Always one to try and help out where possible, in this week’s Guru’s Goat column for the Vital Norwich site I’ve put together a bit of a shortlist of potential targets for him to work through with Messrs Smith, Jones, Turner and Doncaster.
You can read it here…
The headline on the Pink’un story reads “Hollman lifts lid on City exit“.
Call me naive if you will, but I expected therefore to be reading Hollman’s side of the story, maybe even something controversial given that the impression given was that his departure was anything but mutual.
The closest we get to a story is this quote:
It really was mutual consent in the end. I think something told me it was time for a change and we basically decided to go our separate ways. It is a parting of the ways because I’d done enough.
How disappointing.
Yes I’m afraid confirmation has now been received that football really IS dead. It came in an unusual form, but it is indisputable.
Tony Pulis – Manager of the Month. I’ll say that again. Tony Pulis, you know, the Stoke City manager, has been named as the Championship’s Manager of the Month for February.
Putting aside for one minute the fact that no 50 year-old man should be seen permanently wearing a baseball cap (I don’t care if you’re going bald or not, it’s just not cricket), how did that happen?
If you look at the facts it’s actually fairly clear. Stoke won their first five matches in February (before it all went a bit wrong against Preston) and are now, incredibly, sitting atop the Championship table.
Stoke don’t actually play football though, so I’m sure if we look at the rules we’ll find some sort of loophole there that enabled this to sneak through.
Part of me would actually quite like them to go up this season, if for no other reason than to find out if it is possible for anyone to embarrass themselves in the Premier League more than sorry old Derby have managed to this year.
A touch of bitterness? Would I swap places with a Stoke fan right now? If it meant playing the sort of football that requires some serious neck support then no, not on your nelly.
It was only last month that the giant keeper left the Yellows to join Posh for £400k, which I believed at the time and still believe now was good business for the club – especially as there was a nice big juice sell-on clause attached.
This week of all weeks it is only right and proper to post a public service announcement to men everywhere, so ladies if you can avert your eyes for the remainder of this post I would be extremely grateful.
Have they gone? Ok, lads listen up. You might not realise this but tomorrow is 29th February. In case you are unaware, that is the day that women are “allowed” to propose to their men, so if the missus is acting a little strange (I resisted the urge to write “stranger than normal”) and you’re out for dinner tomorrow tonight, or she has arranged any “special” plans, if you don’t want an uncomfortable few night’s sleep in the spare room you might want to pick up that headache she always seems to have just after Match of the Day has finished.
You know the one. It comes on all of a sudden in the evening for a few hours but is gone again by morning.
Don’t say I didn’t want you. 
PS for the record I’m very happily engaged – and it was almost all my own idea!
Sunderland have told midfielder Liam Miller that he can leave the club.
Miller started his career at Celtic, and joined Manchester United on a Bosman deal in 2004. After making just nine appearances for the Red Devils, Miller was loaned to Leeds in the 2005/2006 season, where he played twenty-eight times, scoring once.
On the day Roger Munby announced that the board will back Roeder in the transfer market this summer, what better place to start than with the 27 year-old Republic of Ireland international?
The Premier League has pulled out of a meeting with Fifa to discuss the…ahem…controversial plans to play a 39th league game overseas, claiming they:
Need to conduct further studies and consultation before seeking the advice of Fifa.
So in other words they’ve realised that it’s a completely ridiculous idea that Fifa would never sanction in its present form, so they’d better start again.
Hahahahahahaha.
Now that everyone has had a couple of days to chew over the tackle that broke Eduardo’s leg the overriding sense of opinion seems to be that it was not a malicious challenge, and Martin Taylor didn’t try to hurt the Croatian international; rather it was one of those “freak” occurrences that happen in football from time to time.
I’m glad to hear that.
Most people would say that Taylor is “not that sort of player” and the player himself is said to have visited Eduardo in hospital on Sunday morning (after first being turned away on Saturday night as the Croatian international was undergoing surgery).
I see PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor has had his say. I’m not one of his biggest fans but for once he’s talking a lot of sense here.
Incidentally there is also another good piece on Football365.com by Rob McNichol in his “Referee365″ column. He gets a little bit of stick in the comments section but I find his column usually to be a really interesting insight, as it’s often too easy to lambast referees. You can read that here.
So what does this all mean for Norwich City? Well for one we can kiss goodbye to signing “Tiny” in the summer if we even had a chance left of bagging him.
Birmingham have rightly rallied round the defender and I for one would be absolutely amazed if they got rid of him now.
If Alex Pearce repeats his performance from Saturday against Barnsley and Mr Roeder brushes up his powers of persuasion it may not be an issue for us anyway.
According to this story in the Pink’un, Glenn Roeder isn’t too happy with some people around the club for suggesting there was a problem between him and Darren Huckerby.
I don’t usually copy and paste whole stories into here but there are so many good quotes in it I just can’t avoid it:
Glenn Roeder has criticised those who, he claims, have tried to drive a wedge between himself and Darren Huckerby.
Huckerby made his first league start of the year against Barnsley on Saturday, but it was his absence from last weekend’s trip to Leicester which was a major talking point among fans and pundits alike, although Roeder clearly didn’t take kindly to all of the observations.
“Considering he hasn’t played for a while I was very pleased with Hucks,” he said. “What I like about Hucks is he has a super attitude.
“What I don’t like is the way people in and around the club have tried to say there is a problem between the two of us. He has gone out of his way to say there isn’t. I have gone out of my way – although I don’t feel I have to go out of my way – to say there isn’t.
“And yet these nasty, irritating people that try and cause confrontation between myself and a player, between myself and supporters, are just bad people.
“They are people who will never manage a football club, they have little idea of managing a football club and yet they have a voice that reaches our supporters. Me and Huckerby get on very well. I don’t have favourites, I don’t do favourites. I pick the best team and at the end of the day it is my call.
“It is easy being a manager when you are one of 25,000 sitting in the stand or if you are an ex-player who is now working for the media who will never manage anything better than an under-10 team, thinking he knows best – and you know what I’m talking about, and I will deal with that, trust me. I’m a nice bloke, but not always.”
Roeder’s comments are believed to refer to BBC Radio Norfolk summariser and Pink Un columnist Neil Adams, the former City midfielder who is a coach within the club’s youth set-up.
Adams yesterday said he stood by comments he made this week when he said he would play Huckerby – but that Roeder’s record in leading City out of the relegation zone could not be argued with.
“It is not me saying that he should have played – because results show that the manager has got it right,” said Adams. “I am a big fan of Huckerby’s, but it’s results that count and it’s results that the manager has got.”
Now let me go and check that I didn’t insinuate there was any problem between the two quickly…no, don’t think I have. I should be in the clear.
To be fair, at least Adams actually has an opinion (assuming Mr. Roeder is referring to him of course). He’s not there to just agree with everything – even if whenever I’ve listened to Canary Call that’s pretty much what he has done.
Somebody outside of the “big 4″ can win a trophy in England. Spurs upset the applecart to land the Carling Cup at Wembley yesterday, and deservedly so.
Hucks and Roeder get on just fine. There is no rift, which means less column inches for journos (including us citizen ones) but I’d much rather that was the case.
Football still has the ability to shock. Eduardo’s broken leg. Enough to make you want to play darts methinks.
King Kev is a tactical genius. Since returning to Tyneside, Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle have recorded a very unimpressive return of 2 points from a possible 15 in the league, have been knocked out of the FA Cup and in total scored a 3 goals – conceding 16.
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