ANDREW Fitton took great pleasure in finding and developing young talent and another example of this was Matt Ritchie.

Ritchie was a huge success on the pitch, having signed from Portsmouth, but financially he proved to be a missed opportunity.

“With Matt Ritchie, I had to over pay for him, because I wanted him, but the deal was that I would give them (Portsmouth) a big sell-on because Steve Cotterill (who was manager at the time) knew how good he was and didn’t want to let him go.

“And it was a travesty that he was sold for £400,000, because clubs would have paid far more than that for him at the time, he was a panic sale.

“I’m pretty certain that Norwich would have paid £800,000 for him, because they rang me about him a few days before he was sold.

“I actually told them that I didn’t think that the club would be willing to sell him – how wrong I was .”