Grant Holt reveals Norwich City transfer truth | OneFootball

The Canaries legend spearheaded their rise from League One to the Premier League, but it was a move that almost never happened

There arguably wasn't a more loved player at Norwich City during their rise from League One to the Premier League in consecutive seasons between 2009 and 2011 than Grant Holt.

The 45-year-old arrived at Carrow Road off the back of a 20-goal campaign with Shrewsbury Town in the 2008/09 League Two term, which ended in play-off heartbreak at Wembley in the final against Gillingham.

Having been a well-established goal machine in the fourth tier with Rochdale before his days at Croud Meadow, and with a 14-goal League One season in the bag with Nottingham Forest, too, it was clear that Holt's immediate future lay at a club higher up the pyramid than Shrewsbury.

Norwich would be the side to sign him, spending £400k on his services, and he'd net 55 times over the course of the two promotion campaigns, as well as 15 in his debut top-flight term to help the Canaries establish themselves in the Premier League.

He was the club's Player of the Year for those three straight seasons, becoming the only player to win the award three times, but that legendary career at Carrow Road almost didn't come to fruition.

Grant Holt nearly signed for Colchester United before his move to Norwich City in 2009

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Indeed, Paul Lambert, who would become the mastermind behind the Norwich squad over the three years from League One to the Premier League, nearly stopped Holt from signing for the Canaries in the first place.

The Scottish manager was at Colchester United during the summer of 2009, and he wanted the then-Shrewsbury frontman to come and help the U's get back into the Championship after they were relegated the season before Norwich were.

"Paul Lambert was desperate to sign me at Colchester, and he rang me loads of times saying, 'We're putting £300,000 in, go and tell the chairman you want to leave.' And I was like, 'No, I'm not going to tell him until you've done it," Holt told the 3 in the Middle Podcast, per PinkUn.

"Then Norwich went up to £400,000. The Shrewsbury chairman rang me up and said they'd agreed it, so it was up to me. He said, 'Go and see what they say. I've got a new contract here, so if you don't like it, you can come back.'

"We went down there, but I nearly didn't sign. My brother came with me, which was brilliant. We left Carlisle, and it was freezing, then went down there, and it was the hottest place to go.

"I was there for three days, and I'd had an ankle operation in the summer, which had been messed up at Shrewsbury. By the third day, Norwich weren't so sure, so I told Bryan Gunn [Norwich's manager at the time], 'You've got to tell Delia Smith, you've got to do it today or I'm going back.' They did the deal there and then."

The rest, as they say, is history, as Holt spearheaded the run from the third tier to the top flight in as many seasons, becoming the fourth team to do so in the Premier League era.

The best years of the former frontman's career came at Carrow Road, but it could all have been different if the Norwich higher-ups had got cold feet about his ankle operation that summer.

Paul Lambert got his hands on Grant Holt soon after and showed why he wanted to sign him

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Ironically, Paul Lambert's disappointment at losing out on Holt as Colchester manager was short-lived, as the Scotsman would end up following his former striker target to Carrow Road less than a month later, after Bryan Gunn was sacked two games into the 2009/10 campaign.

Given how well Holt performed under Lambert, it's no surprise that he wanted to sign him that summer, and the duo were arguably the two most important figures of that rise to the Premier League.

"Paul Lambert and Cully [Ian Culverhouse] were brilliant," Holt said about the manager. "All they did was say this is how we're going to win. If you stick to the philosophy, we might win. If you don't stick to it, we'll get beat. If we do stick to it, we might still get beat, but it's the only way we're going to win, and everyone was on board with it.

"He was the best for me because you couldn't rest. Simon Lappin played loads in League One and the Championship, but hadn't been playing when we got to the Premier League. He'd been in the squad but not often, even on the bench.

"We played QPR on New Year's Day, and we'd all got off the bus, and Lapps had left his bag there. He didn't even bring it out. He sat down, the team was named, and Lappin had started. He was like, I don't even have my stuff!

"You always had to be on it, because he would throw you in from nowhere. You might play three games or be dropped the next week, but you always had to be ready."

There was no danger of Holt being dropped under Lambert, though, and his lethal nature under Lambert was emphasised when his goal involvements dropped significantly in the 2012/13 campaign after the manager had left for Aston Villa.

Every player will have the one manager they prefer to play under and who gets the best out of them. Lambert transformed Holt into a Premier League-level striker in his 30s, and the 45-year-old's story is one of the more inspirational ones due to how the manager was able to get the best out of him.