Bristol City Preview

This afternoon the Yellow Army rolls into the West Country to meet high-flying Bristol City at Ashton Gate.

The Robins will go back on top of the table should they win and Stoke fail to beat Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, and Canaries chief Glenn Roeder believes they are there on merit:

Generally speaking the league table doesn’t lie and Bristol are there on merit. They are very close now, very much in the home straight and they can see the winning line but they haven’t got across it yet. They play good football and if we allow them to play it will be much more difficult for us.

The hosts will give late fitness tests to Lee Johnson and Jamie McCombe, while the Canaries are sweating on the availability of Gary Doherty and the influential Darel Russell.

A few facts…

League Position: Bristol City 2nd, Norwich 17th.

Last Meeting: 20th October 2007 – Norwich 1 Bristol City 3.

Top Goalscorer: Bristol City – Byfield (8), Norwich – Cureton (14).

My Prediction: When I originally made my predictions I went for home win, but I can’t bring myself to predict a defeat. Bristol City 1 Norwich City 1.

£5m for Ameobi? He’s all yours Tony…

So Stoke pipped us to the post for Shola Ameobi, but if Glenn Roeder’s right and there’s a £5m future transfer fee attached then good luck to them.

In a recent column for Vital Norwich I said that I thought Ameobi could cost anywhere from £1.5m upwards, but £5m? The board have their critics but if they spent that much on him there would probably be uproar.

Still, he’s pretty chuffed to be going there:

As soon as I heard of Stoke’s interest in me I was absolutely delighted. They are a big club, who play good football and they are doing extremely well this season, hopefully I can help them achieve their goal.

I guess one and a half out of three’s not too bad…

The mystery of the disappearing banner

At some point in the last 36 hours the banner on the main page vanished. It’s back now (as you can see), but I’ve no idea what happened there. Sorry about that.