Norwich City scored big with £1m Man City forward deal - He lit up Carrow Road | OneFootball

Signing Darren Huckerby from Manchester City in 2003 turned out to be very a wise move by Norwich City.

On Boxing Day 2003, joint Norwich City majority shareholders Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones took to the pitch at Carrow Road before their home match against Nottingham Forest to announce a new signing.

It was, perhaps, a slightly unusual way of announcing the acquisition of a player who they'd already had on loan for three months throughout the first half of that season.

But then, this was a slightly unusual player - one who would write himself into Canaries folklore in the time he would spend in Norfolk - that man's name was Darren Huckerby.

Darren Huckerby was a Norwich City legend - and also a bargain

Darren Huckerby had started his professional career a decade earlier at Lincoln City. He got a big move to the Premier League with Newcastle, but he was unable to get into the team and was eventually loaned out to Millwall before being sold to Coventry in 1996, where he stayed for three years.

A spell with Leeds United followed before he found himself at Manchester City, again unable to get a place in the first-team once they were promoted back into England's upper echelons. He was loaned him once more, first to Nottingham Forest (for whom he scored five in nine games) and then for three months to Norwich City in September 2003.

He made his debut for the Canaries against Burnley on the September 12, and by the end of the month he'd scored in three successive games.

Behind the scenes, his new team-mates had arranged a meeting and encouraged manager Nigel Worthington to continue his efforts to keep him at the club.

By Boxing Day, with another offer from West Bromwich Albion having been rejected, Huckerby was back, and this time he was staying, with a £1 million deal agreed with Man City for his services.

Promotion back to the Premier League as champions followed for Norwich at the end of the season. Huckerby chipped in with 14 goals, ending the season as top goalscorer and runner-up in the club's Player of the Year awards. The following season they were relegated straight back, but this time he was their Player of the Year.

They nearly stayed up, too. A 1-0 win against Birmingham in their penultimate game of the season lifted them out of the relegation places for the final day, only for a 6-0 loss at Fulham on the final day to send them back down to the second tier, in 19th place.

Huckerby would end up staying at Carrow Road for a further three seasons. Norwich couldn't get back up into the Premier League again while he was there, but he remained a fan favourite until he left at the end of the 2007/08 season. And when that time came, it was shrouded in controversy.

Manager Glenn Roeder was the person who decided not to renew Huckerby's contract, and it was the manner in which this happened which angered supporters, who were unable to say a proper goodbye to a player who, by that time, had been their club's Player of the Year twice and who had been inducted into their hall of fame two years earlier.

Fans would get their chance to say goodbye when he appeared in a 'Greatest Ever' legends match at Carrow Road shortly after the announcement was made. In total, Huckerby scored 48 goals in 203 appearances for the Canaries in all competitions over five years.

Roeder's reputation with the supporters never really recovered. He was sacked the following January, with the team in 18th place in the Championship. At the end of the season, they dropped into the third tier for the first time since 1959. Huckerby, meanwhile, went to the USA, playing for San Jose Earthquakes before retiring following a hip injury in 2009.

Darren Huckerby's Norwich City fan favourite status was never entirely about his playing ability

Huckerby's most notable asset on the pitch was his electrifying pace.

Speaking to The Athletic in 2020, former teammate Iwan Roberts described him as one of "the quickest players I’d ever set eyes on". His goalscoring tally over the five years during which he was with the club was also impressive for a winger.

But when supporters really bond with a player, there can often be factors in play which are more difficult to quantify.

Huckerby was one of theirs, a player who formed an instant connection with the club itself as well as the supporters.

Talking to the BBC about why he stayed with the club, he said: "It sounds stupid, but I took four pay cuts, truthfully, to come to Norwich and every time a new contact came round I took a cut to stay here, obviously my agent was not happy at all."

Huckerby stayed in the area following his retirement as a player, and became a Club Ambassador alongside Jeremy Goss in June 2019.

He later said in an interview with My Football Writer that: "The day they let me go, I bought three season tickets for me and my boys. I was just happy to be part of the club.

"I always said that this is my home. Norwich is my club, even though I played for a lot of clubs, and I’m well regarded in other places, this is my club. It was an honour to coach, it’s an honour to be an ambassador.