The Canaries now in two safe pairs of hands
The third episode of the Club’s excellent On the Ball series dropped on Friday teatime. If you’ve not yet seen it, you really should.
It gives the best insight yet into what makes this group tick while reassuring us that, if we were in any doubt, we are in very safe hands.
It’s entitled Setting In and is loosely based around a couple of the new arrivals – Oscar Schwartau and, the star of the show, assistant head coach, Glen Riddersholm.
I’ll not stoop as low as giving you a blow-by-blow account of its twenty-five minutes and two seconds – as tempting as it is in the midst of this interminable international break – but will just say that both came across as genuinely decent blokes who just happen to be at opposite ends of their footballing journeys.
Riddersholm was clearly brought in as the wise older head – someone for Johannes Hoff Thorup to turn to and, perhaps, lean on in the difficult moments – but turns out to be so much more.
Among many other things, he appears to be the ‘good cop’ in the relationship; the one to connect with the players while JHT leaves just enough space for them to know exactly where they stand and where the acceptable boundaries are.
For a perfect example look no further than near the very end of the video when Borja Sainz, in the dressing room post-Hull, half-joking suggests to JHT that such an emphatic 4-0 win should earn those not departing for international duty a week off.
The response was, as you’d expect, unequivocal but was also preceded by an awkward few seconds where you wait to see if the head coach has seen it as a joke or otherwise.
