The £3.5m gem: Norwich City's unbelievable strike of gold in the transfer market | OneFootball

Robert Earnshaw arrived in Norfolk with a reputation to uphold - and he certainly delivered

When Robert Earnshaw arrived at Norwich City from West Bromwich Albion in January 2006, he had big boots to fill.

The prolific Dean Ashton had just left the club, and the Welsh international arrived from The Hawthorns with an enviable record of scoring hat-tricks in all the top four divisions of English football, the FA Cup, League Cup and in an international fixture.

And, despite his City career not getting off to the best of starts, with a defeat at home to East Anglian rivals Ipswich Town in his debut appearance, he was about to step into Ashton's shoes and then some to become a hero at Carrow Road.

Earnshaw had a very eventful journey to Carrow Road

Born in Zambia to a mother who was an ex-professional footballer and an English-born father, Earnshaw moved to Wales at the age of 10 after his father passed away. He first started playing football upon his arrival in Wales, and he ended up being scouted for Cardiff City - where he would make his senior debut in the Football League Trophy in 1997.

He will go down as one of the greatest players in Bluebirds history, as he scored 82 goals in 169 appearances for the Bluebirds across two spells, making him the third-highest scorer in the Welsh capital club's history.

His form at Cardiff saw him make a move to West Bromwich Albion for £3 million, where he was perhaps not as prolific, although he did play a lot fewer games. After a transfer saga that saw the Welsh international have two transfer requests rejected in December 2005, he did eventually get his way out of The Hawthorns and over to Norwich.

He was a short-term Norwich legend

After making a move to West Ham United, Earnshaw had to replace Ashton in that City team and the £3.5m man most definitely did, scoring his first goals for the club with a brace in a Valentine's Day win over Brighton & Hove Albion. He scored six more that season as the club finished ninth - but it was the season after that he really started to impress.

In a poor season that saw the Canaries finish a lowly 16th, Earnshaw still impressed - scoring 19 goals in the Championship. These included early-season braces against the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Barnsley and Southend United - with that including a remarkable 17 by January 2007, leading to him being the top scorer in the division at the time.

However, he suffered a relatively serious groin injury later that month that kept him out of the large chunk of the rest of the season, although he did return in April that year in order to hit his final couple of goals of the season. The Canaries, having signed him for a large sum of money, were never going to be too happy about letting him leave, but the Welsh international was given the chance of top-flight football and thus found it too good to turn down.

Mixed fortunes upon leaving City

Norwich accepted a bid from newly-promoted Derby County to sign Earnshaw for their Premier League season. However, he never made any real impact in the East Midlands in what was statistically the worst ever season in Premier League history. In total, he scored only two goals in 25 appearances for the Rams, before crossing Brian Clough Way a year later.

His time with Nottingham Forest was much more successful, as he scored 43 goals in 110 appearances. Notable highlights were the only goal in Forest's first win at Pride Park against Derby, and a hat-trick in a 5-1 win at home to fellow East Midlands side Leicester City.

He returned to Cardiff in 2011 but never really could find a regular starting spot ahead of Kenny Miller, the man who was also ahead of him in the pecking order at Derby. He went out on loan to Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel and then eventually ended up leaving Cardiff permanently for Toronto FC in the MLS. He had spells at the Chicago Fire and Vancouver Whitecaps as well as a short spell at Blackpool, before announcing his retirement in 2016.

Despite the mixed spells at other clubs, Norwich definitely saw the best of the talented Earnshaw in a deal that saw them strike gold.