Tim Allman, Capital Canaries Having watched our first three games this season, it was painfully obvious what was missing. It was the same thing that was missing for the majority of last season.

Tim Allman, Capital Canaries

Having watched our first three games this season, it was painfully obvious what was missing. It was the same thing that was missing for the majority of last season.

Goals.

Last season, there were a few aberrations at the defensive end of the pitch but generally it was reasonably sound.

We conceded roughly the same as a batch of other mid-table teams, but we still acquired three new defenders before the start of the campaign.

And with Dion Dublin retiring and Darren Huckerby departing, it didn't take a genius to work out that we needed reinforcements up front.

It was so frustrating at Coventry my nine-year-old daughter Gemma was almost drawn to violence after the game.

Her post match analysis was that “Coventry were rubbish but we couldn't score a goal”.

Against Blackpool she commented that “I thought Russell was our best midfielder, but he was our best attacker today”.

That second comment summed it up for me.

When a nine-year-old spots what is wrong, you know we've got problems.

And this week the search for a striker took on a new twist as it was revealed that the man we have been trailing for the last few months, who was contracted to Rosenborg, only had a verbal get-out clause which unfortunately held as much water as a wet paper bag.

And we were relying on this.

If I were to speculate on exactly what was said or agreed between either Steffen Iversen, his agent, Rosenborg and Norwich, I think that Rosenborg would have stated that he could leave provided the circumstances were OK, but that was then and this is now.

And more fool to him, his agent, and Norwich City for believing it was so.

Whether it is true that Norwich now don't have the funds for the deal, or whether Rosenborg, realising that as an in-form striker who was in demand, Iversen was worth quite a few Krone more than the fee that may or not have been agreed in the summer, I don't know either.

I'd like to think we would hear the Norwich City side of the story.

We did two years ago as the hectic life of a football executive on the August transfer deadline day was detailed in the EDP.

Perhaps we'll get a chance to read the sequel.

Regardless of whether this pursuit of Iversen fails, questions need to be asked as to why we started the season with an attack consisting of an untried on-loan teenage Ghanaian playing in his first season of English football, an on-loan player who struggled last season in Italy, and Jamie Cureton, who despite bleeding yellow and green is not getting any younger.

And why all our eggs were seemingly all in one transfer basket. I'm really hoping it will turn out ok, but being the pessimist I am, I doubt it.

I'm half expecting that our new striker will be unveiled soon, but instead of being led out onto the pitch by Delia, as Hucks was on Boxing Day, he'll arrive on one of those comedy cars driven by a clown, parp-parping his horn, and being catapulted out as it explodes and the back wheel falls off.

And of course the first person he meets will get it in the eye with the water squirting flower. Yes, this transfer farce is now that bad.

Perhaps the clown analogy is a little over the top, but what we really need now is a rabbit to be pulled from the hat between now and Monday.

If we don't see that rabbit, it's going to be a long tough season.