Chris Lakey Glenn Roeder will sit down and number-crunch with City chief Neil Doncaster this week as he plots a route back to the top for Norwich City. With the dust finally settling on a momentous weekend when City's Championship status was finally guaranteed, attentions now turn to the future - and who will be part of it.

Chris Lakey

Glenn Roeder will sit down and number-crunch with City chief Neil Doncaster this week as he plots a route back to the top for Norwich City.

With the dust finally settling on a momentous weekend when City's Championship status was finally guaranteed, attentions now turn to the future - and who will be part of it.

Roeder met with all his playing and non-playing staff, including Academy personnel, at the Colney Training Centre yesterday, although it is understood that it was more of a debrief of the season and the challenges ahead, rather than a session in which the axed began to fall.

Part one of Roeder's rebuilding begins after Sunday's final match of the season, when he officially cuts his ties with the remaining five loan players currently on City's books; they go back to their parent clubs with Roeder hoping that at least one, possibly two, may return next season.

Then he will have to address the issues surrounding Darren Huckerby, skipper Mark Fotheringham and defender Gary Doherty - the most high profile players with contracts that expire this summer.

Securing Championship status means that both parties now know the starting point from which negotiations can begin, although Roeder has steadfastly refused to reveal either his or the players' exact intentions. All three players have dropped hints that they want to stay, but equally the conditions and terms have to be right for them as well as the football club.

As well as those three, Roeder has a whole host of fringe players whose futures at the club need to be decided - with the likes of Ryan and Rossi Jarvis, Bally Smart, Matt Halliday, Robert Eagle and Andrew Cave-Brown all anxiously waiting for Roeder's decision.

And all of it is being played out against a backdrop of belt-tightening at Carrow Road, where parachute payments are a thing of the past and which will only return if City can return to the promised land.

While Saturday's victory over QPR completed a remarkable turnaround for City, Roeder will have to watch the pennies as he rebuilds City's fortunes, with his humorous comment to chief executive Doncaster at a fans' forum on Sunday probably one that contains more optimism than realism.

“Next week I will remind Neil and the directors of the last thing they said to me at my second interview,” he said. “That 'if you keep us up, Glenn, you can spend as much money as you want in the summer'.

The reality is that the club needs to continue to seek out potential investors as it heads towards its second season without parachute payments of more than £7m.

“The reality is that last season (06-07) we made £100,000 profit with a £7m parachute payment,” said Doncaster. “That is the sort of situation financially that this club finds itself in. It is certainly not easy and there is not £10m around.

“The board will do everything wee can to bring investment into the club. Everyone on the board will do all they can to bring whatever money they can in - but there is not millions of pounds waiting to be spent.”

The Canaries will have more than 19,000 season ticket holders next season, which helps make them the 16th best supported club in the country, but those fans have had to endure not just their own misfiring side, but the possibility that arch-rivals Ipswich could regain their Premiership status next weekend.

The chances of that are slim, and Roeder has vowed to put City back on top of the East Anglian footballing tree.

“We will do a lot better in the coming season,” promised Roeder. “I will also make this promise as well - Ipswich might have had their day a couple of Sundays ago, but we will have plenty of days against the Blues.

“Just be patient - I can almost taste our first win against them.”