With the club set to firm up the first signing of the Paul Lambert era, it is not entirely clear who is making these decisions. Chief Scout, Paul Montgomery, who was brought in by Alex McLeish is still technically with the club and is listed on the club’s website. The club has been linked with several players from Holland. It appears the strategy was to mirror what Newcastle did, but by mining the Netherlands for talent instead of France.
Paul Lambert’s track record at Norwich has been to find hidden British gems in the lower leagues. It’s unlikely he was scouting Karim El Ahmadi to bring to Norwich.
Perhaps Lambert met with the existing scouts and after hearing and seeing who the club targeted agreed that El Ahmadi was a good buy. Full credit to Lambert if this is the case. Football manager’s tend to have healthy egos. Many managers would’ve taken the months of work conducted by the scouting team, and started from scratch to bring in “his players.” If McLeish had taken this tact last year we could have ended up with Michael Bradley and Yohan Cabaye instead of Charles N’Zogbia and Alan Hutton.
Another possibility is that when Lambert took the job he was told that the club already had some moves in the works that the board wanted to see through. The scenario could be we have deals lined up for players X, Y, and/or Z, and we will give you X amount on top of that to bring in additional players. The only way I could see this happening was if Lambert was particularly anxious to leave Norwich while his stock was still high and this was the biggest job he could get. That does not seem terribly likely.
I still like what the club appears to be doing. Going from Norwich to Aston Villa, Lambert would do well to blend young British talent with talent from abroad. I also like the fact that we have been linked with players from big clubs in Holland. These are players who are used to winning. After a paltry seven wins last season none of our current players can say that. It’s also preferable to players from big clubs who have sat on the bench for weeks and months on end like Hutton and Jermaine Jenas.
To whoever is calling the shots, I say “so far, so good.” I have a feeling this season will be unrecognizable from last season. Thank God for that!
The Author
