Feed The Horse and He Will Score

Yeovil Town 0-4 Norwich City

Only the Carling Cup? Maybe, but Norwich City needed this. Would Bryan Gunn make wholesale changes to the side freshly battered by Colchester or would those same players be given the chance to prove a point? Perhaps predictably, he went somewhere in between - 5 changes.

Ben Alnwick replaced Theoklitos after his hapless debut, Michael Spillane impressed at right back, Jens Berthel Askou played solidly at centre back, 17-year-old Tom Adeyemi belied his tender years with a fine display in midfield and Cody McDonald was, well, Cody McDonald, chasing everything, the poor bloke did everything but score.

The real star was his strike partner. A second half hat-trick from Grant Holt helped restore a bit of pride. This bear of a man is so much more than your average League One target man on this evidence. He completed his hat-trick with a sublime 20-yard effort and in the build up to his second, he ran from the halfway line to the edge of the box with defenders bouncing off him. All the makings of a fan's favourite.

That's not to mention a manager's favourite. In praising Holt's work rate after the game Gunn revealed in his post-match interview that the striker had recently taken on the nickname 'The Horse' in the Norwich dressing room. At least I assume it was his work rate which bought him that pet name and not some other yet to be discovered attribute.

After Gunn I got to interview Holt. He's an imposing figure close-up, as the bruised Yeovil centre backs will testify, and I was grappling with a dilemma all the way through our chat: Should I ask him about this new nickname, just made public by his manager?

What if he didn't like being called a horse? What if this was a behind-his-back nickname that he wasn't supposed to hear? Even if he did know about it, would he really want everybody else finding out?

In the end I braved it in the hope that a hat-trick in just his second game for the club must have left him in a decent mood. There was a slight pause before he answered, a tense moment for me.

"I just hope the manager thinks I'm a good horse and not a bad one."

Phew! I leave Yeovil in one piece and that cautious optimism about what lies ahead slowly returns. Very cautious, mind.