Painting the Window

Norwich City 1-0 Brentford

The Johnstone's Paint Trophy and the closure of the transfer window. What a day it promised to be.

Sky Sports News has become appointment viewing on deadline day. The football authorities spoiled their fun a little bit by making the window close at 5pm - depriving us of an extra seven hours of reporters standing outside telling us that David James' car was still parked up at the Portsmouth training ground.

SSN still managed to rise to the occasion by cutting to Big Ben just as it chimed five times. Despite the frothing transfer frenzy and the almost apocalyptic site of the nations most famous clock tower the world did not end at 5pm on Tuesday September 1st 2009 but Leon McKenzie did sign for Charlton.

As a fan and reporter you spend days like this desperately checking websites to make sure you're not missing anything. Would Gary Doherty leave Norwich? Would Wes Hoolahan leave Norwich? Would Norwich sign a new player? No, no and indeed no.

So it was onto the Johnstone's Paint Trophy for the canaries first ever match in the competition.You could choose to see it as another landmark as to how far Norwich had fallen or think of it as the best chance of a trip to Wembley and just make the most of it.

Carrow Road was surreal. The closed River End made it feel a little like a reserve game but the fans, as they always do, really did come through for the team. More than 12 and a half thousand turned up to see Chris Martin's goal.

To put that into perspective, the next highest attendance in the competition on the same night was just four and a half thousand at MK Dons and it was a bigger gate than last week's Sunderland tie in the Carling Cup.

It was a night of Carrow Road firsts. Not only the arrival of JPT action but defender Jens Berthel Askou managed to smash a clearance over the roof of the Jarrold Stand, the tallest at the ground.

I am now preparing to phone the press office at Norwich City and request they find out how high the Jarrold Stand actually is. They'll love being asked that. Mind you, the transfer window's closed for now so they won't have any speculation to deal with.