Norwich City Heaven - It's the wolf

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There's an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon from my childhood that reminds me of Norwich City's misfit striker Ricky Van Wolfswinkel. "It's The Wolf!" features a wolf who tries to catch a little lamb and have her for his dinner, only to be thwarted by a dog who catches him with his shepherd's crook and throws him over the mountain. Funnily enough I imagined throwing Van Wolfswinkel over the mountain, well into the Carrow Road car park actually, on a number of occasions last season following countless inept performances. With just 1 goal in 27 league appearances the Wolf or "O Lobo" (as he was nicknamed in Portugal) has proved to be a considerable waste of money. Norwich fans have been left wondering whether Chris Hughton had signed Rip Van Winkle by mistake.

However, when Norwich announced the signing of Van Wolfswinkel from Sporting Lisbon for a record £8.5m in March 2013 it appeared the Canaries had pulled off a major coup. When the signings of Messrs Fer, Redmond and Hooper followed a few months later it was evident that Norwich boss Chris Hughton was looking to increase his attacking options and to be honest this was a really exciting time for the fans who believed the Canaries were going to finish comfortably in mid-table in 2013/14 and score lots of goals. How naive we were!

Van Wolfswinkel scored lots of goals in Holland and Portugal and made his debut for the Dutch national team against the Ukraine in August 2010. In fact he averaged a goal every two games in the aforementioned leagues and earned the nickname HatRicky because of the number of hat-tricks he scored. So what on earth has went wrong because it began like a dream for Ricky when he scored on his debut against Everton at Carrow Road on August 17th 2013?

The blame can't all be directed at Van Wolfswinkel and as new Norwich boss Neil Adams so rightly said he cannot be made a scapegoat. Obviously the rest of the team didn't help his cause. You could point the finger at Robert Snodgrass who grabbed the ball and subsequently missed a penalty in the 6th minute against Aston Villa on September 22nd 2013. According to former boss Hughton the Wolf had been made the designated penalty taker. Can you imagine what converting a pen would have done for his confidence at that point in the season? It could have made all the difference.

The service to Norwich's forward line was severely lacking last season and it could be argued that we didn't play to the Wolf's strengths. For example, when you look at the goals he scored in Portugal/Holland on the YouTube clips most of them are in the 6 yard box. Van Wolfswinkel basically appears to be a fox-in -the-box.

Both Hughton and Adams' team selections were a bit strange last season with regards Messrs Hooper and Van Wolfswinkel. When Hooper scored (not that often either) for instance he was dropped in favour of the Wolf. This happened away at Manchester United. Did the Wolf have something written in his contract stating that he must start a certain amount of matches? I believe it's quite likely.

So what now for the misfiring Van Wolfswinkel? On August 5th 2014 the Dutchman left Carrow Road to join St Etienne on a season long loan move with the French club paying an initial £1.25m fee and having an option to buy him at the end of his loan stint for another £6m. St Etienne will also pay all his wages and Norwich will receive another 20% of any fee should St Etienne sell him at a later date.

Basically the Canaries have been very shrewd in recouping as much of the £8.5m they paid for the Wolf. However, the loss of their Premiership status is far more damaging to the Canaries than a rubbish striker. Former Canary legend Iwan Roberts believes that Norwich should have given Van Wolfswinkel a chance at scoring goals in the Championship but to be fair I don't think many Norwich fans will lose much sleep if we do eventually sell him.