Where are goals going to come from in this Norwich City rebrand? 

Not really, of course, but there are just some matches in which you know your team is never going to find the net.  

The long drive back from Wales offered plenty of thinking time to mull over the opportunities that Borja Sainz and co spurned against the Swans.  

Depending on your point of view it was a match to offer further encouragement that Johannes Hoff Thorup is on course to get his new yellow and green machine ticking. They created enough opportunities to win two or three Championship games outright. With a little more finesse they will be absolutely fine.  

Alternatively it was a worrying sign that the Canaries are a team that might see any promise undermined by a lack of firepower. 

That last nagging concern is one that Thorup is going to have to work hard to shake off. On their way to the top six last season David Wagner’s version of Norwich City scored 79 goals in their 46 league games. The summer transfer window saw the scorers of 36 of those, leave. So how do you replace the output of players like Gabriel Sara (13 league goals in 2023/24), Jonathan Rowe (12) or Adam Idah (6)?  

Keeping hold of Josh Sargent in the summer was vital, making sure he stays fit will now become the priority. The American striker hit 16 in 26 appearances in the Championship last season.  

If Norwich can get a full campaign out of him there is a chance that he will outscore himself. He can’t do it on his own though. Where else are the goals going to come from?  

Josh Sargent remains City's main attacking threat (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

Sainz was particularly profligate at Swansea. His winning strike at Coventry remains the only away goal scored by Norwich so far this season. Sainz could already have equalled the six league goals he got in 23/24.  

Not many other players in Thorup’s squad from the weekend have records that suggest they will become regular, reliable sources of goals.  

Saturday was the fifth anniversary of that incredible Premier League win over Manchester City.  

Kenny McLean opened the scoring in that one but has scored just five league goals since. Marcelino Nunez has five goals in total for the club of which three have been direct free kicks.  

The jury remains out on new signings like Ante Crnac and Oscar Schwartau as they get used to the pace of Championship football. Onel Hernandez came on as a sub and his lack of goals in recent years is well documented. That’s not to say those players don’t have other strengths but the ability to pop up with an extra couple of goals each per season would really help the Canary cause.  

Amankwah Forson was the one Norwich player to show clinical instincts at Swansea but unfortunately, he did so into the wrong net. His own goal was one of those great reality checks that football can hit you with. Having spent the two-week international break buoyed by the optimism of a win at Coventry it took less than four minutes for a clumsy but unfortunate own goal to spoil a 600-mile round trip.  

The fact it was an away defeat suggests that some trends from the Wagner era still need to be reversed.  

That top six finish last season was very much built at Carrow Road. Away wins were few and far between. Norwich City have just four in the league since the turn of the year and one of those came at Coventry before the international break. Sargent has amassed an impressive 15 goals in 2024 but only three of them have been scored outside the Norfolk border.  

Thorup cut a frustrated figure after the game. He looked like someone who had been in a tangle with the office printer. He’d pressed all the buttons and given it the right instructions but it still refused to churn out the promised end product.  

The Dane’s challenge now is to solve the paper jam and work out who he can trust to turn promise and possession into something more tangible.  

Take that... 

The way we broadcast football commentary on the radio is starting to change.  

I’ll spare you most of the technical details. In very basic terms BT is in the process of gradually switching off the ISDN network. Over the past few decades that’s the method we have used to plug in to press boxes around the country and send our signal back to Norfolk.  

It means that some grounds now require us to use the internet to send the commentary back instead. Eventually that’s how all of our football coverage will be provided. No-one listening should really notice a difference, so why am I telling you this?  

It’s hard to do justice to the nervous tension one feels when trying to connect back to the studio on arrival at an away ground. Going all that way and then being foiled by technology is the only real curse of the commentator. Getting the green light on our box to show it’s good to go is a feeling right up there with any goal.  

The man in charge of the media at Swansea must have sensed the concern as I plugged in the equipment at the weekend.  

“How reliable has it been so far this season?” I asked, tentatively, of their IT infrastructure.  “Well…” started our helpful host in a reassuring Rob Brydon-esque Welsh accent, “we installed it over the summer and managed to run an entire Take That concert off it so I think it will be fine.”  

Sure enough what was good enough for Gary Barlow was more than sufficient to power a BBC Radio Norfolk commentary. It’s just a shame we never got to test it with a Norwich goal.