SIDELINE CUT:As the 'big four' begin another Premier League campaign in search of glory, spare a thought for those traditional clubs, like Norwich, who are now mired in a different football world, writes KEITH DUGGAN

NORWICH CITY were the leaders of the inaugural Premier League table during the Christmas period of 1992. The novelty of seeing the modest Canaries heading the newly devised super league, with an injection of €350 million of television money (coughed up by Sky and the BBC) was heightened by their unorthodox approach under Mike Walker.

They led all clubs despite having a negative scoring record, receiving occasional thrashings such as the 7-1 drubbing handed to them by Blackburn Rovers – back in the big time after a 30-year absence and breaking the bank by securing the services of one Alan Shearer for over three million notes – but bounced back to register a series of unlikely wins. Even then, the pundits on the BBC sofas waited for Norwich’s title drive to run out of steam, as it inevitably did in the second-half of the season. Manchester United claimed the prestige of winning the first ever Premier title, with 10 points to spare over Aston Villa.

Norwich finished third.

The sights and sounds emanating from Carrow Road last Saturday, where Norwich suffered their worst ever home defeat by losing 7-1 to Colchester, provided a stark reminder of how devastating the new order of English football has become for many of its bread and butter clubs. As a mid-scale English club, Norwich always had a fairly turbulent history, bouncing up and down between the divisions. They were Premier League material as recently as the 2004-05 season, but after losing in the gripping end-of-season relegation roulette that has, in truth, become more entertaining that the usual procession to another title for Manchester United or Chelsea, they failed to adjust to life in the hyper-competitive Championship level.

Last year, they dropped like a stone into League One and the humiliation at the hands of Colchester was too much for many fans to take. The photographs of one fan confronting Mike Gunn, once a Norwich terrace favourite, spoke volumes about the general distress in the ground. Some ripped season tickets; more vowed to hand theirs back and Gunn looked odds-on to become one of the first managerial casualties of the year.

But Norwich’s slide is another example of how the unfashionable, provincial clubs that are, in fact, the soul of English football, can quickly disappear from the radar. Leeds United may still be considered a giant of the English game but their attempts to climb out of the third tier of English football look set to be slow and ultimately they may become another club trading on 20th century glories.

A cursory glance through the FA divisions illuminates clubs that seemed to represent the heart of English football – Southampton, Luton Town, Notts County – all the old names from the five o’clock results bulletin that were once a staple of Saturday afternoons.

Notts County is the oldest professional club in England. This season they hope to be pushing for promotion from League Two, buoyed by the out-of-the-blue announcement in June that fate had intervened in the form of a Dubai-based consortium.

Now, a club that was on the cusp of folding due to financial pressures a few seasons ago can afford to install Sven Goran Eriksson as its new director a football – and you can be sure the Swede is not working for minimum rate. The manifestation of a money man from the East, interested in the acquisition of a heritage English football club as a plaything as much as an investment, is the only real hope these modest, half-forgotten beacons of the English game have of making genuine progress.

As the gossip and speculation ahead of the new Premier League season went white-hot this week, one instance of trivia was the pledge by Arsenal’s Nicklas Bendtner to personally refund fans who had purchased season shirts with his allocated squad number – 15 – rather than the 52 which ended up on his shirt because that number holds some private significance for him. On one level, it was a rare acknowledgement by one of the stellar cast of the Premier package of the fact that, for the nameless fans, money is not limitless.

But it once again highlighted the incredibly strange existence the leading practitioners of the English game lead. It seems an absurd luxury for a sporting professional to be able to worry and fret about the number on his shirt: it is certainly light years removed from the English football scene once embodied by, say, Duncan Edwards.

Although the leading clubs have shown signs of thrift over the summer, the Premier League product has, thus far, seemed invulnerable to the ravages of the global pressure and nobody blinks when Fernando Torres – one of the most marketable names in the global game – agreed terms with Liverpool that will see him earning the fabulous wage packet of €128,000 per week.

As a top player, Torres is more than entitled to whatever the peak of the market rate happens to be. But his wage packet means increases the bargaining power of the sound but unremarkable professionals – the support players – who have secured a place in the Premier League fantasia.

The metamorphosis the English game has gone through since the formation of the Premier League was highlighted in stark terms last spring when a campaign initiated by a Liverpool fan for Ray Kennedy – the former Kop and Arsenal hero struck down by Parkinson’s Disease – culminated in a tribute at Anfield. A sum of €46,000 was raised to provide a new bathroom for Kennedy.

Such hardships should never be a concern for the present generation of Arsenal and Liverpool players, given their earnings.

So a glittering new football season begins with all the usual hoopla. Even for those sceptical about its merits, the Premier League is one of the inescapable sights and sounds of winter. But for all the new money and the arrival of the game’s most exotic names to the old industrial towns of England’s north, there are fewer uncertainties than ever.

England’s big four hold a monopoly on the Champions League placing and the nouveau riche are just pushing, edging for an outside chance of breaking into that elite tier. For most clubs, winning the Premier League title is not even considered the ultimate objective.

But the days of a club like Norwich setting the Premier League standard through the rain-lashed days of Christmas belong to the past. The transformation of English league from the dark bastion of hooliganism and racism into one of the most successful sports leagues in the world has been remarkable.

But the English football world inhabited by clubs such as Norwich City now holds only the remotest connection to the dazzling league in which Fernando Torres is a pin-up hero.

The gap between England’s landmark clubs and her shadow clubs has never been greater and for the obscure majority, the battle to remain visible becomes tougher every season.