SNAP

Well researched and really interesting. There is, however, one small flaw. Our "Second Season syndrome actually started last Chistmas as we begun to get found out. Lambert''s no mug. He could see that no realistic amount of money was going to save our bacon this year. My biggest worry remains that everyone says what a great track record Chris Hughton has. He''s never been in THIS position before and he''s nevr been undrr pressure as a manager before. Newcastle - he was oblivious to the fact that the chop was coming, until it did. Birmingham - No expectations there so no pressure.

Interesting to hear so many people referring to yesterday as a “one-off” including Russell Martin on Radio Spud. If Fulham was a “one-off” and yesterday was a “one-off” how many one-offs can one have in a season? Considering Hughton was supposed to be concentrating on the defence how have we shipped so many goals? The answer may be that he has taken a side that was designed and built by “He who must not be named” as an attacking unit with flying full backs and wingers getting so much service to the front guys that scoring goals became as inevitable as conceding them. “He who must not be named” could see what was coming this season. In all honesty, if one goes back to last Christmas the eventual downfall of a system that involved Championship players going gung-ho for goals was doomed to ultimate failure. So he moves on before his reputation suffers and poor old CH takes up yet another poisoned chalice without even realising it. He watches videos while on holiday and decides that if he can just stop the goals going in he’s onto a winner. Sadly, to accommodate that idea he has to drop Wes, stop Howson and the full-backs straying over the halfway line and bring in a centre half that Martin O’Neill has looked at and found wanting. If he does manage to keep us up somehow (and I hope he does of course) then I think we will have a long a happy relationship – as long as AVB doesn’t mess up too badly at Spurs in which case the merry-go-round starts again.

.....one draw away from a return to The Championship.

Take a look at the list of dodgy unheard of players he signed at Portsmouth. many never got near a run in teh first team yet most cost £1m+. Then ask yourelf if you''d like him anywhere near your transfer budget and football agents.

Martin O''Neill rarely lets good players go. I don''t think he''s let a good one go this time either. turner did well at Hull - and they went down.

We made more than enough chances agreed - sadly we missed more than enough of them too....

When you fail to sign a proper striker and think that playing Morison instead of Holt will solve the problem and you dont play Wes last week because the opposition is too tall but lay him against Newcastle there is only one conclusion - clueless. There is little point in living off the misfortune of being sacked as Newcastle manager and replaced by a guy who is far more successful and being the media''s favourite person when you don''t have what it takes to change the course of a match when you are on top and 1-0 down. How many time did "he who''s name must not be mentioned for fear of upsetting the board police" make late substitutions that changed a game in our favour? Maybe we are happy to clear the debts and go back to being a Championship side managed by a nice guy.

I think the real difference between CH and "He who must not be named for fear of upsetting the Board Police" is that the latter has the ability to bring on players late in a game and alter the tactics usually resulting in a positive outcome. So far CH has simply made changes that are at best neutral and designed to hold what we have. a season full of draws will not be good enough I''m afraid.

Who cares! just post something else!

Sadly, appoint a defender and you get defenders. We could go down with the fewest goals against ever!

It''s not the QPR game that worries me its the one following on through to the end of September. In reality we should have had four points on the board before taking on the big boys. OK, we may still have three if we beat QPR but its more about the psychological damage that has been done. Hughton has a style of play that he favours. That''s fine. So does Big Sam and he''s pretty "successful" in his own way. The difference is that he didn''t take a team of attack minded, hungry footballers and turn them into a well drilled defensive unit by adding a defender not considered up to it by one of our rivals and letting two defenders go who were considered "useful" by people who have seen a lot more of Norwich City than he has. OK, Whitbread and Drury weren''t really on his watch but Ayala was. I agree that there are some alarming similarities with Brian Gunn and short term modest success with Newcastle and Birmingham do not necessatily mean we have got the right man even if the world of "Media Luvvies" love him. Sadly, I think that for too many people, Chris Hughton will never be accepted simply because he isn''t Paul Lambert. These people seem to believe that each defeat brings the second coming closer. Wake up and smell he coffee - it just brings The Championship closer and moves a second coming further away. Anyway, the last second coming was Mike Walker and let''s remember how that eneded.....

So, Hughton will announce the skipper just before KO tomorrow. Who might it be? Has Holt''s summer "toys from the cot" antics ruined his chances? He will surely go for someone he sees playing most of the games. Howson? Turner? ...and does it really matter who is skipper? Maybe the one person it will matter to is one G.Holt. Thoughts?

Am I alone in getting just a little irritated by the “Message Board Police”? By this I mean the people who seem more concerned by spelling, grammar, punctuation and whether a post has been put in the right place than they are about the content or views expressed and with reading other people’s thoughts on our great football team. When I attended my first game in 1960 all this stuff was science fiction. Now we have it we should all be able to enjoy it rather than be concerned about posting something that breaks the rules invented by the Messageboard Police and fearing that they may pick up on a technical issue. Get over it! Enjoy each other’s thoughts and comments rather than being picky about how it is presented. Tin helmets on! Hatches battened down! Hit me – see if I care!

I''d just love to be singing......"Paul Lambert.....it coulda been you!"

If the press are right and PL had a clause in his contract allowing him to speak to a Premiership side and Saint David has broken that contract then he could just have cost the club £1m. Add that to the rather indelicate way that Grant Holt seems to have been treated (and i wouldn''t necessarily disagree with the fact that he shouldn''r be given a three year, top earner contract) and we may just start to see him in a different light. Let''s hope not as there is a lot resting on him getting it right!

He sweats too much! Simple as....

The man is an employee of a company. He is ambitious and wants to better himself. He  believes that going to villa will get him closer to his goal of a top 8 club. He could see that the jump from Norwich to someone like Liverpool wasn''t going to happen. Villa to Liverpool is a much shorter jump. He would need many millions of pounds to move the club from 12th to even 10th and he knew he wouldn''t get it. The borad simply wnt survival and the money that comes with it - nothing more. If he were to finish 17th next season they would be delighted but his star would have dimmed. No brainer I''m afraid. take Villa to a top 10 finish and he''s ready for the next big step. On the flip side - fail at Villa with no funds and he''s bound for Scotland.....

My thoughts exactly - What more can he achieve here given the backing he will get? 10th? So what? Awhole season counting on the same amount of surprise and luck we had this year? how would his stock stand if we finished 17th? Not so high I suspect. The Board would be "Delia Lighted" but would the fans and would other clubs see him as the potential Messiah? Hw can go to Villa and finsih 12th again and they will see that as a major achievement. Simply put he has over achieved here for whatever reason (and there are genuinely loads of them) but, from a personal point if view he need a club in decline wbut with big potential. He can move to a top six club from Villa, he can''t do that from here....

but while we''re waiting for confirmation......let''s lash out anyway!

How about........Lambert to Wigan! Could be his only option if he doesn''t nail his colours to a yellow and green mast soon.

Definate shades of Mike Walker after Munich if you ask me.

OK, so now we are “nailed on certs” for the Europa League next year with the outside possibility of facing Paul Lambert’s Barcelona in the final of the Champions League. Let’s make sure we are all ready for the experience. Here is a checklist of things we need to start getting ready now: 1)      Passport. Make sure it’s up to date and that you make a diary not to renew it in plenty of time if it runs out in the next two years. You’ll need it to get out of Norfolk I believe and will certainly need one for places like Uzbekistan and Scotland. 2)      Money. Start saving now. Some of the less fortunate countries in Europe (like Uzbekistan, but certainly not Scotland who seem to still have money to burn) make most of their National income from visiting English supporters. We don’t want to let the side down by appearing to be “doing Europe on the cheap”. 3)      A new bicycle. This is for whoever scores a goal against a European opponent. He can keep it locked away until he wants to get it out in fifty years time and cycle all the way back to the scene of his finest (only?) hour for charity. 4)      Translation Dictionaries. These can be handed out at the away legs to supporters who will be travelling to Norfolk. We need to explain that their normal English-Latvian dictionary will do them no good at all in Norfolk. 5)      A large supply of bed sheets. These will be used to display messages such as “Hello Mum”, “Paul Lambert was King”, “Delia’s Barmcake Army” 6)      Large Union Jack flags. These will have various towns and cities around the world embroidered across the middle to make it look like we have supporters everywhere. You didn’t really think that Stoke had supporters in places like Hastings did you? Of course not – they make it up. 7)      Sellotape. This is to be applied to the side of the face and used to stretch the eyelids back. We need to make people in the Far East believe that we have lots of supporters from their region. This is important for future television deals but the tape should be removed as soon as the cameras have moved on to avoid headaches and impeding your view of the game. 8)      “Canaries on Tour” tee-shirts. These may be better purchased in advance with all the dates printed on the back. All you need to do then is use a felt tip pen to write in the names of the opponents. I’ll ask the sad bloke who sits in front of me in The Jarrold Stand where he got his pen from. He has a lovely shirt with Alan Lee written right in the middle of the back. It’s still as clear as a bell and he doesn’t smell so I guess it’s a pretty good pen. 9)      Redevelopment of Norwich Airport. Well, we can’t expect people like Lionel Messi and his Barca colleagues to be bussing it up from Stansted and they would certainly not appreciate having to arrive on a small plane because the runway isn’t long enough. Come on Norwich International, think of all the money you are going to make selling stuff to the media army – get developing now ready for the big day. 10)  Finally, I guess, we need one other big thing – A Reality Check. We beat a poor Sunderland side 2-1 at home. But, let’s leave this last item on the checklist for another day and enjoy the dream.

[quote user="Nexus_Canary"][quote user="Gingerpele"]Morison shouldn''t get into the team until he learns how to score.... 3 great chances he has missed this season...[/quote] this [/quote]   Erm....Torres at £50m has missed rather more.

[quote user="Lambert is god"] "To stay up a club is expected to spend all its Premiership money and then put itself into hock (or have a rich owner) to even feel like an ugly sister."   What, like our Premiership opponents yesterday? They''ve got no sugar daddy owner, and are not in debt. A properly run club that others would do well to emulate (though not some of the onfield antics yesterday).   We are the ones 20 million in hock and yet have spent all but one of the last 15 seasons out of the top league. [/quote] Good point - but they are the exception rather than the rule and have spent as many seasons out of the top flight as in it I suspect.

Thsi season is shaping up to be a classic case of "Be careful what you wish for..." Each time we have been here we have been made to feel like the poor relations - because that''s what we are. We are nowhere near the standing of even a mediocre clubs like Villa and Everton. The decision to bring in "hungry players" who wanted to prove themselves at Premier level is laudable - but they weren''t Premiership players for a reason! Guess what that reason was..... Having said that, given a choice of going into battle with over the hill and overpaid Scandinavians in the side, or Lambert''s Hungry brigade I''ll take the latter every time but I fear the result might be the same - plucky Norwich, everyone loves us - just like Blackpool. Sadly, like Blackpool, we don''t fit the Premiership''s image of what a Premiership Club should be like. We don''t have a host of foreign imports with names no one can pronounce but whose presence ensures revenue for the Premiership in their home countries. We don’t come from a densely populated urban area with the potential for lots of Sky Subscriptions. We are not owned by a Billionaire with more money than sense, or more money than their knowledge of football in England. No, make no mistake, the Premiership and its associated people (referees?) won’t want our stay at this level to be a protracted one. They will want West Ham and Birmingham back just as soon as possible. That’s why our stay last time felt “uncomfortable” and that’s exactly the way it’s shaping up this time. It wasn''t helped by Delia''s outbursts or her "poor little Norwich" speech but she wasn''t solely to blame and she does a lot more good than harm to the standing of the club. To stay up a club is expected to spend all its Premiership money and then put itself into hock (or have a rich owner) to even feel like an ugly sister. We may remain a Cinderella but we’ll still be proud of our club, team and region. If we could wish again would we wish to be top of The Championship, or seeing fourth from bottom as a dream end to nine months following our team? What a shame we couldn''t take their Premiership money but stay in The Championship. Unambitious or Realistic?