Mr Grumpy

I went. Not sure of the relevance though.

It actually makes me really angry that the inbalance in rewards between PL and FA Cup, and the arrogance of the PL for planning fixtures next mid-week means that we have no real choice but to effectively withdraw from the competition. What is the point of a football club, if not to create memories and fantatic experiences of joy and despair? Looking back over the years of following this club, so many of the matches that stick in the memory the longest are the cup runs. Milk cup semi and final, an amazing FA Cup quarter final v Southampton, the experience of 2 FACup semi finals etc. I totally agree with the way the club have approached this game (and most other cup games in the last few years) but it''s really sad for younger fans especially who may not get to experience a cup run for the foreseeable future.

I think this is a case of AN having to prioritise. It''s well known that there''s a dearth of quality CBs in Europe at the current time, hence Celtic are likely to get the £10m for Van Dijk. To find someone who could walk into our side and ideally has PL experience is going to cost at leasf as much as that. If we say AN''s total budget is £20m(?) then you can see why he may be going with what we''ve got.

That was my first thought too.

"We will have some really positive news later today. Keep a close watch on @NorwichCityFC and http://canaries.co.uk " Any ideas anyone?

Sorry, but can''t let that one just go past without comment. £21 to add an NCFC badge to a stock item?? Wow.

For me, Howson has everything you would want in a captain. Quality player, sets a great example, leads by example etc etc. Great player though he is, i think Bradley is too indisciplined to be captain material.

[quote user="Jarders"]Crystals was an absolute shit hole but it didn''t matter in the slightest. An massive empty room, 4 cans for a tenner, no queues for the booze, a playlist of Norwich songs and a load of excited Canaries is the recipe for a cracking time.[/quote] As I said, they knew exactly what their customers wanted!

Sorry, missed your''s from this morning. Can''t believe no-one else from this Board was in there. The place was rammed and they knew exactly what their customers wanted!

Did anyone else on this board spend time in Crystals bar right next to the stadium yesterday? How mental was that place. Loved it.

How about the overnight sleeper train. Leaves Euston at about 8.20pm i think. Arrive refreshed in Aberdeen at 7am the next morning.

There are many thousand Club Wembley members who pay for an option to buy tickets for any game at the stadium. I guess for popular games like this, many will take up their option and then sell on the tickets at a profit through sites like this one. The deadline for CW members to buy was 5pm today, which is also why there may be extra ticket allocations for the 2 clubs announced on Wednesday (ie we''ll get the tickets that the CW members chose not to buy)

Teams that have 2 consecutive away games often struggle in the 2nd game against teams that have 2 consecutive home games. A point tonight would be fantastic, but the most important thing is that we don''t over-react if we do happen to lose. Whatever the result, our season won''t be determined tonight for sure.

York are a very poor side at the moment and for some unknown reason they’re not giving Carlton Morris a start. So he’s only getting 20 minutes or so coming off the bench when they are usually already struggling in the game. It’s not been the most worthwhile loan move for him, to be honest. I don’t think it’s a reflection on the player but choosing which club to loan players to is always a bit of a gamble.

Alex Neil has clearly indicated that the squad is too big for his liking, and he’s right. An oversized squad means an oversized wage bill and disgruntled players who know they aren’t going to get a game which is bad for morale and hence bad for team performance. There was always going to be a one in, one out approach to this transfer window. In this case the ‘one out’ fell through due to the player’s demands and so the ‘one in’ doesn’t happen either. It’s not that difficult to understand. To say we’ve run out of cash is ridiculous.

Yes. The last thing we needed last night was someone to slow the game down. Plenty of possession in the first hald but it was ponderous and predictable. Middlesbrough were happy to watch us play in front of them and then they had a clear tactic of trying to exploit our right hand flank. In the second half we changed shape to try and chase the game, but they responded tactically themselves and we hardly had a kick of the ball. Defense needs sorting first, as we can''t always chase games and then going forward we need to be much more sharp and attack with pace.   

If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, I’m sure that when the Barclay was redeveloped the plan was for away fans to go in the upper tier. The first game was a pre-season friendly against Spurs and their fans smashed up a snack bar and lobbed various objects and bodily fluids down onto the home fans so plans were hastily changed and away fans went into the South stand.  

[quote user="lharman7"]I think we are sorted in that department now and would be flabbergasted if we signed another striker. I think he''ll go to Fulham.[/quote]   I agree, but at the back of my mind I can''t help feeling that cash + Becchio is something that would interest both parties.

Source: official tweet

Malky will be the new WBA boss.

My view, for what it’s worth. We have to be realistic. Over the course of a season the final positions in the Premier League (and all other divisions for that matter) will tend to reflect the overall salary budget of each club. The teams that spend the most on wages will be fighting out at the top of the league and so on. This means that for the last few years we have clearly overachieved, but that is not the norm for a club with revenues such as ours and no billionaire benefactor. Unless we take action to increase our revenue (and then subsequently invest it in the playing squad) or get taken over, then our long term position will probably be to bounce around between the top 2 divisions. We’ll have occasional spells of overachievement and underachievement but about 16th – 20th   place in the hierarchy is where a club with our spending power is always likely to revert to in the long term. Relegations will happen from time to time and whilst you need to learn lessons every time it happens, vitriolic abuse aimed at players, managers, coaches, directors cannot change the fundamentals.   All of the focus should now be on next season. The promotion push starts on Sunday. This is now a match with no pressure so let’s take some pride in the club, get fully behind all of the players, sing from start to finish, take the roof off the stadium with the noise and that can only be a positive thing for next season.     

Sounds like he''s in Scotland somewhere. Don''t you just love this time of the year.

It''s Kamara

I don’t think we should be so quick to rule this out - this could be a good move if we got Graham too. We could end up at the end of January with Hooper (age 24 with lots of potential) and Graham (proven to score PL goals) as attacking options and having removed one of the highest wages from the club. The 3 year Holt deal in the summer was always a gamble given his age and I’m not sure it’s working out. One thing is clear, if we don’t get more goals out of our forwards then we’ll be in for a long hard relegation scrap and this could be a good way to achieve that.   I know Holt is a talisman etc etc, but at some point that has to end.

Grant Holt retweeted this tonight: Get Football News @GetFootballNews 3h Swansea manager Michael Laudrup will hold talks with striker Danny Graham to see if he wishes to remain at the club.   Do you think he knows something?