With the hiring of highly-regarded Danish Head Coach Johannes Hoff Thorup, the Canaries have made four additions this summer, keeping their summer transfer window quiet.
With Callum Doyle, who is on loan from Manchester City, the stakes will be a little lower, but he still has expectations after winning three EFL promotions at the young age of 20.
For transfer fees, Jose Cordoba, Benjamin Chrisene, and Forson Amankwah have all landed in Norfolk. Of course, these amounts pale in comparison to some of the past investments made by Norwich, which their supporters still remember.
Transfer evaluation for Norwich City
It’s always appropriate to reflect on past transfers as the summer transfer window draws to a close. Examining the areas where clubs have made glaring errors leads to particularly stimulating debate, since individuals involved are obviously anxious to prevent those errors from happening again.
In light of this, Zeke Downes, a Norwich supporter on Football League World, has mentioned Ricky Van Wolfswinkel and Steven Naismith as past mistakes made by the team, with Christos Tzolis serving as a more current illustration of a transfer disaster.
“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 told Football League World.
“I believe the main issue was that the player wasn’t suited for the system. He was, in my opinion, an extremely talented player, and he is still performing admirably. However, paying over £10 million for a player who only scored once was awful, particularly at the time.”
“Naismith was up there, a costly player who played a few games and had a great appearance before faltering and spending years at the club without participating in any games. Those would likely be the two, albeit Tzolis is a more recent example, when we paid around £10m and were able to sell him for about £3m.
“We foolishly included a clause implying that it was that low, but he’s clearly performed incredibly well and Düsseldorf has already turned a profit with him.
“That’s a sign that it was a terrible transfer.”
Norwich City is still engaging in dubious transfer transactions.
While Van Wolfswinkel and Naismith serve as historical illustrations of some of Norwich’s transfer market inadequacies, it is the Tzolis saga that has perplexed supporters in more recent times and shows they may not have entirely learnt their lesson.
Tzolis, who had eight senior caps for Greece at the time and had just finished an immensely impressive 16-goal, 10-assist campaign with PAOK in the Greek football league, signed a five-year contract with Norwich during their Premier League season for a sum of £8.8 million. Tzolis, who was only 19 years old when he signed, seemed to have been influenced by the Canaries’ economic acumen as he was one of the most gifted young players not in the top five divisions in Europe.
But the Greek winger struggled to find consistency and plenty of opportunities at Carrow Road. Then, he turned things around last season with an incredible loan at Fortuna Düsseldorf in the German 2. Bundesliga.
After they invoked a clause in his loan contract, Tzolis signed a permanent deal with Düsseldorf for a sum of €3.5 million (£2.9 million). However, they quickly sold him to Club Brugge for €6.5 million.
Fans of Norwich will be interested to watch how Tzolis performs in Belgium because he appears to be a rising star with a revived reputation, but they are frustrated by a number of aspects of the move.
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