Norwich owner delighted by 'special' Clement

Norwich City's owner has hailed Philippe Clement as a "special manager" following the team's dramatic improvement under the Belgian.

The Canaries were next to bottom of the Championship when Clement was appointed last November, but won 19 games under Clement to finish ninth.

"You need some good fortune in sport, and we had good fortune to connect with Philippe," Mark Attanasio told BBC Radio Norfolk's Canary Call phone-in.

Clement, who had 16 months in charge of Scottish club Rangers, has a three-and-a-half year contract and the club are already looking beyond a bare minimum of reaching the play-offs next season.

"Our goal is more than just the play-offs - I have to be careful when I talk like this because I'm superstitious and it can come back to bite you - but when we talk internally, our focus is how to get the team into the top two next year," US businessman Attanasio said.

"Obviously that's going to be a huge effort with the teams that might be coming down (from the Premier League), everybody is going to be getting better.

"Sure the two extra (play-off) spots help us, but we want to put ourselves in a good position and everything is directed towards that.

"We're going to devote everything we can towards getting back to the Premier League and whether that happens next year, that focus is going to be unwavering."

Attanasio praised sporting director Ben Knapper for his work alongside Clement in recent months.

There were calls for Knapper to be sacked during the run of poor results in the first part of the campaign, which led to Clement's predecessor Liam Manning - now in charge at Huddersfield - losing his job at Carrow Road.

"He [Clement] and Ben, and the recruitment team, have been working for weeks now, looking forward to the summer - that's been a very strong relationship, and aligned importantly," Attanasio said.

"We've got really good chemistry here and since Philippe has joined we've been top two or three in points since the start of the year and it's a significant effort between Ben, the analytics people, the recruitment staff and Philippe, who watches film of every player intently.

"Ben has certainly shown a lot of strength - how people perform in adversity is a lot more of a measure of character, it's easy when things are going well to smile and look good.

"Ben really doubled donw on how hard he worked. We had a terrific transfer window in January and that had a lot to do with the success. Everybody was on a mission."