During his tenure as Norwich City’s manager, Daniel Farke had a respectable track record in the transfer market.
When Farke was named Alex Neil’s permanent replacement in May 2017, he was a relative unknown at Carrow Road, having only managed in Germany’s lower leagues before, but he undoubtedly had a significant influence.
The German won two Championship titles for Norwich in 2019 and 2021 after a poor debut season. Although he was unable to keep the team in the Premier League, he will always be remembered with affection in Norfolk.
Farke’s success was largely attributed to his recruitment efforts, which were aided by sporting director Stuart Webber. During his tenure, Tim Krul, Christoph Zimmermann, Mario Vrancic, Kenny McLean, Marco Stiepermann, Emi Buendia, and Teemu Pukki joined the Canaries and quickly became ardent supporters.
Ben Marshall, a winger, will go down as one of the players that Webber and Farke did not always get right in the transfer market.
Norwich City’s signing of Ben Marshall did not pan out.
Farke managed a rebuild in the summer of 2018 following the team’s 14th-place performance in his first season as manager. Marshall joined Krul, Buendia, and Pukki in moving to Carrow Road.
Marshall signed a four-year contract with Norwich after leaving Wolverhampton Wanderers for a fee of £1.5 million. Considering that he had proven himself at the Championship level over the years, he appeared to be an intriguing addition to the team at a reasonable cost.
Marshall built a reputation for himself during his time at Leicester City and Blackburn Rovers after several successful loan trips early in his career. However, he had lost favour at Wolves under Nuno Espirito Santo, so he came to Norfolk with a point to prove.
After starting the first four games of the 2018–19 season at right-back, Marshall appeared to be ready to jump-start his career with the Canaries. However, Farke abruptly dropped him, and he was often left out of the matchday squad entirely in the months that followed.
Unfortunately for Marshall, Norwich improved their play while he was out of the starting lineup and started to look like a strong candidate for automatic promotion, which made it even more difficult for him to get back into the lineup.
Marshall made his first appearance in more than four months when he started in the FA Cup third-round 1-0 home loss to Portsmouth in early January. However, it was not the beginning of a change in the former England youth international’s fortunes; rather, it was the final time he would be seen wearing a Canaries shirt.
Marshall’s contract with Norwich was mutually terminated in the summer after their promotion to the Premier League, and he joined Millwall on loan less than two weeks later, just as he had done during his spell at Wolves during the previous January transfer window.
Marshall was an expensive transfer error for the Canaries, since he only made six games and recorded one assist. However, it would subsequently become clear that there were more significant factors at play when Marshall struggled at Carrow Road.
Norwich City’s Ben Marshall deal was a bad one.
After leaving Norwich, Marshall made the decision to retire from professional football. In January 2020, he signed with non-league team Stoneclough, where he talked about his time there.
The 33-year-old said that he had serious doubts about joining the Canaries and that, after losing his passion for football when he was in Norfolk, he experienced sadness.
The Eastern Daily Press cited Marshall as saying, “The conversation I had was that I didn’t really want to go to Norwich because it’s the other end of the earth.”
“I told my agent I wanted four years and a good amount of money.” Yes, they replied. I went up, and I knew right away as I walked in that it wouldn’t work.
“A Sunday would be considered a day off, followed by a Monday at 3 p.m. It was a day off, and it was twenty-four hours. Actually, that didn’t work out, and Daniel Farke wanted to play me at right-back.
“I actually started at right-back for the first three games, and I was completely destroyed. However, I scored nine goals or something at Blackburn and was named player of the season while playing right back. It simply didn’t make sense.
“I was living in this ‘castle’ alone. All I wanted to do when I got home from training was sleep. “Until the doctor pulled me in and said, ‘You’re showing signs of depression,’ I didn’t think anything of it,” Marshall added.
“I would still be the vivacious one at Blackburn even if I was rough. I would enter Norwich, grab a coffee, and spend my time playing Candy Crush on my phone. I didn’t know anyone and I was in the middle of nowhere.
Marshall was obviously going through a tough time, and he deserves praise for being so open about his difficulties. The decision just didn’t work out for either side, and it would turn out to be the beginning of the end of his professional career.
