The Welshman famously scored a hat-trick in the Black Country derby for Wolves and helped Norwich earn promotion to the Premier League, so tackles the Foot In Both Camps feature.
Roberts features in a programme fronted by Louise Cobbold’s impressive artwork of Pedro Neto, who is the focus of the main interview too.
Snippets of Roberts’ interview are found below, with the full version printed in Sunday’s programme, available at shop.wolves.co.uk and around Molineux pre-match.
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Iwan, you switched Molineux for Carrow Road in the summer of 1997, how did the move come about?
If I’m honest, I didn’t really want to leave. I was one year into a three-year contract. I’d just moved from Leicester, we’d bought a house in Shropshire, I’d settled in and scored 12 goals which wasn’t too bad, although not quite as good as what ‘Bully’ was getting. I was more than happy there, but the day before pre-season training Mark McGhee pulled me into his office and he’d been told he had to start selling players if he wanted new players in. Norwich put a bid in for me which the club accepted and I thought, if they were allowing me to talk to Norwich, they’re basically saying I don’t have a future. I didn’t want to stay somewhere I wasn’t wanted, so I talked to Norwich and decided to make the move.
What can you remember of your Norwich debut soon after?
My debut for Norwich was a home game against Wolves, only a few weeks after I left the club. Robbie Keane made his debut for Wolves. I had a disaster and he was a worldie and scored both goals in a 2-0 win.
What can you remember of the Molineux atmosphere?
Molineux is one of the best atmospheres I played in. I was lucky, I played at the Millennium and the old Wembley in a Play-Off final. The second leg of the Play-Off game against Crystal Palace at Molineux, even though we hadn’t been great at home, we knew the crowd would get behind us. When we were coming out of the tunnel at Molineux, I’d never heard an atmosphere like it. It was so hostile towards Palace. We just scored the second goal a little bit too late, but that atmosphere was the best I’d ever played in.
