Phil Parkinson surprised by Gunn sacking
PHIL Parkinson has revealed his surprise at Norwich’s decision to sack Bryan Gunn after only two games ahead of Charlton’s visit to Carrow Road on Saturday.
The Canaries began the campaign as one of the favourites, along with the Addicks, to bounce back to the Championship at the first attempt.
However, Norwich made the worst possible start with a 7-1 home hammering by Colchester and even though they followed it up with a 4-0 Carling Cup success at Yeovil, Gunn was replaced by Paul Lambert within a week of the new season.
Parkinson said: “It is always strange looking in from the outside. You let a manager bring in 10 players and then he gets sacked after one league game.
“Albeit the first was 7-1 but still they’ve backed him to spend a few quid.
“They haven’t all been free transfers because Grant Holt had quite a hefty transfer fee, so I think everybody was surprised that he only got two games.”
Results have improved since Lambert’s arrival, although the Canaries go into Saturday’s match on the back of a 2-1 defeat at MK Dons.
Parkinson is expecting the league leaders to face a real test this weekend and predicted Norwich will be involved in the promotion chase come the end of the season.
He said: “It is similar to Southampton last week - it is quite difficult to predict how they are going to play in terms of their system.
“They’ve gone 4-4-2 at home and 4-5-1 away from home.
“But we’ve obviously identified who we think their key players are and there has been a big changeover in both the management and playing squad.
“They’ve got a lot of quality in the squad, a lot of strength in depth and they’ll be up there.”
Norwich were relegated on the final day of last season at The Valley when they were brushed aside 4-2 by the already demoted Addicks.
The poor display from the Canaries led to some vociferous criticism from the visiting fans, but Parkinson today diplomatically declined to speculate on why Norwich had put up such a limp display with so much at stake.
He added: “Obviously we played very well that particular day.
“It was a strange old atmosphere and I don’t really want to go back over old ground and comment on their performance.
“I’ll leave that to the Norwich people.”
Lloyd Sam returned to training today after picking up a knock against Southampton last week and the League One August player of the month is expected to start at Carrow Road.
