There are just three days to go until the 2020/21 football season starts for Norwich City.
The first task will be a rather unusual opener at Luton Town in the Carabao Cup which will be complicated all the more by the loss of around fifteen first team squad members to international call-ups.
The Canaries finally confirmed their squad numbers on Wednesday with three high profile omissions.
We can confirm our first-team squad numbers for the 2020-21 season! 🔢
— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) September 2, 2020
Tom Trybull, Moritz Leitner and Josip Drmic have not been allocated squad numbers which heavily suggests that they will be moving on. I don’t expect there will be any problem in finding new clubs for Trybull and Leitner as I wrote about below, but Drmic might be more problematic.
I’ve not seen any speculation linking Drmic with a move elsewhere. There’s been plenty of talk among the local media that the club would like to move him on and the arrival of Jordan Hugill, who is basically his replacement, seems to have put paid to any future that our Euro Pop striker may have had at the club.
It’s slightly strange how it’s gone for Drmic last season. He joined on a free transfer last summer and scored goals in pre-season before quickly getting injured and missing three months. He just about got back to full fitness by the start of 2020 but then came lockdown. I remember Stuart Webber really talking him up on a video podcast but once football started again, it was clear that he just wasn’t up to the Premier League. His reckless sending off against Burnley was the final straw, really, for most fans.
He is likely to be one of City’s higher earning players as he came on a free and with a reasonable goal scoring record that was only matched by his injury record and as our own Head Coach said words to the effect of last week, you don’t get to play for Switzerland as many times as he has and not have something about you.
Mr Webber is pretty canny and hopefully, Josip can be moved on without too much fuss.
In other transfer news, Sky Sports reporter, Kaveh Solhekol has tweeted that Leicester City and Newcastle United are both interested in Jamal Lewis.
Leicester City and Newcastle United are two of the clubs looking at signing Norwich City left back Jamal Lewis. Liverpool made a £10m bid which was rejected last month. Norwich value him at £20m. He is under contract until 2023.
— Kaveh Solhekol (@SkyKaveh) September 2, 2020
You may have noticed that Aston Villa agreed a £16m transfer with Nottingham Forest on Wednesday for Forest’s full-back, Matty Cash.
Cash is a good player, no doubt, but he doesn’t have the experience of the Premier League that Lewis has and he is not a full international for his country either. If £16m is the going rate for a player like Cash, then Norwich holding out for £20m for their man does not seem crazy at all, eh, Liverpool fans?!
Leicester are closing in on the signing of Atalanta full-back, Timothy Castagne who can play at either left of right back, but is he the direct replacement for Ben Chilwell, who moved to Chelsea recently for £50m?
If Jamal Lewis were to be sold then the Norwich are well stocked at left-back after the arrivals of Sam McCallum from Coventry and Xavi Quintilla from Villarreal.
Should Lewis stay, the I would expect McCallum to go out on loan with Quintilla being Jamal’s competition for a starting berth.
With all these players away for the Luton cup game, there is, naturally, an opportunity for some of the new players to stake a claim for a start the following week at Huddersfield.
The likes of Quintilla, Hugill and Jacob Sorensen will have that free shot at the first team on Saturday while their internationally picked team mates will only be able to watch from afar. If they do okay then it would be very difficult for Daniel Farke to drop them.
You will also have probably seen that Kenny “The Mayor” McLean has signed a new three-year-contract with the club. He has been the subject of plenty of conjecture among City fans over the course of last season as to what he actually offers the team?
Delighted to extend my stay 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣3️⃣ pic.twitter.com/Daa6GZ5gDL
— Kenny McLean (@kennymclean66) September 2, 2020
That may sound a little harsh and the statistics do support Herr Farke’s assertion that McLean is Norwich’s most complete midfielder. It’s just that when you watch him he isn’t scoring too many goals or winning too many tackles. Maybe the Premier League is just a level too far for him, as we’ve seen with other players plenty of times.
Either way, his value has no doubt increased significantly since we paid around £300k for him a couple of years ago. At Championship level, I expect him to be a competitive player who seems set to be a regular under Farke again.
OTBC