City hero Holt reveals he almost didn

City legend Grant Holt has revealed he almost never signed for the Canaries.

The striker arrived at Carrow Road for £400k in July 2009 from Shrewsbury Town and went on to score 78 goals in 168 appearances across four years with the club.

He netted 24 League One goals in his first season to help Norwich secure an immediate return to the Championship, before adding 21 in the second tier as City completed back-to-back promotions.

Holt then struck 15 Premier League goals to help guide the club to a 12th-place finish in their first season back in the top-flight for six years, before scoring a further eight the following campaign prior to his departure to Wigan Athletic.

Holt scored 78 goals for the Canaries in 168 appearances (Image: Chris Ratcliffe/Focus Images Ltd)

However, that remarkable rise, including his memorable hat-trick against Ipswich, almost never came to fruition.

“Paul Lambert was desperate to sign me at Colchester, and he rang me loads of times saying, ‘We’re putting £300,000 in, go and tell the chairman you want to leave.’ And I was like, ‘No, I’m not going to tell him until you’ve done it.’

“Then Norwich went to £400,000. The Shrewsbury chairman rang me up and said they’d agreed it, so it was up to me,” Holt said on the 3 in the Middle Podcast.

“He said, ‘Go and see what they say. I’ve got you a new contract here, so if you don’t like it, you can come back.’

“We went down there, but I nearly didn’t sign. My brother came with me, which was brilliant. We left Carlisle and it was freezing, then went down there and it was the hottest place to go.

“We had to go to the shop over the road because we had nothing. He had the best time for three days. I couldn’t leave the hotel because I didn’t want anyone to see me.

“I was there for three days, and I’d had an ankle operation in the summer, which had been messed up at Shrewsbury. By the third day, Norwich weren’t so sure, so I told Bryan Gunn, ‘You’ve got to tell Delia (Smith), you’ve got to do it today or I’m going back.’ They did the deal there and then.”

Following Bryan Gunn’s departure after just two games in charge, Holt finally linked up with Lambert, who had previously attempted to bring him to Colchester, and the rest was history.

“Paul Lambert and Cully (Ian Culverhouse) were brilliant. All they did was say this is how we’re going to win. If you stick to the philosophy, we might win. If you don’t stick to it, we’ll get beat. And if you do stick to it, we still might get beat. But that’s the only way we’re going to win, and everybody was on board with it,” Holt continued.

“Why he (Lambert) was the best for me was because you couldn’t rest.

Grant Holt ranks Paul Lambert as the best manager he worked under in football (Image: PA)

“Take Simon Lappin. He played loads in League One and a bit in the Championship. Got to the Premier League, hadn’t been playing, he was in the squad but not often even on the bench for quite a few of them.

“We played QPR on New Year’s Day and we’d all got off the bus and Lapps had left his wash bag on the bus. He didn’t even bring it out. He sat down, the team was named, and Lappin was starting. Lapps was like, I don’t even have my stuff.

“That was what he was like. You always had to be on it in training because he would throw you in from nowhere. You might play three games or be dropped the next week, but you always had to be ready.”