Damien Francis, Mathias Svensson and Thomas Helveg appearing on my social media timeline was a welcome addition to the past week’s nostalgic international break trend.

The throwbacks to ‘Barclaysmen’ - an elite term coined to describe a particular type of player who plied their trade in the Premier League between around 2004 and the mid-2010s - have been dominating our devices over the last few days as millions of English football fans indulge in a trip down memory lane.

After many official club accounts - namely those most quintessential ‘Barclays’ teams like Wigan Athletic, Bolton Wanderers and Portsmouth - capitalised on the volume of compilations combining elite ‘Barclays’ players - think Benjani, Roque Santa Cruz and Amr Zaki - with popular, indie-rock music from yesteryear, Norwich City also jumped on the bandwagon by posting an evocative throwback of their own on Tuesday.

A highlights reel from the 2004/05 top-flight season accompanied by Lowestoft band The Darkness’ 2003 hit ‘I Believe in a Thing Called Love’ perfectly encapsulated the Canaries’ early ‘Barclays’ spirit, an epoch characterised by long-range screamers, fewer statistically-driven tactics and fundamentally, significantly more enjoyable football as a result.

And that’s the reason this trend has become so pervasive over the past few days.

Because football back then was ultimately more exciting, a pre-Pep Guardiola era where patterns of play were more unpredictable, players were not as afraid to take risks and we were therefore treated to more iconic moments, matches and individuals.

Of course, me and all other fans in their mid-to-late 20s - seemingly the peak demographic spearheading this ‘Barclaysmen’ trend - are all still football obsessives who remain religiously attached to the game in the modern era.

But it’s difficult to dispute the idea that the sport was better, purer and ultimately more entertaining back then, a period that predated the rise of self-proclaimed social media tacticians and anonymous Football Manager-fuelled fan accounts that spout relentlessly about ‘xG’, ‘inverted full-backs’ and ‘No.6s’.

Of course, we accept the game has changed and advances in technology have inevitably led to enhanced analysis and numerically-driven ideas.

But while players now are so often robots in a manager’s rigid system, back in the Barclays they were mavericks who boasted considerably greater autonomy on the pitch, a more care-free, fearless mentality that led to those moments so many of us have been reflecting on over the past 10 days.

Midfield enforcer Francis, Swedish striker Svensson and crunching defender Helveg were just three of those prime City ‘Barclaysmen’ to feature in that club-produced package.

But who could forgot the influence of both Leon McKenzie and Dean Ashton, two similar Barclays bastions whose goals fired us to that unforgettable triumph over Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United under the Saturday night Carrow Road lights.

Or what about Darren Huckerby, Adam Drury and the great Youssef Safri, the latter of whom indelibly etched his name into yellow and green folklore with that ludicrously long-range strike against Newcastle to keep our survival hopes alive.

These players were all cult heroes who despite suffering final day relegation, we will always remember fondly - just like those equally iconic top-flight players who emerged under Paul Lambert six years later.

It was pleasing to see both Grant Holt and Anthony Pilkington feature in a pair of compilations produced by the popular ‘@ncfcpain’ account, two more players who unequivocally fit the Barclays mould alongside the later likes of Robert Snodgrass, Sebastian Bassong and Johan Elmander - just to name a few.

For many of us who were born slightly too late to remember football before the early 2000s, those heady Barclays days were synonymous with our childhoods as that all-action, chaotic and intoxicating product made us all fall in love with the beautiful game.

That love is obviously unconditional - and despite the advent of less thrilling, possession-based tactics, an obsession with over-analysis and often unnecessary statistics, following football and Norwich City will always remain a fundamental part of my life.

But as the last few days have reminded so many of us, the spectacle was just better back in that barnstorming Barclays era as the class of 2004/05, plus so many others, found a permanent place in our hearts.