Norwich’s Mulumbu to miss season start

In all 11 close family relatives of Mr Joy and Mr Timbers were invited to Carrow Road by the club who said the “thoughts of everyone at Norwich City Football Club are with them as they continue to come to terms with their loss”. He’s kept things the way they were under Alex.

While the competition is taken up a couple notches as they enter the Premier League, the Canaries will have the confidence that they can get goals from a lot of different players.

Only Bournemouth (98) scored more goals then Norwich last season (94), with striker Cameron Jerome leading the way with 20, followed by Bradley Johnson on 15 and Gary Hooper and Lewis Grabban both on 12.

The club’s Community Heroes initiative sees people from all walks of Norfolk life given the honour of bringing out the matchball before 2015-16 Barclays Premier League games at Carrow Road. These tactics could suffer when coming up against the speedier and more tactically astute Premier League outfits.

The obvious standout youngster for Norwich over the past few seasons is under-21 England worldwide Nathan Redmond.

The manager is Norwich’s biggest asset and how he adapts to the Premier League will be key. Tettey sat behind a quintet of attack-minded players in a 4-1-4-1 formation that brought plenty of success to Norwich, last season. But things picked up at the end of the season though.

Unlike his fellow thirtysomething managers Garry Monk and Eddie Howe, Neil has yet to welcome reporters behind the scenes to survey the finer points of his training ground methods and – in the case of Monk’s Swansea – new-age inflatable porta-beds.

The experience possessed by new signing Mulumbu could also be crucial to their survival next season.

The former West Bromwich Albion midfielder is due to undergo an operation on Monday.

“Something like eight out of eight had us finishing last and we were third at Christmas”, he said of media guides ahead of Accies’ top-flight return.