Why He Never Even Gets A Mention

He is the forgotten man of Ipswich. With the size of our squad and the quality within it, there is some justification in not seeing him on the team sheet every week, but these days, he does not even make the Town bench! The same could be said of Louis Barry, Jon Nolan, Scott Fraser,  Kayden Jackson, and Tom Carroll but this man used to be a goal machine!

In the 2018-19 season with Tranmere Rovers, he scored as many goals in League Two as Sergio Aquero, netting 32 times in just 53 appearances! This brought him to the attention of Ipswich Town, and he signed for the Blues in June 2019 on a free transfer.

Although he ended that season as a top scorer with 11, he managed it after surgery on his adductor, which kept him out of action until April that year, before the Covid pandemic set in, and the season was frustratingly abandoned in the end.

In October 2020, Ipswich announced that Norwood had suffered a torn hamstring in training and that he would be set for a long spell on the sidelines. He recovered earlier than expected and started playing again, before suffering a reoccurrence of that hamstring injury just one month later.

On the occasions that he was fit, he managed to find the net quite regularly, and for the second year in a row, ended up as Town’s top scorer, with 10 goals to his name. Not bad for a guy who seemed to be never too far away from the treatment table.

So why does he not get a look in now?  Well, I suppose he could be injured again. Manager Paul Cook keeps his cards close to his chest on the injury front, but the last time that Norwood was assigned to bench-warming duties, and came on the field, was against Gillingham over a month ago in the EFLT trophy. He did not score, but even more interesting perhaps, is that he did not receive his obligatory yellow card either. Has the penny dropped I wonder?

I think this is where the problem lies. In his relatively short time at the club, he has been ill-disciplined both on and off the field, and this sort of behaviour does not sit well with the gaffer. How many times have we seen Norwood come onto the field and immediately start mouthing off at officials when nobody else seems to have blinked an eyelid.

It is so unnecessary and quite frankly very stupid. Bersant Celina has also got into the bad habit of getting yellow carded for taking off his shirt, but at least he has had something to shout about!