The season in review (part 1)

Football blog alert.

I know, just warning you before you read too far.

Like many Norwich fans, I have spent the last month getting my head round the fact we got promoted. As champions, and are now, well, Premier League.

How did this happen?

It was, a combination of things, and without one of them happening, the result would not have been the same. And yet, things were done right, for some years, and the club believed in what it was doing, and ignored calls for change, even when at the start of the season, the results did not improve.

I think I am right in saying that Daniel Farke only won the Manager of the month award once, and failed to win either of the two main Championship Manager of the Season awards. Is it because we're no Leeds and Farke isn't English? Or Frank Lampard.

So, despite scoring more goals than any other team, winning more games than any other team, losing just six games all season, it seems that isn't enough for the national media, or the game in general But for us fans, our local newspaper and media companies, we're word famous.

Highlights include Michael Bailey's video reports at the end of each game, as he tried, without notes, to make sense of the fact Norwich were playing like Brazil on a regular basis. He won a national award for being the best digital reporter in the county. Well deserved. His first two years in the job have been spent following the development of the Webberlution and Farkeball. He'll never see a season like this again.

Two Twitter accounts were behind a scheme to improve the atmosphere at home grounds, selling t shirts, badges and stickers raised money for @alongcamenodge and the Barclay End Project buy more and more flags and banners, to be waved and raised before games to build the buzz before games.

It worked.

Nor will we.

And to think it all began, on a hot Saturday at the end of July with a pre-season friendly at the Valley, home of Charlton Athletic, who also ended up being promoted this season, and despite being dreadfully run by its owner.

It was a poor game, little to suggest of the wonderful season awaiting both teams that would come. Just a lot of huffing and puffing, and City lost to a deflected goal. It didn't seem a good start to the season But then I have seen two away friendlies, and both seasons that followed saw Norwich promoted. As champions. So, better go to a game every season.

No team wins the title or promotion in August, and no team is ever relegated either. And yet, by the end of the first month of the season, Norwich had lost three games already and were 17th in the table. Leeds were top, unbeaten, WBA were free scoring, and Frank Lampard's Derby County well, were just that.

Little did we know that Norwich would lost just one more away game all season, and just two more home games.

At the start of September, Norwich went to Portman Road, and scraped a late equaliser. It seemed two poor teams, both facing a season of struggle. One would go on to be promoted, the other would get relegated, though at the tame hard to tell which.

I have always said that it is easy to be enthused by the season in August and September, when the sun is still warm, and games end in daylight. Noriwch began to win, but at such an early stage, two wins can lift you up 12 places, which is what happened.

Just before the second international break, City lost another home game, to Stoke, 1-0, but played well. City would lose just two more games all season, but me, reading the result in a tiny room in New York, it felt like every other season, one which promised something, but failed to deliver. I won't say promised much, as few had any hopes of anything other than a moderate improvement on last season. Yet a few points could have lifted us into the top ten, but two wins in the last 13 games mean City ended up below Ipswich. This season, City would go the last 14 games of the season unbeaten, winning ten and drawing 4.

So it goes, so it goes.

October ended with Norwich winning away at Nottingham Forest, home to Aston Villa and to Brentford, so in a good place.

Little did we know that City and the craziness had only just began.