Arturo Lupoli - remember the name?

As I write this latest column from the historic streets of Rome - having also dragged my girlfriend to the Stadio Olimpico for Lazio vs Juventus in the Coppa Italia semi-finals on Tuesday night - the Norwich City nostalgist inside me couldn’t help but reflect on memories of the club's only ever Italian player.

Arsenal academy ace Lupoli, just 21 when he made the switch from Fiorentina to Norfolk back in the summer of 2008, netting a dramatic late double to salvage City a Ninian Park point, remains one of the rare positive memories in an otherwise miserable Carrow Road season.

In fact, the once highly-rated striker went on to grab goals in back-to-back away games as his effort away at Plymouth, followed by Antoine Sibierski's long-range free-kick - another blast from the yellow and green past - earned City an optimism-building three points.

Despite a reasonable return of four goals in 16 matches during the first half of the season, Lupoli's loan was terminated in February after his frustration at a lack of game-time as a combination of strikers Sibierski, Leroy Lita, Alan Gow, Alan Lee, David Mooney and Chris Killen all jostled for places under struggling boss Bryan Gunn.

Which is where this column becomes relevant from a current Norwich City perspective.

That team of 2008/09 became an abject footballing comedy under both Gunn and then Glenn Roeder, a bizarrely-assembled group of incompetent players - largely loanees - seemingly picked at random that eventually slumped to a shock relegation into the depths of League One.

When City were sliding towards the bottom of the Championship during this season's shambolic autumn run of results, I saw several fans on social media draw parallels between the two sides and state this was the worst team we'd had since that rotten Roeder era.

But based on what's happened since, that couldn't be further from the truth.

Whatever happens during these final two matches, David Wagner and his resilient squad should be nothing but proud of the heights they have scaled over the last few months.

Yes, I agree that City should have never been in that seemingly 2008-esque position they were in back in November.

And yes, there remain many obstacles still to overcome if we are to navigate our way to Wembley and cap another unlikely play-off promotion.

But based on the adversity they have battled through and the recent performances - both collective and individual - we have seen, this is a team who can end this season with their heads held high and who really may be one of the most youthful, talent-packed outfits the club have had for some time.

Gone are the days where Wagner and a squad containing Kenny McLean - a fully deserved Player of the Season winner - Gabriel Sara, Josh Sargent, Jonathan Rowe, Borja Sainz and Angus Gunn are being compared to Roeder and his inadequately-assembled group of third-tier bound players.

This is a team, and manager, who have got the good times back rolling after a depressingly underwhelming few post-pandemic seasons and frankly, deserve a huge amount of credit for engineering a turnaround as drastic as they have.

City should mathematically book their place in the play-offs against Swansea on Saturday and if they do, there is no doubt that none of those top five will want to play us.

And that is a statement firmly testament to the job Wagner and these players have done, propelling themselves back into the promotion picture and giving us fans a cause to genuinely believe in once more.

That Lupoli-featuring, Gunn- and Roeder-managed season ended in City somehow plummeting into the depths of League One.

But exactly 15 years on, and as I travel back from the Italian striker’s homeland ahead of Saturday’s Carrow Road clash, Wagner’s squad now have a serious chance of catapulting themselves up in the opposite direction.