Norwich City legend on pre-season, MK Dons, Clement's team | Eastern Daily Press

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0 Comments This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today, and has been written by our American colleagues. It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald. I was always glad to see the back of pre-season - I did 20 of them and it never got any easier.

I was always a bit anxious and nervous going in for that first day and doing all the testing and seeing how much weight you'd put on and how unfit you were. That got better as I got older.

It was always around the time of my birthday near the end of June - we'd go to the Norfolk Show and make an appearance there and then we'd get into the full flow of it that weekend.

The first game of the season - in the Carabao Cup at home to MK Dons - cannot come quickly enough. To be fair, even the first game of pre-season can't come quickly enough because at least then you know it's going to ease off a little bit because you are playing matches.

You can do all the running and the fitness work in the world, but it's not until you start playing the games that you get those minutes into your legs and get those good habits back into you.

So, as a player, I think this last week couldn't come too soon for them.

Norwich City fans will be back in force now pre-season is finally over (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

This first game of the season on Saturday - they will have been looking forward to this for weeks.

It is a strange fixture to start the season. I was having a conversation with my son and he was asking what my first game was this season and I said, on Saturday, AFC Wimbledon-Newport in the EFL Cup. He was like, a League Cup game on a Saturday?

At the end of the day, you've got three competitions that you enter before the start of the season. Your priority is obviously the league, then it’s the FA Cup, because it's a massive cup competition. And the third one is the League Cup.

But I still think with just over the week to go, you want to be impressive in this game.

I think the manager now will have a good idea of his starting XI for West Brom.

Does that impact and affect the team that he picks for Saturday? Maybe. I believe that there'll be players that will start, or will feature in the game on Saturday, that will start against West Brom.

Some players will need more minutes in their legs going into this game than some others, because pre-season is different now. I think they manage the load that every player gets equally. I think the manager tries to make sure, or the fitness people try and make sure, that in the games that they've played, nearly every player gets the same minutes of time on the pitch. I think that is very important. You've got to be able to call on any individual whenever you need him, and he's got to be ready to go.

I think the most important thing is they don't pick up any injuries before the league starts a week on Saturday.

If Philippe Clement could make, say, eight, nine changes, I think it might be different, but because you can only make five, who does he start with ... it's a big question.

Is he going to start with what he thinks is going to be his starting XI for West Brom and then take five key players off at a certain period, a certain time? Or does he mix and match it a little bit?

The new left-back, Darlin Yongwa, for instance, who hasn't had a lot of game time. Maybe he's one that needs 60, 65, 70 minutes in his legs just to get him up to speed. Maybe there's one or two others that need that.

You don't want to lose, but you don't want to risk injury to key players as well.

Mo Toure - how many minutes will he get this weekend? (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

What do you give Mo Toure? He's been away with the World Cup and you're without your top scorer from last season for a period of time. You've got Mathias Kvistgaarden who apparently has looked okay in pre-season, which is a good sign.

There's a lot to think about, I think, because of the nature of how the season has started with a League Cup game on the first weekend of the season.

No repeat - then Norwich boss Paul Lambert and assistant Ian Culverhouse during the home thumping by MK Dons 15 years ago (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images)

City and MK Dons have met three times in the competition before: MK have won two, including 4-0 at Carrow Road 15 years ago – and Norwich have won one.

I can remember, when I think they were new to the Championship, in February 2004, they'd just made the move from Wimbledon to Milton Keynes - they were still called Wimbledon and I remember Darren Huckerby scoring an absolute worldie.

They used to play at the National Hockey Stadium ground in Milton Keynes because they didn't have a ground. It was a really windy day. Hucks had hit it from wide left, the wind's got hold of it, it's gone into the top corner. We had the wind in our faces first half, we weathered the storm. We came out second half and while I wouldn't say we battered them, we were comfortable 1-0 winners

MK Dons manager and Norwich fan Paul Warne (Image: PA Images)

This weekend you have Paul Warne coming back to Norwich, his club. I’m delighted for him and what he's done at Milton Keynes. He's done a good job at Rotherham, got them promoted, they went back down. There were reasons for that, finances and one thing or another. Got them back up, went to Derby, initially did well there, but that's a hard club to manage, to be fair because they expect top three every year.

And he's got MK Dons back into League One at the first time I've asked him. I'm chuffed for him because he's a Norfolk boy, he's a Norwich lad. I know him reasonably well and when good people get success, you're pleased for them.

I don't like using the term deadwood, but there were players who were surplus to requirements at Norwich and you have a big chunk of money off the wage bill with players that have left, which helps the manager, I guess.

Sometimes you can bring in for the sake of bringing in. You read on social media, and it's not negativity, it's like... ‘a little bit disappointed that we haven't brought more in’…you've got to buy your time now. Because second half of the season, I think only Southampton won more points than them in the league.

With the man that they've got in charge now, getting the best out of the group that he's got, with a healthy squad, I don't think you need to bring six, seven players in because sometimes having too many cooks can spoil the broth, you can have too many options.

We knew there was going to be a left back, which they have sorted.

If it's not broken, don't try and fix it.

You've got a team who just missed out on the play-offs, having won two of their first 17 league games last season. There's not a lot wrong.

Football-wise I watched a lot of the World Cup. I had two friendlies in the beginning of June. One in Cardiff, the second one in Romania, in Bucharest. It wasn't a good time for us, to be fair. We drew in Cardiff, and we lost to Romania.

That was a busy time for me, because I had a lot of interviews to do.

I watched a lot of the games. The only one I watched after 11pm was the England-Mexico game, which was worth waiting for. I said at the time, and I maintain it, that was England's toughest game. Because of altitude, in Mexico, down to 10 men for nearly the whole of the second half. I thought that was the biggest test.

I've kept my fitness levels up. It's a long season -I've got 54 games to do this year. Be a lot of travelling for BBC Radio Wales and I've got a bit of work with Radio Norfolk as well. I really enjoy it. It keeps me involved. You see faces in a press room that you haven't seen for a long time, you catch up with people and you see former team-mates as well that you've sort of lost contact with.

And I'm going to somewhere on Saturday that I haven't been to since 1987 - Plough Lane.

That was the quarter-final of the FA Cup. I was at Watford. We were 1-0 up, they were down to 10 men. Justin Fashanu got sent off - shock horror - and they beat us 2-1. And then they went on to beat Liverpool in the final.