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Is this podcast part of the 90% or the 10%?

Hi Lakey, I do love your optimism. I have nothing against that, but in the interest of debate do allow me to totally pull apart your OP. Nothing personal but I do feel you are overlooking areas of real concern. The Webber era is plainly coming to an end Agreed, but think there are still some skirmishes to come on this because of the lack of good corporate governance at the Club. but overall there have been more positives than negatives. TBH, not entirely convinced of this statement. For a Football Club, the overriding assessment of how well you are doing is on the pitch. In that respect realistically we are back where we started! At the moment I think the squad is in a worse position than when Webber came in, albeit with some as yet unproven talent waiting in the wings, but they have to deliver before your statement can be unqualified. So presuming he leaves now, what will his legacy be? A strong club with loads of very decent young players, a quality manager and assistant, good finances and a club with loads of potential to do well again. The young players have not yet proven themselves on the pitch. The manager has yet to prove he can get the team playing in a confident manner. The assistant has a good track record, but further success depends on how his knowledge is used by the manager. The balance sheet is relatively strong for a football club, there are parachute payments to break the impact of relegation, but once again the model we operate under has proven to not provide sufficient finance to break into the EPL as a relatively permanent member. The potential remains but as you will see below, I am not convinced the club is now in a position to make the most of it. but he has shown the way forwards and we are still in a good place. Has he? I assume by this you mean that a long serving Sporting Director is more important than allowing the man in charge of team affairs ("the manager") free reign over all football matters. The very fact we seem to be losing this particular Sporting Manager seems to suggest it is not the way forward we thought it was going to be. Sporting Directors seem to have bigger ego's than the managers they supposedly employ! Some people have been droning on about how the club is falling apart. Ridiculous. So there has been a turn over in staff - happens in all walks of life in all sorts of businesses. Once again I will get on my favoured hobby horse. Corporate Governance at the club is a mess. It is way off where best practise says it should be. No Chair, no CEO, no accountability anywhere, which for a PLC organisation is criminal. If governance was better, the Board could hold the executive to account for the increased turnover in senior positions (and this is where I take issue with your statement - we are not talking junior staff, but relatively senior people some of whom have made a success of their time at the club as evidenced by them going on to similar positions elsewhere). In addition the debacle over BK8 would not have happened. The latter farce and the incident over the weekend also show the club have lost touch with the fans, otherwise the article and the subsequent fracas outside the main entrance would not have happened. All the signs are there that the club is indeed falling apart. Financially we are still strong, the infrastructure of the club is superb compared to five years ago Colney has been improved, but we have missed a major opportunity to improve the ground. The cost of capital has been incredibly low over the past ten years, and yet no major improvement when it was needed most. This is now borne out by the 70% salary budget limit on turnover that looks increasingly likely to be implemented within 5 years. We will be hamstrung by not making the most of increased capacity on match days and the associated hospitality income that would come with it. It is currently impossible for us to be a top 26 club based on income now if all other clubs attract 90% capacity; it makes everything we try and do from now on so much harder! and we have loads of good players. We have about 5 proven good players! Which I would argue is not loads! and we have a stable ownership at the club that repeatedly rides these storms out and keep the progression of the club going in a good direction. Our two major shareholders are both in their 80's and are looking increasingly frail, some may even argue they are showing a few signs of senility. They could drop dead at any moment and have been issuing statements that seem to suggest they still have no real succession plan in place given the flip-flopping that has been revealed in recent public statements. Even Foulger seems to be hiving his shares off into a family trust, which again is unproven to have the same sense of support that he has, no matter what the trust deed says. As for riding out storms, it is said publicly outside of our NCFC bubble that the club is a joke. Yes, the willingness of the supporters to accept yet another relegation does help the club ride out storms. However there are real signs that patience is wearing thin, not just on social media but by the increasingly empty seats at matches. the issue is always how we move forwards We await the post-season statements from the club, if Webber does go as a result of the current issues then Ward will certainly have to go too (which I have set out very clearly reasons in other threads has to happen otherwise any sense of there being even a smidgeon of corporate governance at the club has gone). There will be a need a to appoint a very strong CEO and confirmation of the Sporting Director model with a strong appointment there as well. That is a lot of work for the club to do in a short space of time with a relatively inexperienced remaining executive and a board that I would argue is well past its best. So, yes, there are issues over moving forward, some really big issues which I do not think the club is in a good position to overcome! The club is bigger than Webber, Webber going is not a disaster, Absolutely agree that should be the position of the first part of the statements, but unfortunately due to imperfect corporate governance, it is not well placed to operate without him. I am feeling extremely uneasy over what the next few months are going to bring and I am usually a Percy Positive, but at the moment I am miles off that. Note that I have not said Smith & Jones should go, but they do need to change their approach to how the club is run a Board and Executive level and need to make some key decisions over what their succession policy is and to stick with that once decided to remove further uncertainty. I apologise if that makes some people queasy, but I really think a degree of realism is called for with significant changes in the corridors of Carrow Road before we really see the Club stride forward confidently.

I have worked in the charity sector for many years. At Board level, there is always a raised eyebrow and some strong questioning (as you would expect with strong corporate governance) when a senior executive is known to be doing a charitable event / activity that does not benefit their own charity, especially if that charity does not have the values of the employer. It is an unwritten rule that senior executives (who set the example for junior employees and supporters of the charity) should apply themselves in all their activities first to the charity that employs them, subject to a truly unarguable personal position that warrants such support. Now the Club is not the charity here, but it has supported the CSF which publicly is seen as the charitable arm of the club (I know that is not the case legally but we are talking perceptions here). It does strike me that the outcomes the CSF is seeking are similar if not the same as the Summit Foundation that has, as I understand it, not yet been properly and fully set up! If the Board were on the case I believe at worst they would have seen this as a missed opportunity, but most of them should be absolutely fuming under their breath! I therefore think again this is another example of a lack of corporate governance within the Club, with its values not being clearly lived by either the Board or the executives. When Webber asked for the leave to pursue his mountainous goal, the Board should have made it a pre-condition that this met with the values of the club. This would have lead all to the conclusion, fine, go ahead Stu but please do it in a way that the club can get some reflected glory if only through the support it would bring for the CSF. But the lack of clear governance has lead to an even bigger row and is quite rightly seeing questions raised by some of our more worldly contributors on this page which should be reflected more widely amongst supporters of both the club and the CSF.

He said "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder, How I keep from going under". Then went on about broken glass and people urinating in the street.

I think you'll find Cantwell has had a hard time of things tbh hence the move to Bournemouth. Just saying...they are human. He could be massive for us if he sorts things out.

It would be funnier if the mask was only 90% of Stuart Webber’s face 😂

I'm suspicious of the quality of any footballer called Andy Hughes.

Indeed, but a forum would be pretty dull if it were just people laying out their positions and then "moving on". FWIW, I agree with Horsefly's assessment of your post/position. There are some major logical questions around the reasoning behind some of your conclusions, which sound like they will go unanswered.

No fan wants Norwich City to go - or to have gone - into administration, but to praise that not happening as a 'real achievement' by the owners is probably the most bizarre view I've ever read on this forum.

Of course Russia is entirely responsible for its own foreign policy and Putin is clearly an abhorrent man: I'm not sure how you inferred otherwise from what I posted. However, that does not mean that western foreign policy was thought-through and coherent. All the political parties in Britain and national response from other leading parts of the West have stumbled in their response to the collapse of the Soviet Union in general and the handling of Putin in particular. It is to my mind, a little dismissive just to say that, as if this makes it "normal" and does not give a good indication of the nature of Putin's regime. It was a very bloody war and there were terrible atrocities committed. Our response - our then PM, Tony Blair said, Putin " a focused view of what he wants to achieve in Russia." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/674480.stm This was weeks after between 5-8000 civilians were killed in the Battle of Grozny. A few weeks later Blair invited Putin to Britain to meet the Queen. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-to-meet-blair-and-queen-on-first-official-visit-to-west-279866.html The response by Britain to further aggression has been similarly timid whilst at the same time we have bent over backwards to accommodate Russian money in Britain. Johnson's links to an ex-KGB leader are well known and other associates of Putin have been embraced until recently. Britain, of course, is not alone in this: German dependence on Russian oil is well-known as are trumps close links with Russia and praise of Putin. Up until Ukraine the West has at best turned a blind eye to the nature of Putin's regime and has at worst worked closely with associates of Putin and palled-up with Russian money and resources. IMO, the truth is that it suited us to do so. Can you really say that our hands are completely clean in the current crisis and that we could have done noting earlier?

From BOD upwards I'm not sure the club is strong, to the extent I'm actually quite worried about it. We have ageing owners losing touch with reality and a BOD who appear to be pretty damn clueless. The signs were there right from the BK8 shambles. If Webber leaves we need a strong candidate to reinvent NCFC or get back to where we were before. Adams doesn't have that wider strategic vision? I worry we've further to fall yet. When Webber leaves and if we don't hit the ground running next season, the crosshairs will switch pretty swiftly to the owners.

I personally don’t quite get the Webber witch hunt that is going on but he clearly does have a way of riling people (especially journalists) if he has now fallen out with the local media and the Nick Ma****er fella who once seemed to be firmly in the know. Overall, if he does now leave then his tenure has to be classed as a success. The club is in a demonstrably better position than what he inherited and whilst people can call him a fraud etc but that is pretty indisputable. I noticed one of the TNC boys state he has failed twice in his objective but I personally think this view is narrow minded. Would anyone with the available resources been able to enable Farke to have kept us up in that first season. This year has not been great, that clearly needs to be reviewed but ended up losing 2 of our best 3 players (Emi and Skipp) and also got zero from Cantwell. That is some loss. Yes we have spent some money but net spend is what c£15-20m? Hardly massive premier outlay. Hindsight with transfers tells a different story but I think we all would have been happy with Gibson and Dimi at the end of last year (albeit everyone now slates the Gibson signing, I didn’t see much of that in June 2021), I think everyone expected Kabak to be better, Rashica was seen as a coup, as was Gilmour. PLM was an experienced midfielder who had played at a good level and they either didn’t get thr desired CDM or Normann hasn’t quite worked out. I fully agree with everyone else the Sargent and particularly Tzolis signings were odd! These signings overall coupled with the losses have left us in a bad place but I don’t think there was a lack of logic or ambition, they just haven’t worked out. naturally all things have a shelf life and it might be time for Webber to go but this vitriol built up against him is OTT in my opinion.

Why don't we do what Walsall has and sign up with Poundland?😉

For his supporters only. The Russian machine is known to take endless amounts of time to get moving. He will not use nuclear missiles as MAD serves no purpose whatsoever. It seems to me he is searching for an out. An appearance of a victory without ever achieving one. For all the bluster from the West, they would carve up Ukraine if it suited them.

i do not know the reason and you might well be right but i do not think he help matters on Social Media

Putin now warning against “outside interference“ in Ukraine. I don’t think he has a sense of irony.

Going to massively refute this. He was not remotely consistent in the PL that year, had a very good start/first 3rd but then tailed off and since January created, contributed and scored basically nothing. DF pointed this out in the press when TC allegedly went a bit Toddy Big Chops and DF was asked why he had dropped him. Came back into the fold and did fine, not great, just fine. Imo was made to look more impressive due to the work of Emi, who whenever was absent from the team we basically lost, even with Todd playing. I’ve definitely got my view and am a bit careful not to try and destroy the guy, because ultimately he is just a young lad who has grown up in a small town and been the best they’ve seen there for a long time which I suspect massaged his ego, thrown into an academy system where your every day life is done for you and you’re given the impression you’re the next Messi (or Deco) and then you have a couple of good games and the media, people like Adrian click bait Durham, make some massive claims about you being exactly what Arsenal need instead of Ozil etc. the lad just seemed to either believe the hype, in which case those around him needed to do better to ground him, or he is and has been consistent in underperforming for about 2 and a half years. He is young (ish in footballing terms) and still may yet make something happen he wants, which if congratulate him on. That said the risk to us is not worth having to carry him and pay him as honestly I feel we are far bigger than the standard he offers to us - and I don’t think our standard is really that high.

I mean FFS. This is the kind of due dilligence NCFC is renowned for.

I can guess....

The Caribbean tours have been an embarrassing exercise in tone-deafness.

Quality reference!

Innovative cash and investment ideas are not, apparently, something the Board have yet considered. I don't know why. The Academy Bond was a great success on a smaller scale. We discovered that it didn't need to be so generous in investment terms, so something bigger and more long term makes a lot of sense. Just giving every season ticket holder the chance to purchase some of the unissued shares would be a start. The failure to expand the ground over the last two promotions is now looking like a very poor position for the Board to have held onto.

Let's go back to the end of last season. We'd won the league with a record points haul. Farke signed a new 4 year contract. We had an identity and a clear vision running through the club. We had the biggest transfer budget in our history. Fast forward to today. Farke is gone. The identity is gone. The money is gone. Unlike our previous relegation the assets are gone too. It's hard to be positive about the future at this point. Regardless of where you lay the blame, things don't look great. I'll reserve judgement until we see what the squad looks like after the summer. After 10 games next season we'll have an idea where we are. I fear we're facing a significant decline.

There are valid sticks with which to beat Webber but this doesn’t strike me as one of them. @Nuff Said @PurpleCanary Please be careful of assuming everything starts with a polemic viewpoint. I asked a Socratic question, with no pre-conceived ideas other than to wonder why - as @Jim Smith as noted - the CSF was not an obvious vehicle, particularly with his wife as a trustee. Nobody had mentioned it. It would seem an obvious choice ‘to help the people of Norfolk’. I love the CSF as a charity - coversely to ‘low blow’ or ‘stick to beat’ - for me I was interested in the reason not to support it. Hence why I asked @nutty nigel Parma Parma, in that case you shouldn't have asked the question in such a obviously loaded fashion: Do you know why Webber did not feel that the CSF was a suitable vehicle for his charity work @nutty nigel?…why did he have to set up his own when such a worthy option was on the table in front of him?… "...why Webber did not feel..."...why did he have to..." "...such a worthy option on the table in front of him..." A genuinely Socratic question would have been phrased neutrally. Yours was not.

I think his legacy is being honest about what Norwich is about. We buy cheap players with potential work with the academy and sell them. These sales fund a wages to turnover ratio we could not otherwise afford. This aligned to coaches who play good football and want to develop players. He cops a lot of stick for soccerbot but you can’t sell the club as a good place to develop your career when the training ground is a bunch of portakabins. I don’t think anyone has been as honest about how we sell players and try to develop players. I actually like this clarity you know in the summer we will sell maybe Aarons and Cantwell and buy a load of random players you have never heard of.

There are valid sticks with which to beat Webber but this doesn’t strike me as one of them.

I'm not sure he's much in credit any more but equally I also agree his overall results are not below par. If you want to use the golfing analogy he's had 4 rounds of 64, 73, 69 and 75 in my view over the last 4 seasons, but the last one has been a real blow to the confidence. But when an employee is not showing full commitment and indeed is showing destructive tendancies in terms of his interaction with the fanbase then there is arguably a decision to be made for both parties. I don't know whether behind the scenes he's feverishly working away to bring in players this summer to try and put things right. All I am saying is that whilst the "I will put up with him being a t**t sometimes because overall he's good for the club" balance was clear cut previously, now its more in the balance for me.

His legacy on a personal level is that he failed twice to mix it with the best. Accused others of pissing money up the wall then replicates that himself. Not half as good as he thinks he is and no top club will come calling any time soon.

It's amusing that all these right wingers are on every platform whining about their lack of free speech.

Not Ipswich but I did wear a Watford shirt because I lost a charity bet. My saving grace was the city shirt underneath so that Watford shirt never actually touched my skin. 🙃

I think if you feel the guy that makes you less of a softy, more of a sex pest 😂

Well said. Just because he’s a very well paid footballer doesn’t make him immune from potentially mental health hiccups. I for one hope he comes back, smashes it with us and gives a lot of people a very large slice of humble pie.

The Webber era is plainly coming to an end and history will show that his overall contribution for us has been brilliant as there is no problem in recognising his achievements - even getting Dean and Shaky in may be seen in a good light if they do well next season. Yes, the two PL seasons have been nightmares, not all Webber's fault by any means, but overall there have been more positives than negatives. So presuming he leaves now, what will his legacy be? A strong club with loads of very decent young players, a quality manager and assistant, good finances and a club with loads of potential to do well again. Yes, he hired our best asset, then sacked him - but he has shown the way forwards and we are still in a good place. Some people have been droning on about how the club is falling apart. Ridiculous. So there has been a turn over in staff - happens in all walks of life in all sorts of businesses. Financially we are still strong, the infrastructure of the club is superb compared to five years ago and we have loads of good players - and we have a stable ownership at the club that repeatedly rides these storms out and keep the progression of the club going in a good direction. Ya da ya da, yes, we've been relegated again - that is not the issue here, the issue is always how we move forwards - not cry about the difficulties - and there we are strong. The club is bigger than Webber, thanks for your work and efforts, not good enough at the highest level, but then it was always going to be difficult with our self-funding policy. So onwards and upwards. Webber going is not a disaster, not a big deal, just a bit if a shame it looks as if he has lost a bit of goodwill. Good luck to him, it's been a roller coaster of a ride for five years....but then that is football and Norwich City. Never a dull moment....wouldn't have it any other way!!

These investment ideas are all very well but if I gave our club 2 of my millions this summer someone else would have to do it next summer then the next summer for a minimum of three years. Just like the parachute payments that some people seem to misunderstand. Funding a new stand would be better because it could provide extra income every season. But that's still only a could with no guarantees.

Yep, they claim a lot of things. Some even repeat them on here...

Except it is not really semantics, is it? A rights issue to fund a loss making enterprise without changing the fundamentals of a business makes no sense at all. You could justify it for building infrastructure e.g. a new City Stand or even a completly new stadium, but for underwriting operational expenditure it is clearly not normal business practice. It is just another attempt to find a magic money tree.

We haven't been in administration. I know that disappoints a few on here (not you Doc) but it hasn't happened. That is something the owners deserve credit for and is one of the real achievements of their tenure. I don't think we'll ever agree about the owners. I see value in people others see value in people's money. I seem to be in the minority on here. It's practically a clash of world views so there's no right or wrong.

True democracy, we would not be distracted by Everest or Angela Rayner's thighs.

He is one of the few players to come out of the season with any credit so it would be a real shame if he moves on. I don't think he will tho. His main consideration may well be the world cup. Not sure what the Dutch coach has said about having to play too flight football. I'd say he needs to be playing regularly and I'm not sure he'd be a number one for any premier league clubs. Don't know about abroad. He's spent the majority of his career here and has an English wife so it may not be what he wants. Plus who would want to stop living in Mulbarton! The danger may be more next summer if we don't go up. He's done ok in the world cup and would be happier to perhaps be a number two at a bigger club and take more money for a few European/cup games and a realistic chance of winning a big trophy.

Assuming he leaves end of this season, despite the really basic premise being the same (i.e relegated from the Prem) - Webber will have left the club in a far better state than McNally did, and has actually left some form of legacy beyond mountains of debt.

I wondered that and have no idea. Especially as Zoe is a trustee!

Jim. Thanks for this and I know you have mentioned this in the past and it was mainly bypassed. Your comments are very worthy and I echo them. It's early in the morning in 🇧🇷 so when I wake up and get a coffee I look forward to joining in. I am pleased to see that PARMA has in his post 📫 asked NUTTY if there was a reason that the CSF was not used as a vehicle for his charity work.

TBF, it’s not an unreasonable assumption on this board 😉

Do you know why Webber did not feel that the CSF was a suitable vehicle for his charity work @nutty nigel?…why did he have to set up his own when such a worthy option was on the table in front of him?… Parma

A truly fan-owned club is likely to be Impracticable in any near- or medium-term future, sadly. For Norwich City I can see a consortium of well-intentioned and reasonably well-off fans adding some money to the club, but this would be nowhere near the level of finance available to our rivals. I am interested in the government’s adoption of a supporter golden-share veto, not least because I may have been the first person to think of the idea, about 13 years ago. Certainly when I proposed it here and on the club’s message-board it was greeted as something no-one had heard of before. This was at a time when supporter-directors were being proposed as the solution to bad ownership, but it seemed to me there was a basic flaw in the notion. Namely that the one supporter-director would simply be outvoted. And later events at Swansea, supposedly controlled by the fans, where the club was sold behind their backs, rather proved the point. From this discussion it seems as if the idea would be for someone or some group to have a decent sized block of shares which would give them veto powers. That is not what I had in mind. My proposal was that a supporter-director would be chosen by an electorate consisting of all employees of the club, all season ticket holders, all share-holders (one vote irrespective of the number of shares held), and all members of bona fide supporter organisations, such as Capital Canaries and overseas fan groups. This S-D would serve for four or five years, and either have the chance to re-elected or for a new person to take over. In fact this plan would fit in with the government’s idea of a shadow board of supporters, because the S-D could act as liaison between the real board and the shadow board by being a member of both. As to powers the government, as I did, envisages a veto over certain heritage issues, such as the sale of the ground etc, but stops short of giving a veto over any sale of the club, which I proposed. I can see the government thought that too revolutionary an idea, but if not a veto the the S-D should at least have the formal power to register their approval or disapproval.

I'll let him know.

Jesus is Sexy Bennett back again? A broken clock is right more often than them 😂

A year in the champ and you can move if we dont go up makes more sense.

Not really. Never said I would be happy with just anyone. I just don’t see what Delia and Michael bring to the table. They certainly cannot back us financially!

TBH, nearly everything he writes is snidey except the historical things. he is always trying to find some way to run the club down, without ever providing evidence for his views. I think that his opposition to the club ownership is personal - possibly political, I don't know - it is certainly long standing.