Norwich City Season 2 (2013-14) Part One

It was time for the big kick off.

The season started at home to Man City and we scored a huge upset with a 3-2 win. Andy Caroll scored 2, and Kweuke got the 3^rd, and though City played the last quarter of the match with ten men, it was still a huge confidence boost, and really augured well for a fantastic season.

A mood that lasted all of one week, till our next match, a dispiriting 3-1 (Howson) loss at Newcastle.

Newcastle seemed a winnable game to me and I really felt the team i put out could have done more.

We overcame Championship Birmingham in the first round of the League cup, 2-1 after extra time (Howson and Kweuke) but it was hardly convincing.   

I was sticking with my 4-3-1-2 which had helped me at the end of the season and perhaps other teams were getting used to it.

Two draws in highly winnable games against Blackburn (Carroll) and Wolves (Kweuke) left me feeling things weren’t quite gelling, and this was only exacerbated by a 1-0 loss to West Ham.

                                               

                                              Bassong:  He'd earned his new deal 

Meanwhile the board were continuing to prove very hard nosed. They continually opposed my requests to expand the stadium to help us get more revenue than our current pitiful 27,000 capacity allowed, and were to prove equally recalcitrant when dealing with requests around wage/transfer budgets despite the excellent financial discipline I had shown.

At this time, I found Man Utd had offloaded Joshua King on a free transfer and felt he was worth a punt, showing only that I had learned little from the Bebe debacle!

The Capital Cup brought some respite with a 2-0 victory over Leicester (og, and Butterfield) and there were other positives. Arshavin was surpassing all my expectations, being consistently excellent, setting up countless opportunities and keeping Hoolahan on the bench.

Meanwhile Kweuke decided to pick this moment to demand a big contract increase. I felt his excellent form warranted some sort of improved deal, but his agent wanted his contract tripled. We could not reach agreement.

A 2-0 victory at home to Stoke (Arshavin and Caroll) made me wonder if I had turned the corner but though October started with a creditable 2-2 draw at Chelsea, it was followed by losses to Spurs (2-0) and Man Utd  (4-1  Howson)  and when we went out of the League Cup to Spurs (2-0 again) things didn’t look so great.

                                                 Homeward Bound:  Lugano's loan didn't work out

Seb Bassong continued to be consistently excellent, averaging over 7.6 as an average rating, andbeing a great leader and a defensive rock. When other teams started sniffing around I loosened the purse strings and moved him to a £41,000 p/w contract. High for us, but still very low by premiership  standards.

In the transfer market we picked up Ashley Smith-Brown on a free transfer. Cast off by Man City I thought he had the potential to be a decent premier League defender, and was worth developing if only to sell on.

As November started we were 16^th , bottom of a large group of teams within 2 points of each other. One victory could have taken us top 10,  but suddenly the board, and the media were saying my job was at risk. This seemed ridiculous to me, so early in the season. The board had asked for a mid-table finish and it was way too early to doubt it. However one newspaper report said a loss to Liverpool would seal my fate.  Oh the madness of modern football.

This may have been a blessing in disguise however, as 

I changed the formation around to a variant on 4-1-3-2 (I had no wide men so my options were relatively limited) and we came out with a critical 2-1 victory over Liverpool (Stracqualursi and Kweuke) and when we went 2-0 up against Sunderland in our next match, I thought I’d cracked it. Sunderland, however, mounted a soul-destroying comeback, and snatched  it 3-2 in stoppage time (Carroll and Howson) and I was, literally, in tears at throwing away such a lead  (football's an emotional game!) The Liverpool 3 points had moved us up several places and apparently bought me a little time.

                                                              

                                                  Homesick: Gomis was given a leave of absence

About this time Remi Gomis started complaining of being unsettled and homesick so I gave him a leave of absence to get his head together. I also felt that Lugano wasn’t really gelling with the rest of the team, his body language was all wrong in some of the matches,and he wasn’t justifying his huge wages, so I terminated his loan and determined to use Ayala and Bennett giving them the maximum opportunities to develop by exposing them to first team football whilst they were young enough to make big improvements quickly..

We beat our favourite whipping boys Swansea 2-0  

(Kweuke and Johnson..view the goals by clicking the play symbol above) and then again conspired to throw away a lead, allowing Aston Villa to come back from 2-0 down to draw  2-2 (Johnson and Jensen)  with a 93^rd minute equaliser from Bent breaking our hearts. Still it was a good away point and as November started we were steadily moving up the table and were now 9th.