bigbear

I, myself, was quite happy at the draw.  It''s what I was hoping for at the start of the game, as I had almost seen a defeat coming.  Especially when I heard that Blackpool haven''t beaten a team a division above them in the FA Cup for 20 years, not what I wanted to hear!  I was hoping to get on tv in the replay for added revenue, but I would have thought that Bristol City would get that, for the highlights I saw, they looked very good and full of confidence.  Whether there will be another televised game I don''t know.  In terms of a bigger crowd, maybe, being on tv isn''t such a good thing.  It will be a very difficult match, especially as I can''t see us coming through the games leading up to it with a great deal of confidence.  With our injuries and suspensions starting to mount up a bit, I can''t really see us winning anything from now until then.  Leeds is a good chance, but just got to hope they don''t gel again, as we all know they still have some very good players, but league form and positioning don''t really tell the whole story. Just hope Grant can do some wonders in the next couple of days tobring in some much needed cover or even players who will start instead of some of the dross we have been witnessing

sorry to have caused confusion.  What i meant was, that the hotel itself had the type of clientel that can afford bentleys, etc.  I also assume that the team went up there together either on a coach or on a plane.  My mates aren''t the most posh of people to say the least and its surprising to see them in a hotel of that type, but someone else sorted out their hotel tickets.  Normally, i''d have thought they would have gone in 1 of those nasty b+b''s near the sea front which cost about £10 a nite if you dare to sleep with cockroaches bigger than you are.

I got a phone call at 11am this morning by 1 of my friends.  He had gone up to Blackpool for todays game.  they are staying in a swanky hotel, which was somehow just £40 a night.  He pulled up in his car, got changed from shorts to jeans in the car park.  He was surrounded by Bentleys and other expensive cars.  After puttign their clobber in their room, they then went down to the bar to wait for serving time.  Who should pass them on their way there, but Safri, Dublin and Drury.  By the sounds of it, the whole team are their.  He sai they were just standing around by the front reception desk looking quite relaxed.  Hopefully that is a good sign.  Just hope for their sake, they have a good game and win, cos my friends will no doubt be getting a little tanked up and if they see them, they will probably hurl some form of abuse at them!!  The bookies have us as underdogs, and I can see where they are coming from.  I''m not too hopeful of today, but I hope we come out victorious, we need a good win to get us going

I had a dream last night that James Hayter had signed for us.  Unfortunately, that was the only part of the dream I remember so I don''t know whether he did well for us or not, or how much we ended up paying for him.  It may come true, you never know.  I''d have prefered to sign Ronaldinho or Ronaldo, but even in my dreams I must have realsied that we wouldn''t be able to afford players like that, although it would be nice.  I suppose Hayter will have to do. IBack to real life, i''m quite worried that PG is only really looking at getting players in to sort out the attacking side of our game, I do admit, it leads a lot to be desired at the moment with Earnie out but, if it was me, I would be wanting to shore up my defence which is leaking more goals than I care to think about.  Whether that means, another 1 or 2 defenders in or a good defensive midfielder I don''t know, but something needs to be sorted there.  If we aren''t going to get the players in, then serious work needs to be done on the training ground.  To teach them to actually go towards players rather than back away to the edge (if not inside) the penalty area, to not ball watch, to not hold opposition players so much (take note Doc, he make me cringe sometimes as he is so blatant),  to not leave tackles/clearances to the last minute when it can be done more safely earlier, to actually talk to each other while play is going on rather than when they are arguing after the ball is being picked out of the back of the net. Sorry, my post started off quite nicely, then I went into one a bit.  Rant over, though I feel a bit better after it! 

Is Brown able to play against Blackpool on Saturday or did he play in the 3rd round for the mackems?  If a player is going to make his 1st start for a club, playing in the FA Cup against a team a division below isn''t a bad one.  A pity that Blackpool are in such a good run of form at the moment.  If our players can pick themselves up and be counted (which they don''t seem to like doing at present) then it should make for a very good game.  Hopefully the weather will be fine and dry and the pitch will play ok.  If Grant can get another face or 2 into the squad by then, the players in those positions will be feeling the heat so will have to produce, especially if Grant puts his money where his mouth is and starts dropping players who are underachieving. I''ll obviously be hoping for a win as i would love to see a cup run which the fans deserve, but the old quotes will be out in force if we don''t, "the league is what we are concerned with", etc.  I''m very confident for the game though, and certainly wouldn''t mind getting a draw and have the replay at Carrow Road which could possibly even get televised depending on what other games have to be replayed.

We could get Stephen Fry''s mate Bill Bailey here in the opposition dressing room before the match and at half time, they would be so confused or hurting by laughing so much afterwards that we could be a couple of goals up before they know whats happening

One of my workmates had a strange dream yesterday.  He knew that he was going to see Norwich for the 1st time in ages because he plays football at s decent standard and is required to play every Sat afternoon.  Anyway, he dreamed that he was sitting in the Barclay looking out onto the pitch.  Who does he see but Jordan (Katie Price) playing upfront for us.  He didn''t say whether she scored or not or what the final score was though.  If anyone is into reading dreams, maybe you could clarify this to me, an omen perhaps, or maybe that one of our strikers is actually female (I doubt if DD is, from what Alex Ferguson once said about him!!).  Maybe one of our boys will chest the ball in?  Who knows?  Sorry, thought i''d share that with you.  I just wish it was my dream instead.[:P]

From the looks of the papers, it seems that Earny might be injured and out of tomorrows game.  If that is the case, do we put Brown up there with DD?  He will have to be put in at some point, but playing alongside another target man might not be wot Grant had in mind when he 1st signed him.  If they do play together, then we need Croft and Hucks to be on top crossing form, with the height and strength that those 2 possess.  Or would we go with DD up front by himself or with Hucks, because Thorne will probably be still out.  Maybe McVeigh, or even bring in Chris Martin.  I personally play the new boy up front with DD to see what he is like, and have Martin on the bench waiting to come on if it is all going pear-shaped.  Obviously, in an ideal world, Earny will be fit, but do we want to risk injuring him more when we have some hard games coming up as well as the cup. If Earny is out, Grant will have to earn his money

Just like a lot of you I have wondered long and hard about the signing of Brown.  In my eyes, a team in a division shouldn''t sell players of any quality to a rival team, like we are, unless they are paying massive amounts of money which would come in handy, which we aren''t.  If you sell a good player to another team seemingly of the same sort of standard, then you are biting your nose off to spite your face, weakening your team to strengthen another.  That is why I don''t feel that Keane is entirely bothered at all by getting rid of him for what seems an over the odds amount of money.  That is 1 option, another is that due to his disciplinary problem, they just wanted rid of him to the 1st bidder.  Sunderland don''t seem to be particularly short of money, so money can''t be the reason.  He has been quite a regular if you look at the number of games he has played for them this season, which mystifies me more.  Has Keane been mad in letting a good player go, or shrewd in letting a bad player go for a half decent amount of cash. We will see shortly.  I''m sure everyone will get behind him as Norwich fans always do for new players, but if they start seeing that he is another player who is clearly not of the standard needed, or the workrate then they might be quick to jump on his back.  One thing going for him is that he has a great player in Earny and also the calm, unnerving, experienced head of Dublin, to help steer him on the path to hopefully becoming a player the fans take to their hearts with passion, and hopefully ability and goals. 

I agree with a lot of what people have said about yesterdays game.  It was far better than the load of rubbish that has been served up to in recent matches.  I believe that a lot of that was down to good old DETERMINATION and EFFORT.  It wasn''t a classic city performance by any stretch of the imagination, not a hell of a lot of skill and guile but what we did have, mixed with a bit of heart made the difference.  Drury had a better game, that was thanks to Hucks actually getting back a few times and also Safri kept going over to help him out, as often as possible.  The defence seemed more of a unit (did back off quite a bit as usual but luckily it didn''t count for anything), with big blocks and tackles going in.  Etuhu actually looked interested in playing (for most of it anyway), and put a few tackles in.  Our full backs tried to get forward whenever they could to support the winger, just a pity about final cross.  Dublin was immense, won everything in the air, and scored with a lovely finish.  Earny, not his best game, but he has a lot of things on his mind at the moment with transfer speculation which certainly isn''t helping matters.  Even though i wasn''t mesmorsied by the skill on show, i was more than satisfied with what i saw as quite an enjoyable match, with us playing with a bit of heart.  Luckily we weren;t against a great team or we might have really struggled.  More efforts like that please lads, thats a good last match of the year, lets hope we have a good to start to the new year, with 3 points and hopefully some new players on show in the next few weeks.

There isn''t really anyone else out there who can take 1, maybe Earny is the best of a bad bunch.  I remember Drury taking a couple earlier in the season.  They were cringeworthy.  1 thing I couldn''t fatom out about Earnies free-kicks on Tues was, whatever was Robinson doing.  He was lining up to shoot as if shooting with his left foot. He hasn''t really got a right 1 but it is better than his left.  If it is meant to be getting the wall worried or making the keeper wonder who is taking the kick and where the ball might be going, it was clearly never going to work.  Surely they could try some in practice and see who might look closest to scoring, as nothing else is working.  Do you remember Eastwoods free-kick against Man Utd? I think it may have been the 1st free-kick he had ever taken for Southend, it doesn''t have to be the same player every time.  Try others, wot would it lose?

In years gone by, I would look forward to every match I went to see, nowadays, that isn''t so.  The only reason i''m going is that i''ve got a season ticket and I don''t really want to waste it.  None of my friends want to go anymore because they are so pi**ed off so I can''t sell it to them and I don''t want to sell it back to the club cos they will just be getting far more in return than I do.  Hopefully in January things may change so I can get back to looking forward to my matchdays at Carrow Road. In January i''m in mixed minds what Norwich should do, do they go for broke and sign players who may or may not get us to the playoffs but will cost us a hell of a lot if we don''t, or do we look to the next 2-3 years.  There are young players trying break through but can''t in the Prem and Championship who are untested but could be scouted or there are always plenty of mid 20''s players in the 1st and 2nd Divs raring for a chance to play in front of 25,000 fans.  Or look away from the English and Scottish leagues.  Didn''t Reading buy Doyle for anout £20k from Cork City or somewhere like that?

A few people seemed curious about Earny coming off against Wolves.  It was Dublin being brought off that really baffled me.  Unless he had a knock or something like that.  The man has played most of has games under Grant at the centre of  defence and has been our best player by a mile on a lot of those.  Why wasn''t he put at the back for the last 10 mins instead of taking him off.  He is possibly the best header of the ball in our side yet he is not there at the death when Wolves are throwing everything forward.  My patience is starting to wain a bit with Grant, he needs to do something soon, Jan is only just round the corner and signings need to happen sooner rather than later in the month.  Merry Christmas by the way.  Hoping for a few points over the next few games, but am finding it difficult to see them at the moment.

Has anyone heard of who Norwich might be linked with in Jan?  Grant said he wanted to get players early in the month rather than having to get someone last minute, so maybe he has already got some people in mind.  When he says that he can''t get hold of decent loan players, he is speaking rubbish, how come teams like Cardiff and Hull can get them?  Even if we don''t get starting players, we need good fringe players who are on the verge of the 1st team, to give them a kick up the harris.  Too many players know that they are going to automatically on the starting line-up.  Competition for places is a must, obviously our youth players aren''t going to do that.  Grant doesn''t want to have to throw youngsters in at the deep end.  If they are good enough, then play them.  1 of Southamptons better players on Sat was 17!  Either bring in new talent, or give youngsters a go, as there is no way now I can see us getting anywhere near the playoffs ( I hope i''m wrong though), so why not try new things.  Worthy had the cahnce to at the end of last season, but didn''t.  Grant should maybe give a couple of them a good run in the side.  He might want to wait about 10 games before doing so, so that we know that it is a sure bet against getting to the playoffs.

Match predictions:- Southampton 3 v 0 NCFC -with our team today, no chance.                               Wolves 2 v 0 NCFC -always lose at Molineaux, early goal to get our heads down.                               NCFC 1 v 1 Southend - should be a win but still can''t see it.                               NCFC 1 v 0 QPR -think we will luckily nick it after another lacklustre display.                               C Palace 2 v 0 NCFC -usually a terrible game for us and can only see 1 outcome, at least no Johnson! All in all, i''m forever a pessimist, but times are kooking more bleak by the passing hours at this football club.  I really hope i''m wrong, but I think we will be about 18th by the end of New Years Day.  I''ll still wish for the best though, you never know, it is Christmas time after all, magical things are supposed to happen!

I''m hoping that the person who has been doing these heinous crimes is caught very soon, whether it is the man with the BMW or not.  Unfortunately, like with a lot of serial killers, they get braver.  From picking on prostitutes from just a certain area, to then branching out.  From those, would he then think that the police and the world has nothing on him so he can do as he pleases with any woman from any walk of life in any area.  He may now stop the bloodshed forever to stop himself getting caught, or he might carry on, but leave it a long while.  No-knows, it''s almost impossible to at this moment in time.    Does he work in Ipswich, and only pick them up when he has finished work?  Is he a local?  Then there is a motive, Was he shunnned or belittled by a prostitute? Given an STD?  Lots of questions, but few answers at the moment.  This man (a good assumption), has to be caught to stop anyone else and anyone elses family getting hurt.  Just hope its sooner rather than later.  Thoughts go out to the families and friends of those young unfortunate women. 

 Maybe this is what the team are hearing in the match build ups and at the training ground.  I can only understand 1 word in 6 coming from the man. "_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ pass _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ opposition.  _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ don''t _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ shoot.  _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ keep _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ backing _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ away. _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ concede _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ goals." Maybe we should just get a team full of Scots instead, they might be c**p but at least they would know what he is on about!!

Obviously Gallagher isn''t doing a very good job at interpreting for Grant, maybe we should get Malky back to help us with it.  That Riordan from Celtic could do it as well, but I very much doubt he would want to drop down to our level. Couldn''t Grant write everything down as well, or is his handwriting worse than his English!!

In my eyes, Drury was a very accomplished defender when he came to the club, and Barry Fry was quoted as saying that is was possibly the best full back outside the Prem.  That may have been true, but ever since he was given the captains armband, things have gotten worse.  Then it got taken off him, he played better, given back to him, and it started all over again.  He isn''t a leader in any way shape or form, not vocal or charismatic enough.  Players have respect for him but not as their leader.  It''s true he is caught out of position too many times and the amount of crosses which come in from that side is unbelievable.  A lot of that is to do with Hucks.  Thats why our center midfielders should be more aware and go and help him.  Maybe that would make him more comfortable and confident in going more towards and marking the man instead of backing off by 10 yards. 

I think its fair to say that I''m not a fan of Peter Grant and probably less so as a City player, but even then, I will hold my judgements until after Jan.  Unfortunately, we need new signings to make an immediate impact when quite often it takes players a fair few games to get used to other players and the tempo in which that team plays.  Only then can we judge him and the team.  We also have to see who he chooses to get rid of, to be honest I would want to name most of the squad on that list!!  I''ll be crossing my fingers for new faces in January .  Not just old boys of his like Ashdown (rubbish) and Chadwick (not a bad player, but gets a few injuries).

Personally, the central midfield pairing I think are the worst I have ever seen were Grant and Milligan,  No goal threat, no ability to pass and control the ball, just running about like headless chickens following the ball about wherever it went.  They only ran after the ball so much because the kept losing it all the time.  Sounds a lot like Hughes really!!

Grant keeps having a go at everyone but himself, that makes me a little puzzled as there is only 1 person who picks the side, or is there?  How much to do with the tactics, etc are the other back room staff involved in?  Since Worthless departing, we seem to play exactly the same way, with the same players and same formation. No matter what people say about the points picked up since Grant has been in charge, only the Cardiff 1st half can I remember Norwich playing great stuff .  Yes we''ve won games playing quite well in parts, but the amount of times in games when teams dominate us outweighs it.  Sunderland at home, we won with 1 shot on target and Gallagher laking saves, West Brom hit the woodwork 6 times and missed 2 open headers, we had 2 good chances, to name just 2 games we won.  He said he prefers 442, yet weve only done it against Leicester.  He also said that he wouldn''t play people out of position, which he has.  Only a couple of times has it been forced (ie Hughes going to right and left back and Dion at centre back).  He had more than enough time to bring in players via loans.  Im not counting Chadwick as we will be signing him in Jan and he would upset people at Stoke, so they had to let him come here, and also Ashdown who was useless, both old boys of Grant.