Peter Grant on Youssef Safri’s Norwich exit to Southampton.
The relationship between Peter Grant and Youssef Safri during their time together at Norwich City will go down under the category ‘uneasy’.
Safri had endeared himself to the City faithful since his arrival in the summer of 2004, rubber-stamping his standing with a rocket of a goal against Newcastle at Carrow Road in April 2005.
He’d been signed by Nigel Worthington, but things changed when Grant took over in October 2006. Safri dropped down the pecking order and was far from a regular choice for Grant.
The relationship soon became the story, especially when both sides began to ‘talk’. The cracks really began to show at the end of the year, when Safri suggested he might need to leave Norwich if his primary role was on the subs’ bench.
Grant’s response was diplomatic: “He is a terrific lad, and not one moment’s problem. I had a chat with him right at the start because obviously I need to know what everybody’s feelings are because you hear stories before you come, about X, Y and Z how they feel and you have to make sure everybody’s happy at the club.
“When he’s played, he’s played decent in games – other games he’s not done so well, but I can say that about everybody at the club.”
The response to Safri’s hint at a move away was: “That is not really down to me. I think there were obviously situations, probably before I came. Maybe it’s a situation you’d better ask Saff about.”
The end was nigh, but it took a strange situation at the end of the summer of 2007, to set the ball rolling.
Grant was furious that Safri had missed the pre-season team photoshoot. He fined Safri a week’s wages and when asked if the Moroccan would ever play for Norwich again, said “Hopefully not.”
Days later he signed for City’s Championship rivals Southampton.
The Grant-Safri relationship resurfaced this week when the former City boss appeared on the Undr The Cosh podcast, explaining how it all unravelled.
“That was us finished,” he said.
“All the boys I worked with at Norwich at that particular time period, I could not complain about one. The only one was Saff.
“Saff came back, we had a team photo. He phones us, he says ‘gaffer, I’m stuck in Heathrow Airport’. I had already said the team photo was on whatever (date). He said ‘I’ll be back’. I said ‘it doesn’t matter’. That was him finished.
“The funny thing is we got off to a bad start with Saff. I thought he was a really, really good player.
“When I went in first, he told me what he was on and said ‘gaffer, I was talking to the ex-manager about a new contract, whatever, and I said ‘fine – what are you on?’ He told me what he was on and I went, ‘Norwich have done brilliant getting that deal because they’ve spent a few bob on you. I think you are underpaid, I think you’re a real good player. I’ll sort that out for you’. So I go to (chief executive) Neil Doncaster and said ‘you’ve done brilliantly with Safri with how much you paid for him, I think it was over £1m but I’m not 100pc sure. He said ‘gaffer, he’s on double that’.
“I said, ‘alright, okay’ – it didn’t sit well with me.”
The East Anglian derby of November, 2006, had already provided evidence to Grant that all was not well.
“In Chaddy’s (Luke Chadwick’s) first game he scored at Ipswich, banged his knee and was carried off, he was out for a long period of time,” said the Scot. “Before the game. Saff turns up and says he wasn’t well. And he came back one of the times a little bit late from Morocco. There were a couple of things where I went ‘listen, I really like him as a player, but I’m not sure as a character’.”
“He turned up late from the airport that time and I said ‘that’s us finished, Saff’.
“I sold him to Southampton and obviously the fans had been asking why he hadn’t been playing. I never said a dickie bird, I never came out in the press and said about them (players) and the first thing I said to him right away was ‘no problem’. I’ll go and see that – I heard a couple of guys whose contracts were up and the club were brilliant in backing us in respect of that. Because that’s important as well, when you make a decision that the club have to back you and they did. And I knew how popular Youssef was, but he just let me down and I just thought I can’t have that.”
