Chris Goreham: Look up 'along come Norwich' in the dictionary and see what it says

The phrase ‘along come Norwich’ has been enthusiastically adopted by City supporters because their home ground is a place where life is rarely predictable and often confusing.

It’s the only venue in the Championship that Preston could possibly have been involved in a five-goal thriller. Six of their previous 12 league matches had finished 0-0.

The scoreboard tells the story (Image: (C)Focus Images Limited www.focus-images.co.uk +44 7813 022858)

What Norwich really needed, we all agreed before kick-off, was to score early in order to avoid a frustrating afternoon that couldn’t possibly develop into a goal-fest.

Josh Sargent took just over 100 seconds to become the first player to score against Preston on their travels in the league this season. He crashed home a brilliant opener that arrived quicker than you could say “this has got 0-0 written all over it”.

It was the perfect platform to go on and extend Norwich City’s unbeaten run to 10 matches. Or at least it should have been.

Carrow Road once again became a Championship Twilight Zone. Teemu Pukki failed to take the sort of chance that’s made him into a Norfolk hero and then the Canaries forgot how to defend. The three goals they conceded allowed Preston to almost double their goals tally for the season. All three were avoidable and made many senior supporters long for the days of no-nonsense defending when balls were cleared and questions were asked later.

Then we got home and watched one of those who wrote the textbook on old-fashioned defending take his clothes off on prime time television. Tony Adams doing a Full Monty on Strictly Come Dancing underlined that Saturday was definitely a confusing day.

The trend continued during the post-match interviews at Carrow Road when Gabriel Sara arrived to talk about his first City goal. He walked into the room alongside another tall chap who I thought for a moment might be a Preston defender. No wonder their record is so impressive if they continue man marking after the final whistle.

It was in fact a new Carrow Road star. Alan Rosling is Sara’s interpreter. It’s the first time I had ever conducted a post-match interview through a translator. It was a strange experience because I wasn’t really sure whether to look Sara in the eye while asking the questions or whether to address them directly to Rosling.

It reminded me of the time a puppet from CBeebies joined us on the radio at the Royal Norfolk Show. The instinct to hold the microphone in front of the big foam mouth of the alien rather than its puppeteer was almost too difficult to overcome.

It was brilliant to be able to hear from Sara, who has started only one league game since arriving in the summer. Such was the excitement at his signing from Brazil that a giant poster of him has been put up overlooking the car park on the South Stand. I wonder how Alan Rosling explained to him that it was going to happen?

Rosling must have an interesting job. Being fluent in a second language is a skill that people like me can only stand and admire. Last week the Oxford English Dictionary officially accepted 15 football-based phrases for inclusion in its next edition. The game has a language all of its own so, even for those fluent in Portuguese, terms like ‘squeaky bum time’ and ‘park the bus’ may need a little bit of extra context. They have genuinely been added to the OED.

It could be that the education is flowing both ways. Let’s not forget that Jose Mourinho was Bobby Robson’s translator at Sporting CP, FC Porto and Barcelona. We might be watching Alan Rosling’s yellow and green army in years to come.

One phrase that he might need to teach Sara after Saturday is ‘ao longo vem Norwich’ which, according to the online translator I found, is ‘along come Norwich’ in Portuguese.

Smith must score...

There have been many comparisons drawn between Dean Smith and Daniel Farke amongst Norwich City fans over the past year. Everything from the style of football they choose to how they salute supporters after a victory has been analysed.

One admirable quality they share is a consistency of character. They both subscribe to the ‘never too high, never too low’ mantra, which doesn’t half come in handy when you’re yo-yoing up and down with Norwich City.

I’m sure both men conduct themselves differently in the dressing room, but they are reassuring constants when they speak to the media.

Smith’s post-match interviews this season have been very honest. The perception that he is somehow trying to build a team that is the polar opposite to Farkeball has come from the fact that City have struggled to control games for long periods this season. After a promising opening 20 minutes against Preston the Canaries settled back into the bad habits of giving the ball away too easily.

It’s an issue that Dean Smith has addressed multiple times this season. He wants his team to be consistently better in possession. His post-match verdicts on performances usually tally with what most supporters are saying online.

I do wonder if supporters would have taken him to their hearts a bit more willingly if they remembered him as a player more clearly.

Smith is highly thought of at most of the clubs he played for, most notably Walsall and Leyton Orient, after a career spent almost entirely in the lower divisions.

It’s worth doing your research on Dean Smith’s playing career as one of my colleagues from a national radio station discovered recently. When Sam Byram scored a somewhat fortunate equaliser against West Brom last month it was the full-back’s first senior goal for seven years. The reporter asked Smith whether he had ever endured a similar goal drought during his long career as a defender.

It was the most I’d ever seen the City boss bristle at a question. “Don’t be daft, I averaged a goal every 10 games” was the gist of his response. I’ve looked it up since. Smith scored 67 goals in 677 first team games.

That probably explains why his frustrated by both Norwich City’s defending and their attacking on Saturday.