Norwich are set to part ways with their current sporting ditector Stuart Webber and they have decided to appoint Knapper as his successor.
Knapper is currently handling Arsenal’s loans manager role, but he will become Norwich’s new sporting director imminently.
Roberts thinks that there were more people with more experience than Knapper available for the job and believes that former player and West Ham United’s current head of recruitment Rob Newman would have taken the role.
The ex-Norwich star pointed out that there is a big difference between managing players on loan and taking charge of an entire club and believes that Knapper’s current role as loans manager is a made-up job.
“I don’t know much about Ben Knapper, but there’s a big difference between running a whole football club – your responsibility is pretty much everything – and the job he’s leaving a job at Arsenal as loans manager, making sure players are okay at their loan clubs”, Roberts wrote in his Eastern Daily Press column.
“Neil Adams had the role here for a few years.
“It’s a bit of a made-up role – we’d never heard about it 10 years ago.
“I heard there were far more experienced ex-players in for the job.
‘Rob Newman would have loved it.
“You look at the experience Rob has got – worked at Manchester City with Pep Guardiola, and West Ham but wasn’t given the opportunity.
“They’d rather people who are more like school teachers.”
Norwich are going through a disastrous form and their manager David Wagner’s future is under severe scrutiny.
