defeat was the best he could do there but he still got the nod from Colchester, where, for all the hype of the 1-7 and what followed, they only finished mid-table in his only full season with them. So someone at Carrow Road must have seen something about him because he sure as hell didn't get offered the job on the basis of that 7-1 win he got them on that day. At least you'd think there was more to it than that-but his record, up to then, makes you wonder what they saw and where they found it. Nonetheless, it worked. I think he feels we owe him-and maybe we do but that was apparent, even yesterday, when loads of Norwich fans were, despite expressing their dislike of him now, still acknowledging what he did here and how great it was at the time. He has respect, grudging at best, but he's done his level best to wear that down now and maybe, deep down, he doesn't want anyone to love him a'la Millwall and Leeds. He'd fit in well at either of those clubs, they share his aggressive outlook on things-fight, scrap, them against us, "don't ****'in get beat", that sort of thing. He isn't a 'fit' at Ipswich in the same way Mourinho wasn't at Man Utd. Their fans are trying to convince themselves he is & he's doing all he can to convince them as well (the soundbites early on, getting the ex-players into training, his actions yesterday) but its an uncomfortable liaison that won't last. He reminds me of David O'Leary when he found himself as Leeds manager almost by accident and, albeit with loads of cash, made them a force and a side to be reckoned with for a couple of years, including a Champions League semi final. The lure of the big time and Villa, in time, were his downfall as well. He chose to get out and count his money when his time there ended, Lambert is refusing, it would seem, to accept he may have been found out as well.