05 May 2008
Add goals and City have recipe for better season

STEVE GEDGE

Free from the threat of relegation, would Norwich City go out with a bit of a swagger and end a campaign to forget with a flourish? But, hey, why break the habit of a season?

This game should have been done and dusted within the first half-hour.

Had City taken their chances then, would the Owls have hit back with their second-half flurry of goals?

It's unlikely, because surely they would have become totally dispirited. But instead, because the Canaries frittered away their openings, they knew they were still in with a chance - and took it.

It just goes to show how huge that win over QPR was. Over the last three months Norwich have been far too brittle away from home, and you just knew that if they had needed something at Hillsborough they would have been unlikely to get it.

Defensively, City haven't been great all season, but it isn't problems at the back that held the Canaries back yesterday or, indeed, at any point over the past nine months.

A goals-against total of 59 compares favourably with recent years - it was 71 and 65 in the two seasons since relegation, for example - but up front it's a very different story.

Ched Evans can look back with a great deal of pride and satisfaction on a total of 10 goals, and Dion Dublin chipped in with nine, but otherwise the strike rates have been simply appalling.

Yes, some stupid goals have been conceded, but if players had done their job at the other end it wouldn't have mattered. While we should be extremely relieved to have finished three points clear of the drop, at the same time we finished just 16 short of a play-off place. And it's our woeful scoring record that is to blame.

As a top scorer Jamie Cureton should have finished with a whole lot more than 14 goals, and the other 11 scorers who managed anything between one and five - well , the lack of goal support across the field was utterly pathetic.

Anyone, other than one particular player, released this summer can have no cause for complaints. Cureton has escaped a lot of criticism from fans this year because of his Carrow Road past, but I think he's used up all his popularity credits now.

That 16-point gap that could have been bridged if we'd been able to take and create any chances in a season when teams weren't exactly queuing up to take a firm grip on the top six.

Forget poor collapses like yesterday's, rather than drawing at home to Charlton, Ipswich, Leicester and Scunthorpe had we won, beaten Sheffield Wednesday at home instead of losing, drawn with Cardiff and not lost, won at Colchester instead of grinding out a draw and not conceded a last-gasp goal at Bristol City that would have been the Canaries 15 points better going to Hillsborough. And who knows what might have happened then.

That has to be the one thing that Norwich take from this season as they prepare for the next one - it won't be a division crammed full of brilliant teams.

If Watford fail in the play-offs that will be five or six teams receiving parachute payments next season - I suppose it's possible that Derby are employing a bit of gamesmanship when they're saying that they've already spent next season's money.

Throw in Ipswich and QPR with their supposedly unlimited funds and that's seven or eight teams for starters that are in a different league to the Canaries.

But as Leicester showed yesterday, having a lot of cash to play with doesn't guarantee any kind of success. Some of them will fail.

(And while I'm sorry for Foxes fans, I have to say their relegation did give me a moment of satisfaction at a frustrating time when we can fill our ground every home game - but it doesn't really matter financially in an age of sugar daddies).

If Glenn Roeder can find two strikers who can show a bit more consistency than anyone currently on the Carrow Road books - and that shouldn't be too hard - we shouldn't be finishing anywhere near as low as 17th next season. And talking about the manager, while there are some gripes about our lack of goals, ultimately this season was all about survival, and on that score it's mission well and truly accomplished.

Unlike four years ago there won't be huge numbers of Canaries fans thronging the city centre tonight, but staying up in 2008 is as big a cause for celebration as winning the title in 2004, given what a state we were in six or seven months ago.

The subsequent recovery can be put down to Roeder. Totally.

Right from day one he has had a huge impact - witness his half-time talk against Ipswich on November 4. We got a point, but more importantly, how crucial did that result turn out to be for the visitors?

The evidence is maybe beginning to suggest otherwise, but I hope he gives Darren Huckerby one more year.

In all the Dion-fest celebrations of the past fortnight the possible departure of City's No 6 has been totally overlooked.

Norwich just don't do letting top players go very well at all. Mackay, Fleming, whoever - they can all be bundled out of the back door by managers and forgotten until there's a few tickets for failing reunion events that need to be shifted by being able to advertise their presence.

Huckerby has been an immense part of City's recent history, and while I wouldn't expect that to be a concern of a recently-appointed manager, the club really won't have handled things very well at all if yesterday does turn out to have been his Norwich swansong.

Player of the season twice in the last four years, he is just as deserving of the amazing reception Dublin received - and thoroughly deserved - at Hillsborough yesterday.