Canaries on song in top flight
UNSPOKEN, THE word hung in the air at Norwich City’s training ground, nestled deep in the fields of rural Norfolk, squatting beneath a slate-grey sky ahead of the overnight clash with West Bromich Albion.
Footballers are superstitious creatures. They know how easy it is to invoke a curse, to tempt fate. They will not say it aloud; their voices are reduced to whispers when it is mentioned. They would rather not think about it at all.
‘‘Yeah, I’ve heard about it,’’ says Mark Bunn, the goalkeeper, shifting uneasily in his seat, eyes darting nervously around the room. ‘‘ But if you start talking about that, you get carried away. If you look into it too much, you end up losing games.’’ That is the nature of the hex. Even asking the question could be enough.
Inquiries are unwelcome, quickly rebuffed. ‘‘ I’ve heard it mentioned,’’ deadpans Chris Hughton, Bunn’s manager, in evasive mood. ‘‘It doesn’t mean anything.’’
The word, rather improbably, is Barcelona. The Barcelona of Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernandez and all the others, the Barcelona widely recognised as one of the finest club sides in history. The Barcelona who are the only team in any of the major leagues in Europe on a longer unbeaten streak than Norwich.
Hughton’s team have not lost for 10 Barclays Premier League games. True, they are six shy of the Catalan giants’ run, but the feat, a club record, is remarkable none theless. It has been no fluke: it encompasses victories against Arsenal and Manchester United, a creditable point at Everton and a spectacular win at Swansea City, and it has taken them to eighth place, on the cusp of Europe. No wonder nobody will run the risk of breaking the spell.
Overnight, Norwich travelled to West Bromich, a club that have spent a substantial part of their campaign in a Champions League slot after their best start to a top- flight campaign. Quite what alchemy Hughton has worked is not, at first glance, entirely clear. Softly spoken, thoughtful, the club’s manager attributes the turnaround to a reaction among his squad to the heavy defeats by Liverpool and Chelsea; others suggest his defence tactics have made Norwich extraordinarily difficult to beat. Neither, really, explains how a club of such limited resources has managed to avoid defeat for not far off a third of the season.
‘‘That’s a good question,’’ Hughton muses when asked if he is surprised at his team’s achievement. ‘‘I don’t want to say I’m surprised. That could look like a poor reflection on the players we have. But it is tough. It is very tough.’’
This season of all seasons, though, Norwich’s transformation into one of Europe’s form teams, somehow fits.
It would be appealing to see Hughton’s success as a triumph of the traditional path to success, for good, old-fashioned coaching, for football’s long-forgotten virtues of patience and hard work.
‘‘Our gaffer here is much more hands-on than most,’’ says Bunn. ‘‘He does all the sessions. Even when we are not in, he takes the young lads, or the reserves, and he does one- on- one sessions for players. Most managers pick and choose their days on the training pitch. Chris is out there every day. He’s there before us, putting the cones out.’’
But unexpected success is not simply limited to the Broads. Swansea, of course, have built on all they achieved under Brendan Rodgers last season, with Michael Laudrup, a little more expansive, a little more gung-ho, at the helm.
West Ham United have adapted to life in the rarefied air of the Premier League with not a single symptom of altitude sickness; Southampton took a little longer to find their feet, but have now lost just one of their past six; Sunderland, Newcastle United and Liverpool all find themselves mired in the bottom half of the table. The old order is being inverted.
That, of course, has prompted much intensive debate over whether the giants are stumbling or the minnows growing. More competition clearly means a healthier league, but does it signify a stronger one? Does this acquiescence to democracy not indicate a weakness on the part of the elite?
This is a chicken and egg of a conversation: for the weak to seem strong, the strong must seem weak, and vice-versa.
Hughton’s analysis of what has happened in the Premier League in recent years, of what has allowed his Norwich to find themselves in the shadow of nobody but Barcelona: ‘‘The best teams will always finish at the top and the ones who are not the best at the bottom, and that will never change. But the clubs who are entering the league are better prepared now.
‘‘ The game is not just about money, about having the best players. You could look at any team in the Premier League and the way they prepare for games, their approach to sports science, to nutrition, to that entire side of the game would be as good as the clubs at the top. Every club has made a massive effort to keep up.
‘‘Because everyone now is better prepared, there is much less fear in the games we are playing. Teams are playing with open philosophies. Look at Swansea last year. They came up, and they were not afraid at all.’’
Like Swansea, like all the others, nothing frightens Norwich any more. Except, of course, that word; that accursed word.