* * * The Foxtrot Report * * *

NORWICH CITY 3 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 2

It seems that a small minority of people have come to keenly anticipate The Foxtrot Report, almost expecting it to provide a humorous take on a Norwich City performance, whatever the result.

Well, let me open by saying that there is absolutely nothing funny ? at all ? about the way Norwich City won this match. There is nothing amusing about a team playing excruciatingly poor football for 80 minutes of a game, by which point they should be five or six goals down rather than two, only to somehow score three scrappy goals and end up winning right at the death.

This becomes even more tragically heart-rendering when one considers that the QPR fans had spent the whole game mocking both our support and our star striker Robert Earnshaw, who was already disheartened by the scathing reviews of the film he recently made with Ant and Dec. I didn?t laugh once as I watched the furious QPR fans file out of the Jarrold Stand (where I was sat) the second that Norwich City scored their well-deserved third goal, and you should not have either. If you laughed yesterday, or are deriving any amusement from these paragraphs, please go and take a long, cold shower. Now.

I was unable to hear the Norwich fans, for the most part, over the incessant noise of the QPR fans, who ? bless them ? kept singing right until the 85th minute. So I missed the booing of Andy Hughes? every move and the group of Norwich fans who apparently cheered QPR?s second goal. For my money, I didn?t cheer ? I simply watched and admired, wondering how I?d feel if Norwich were to score a ?goal? of their own. Luckily, I got to celebrate three in what was subsequently to become the greatest afternoon of my life.

The first half was a tense, engaging affair ? a brilliant, taut tactical battle between two talented, experienced minds. The first forty-five minutes rarely promised a break to the deadlock, but then one side made a move that blew the game wide open.

?B5?, I said. ?Curses!? replied my father. ?You sunk my battleship!? I had packed the Travel Battleships in anticipation of the football being an embarrassing, scrappy, artless, witless, eyeball-gougingly poor contest between two thoroughly pedestrian teams, and I was right.

Occasionally, though, I bothered to watch it, seeing as I?d paid twenty-three pounds to watch it (which at least provided better value than the THIRTY POUNDS I spent at Selhurst Park). Nothing of any worth happened at all. Carl ?Gary Neville?s mouth, Philip Neville?s feet? Robinson managed to misplace a 5-yard pass to Andy Hughes, and then had a little argument over it, probably over which one of them least resembled a Championship midfielder.

Despite the presence of much-loved courtroom jester Georges Santos in the QPR defence, Norwich created the square root of nothing in the opening half. Robert Earnshaw scuttled around up front, doing nothing but wave his arms around every time he got caught offside, which was once every three minutes. One of Norwich?s pre-planned set-pieces came off perfectly, though: Dickson Etuhu rolled a dead ball to the feet of Darren Huckerby, who blasted it into Row Z, the players congratulating themselves on replicating a well-rehearsed set-piece routine in a ?real match? situation.

QPR were the better side without creating a clear-cut chance. Stylishly-haired winger Gareth Ainsworth presented the biggest threat, and it was no real surprise when he capped QPR?s best move of the game with a well-taken goal right on half-time. Nobody in the Jarrold Stand seemed to care at all ? perhaps they, like I, could tell from the first-half performance that we were definitely going to win this game.

However, what the club needed was a brilliant, rousing, inspiring half-time team talk, much like the speech delivered by Kirk Douglas to the court in Paths of Glory.

The Norwich dressing room, half-time:

GARY DOHERTY: (Grabbing Nigel Worthington?s head and banging it against the wall) How many times do I have to tell you, eh? How many feckin? times? Playing 4-3-3 doesn?t feckin? work!
NIGEL WORTHINGTON: That hurts, notmean!
DOHERTY: (Banging NW?s head) And Hughes, Robinson and Etuhu isn?t a feckin? midfield, for feck?s sake! It?s so feckin? obvious! How many feckin? times?
STEVE FOLEY: Nigel, he?s banging your head on the wall there.
ANDY HUGHES: The nasty men keep making nasty noises at me!
DOHERTY: Why don?t you play feckin? McVeigh? (Bangs NW?s head) Put him in the feckin? team, he saved your feckin? job, you big feckin? eejit!
WORTHINGTON: (Crying) I?ll pick him, I?ll put him on, notmean.
MICKEY SPILLANE: (In tears) I want to go home!
DOHERTY: Oh for feck?s sake, go and write your feckin? crime novels! (Bangs NW?s head again)
WORTHINGTON: OK, OK, I?ll put Andy Hughes at right-back, notmean! I?ll bring on McVeigh, I?ll do it, just stop banging my head on the wall, notmean!

Doherty lets go of NW?s head.

HUCKERBY: This is rubbish.
EARNSHAW: (Waving his hands around a lot) Yes, our collective performance in the opening half was most disappointing. I insist that we reconsider our methodology post haste.
ROBINSON: What?s the problem? We?re definitely going up next season, I promise. With me in the side we really can?t fail.
HUGHES: (Crying) Why don?t they like me? I clap them all the time!
SHACKELL: There, there, Andy.
THORNE: I?m ninety-two years old!
RYAN JARVIS: Are you still here? Go home!
THORNE: I want to but I?ve forgotten where I live.
DOHERTY: Right, for feck?s sake, get back out there and start playing feckin? football, or I?ll trow you to me feckin? dags.
DRURY: Hey Gary, that?s a good motivational speech. Where did you pick it up?
DOHERTY: Thanks Adam. Roy Keane taught me how to do it. Now let?s feckin? do it! (Turns to NW) And I don?t want any more of your s**te, alright?
FOLEY: He?s having a go at you there, boss.
WORTHINGTON: Just go and win the game.
LIVERMORE: Great tactics, boss!
McVEIGH: (Under his breath) Big feckin? eejit.

So the second half started very differently, with Norwich abandoning their hopeless 4-3-3 for a 4-4-2 that incorporated their most skilful attacking player and better suited Ryan Jarvis, Huckerby and Earnshaw. Andy Hughes made a Sutch-like switch to right-back, with Etuhu and Robinson pretending to be central midfielders by themselves, and McVeigh playing in his favoured right-wing position, being the natural right-winger that he so undoubtedly is, and always has been.

That didn?t stop QPR?s Lee Cook walking through our defence with the ball and making it 2-0, a goal that was greeted with cheers by both QPR and Norwich fans. I laughed helplessly rather than cheered, at much at the QPR who celebrated as if the match wasn?t entirely meaningless as at the haplessness of the Norwich ?defence?.

Thereafter, Paul Gallacher made a series of brilliant saves to keep the score at 2-0, and in truth QPR probably should have been 3-0 up after Norwich cleared a shot that probably did cross the line. As the strains of ?You?re even worse than us? rang out from the away end, some miraculous things happened. Dickson Etuhu started to look like he cared about playing football, and had a bit of a barney with some QPR players. The Norwich players started to ?pass? the ball, sometimes even to Paul McVeigh, and even ?tackle? the opposition.

After 78 minutes Norwich put together their first really threatening attack. A seemingly innocuous cross by Hughes was hashed by QPR ?keeper Paul Jones, and Darren Huckerby scored a header (or some sort of header/shoulder combo) to make it 1-2, the crucially important goal sending Carrow Road into rapture and proving beyond all reasonable doubt that Nigel Worthington is a truly brilliant manager, and not a desperate man devoid of ideas and floundering around in a pathetic attempt to keep his job like you all thought.

Immediately after helping Norwich pull a goal back, Hughes was taken out of his doubtless misery, which was met by applause from much of the Norwich crowd. I?d be lying if I said I was sorry to see him go off, but I, and most people around me, didn?t go so far as to celebrate his departure.

That said, without Hughes and with Jonatan Johansson, Norwich looked a far more dangerous proposition. Henderson replaced Ryan Jarvis, leaving Norwich with five centre-forwards on the pitch. (Who says Nigel is negative? Eh?) JJ2?s cross was met by Earnshaw after McVeigh did it, and then Earnshaw did his little double-somersault-and-show-the-crowd-his-massive-teeth celebration, which makes him look nearly as cool as Robbie Keane. The QPR fans, furious that the Alien had scored against them, promptly shut up, meaning that I could finally hear how the Norwich fans were turning Carrow Road into a Galatasaray-style cauldron of hatred for their own team.

Five minutes later Earnshaw scored again, and Carrow Road, like an over-enthusiastic referee being broadcast on Radio Norfolk, blew up. The QPR fans left immediately as I laughed like a simpleton, celebrating what was undoubtedly the greatest, more deserved comeback in all of football history, engineered by our beloved tactical genius at the helm.

MATCH RATINGS (First half ratings in brackets):

PAUL GALLACHER: 8 (6).
Made some very impressive saves in the second half and looks like a decent prospect. The likely departure of Robert Green after the World Cup worries me far less having seen flashes of Gallacher?s ability.

MICHAEL SPILLANE: 6 (-).
A reasonable performance, out of position. Substituted with an injury at half-time.

ADAM DRURY: 5 (4).
Nothing of any note can be said about Drury?s performance.

GARY DOHERTY: 6 (4).
Involved in the build-up to the winning goal, and more assured in the second half.

JASON SHACKELL: 5 (4).
Failed to get a tackle in for Lee Cook?s goal, and didn?t look too comfortable throughout.

DICKSON ETUHU: 9 (for the last ten minutes), 5 (for the rest of the game).
Lazy and disinterested for much of the match, once Dickson spotted the opportunity of getting into a fight (or at least some embarrassing pushing and shoving) he was a changed player, tackling well, playing some good passes and driving forward. More please.

CARL ROBINSON: Shit (f**king s**t).
Chasm-gobbed mediocrity Carl Robinson has taken it upon himself to be a club spokesman in recent weeks, much to the annoyance of anyone who is still trying to establish exactly what it is he?s supposed to do on a football pitch. Ineffectual, flimsy and bad-tempered, Robinson?s performance summed up everything that been wrong with our midfield this season. Dismal.

ANDY HUGHES: 3 (3).
I was tempted to be harsher on Hughes, who I cannot warm to, but the over-reaction of the crowd to his (admittedly obvious) ineptitude seems a touch unfair, especially when, whatever Hughes? limitations, he cannot be accused of not trying. That said, when a player is so technically limited he really has very little choice but to work hard.

Hughes was involved with the first goal, but misplaced numerous simple passes, displayed very little positional sense and barely (if at all) won a tackle. Sadly, Hughes? extortionate price tag (ten times as much as Robinson!) and continual indulgence by the manager means that he has come to epitomise everything that has gone wrong with Nigel Worthington?s tenure, and so has become an obvious target for disgruntled members of the crowd. A shame, but that?s football, I suppose.

DARREN HUCKERBY: 7 (5).
Barely featured in the first-half, but was central to our deeply satisfying comeback. And he scored with a header! Brilliant.

ROBERT EARNSHAW: 7 (4).
Spent the whole first half waving his arms about. Scored two simple goals at the end. Did his little flip thing. Lovely.

RYAN JARVIS: 5 (4).
The 4-3-3 didn?t suit him at all, and he struggled to get into the game in the second half. Substituted.

SUBS

PAUL McVEIGH: 6.
We looked more of an attacking threat with the Little Man in the side. Caused the QPR defence real problems.

JONATAN JOHANSSON: 7.
A genuine attacking threat, and involved in Norwich?s better moves of the last ten minutes.

IAN HENDERSON: 6.
Like Jarvis, he struggled to make an impact on the game, but his arrival co-incided with a significant upturn in our performance.

NIGEL WORTHINGTON: 10 x 10? (0).
Worthington?s substitutions were unquestionably brilliant. He had obviously planned to lull QPR into a false sense of security by instructing his team to go 2-0 down and play like a group of people who had only met each other at a Police identity parade, before bringing on his most creative attacking players from the bench and winning this unspeakably important contest. Worthington is still quite obviously doing an absolutely amazing job and should be given a contract for life. In fact, his children should inherit his job when he dies ? he?s simply that good.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot, Apr 18, 11:22:44