Robert Snodgrass goes cuckoo

By Mark Rasdall

Norwich City may have the nickname of Canaries but they're cuckoos really. They have built a nest in the eaves of the once mighty Elland Road stadium and displaced two of our best players of recent times: Jonny Howson and now Robert Snodgrass.

Norwich will hope to nurture those players to bigger and brighter things while the cobwebs hang and the dust settles yet again on what might have been at Leeds United.

I saw Jonny's first ever league goal at Carrow Road and witnessed some fantastic strikes from Robert - those at the Cities of Bristol and Coventry stand out particularly. It would have been great to keep them and Max Gradel and Adam Clayton in a midfield that once competed so well for us in the Championship.

What we must not forget, though, is that football remains a team game and the coaching and tactical nous of Neil Warnock and his team should not be rubbished until it has failed. Neither Robert nor Jonny felt they had the time to see through the experiment - whether under new owners or not - and that is entirely their choice. Most professional footballers will never have the passion for their clubs that we ordinary fans share.

We must also not forget that each of these players were forgettable during long periods of lots of games. Robert often looked unfit to me or merely exhausted for much of the time. I was minded of Tony Currie, years ago, who, had he run much more slowly would have stopped completely. Of course we remember Tony's amazing talent before he chose to leave and we must do the same with Robert now.

We have to march on and, no, I can't see where this team re-building is heading either at the moment; however, let's hope we will bypass Norfolk altogether, like so much of the rest of the country does.

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