slater

Darren Kenton: I remember him being substituted 20 minutes into home game he was having such a nightmare. Within a few weeks The Barclay were singing "You''ll never beat the Kenton."

Molte grazie signor Tifoso di Dereham. Molto interessante...

Two for punk rock/political reasonsFC St Pauli (Hamburg, Germany) - great anti-fascist/non-conformist/anarchist fans.Livorno (Italy) - again for their left wing fans and sometimes players. Check out their most famous player Cristiano Lucarelli.

I don''t suppose anyone remembers a friendly against either the Iranian or Iraqi national team - maybe early 1990s? We basically played our reserve team and beat them. The best bit was seeing 50 or so extremely enthusiastic Iranians/Iraqis in the city stand jumping around and singing for the whole game. Never did find out what they were singing about....

"Damien Francis has poked Mrs Mckenzie" Hilarious (and potentially actionable).

My girlfriend is a season ticket holder at Ipswich Town. We met each other at the first ''Shake Hands for Derby Day'' fans'' football match in 1999 - so clearly, at that time, I didn''t feel a tremendous amount of hostility to the horsey feckers.What changed that was meeting some of her fellow ''super'' blues. I''ve always felt that a lot of NCFC fans'' hostility towards Ipswich was a bit like hissing at the pantomime villain but many of my g/f''s (otherwise perfectly amenable) Ipswich Town supporting friends are obsessive in their dislike for Norwich - could it be that they don''t have much of a life outside of football? That''s when my attitude began to change.Add in their club''s disgraceful episode in administration, their takeover by an evil baron who makes cash from arms-dealing conferences and some rather unpleasant derby day experiences at Portman Rd and I now reciprocate some of that hostility.

[quote user="Epic Beard Man"]This is as far as I got. What arrogance to think that 72 million children even want to read your blog [/quote] Have stopped lurking and logged in just to say that is the funniest reply I''ve seen for ages. And also to say to WITS - I dig the guerilla charity work.

I''m pretty sure Trevor Brooking was a success in the brief time he was at West Ham? He took over from Roeder (oh, the irony) when they were at the foot of the premiership and saved them from relegation?Now, if only Bryan Gunn could do that sort of trick....

To whet your appetite for old farm fun have a look at these....Never Mind The Danger (pt1)Never Mind The Danger (pt2)"It''s very rare that you lose 5-0 and play well."

Spot on and very well put Johno. Since the fag-end of Worthington''s tenure we''ve had a succession of managers who would claim that because they were fire-fighting there was no time to think of the long-term. Which, rather inevitably, led to more firefighting. The board''s hands-off approach to managing the football team manager hasn''t helped - the board seem to take the attitude that they''d better leave that ''football stuff'' to a professional who knows more about it than them.And you''re so right about the terminated contracts. I''m struggling to name another club that sacks so many players so close to the beginnings of their contracts that they have to pay off the substantial remainder. It''s the sort of thing that I can imagine an egotist  like Barry Fry or the Latvian lunatic at Hearts doing.

20% of total club income on the player wage bill? Surely you mean 8.5/19.2 x 100 = 45%.

Today Neil Doncaster said, for the umpteenth recent time, that our player wage bill is £8.5m - of which only £4m is covered by income generated by the club. People on this board have continually argued the toss over whether enough cash has been spent on the football side of Norwich City.  I had no idea whether £8.5m was a pittance or extremely generous in Championship terms but this article suggests that we we still spend more on our player wage bill than than around least half of the Championship. It looks like our wage bill is somewhere close to average for the division.The top eight (inc. Birmingham, Wolves, Reading QPR and the Arms Dealers south of the border) and two clubs in our cohort have either got wealthy benefactors or parachute payments. The article then goes on to look at this season''s performance of the different teams in relation to how wealthy they are. Norwich City is second bottom in terms of bangs per buck. Or if you prefer, we don''t pay peanuts but we seem to have got monkies. The other main under achievers include (from worst to least worst) Charlton, Derby, Forest, Watford, QPR and the not-so-super blues down the road. It''s fascinating - have a look.

[quote user="PAFC"]norwich - i think your home form vs clubs around you will keep you up [/quote]Blimey - thanks for that. But you obviously haven''t seen us play at home....What about your lot (Plymouth, I presume). Confident you''ll be well out of it?What did you make of us when we played you?

Footballers play better for a manager they like and better when the fans support them.Surely these are two of the most important ''football reasons'' for appointing someone like Gunn?Roeder & Grant on the other hand had coaching qualifications coming out of their bumholes....

As a politically correct, Guardian reading, pinko vegetarian I''d like to say that is the funniest take on Obama''s election I have seen.Brilliant comedy.