Ahead of Wes Hoolahan’s 352nd and final appearance for Norwich City tomorrow, Daniel Farke spoke to the assembled media about his squad at Colney on Friday lunchtime and generally, it’s pretty good news.
Tom Trybull is “potentially” back in contention for the first time for almost three months, having suffered ankle and knee ligament injuries in the 1-0 win over Middlesbrough back on February 4th.
As I’m sure you remember, he scored the winning goal that day, won the man of the match award and came off injured after about 65 minutes – it was an eventful day.
It seems Tom has been back in training for 11 days and that could be useful, as Alex Tettey is suffering with a back issue that will see him as a late call for selection.
Christoph Zimmermann is back after missing last week’s draw with Preston due to a glute injury but is now fully fit and available again.
Having returned last weekend as a substitute, Onel Hernandez has suffered no reaction and is back in the squad. There’s also good news regarding Louis Thompson who has missed the entire season. If Louis didn’t have any bad luck he’d have no luck at all and you get the feeling he would’ve been a big player for City but for his injury woes. Arguably, we may not have signed Harrison Reed on loan had Louis been fit. Talking to Radio Norfolk’s Rob Butler (@BobRutler) yesterday, Thompson says that with a full pre-season under his belt he hopes to play as normal in the squad next season. He will be an asset.
Saturday is all about Wes Hoolahan though, the magician, the Irish Messi, or Wessi if you will.
He was the player presented to the media today, as you’d expect. Speaking to the media/press is a rarity for Wes and not something he’s ever wanted to do much of. He has no social media presence, probably due to his age and thinking what a load of rubbish it is (he’s not wrong either).
It seems that Wes will be Captain for the day and receive a guard of honour from both the Norwich and Leeds players as he enters the pitch. He joked with the EDP’s Paddy Davitt (@paddyjdavitt ) when Paddy suggested that he needed to push James Maddison off free kicks that he will be taking everything. Free kicks, penalties, corners, goal kicks, the lot!
This final game of Wes Hoolahan’s career is going to be an emotional day for the Canary Nation and I suspect for the player and his family. He has expressed a desire to come back to work or be involved at the club in some form in the future, something that I know we’d all love to happen. He truly is a one-off and we’ve been blessed to watch him and call him one of our own.
You can follow all of today’s press conference on Twitter @NorwichCityFC
OTBC