George Caulkin article in today's Times....

FOOTBALL | GEORGE CAULKIN
Norwich v Ipswich: Drama from top to bottom in the Old Farm derby
One of them is flying while the other is hurting but George Caulkin finds striking similarities in the ethos of Norwich and Ipswich, who meet tomorrow

Luke Chambers is hurting, “I kicked someone’s studs last week, so I’ve had swelling on my foot,” the Ipswich Town captain says, although this pain, or a version of it, is an old friend.

“I’ve put my body on the line for the club for six and a half years, played with broken ribs, a broken foot, a broken wrist.” Even now, his left hand is strapped up, but playing and hurting is who he is and what he does. “You just get on with it, don’t you?” he says.

Chambers is a centre half who specialises in discomfort, causing it and feeling it. Commitment is his business; to ache is what it takes. Yet the 33-year-old is hurting in a different way, too. “I struggle to sleep at the moment,” he says. “I probably take on a bit too much. It’s tough. It’s a dark place, at times. It’s a lonely place.”

Ipswich are clamped to the foot of the Sky Bet Championship, 24th and bottom, eight points adrift of safety. They have won three games all season. Tomorrow, they play Norwich City, their East Anglian rivals, whose victory over Leeds United last weekend took them top. These matches chew up logic but Norwich are “flying”, according to Tim Krul, their goalkeeper, and history is their ally. They have not lost an Old Farm derby for a decade.

From the outside, Ipswich’s situation appears bleak and, as things stand, a club laden with history — Sir Alf Ramsey, the title, Sir Bobby Robson, the FA Cup, the Uefa Cup — will drop to the third tier for the first time since 1957. “It makes me annoyed, because everything is here,” Paul Lambert, the manager, says. Lambert is here but used to be there; the Scotsman previously led Norwich to successive promotions and into the Premier League. It adds another layer of complexity.

Yet even as they writhe, Ipswich’s agony is restorative. There is a bud of optimism, which is how Lambert can shake his head at the backing that he and his players have received from supporters and say, “It’s not a normal situation. Normally, there would be protests, mayhem.” Instead, there is what? A positive negativity? “Yeah, that’s the strange thing being at this club,” Lambert says.

It is how, over a conversation at Ipswich’s training ground, the walls pebble-dashed with motivational quotes from Michael Jordan (“Make it Happen”) and Muhammad Ali (“Impossible is Nothing”), Chambers can discuss hope and hopelessness. “We might have to go down to come back up, but there’s a plan and the club is moving in a clear direction,” he says. “I’m excited about the future. I want to be part of it.”

Connection, reconnection; it has not always been the Ipswich way. It was only last month that Marcus Evans, who has owned the club for 11 years, gave his first serious interview with a newspaper, telling the East Anglian Daily Times that he would not sell up and that Lambert would remain in his role “whatever happens”, with a brief to repair relationships and ensure that “the ethos of the playing style runs through every age group”. Belatedly, he has become visible, engaged.

Healing was necessary. Mick McCarthy’s six years of management coincided with underinvestment, an appearance in the Championship play-offs in 2014-15, when they lost to Norwich in the semi-finals, increasing struggle and grumbles about the football. Paul Hurst, McCarthy’s successor, was sacked after five months, the shortest reign in the club’s history. Vital players such as David McGoldrick, Martyn Waghorn and Joe Garner had left and not been replaced.

If Lambert, who was appointed in October, harboured concern about his hinterland at Norwich, it has evaporated. Results have not turned but the mood is altered. Last month, he wrote an open letter to fans, thanking them for their fervour. He reimbursed 50 supporters who travelled by coach to Blackburn Rovers, costing him £1,800. At Thursday’s press conference, he wore a pin badge promoting Blue Action, a fan group formed to improve the atmosphere at Portman Road.

Norwich have advanced farther down a similar path; as well as the spiky contrasts and antipathy, the two clubs share similarities. A couple of years ago, Andrew Lawn and some mates established Along Come Norwich, an online fanzine and podcast. “It felt like the atmosphere and fan scene at Carrow Road — and, more generally, across the country — was getting worse and worse,” Lawn, 33, a science communicator, says.

“People were becoming apathetic. There was no sense of community or theatre. It wasn’t an event any more. It was almost like a consumer chore; you’d spend money on a season ticket, shuffle off to the game and shuffle home afterwards having watching bog-standard Championship football. We wanted to talk about that, to try and challenge and change it.”

Stuart Webber arrived as Norwich’s sporting director in April 2017 and Daniel Farke became head coach the following month, recruited from Borussia Dortmund’s reserve side. “Since then, there has been an opening up of the club,” Lawn says. “They’ve been much more transparent and communicative and they’ve supported us massively. We raised £8,000 through crowdfunding to buy a load of flags and banners, to make the ground more carnivalesque.”

That bond has helped Norwich, who finished 14th last season, when help was necessary. “It’s brought more understanding from fans, so when things weren’t going well on the pitch and when we had just sold James Maddison and Josh Murphy, there was never any sense that Farke’s job was in danger,” Lawn says. “There was an acceptance we were doing something different.”

Krul, 30, joined Norwich in July. After a long spell at Newcastle United, when he won eight caps for Holland, there have been injuries and frustrations, a season with Brighton & Hove Albion when he barely played. “Football is a gamble,” he says. “You know that anything can happen. Norwich are a good club with a great set-up but they had also just finished mid-table and, on paper, they had sold their best players.”

There was a single victory in Norwich’s first six league games this season; that sixth game was a 1-1 draw with Ipswich. From that point, Krul says, “everything clicked”.

Club, team, fans are aligned. “It has happened much quicker than anyone in Norfolk would have thought,” Lawn says. “Stuart Webber said two years ago we can’t afford to keep going out and spending £10 million on a midfield player, that we had to look to our academy first. Since then, players like Jamal Lewis, Max Aarons, Todd Cantwell and Ben Godfrey have got into the team and shown they’re good enough. Everyone buys into it.”

Having a blueprint, explaining it and sticking to it has driven Norwich’s success, as much as their energetic, possession-based football. Ipswich aspire to the same. “To have the owner say the club is not for sale, that we’ve got the manager for three years, that he’s backing his plan, is the kind of environment you want to be part of,” Chambers says. “We’ve lacked that. We’ve been working season-to-season. If you get the club on a roll, it could snowball.”

In the short-term, there may be more suffering, wage reductions and job losses, but Chambers, who falls out of contract this summer, will accept it, as he always does. “If the worst happens, I’ll be the captain who takes the club down to a league they haven’t played in for a very long time,” he says. “I want to be the captain that leads us back.”

For now, plans and blueprints, hope and hopelessness, can all be dismissed. As Farke said at Norwich’s wind-buffeted training ground yesterday, “Every derby has its own story and it’s a big chance for Ipswich, a do-or-die moment.”

Ipswich do not know where their fall will bottom out but there is nothing to be gained from holding back. “I don’t have a balancing act,” Lambert, 49, says. “I’m just going to go for it. Football is a momentum thing. It can change.”

As Chambers poses for our photographer, he is asked to smile. “No,” he says. “I don’t smile.” He is joking, although it is not really a moment for jocularity. It is a moment for Norwich to show how serious they are, for Ipswich to decide what they want to be. A moment for teeth to be clenched. “We’ve been hurting all season, they’re having the time of their lives,” Chambers says. “We have to go there and upset that. If we’re going down, we go down with a fight.”

Key stats
1st Norwich are top and have lost only once in their past nine at Carrow Road in the league
(W6 D2 L1)

24th Ipswich are bottom and without a win in their past nine away league games (drew 1, lost 8)

9 Norwich have not lost in their past nine league games against Ipswich (W5 D4), with their latest such defeat coming in April 2009 (2-3)

2006 Ipswich last won at Carrow Road in league competition in February 2006 (2-1), failing to win any of their seven trips since (D4 L3)

TV
Tomorrow, midday - Sky Sports Main Event

Posted By: JD3 on February 9th 2019 at 09:11:03

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in