As ever December is one your busier months and with less than a week left of 2011 we still have two league games to play, both away and both at the home of a freshly promoted side. On Tuesday night it’s Norwich. Given that they came straight through the Championship few predicted that the Canaries would have enough players to do well in the Premier League but, at the moment anyway, they’re proving the doubters wrong with a brand of busy attacking football that has gained more than a few surprise results as well as being easy on the eye. Holt, Morrison and Hoolihan have all been mentioned many times in despatches as has our own Kyle Naughton who will of course be given an extended Christmas break given the eccentricity of the loan regulations. While we may be pleased with the absence of Naughton in this game and Caulker on New Year’s Eve due to this ruling, we won’t be quite so chuffed when it comes to the (cough) title decider later in January when Adebayor will have to sit out the trip to Abu Dhabi.
The good news is that Sylvie seems to have kissed Rafa’s hamstring better thus the Dutchman may well be available to play at Carrow Road. Redknapp’s favoured option when Lennon is unavailable is to play Van der Vaart in his place though he must be getting frustrated by his inability to cover adequately in front of Walker. As so eloquently covered in Windy’s Blog (http://windycoys.blogspot.com/) both were at fault for Sturridge’s tap in on Thursday night, though they were far from the only ones culpable (step forward Assou-Ekotto). It wasn’t a free kick against Modric but we should’ve stopped the goal anyway.
In many ways this is just as tricky a game as that against Chelski the other night. Norwich have been cavalier and pretty fearless, there’ll be a good atmosphere and they have some capable players and a fine manager. We’ll need to be on our mettle and certainly any signs of complacency will be set upon.
I would try and tell you who the match officials are but my internet is slower than a Van der Vaart back track and I need to go out and get festive. COYS.
By MF
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