With the 2015/16 English Premier League season a matter of weeks away, Richard Jolly provides his thoughts on each of the 20 teams and predicts their final league finish. Here he looks at newly-promoted Norwich City.
Norwich were not even in the Championship’s play-off places when the comparatively unknown Alex Neil was appointed manager in January.
Seventeen wins in 25 games later, they were a Premier League club again after a solitary season in the second tier.
The precocious Neil has turned 34 in the close season and much rests on him: is he, as his record suggests he might be, the next great Scottish manager, one with the motivational, organisational and decision-making skills to make a side greater than the sum of its parts?
His task is different now: Norwich had arguably the strongest squad in the Championship but will be underdogs in the higher division.
Cameron Jerome, who got 18 league goals then but has only reached double figures once in the Premier League, is a case in point.
Like many of the City squad, he has to prove he is not too good for the lower league but not quite good enough for the higher one.
Neil has a group of gifted midfielders, including Nathan Redmond, Graham Dorrans, Jonny Howson and Bradley Johnson, but there are questions about the calibre of the defence and thus far they have been frustrated in the transfer market. The fervent home support will make Carrow Road a tough place to visit, whether or not Norwich survive.
Key Man: Bradley Johnson — Remarkable feats in the Championship can be overlooked and Johnson's 15-goal season seemed obscured. A combative character is a fine striker of a ball and acquired a ubiquity. Prove prolific in the Premier League and his profile will grow.
Pivotal Signing: Youssouf Mulumbu — Fell out of favour at West Brom last season, but the tenacious Congolese used to be one of the best defensive midfielders outside the Premier League's top eight. Signing him, at just 28, on a free transfer could be a real coup.
Crucial Factor: Away form. Cliché has it that relegation strugglers must prosper at home but Norwich's record on their travels in 2004-05 and 2013-14, the last two times they were demoted from the Premier League, consists of a mere two wins in 38 games. They can't afford a repeat.
Prediction: 18th
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA
Starring: Nader Abd Alhay, Majd Eid, Ramzi Maqdisi
Directors: Tarzan and Arab Nasser
Rating: 4.5/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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MATCH INFO
Qalandars 112-4 (10 ovs)
Banton 53 no
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Qalandars win by six wickets
MATCH INFO
Scotland 59 (Tries: Hastings (2), G Horne (3), Turner, Seymour, Barclay, Kinghorn, McInally; Cons: Hastings 8)
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cons: Flaherty
Pens: Flaherty 2
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We Weren’t Supposed to Survive But We Did
We weren’t supposed to survive but we did.
We weren’t supposed to remember but we did.
We weren’t supposed to write but we did.
We weren’t supposed to fight but we did.
We weren’t supposed to organise but we did.
We weren’t supposed to rap but we did.
We weren’t supposed to find allies but we did.
We weren’t supposed to grow communities but we did.
We weren’t supposed to return but WE ARE.
Amira Sakalla
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