When the Canaries fell into League One, things didn’t get off to the best start...
TheF ootball League has thrown up its fair share of weird results over the years – few have been as odd as Colchester’s visit to Carrow Road in August 2009.
Suffice to say, Norwich City wasn’t a massively happy place back then – the Canaries had been in the Premier League in 2005, but dropped out of the top tier that year and went down again four seasons later. After boss Glenn Roeder got the boot midway through the Championship relegation campaign, in had walked club legend Bryan Gunn – City’s goalkeeper for the famous UEFA Cup win at Bayern Munich. The change didn’t have the desired effect: five defeats in their last six encounters consigned them to the third division for the first time since 1959-60.
Not to worry, though: it was only Colchester at home on the first day of the season, in front of 25,000 fans at Carrow Road. What could go wrong? Quite a lot, it turned out: the Essex side had come 12th in in the previous League One campaign, but had been much improved after appointing Paul Lambert in October.
Norwich’s starting XI included Wes Hoolahan, Grant Holt and ex-Spurs defender Gary Doherty, but they were 3-0 down in 19 minutes, not helped by Jon Otsemobor skying a backpass towards debutant goalkeeper Michael Theoklitos and allowing Kevin Lisbie to prod the U’s in front. Groans of horror from co-owner Delia Smith a
