1. Oh Lucien
The positives overflowed from Norwich City’s flying Swiss trip to face Europa League hopefuls St Gallen in a 3-0 win at the impressive Kybunpark on Friday night.
Until Philippe Clement picked up a heavy lead block, in the shape of Lucien Mahovo’s injury news, and placed it on the other side of the scales.
The 21-year-old will miss up to three months with the ankle ligament damage suffered in the closing stages of another encouraging pre-season outing the previous weekend at Colney.
Clement was moved to pierce the gloom in his post-match words in Switzerland by pushing the left back forward as his stand out player in those first two Colney run outs. The attacking threat, the urge to get into the final third and deliver quality chances, were all notable features of glorified fitness turns against the Us and King’s Lynn.
But Mahovo faces another lengthy spell on the sidelines, in keeping with his senior City career since a composed breakthrough under Johannes Hoff Thorup. This is a talent who has yet to last 90 minutes in a Norwich shirt in any one game.
Clement spoke of Mahovo’s ‘devastation’ when initial optimism was replaced by cold hard reality after medical scans. That sense of disbelief was matched internally for a couple of days, while City’s movers and shakers processed the news.
Now it is onwards for Mahovo to meet Clement’s challenge to carry on where he left off later in the season.
And for sporting director Ben Knapper, Clement and all the other recruitment stakeholders, to source another left back which, as the Belgian was keen to point out stood on the touchline on Friday night, had been a summer requirement irrespective of the fitness of Mahovo or Ben Chrisene. Which is just as well.
2. A* for Andre
Back swiftly to those positives. Chief among them the first sight in that lovely new black away strip of Norwich’s £8m summer arrival, Andre Brooks.
To continue the fitness theme, the 22-year-old’s previous campaign for boyhood club Sheffield United had been curtailed by a knee injury that lapped into his summer.
Brooks had watched the two Colney tune ups from the sidelines but, after he was plugged into full team training at the start of the week, included in a potent-looking creative midfield duo in the stifling Swiss heat.
Paris Maghoma in the middle, Oscar Schwartau on the left and Mathias Kvistgaarden the beneficiary of some tempting first half service.
City fans will love Brooks on this first showing. A first stab at match fitness for the left footer, granted, but never too early to start forging key relationships with his new team mates.
Harry Darling picked out the wide player on more than one occasion with pinpoint long diagonal balls that Brooks plucked out of the air and then squared up his full back to attack the box. But three minutes from the end of the opening period he was haring back into his own half to halt a St Gallen counter, and roll the ball back to Kellen Fisher.
That action is likely to have pleased Clement as much as what the Belgian insisted was an attacking showreel which underlined why City were so ambitious and so aggressive in their transfer pursuit, once the Blades signalled they were willing to trade.
There was a wise half-time substitution call, but the hope for an even larger expected contingent of travelling supporters next week is they only have a matter of days to see Brooks again at AFC Wimbledon.
Paris Maghoma scored and was heavily involved in Norwich City’s excellent first half play (Image: Philipp Kresnik)
3. Pomp and ceremony
The pre-match narrative suggested City would be on the back foot against a club who won the Swiss cup last season, and were in the Swiss Super League title race.
The Canaries were offered as the final pre-season step before they embarked on a quest to reach the Europa League group stages against Benfica.
But Clement has already offered ample evidence in his Norwich tenure that on his watch City will aim to pen their own scripts. A strong looking first half line up were dominant in every facet that counted.
Defensively robust, with a clean sheet the reward for Vladan Kovacevic, Fisher, Darling, Ruairi McConville and the returning Chrisene.
Equally strong in the central midfield battleground, with Pelle Mattsson and Jacob Wright, and in the forward areas that creative, clinical edge Clement promised would come after two previous fitness outings once he and his coaches tapered down the hard physical training load.
Just look at each individual goal and decipher what it told you about Clement’s first half selections.
Wright’s whipped 18-yard free kick was a nod to his technical quality but the result of a flowing transitional move down the Norwich left that saw Maghoma dumped to the floor.
The former Brentford player’s second was a cheeky lob over the advancing keeper to cap a precision move which actually started with a Fisher block in his own penalty box. Wright calmly shovelled it out to the left, but the around-the-corner first time pass from Schwartau to release Maghoma and Kvistgaarden for a one, two was majestic.
While McConville’s looping third, from the second phase of a corner, was one to chalk up for Clement’s desire to carry a residual set piece threat.
They would have had another but for Lukas Watkowiak’s flying tip over to deny Kvistgaarden from Wright’s inswinging later corner.
Pre-season caveats to apply, but indisputably a footballing step forward.
Zach Baumann has featured in all three of Norwich City’s pre-season games (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)
4. New wave
More match minutes in a completely revamped second half line up that afforded Zach Baumann, Vatan Ozcan and Dylan Jones another opportunity to impress Clement.
Baumann is a player Clement has already named checked earlier in pre-season, and there is raw material to meld in the driving runs from central midfield allied to the inevitable polish to apply with some decision-making in the wrong areas that put his team in trouble on occasion.
In light of Mahovo’s fresh fitness absence, left-back Ozcan’s status within this current squad may grow if he can continue to look capable of bridging that vast chasm from a development setting to the sharp end of Clement’s first team roster.
Norwich will add in the second part of the transfer window, but in the meantime it would be logical to predict Ozcan is exposed to a greater degree than may have been the case had Mahovo and the returning Chrisene now be duelling it out to get that shirt for West Brom’s opening weekend Championship visit.
While in the precautionary absence of Jovon Makama, and Mo Toure still on his post-World Cup break, the freerunning Jones was tasked with leading the City line in the second half against St Gallen.
That pace and threat in the channels feels like a key attribute Clement desires in his leading man, but his challenge, like the rest of this younger cohort, is to show that calmness and composure at the critical moments.
Both Matej Jurasek and Liam Gibbs played him clean through, but on the first occasion he unselfishly opted to square for Amankwah Forson and the second time lashed a rising strike over.
There is clearly something to work with in all three cases, but if this pre-season ends with Clement deciding not for the here and now the trio have to continue to present their case, in all likelihood, via loan postings.
