Norwich City Transfer Concern Shared Amid £2.9m Summer Transfer

This summer, the Canaries have remained relatively quiet in the way of incomings, having made four signings following the arrival of highly-rated Danish Head Coach Johannes Hoff Thorup.

The stakes will be somewhat lower with Callum Doyle, who has arrived on loan from Manchester City but still has expectations upon his shoulders after achieving three EFL promotions at the tender age of 20.

Meanwhile, Forson Amankwah, Benjamin Chrisene and Jose Cordoba have all arrived in Norfolk for transfer fees. These sums, of course, will be vastly inferior to some of the investments that Norwich have made in years gone by, which supporters still haven’t forgotten about.

Norwich City transfer assessment

Heading into the closing stages of the summer transfer window, it’s always timely to consider previous transfers. Looking at where clubs have got it awfully wrong makes for particularly interesting discussion, with those sides clearly keen to avoid those mistakes been replicated again.

With that in mind, Football League World’s Norwich fan pundit Zeke Downes has name-checked both Ricky Van Wolfswinkel and Steven Naismith as historical blunders by the club, while Christos Tzolis is a more recent example of failure on the transfer front.

“To do one transfer that went massively wrong would be very difficult, the biggest one would probably be Van Wolfswinkel, but I don’t really think it was his fault,” Zeke explained to Football League World.

“I think it was more that it was the wrong player for the wrong system. I think he was a really good player and even now he’s actually done really well. But close to £10m for a player that got one goal was terrible, especially at that time,”

“Naismith was up there, he was expensive and played a handful of games, looked really good, then dropped off and was at the club for years not playing games. They’d probably be the two, although more recently there’s Tzolis, where we paid nearly £10m and have managed to let him go for something like £3m.

“We stupidly put a clause in that meant that it was that low, he’s obviously done really well and Düsseldorf have made a profit on him already.

“That’s a sign that it was a terrible transfer.”

Norwich City continue to do questionable transfer business

Although Van Wolfswinkel and Naismith are both historical examples of some of Norwich’s shortcomings in the transfer market, the Tzolis saga is one which has mystified supporters more recently and suggests they still haven’t fully learned their lesson.

Tzolis signed for Norwich when they were in the Premier League for a fee of £8.8m and on a five-year contract, having earned 8 senior caps for Greece at the time and coming off the back of an incredibly promising 16-goal, 10-assist campaign for PAOK in the top-flight of Greek football. Aged just 19 upon signing, Tzolis had appeared to be inspired by business by the Canaries, having been one of the most promising young talents outside of Europe’s top five divisions.

However, the Greek winger found both form and frequent opportunities hard to come by at Carrow Road, before igniting his career by enjoying a stunning loan stay with Fortuna Düsseldorf in the German second-tier last term.

Tzolis signed at Düsseldorf on a permanent basis and for a fee of €3.5m (£2.9m) after they activated a clause in his loan contract, but they soon sold him on to Club Brugge for €6.5m.

Norwich fans will be eager to see how Tzolis fares in Belgium as he looks to be a rising talent with a rekindled reputation – but they make look back on the deal with frustration at so many factors.