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So Assadi is either 17, 19 or 20, plays up front or out wide and has scored 1 goal, 3 goals or 4 goals. Gotcha

I naively assumed that the club meant what they said when they decided to move in a different direction and for a while their actions appeared to confirm this e,g. There being no call to sack the manager after the first relegation from the Premier League. The impression i had was that we had moved away from the established idea of sacking managers in the hope of success and were intent on building for a future based on the type of football and style of play that Daniel Farke had instigated. My feelings were that this gave us a unique identity and despite the results being harder to come by in the top league, it was an identity that we would strive to maintain. In the long run and due to financial constraints this might only make us perennial yoyo club but personally speaking that would not be a bad thing. Sadly it seems that somebody in authority wasn't 100% committed to the idea and ditched the project. Now we find ourselves back with every other football club, hoping the next manager might hit the jackpot. Ive been a supporter for seventy years and i have seen good times and bad times but I've only ever seen one dream time. It won't come again.

I agree with you totally, but I suspect that Webber would view this talk of identity as naive nonsense. This modern management class will work for anyone - a university, a bank, a medical organisation, a company that cans baked beans, an evil polluter, or a football club - as long as it gets them up the greasy pole. I personally saw these people in the educational field when I was still working. They have no real care, commitment nor understanding of the specific field they are in because they see them as interchangeable. They believe only in a sort of abstract concept of success, and this usually means success for the individual manager or company, not for the field they are temporarily working in. Webber's comment fairly early in his reign that if fans didn't like it, they could go and support someone else perfectly sums up this lack of understanding of the specific field he was in - the fans are consumers and can move to another brand of shampoo if they aren't happy with the product. It betrayed a shallowness of both thinking and belief. And ultimately, in my opinion, this lack of genuine belief in the identity which he and Farke created is why he failed and we are now back (at least on the pitch) to where we were when he arrived, or possibly in a worse position, struggling to forge an overriding identity or structure to our play and having fewer assets to sell.

Underrated: Kenny McLean. We've seen that he's not quite up to it at Premier League level, but he's very good in the Championship. He gets a lot of unfair criticism, simply because he wasn't never upgraded upon promotion, which is hardly his fault. We missed him greatly when he was injured last season. Overrated: Dimitris Giannoulis. He looked good when he first came, but he was put straight in to a team that had sky-high confidence and little defending to do. But since then, he has shown that he's poor defensively, not that great going forward aside from his pace, and crumbles as soon as he's put under pressure.

Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t related to Placheta.

Don't be salty just because you didn't get to start the thread...

I think this is a reasonable time to wallow in the self-pity of recent failures and perform a gory post-mortem on the cadaver of Farkeball to truly understand how it died so suddenly. I'll always differ in my views from some others who (in my opinion) either place too much emphasis on the single event of selling Buendia or claim that Farke was so bad in the top-flight that sacking him was right at the time. The problem, as I see it, is simply the underlying belief that a) we should automatically be able to compete in the Premier League and, b) the only way to achieve this was through a fundamental change to the process which had given us two Championship titles in two attempts. Ironically enough, I think a more dogmatic adherence to the original plan (with greater continuity of style, recruitment, philosophy etc.) would have been far more successful. Ultimately we can never actually know, but the events as they did unfold represent just about the worst outcome we could have envisaged. So it's probably fair for those of us who vociferously backed Farkeball to roll our eyes a little at the people who wanted him out. But this is also the time to look forwards. Indeed there's little to be gained from focusing on the past other than how it might help inform future decisions. And forwards we must look because the squad now contains none of the goalscorers or creators. The good news is that things can't actually get any worse in the short term. Our form at the end of the season, if continued, would see us relegated to League One so a period of mediocrity would actually represent a significant improvement. And the skill level of the remaining players sets the bar very low for any new signings. Better still is that, with low expectations, any success will come as a great surprise. So now is very much a time for shedding any sense of entitlement and taking each game as it comes. If you boo the team, even when they make mistakes and lose, you're only perpetuating the negative cycle; players aren't going to improve if we put them under pressure. Let's take a bit of time to see where we are when the dust settles. Hopefully we'll get a new sporting director under a proper corporate structure with a decent injection of funds and a more progressive outlook. For the time being we should be getting behind the team and enjoying the roller-coaster that is supporting Norwich City.

If Webber gives the club nine times more attention than CC gives this messageboard, Norwich City would have won the Premier League, Superbowl, and several Oscars by now.

Don’t tell anyone, but Cambridge is actually Stuart Webber, this is what he does with the spare 10%.

Unlike a lot of the recent posters on this thread who seem to have a romantic, do-or-die view of what NCFC should (and possibly did) represent, I’m all for a practical, balanced mix of guile AND skill, youth AND experience. It might not be the quixotic, individual path that we can hold aloft and display as manifesting our zeal to rise above the somewhat grubby world of professional football, but it is a valid compromise to the challenges of living in the real world. I’m more excited about next season based on what we’ve seen happen so far than I was the last. Am I alone in this? (Granted, maybe not a great comparison given who our coach was).

This is really poignant, Ricardo, and highly likely to be correct... although I must say that I hope beyond hope that you live to see yourself proved wrong! 🙂

Thing was, that was what many fans wanted, and we all pay the price for that. Farkeball was great when winning the Champs, lousy when finishing bottom of the EPL. Too many asked "why arn't we [[Insert club of the moment]]'' rather than recognising what we were and what we had. Possibly Webber included. If you spend all of your time moaning about why we cannot become an established EPL club you miss that we had beautiful football, inbetweener football, too good for the Champs, not good enough for the EPL. If Farke goes to Leeds, np from me, I wish hime well. We had our chance.

Indeed. I was appalled at the time and my view hasn't been changed by subsequent events. We didnt just lose our identity, we willfully threw it in the bin. In the final annalysis you get what you deserve.

Think Omo suffered badly from the carnage in front to be honest. Put an experienced head alongside him and he'll be fine. A more organised midfield, and the centre of defence shouldn't be an issue.

It should have been a red flag when Placheta was asked to take a seat at the interview and promptly left the room with it.

John's son. Currently plays for our U16s and the Wales youth teams.

Some fine points on this post. One which I raised early on and which I think Don has brought up again is "what does success look like, and how will we know we've achieved it?" In a business context it's a question I ask every time I start a new project, yet no one at NCFC has ever seemed to ask that question let alone try to answer it, other than with a vague, "Establish the club in the Premier League". So, is that irrespective of playing style, debt, reputation or do we have some guidance as to how we try to achieve that "success"? Does it include a successful Academy? Does it include a "world class" training venue? Does it include a stadium with a capacity for more than 30,000 people? Does it include the women's team in something? What does "establish" mean anyway - 5 years? 10? Do they really mean "compete" rather than "establish" - if so, what does "compete" mean? "Ignore the noise" and other soundbites was never really enough of a philosophy to get us there. Without a CEO leading an aligned Board, with appropriate accountability and responsibilities I just don't see how anything else follows. Despite our recent partial success, we haven't actually achieved that much. Without some kind of measurement we don't even know how much is not much. What is the Board's policy and plan for the next 5, 10 and 20 years? Even without parachute TV money NCFC turns over around £30m a year. It's a decent sized business. I've never known a £30m company not have any kind of plan, yet we don't seem to have one, beyond occasionally winning some games of football. We certainly don't have a clue about what to do when we do win enough games of football to get promoted; and now we also don't seem to know what to do when we don't. I recall Webber being interviewed on the pitch, I think it was after the Blackburn game when we confirmed promotion in 2019. He said it had come earlier than they'd expected and it was surprising to the club and the coaching team what had been achieved that season. I realised then he was out of his depth - no one in an executive position should be surprised by achievement. He should have had all kinds of plans in place already.

Fantastic post @Ricardo, sums up everything I feel and would like to have said about the last few years but I doubt that I could have put it so eloquently.

Wombling Free sorry

This is a perfect summary of what I feel as well.

Here you go @Don J Demorr. The nexus point. ‘Committee’ decisions are notoriously susceptible to one loud voice - or even obsessive adherence to a single mission statement (that could be flawed). Further, deep believers often have a need (or weakness) for Messiahs. Be careful what you wish for, lest you should receive it. A nexus point of messianic belief meets obsessive adherence to a plan that no-one questioned at the key moment? QED everything that @ricardo says. Che peccato. Parma

This Lucas Assadi we've been linked with.... He's a forward and scored one goal in 43 games - will fit in well with our Adam.

It’s been my view for a number of years, certainly post Ed Balls, that the directors, usually non-exec officers (the owners) have had the tendency to put far too much faith in the executive officers, seemingly at the expense of a lack of sufficient accountability. Of course, the executive officers will argue that isn’t the case, but I’m seeing little evidence at the moment to suggest that there’s any substance behind their claims.

Parma, as you know I am big on the issue of management decision making. What I see here as a possibility with NCFC is not that poor decisions are being made but, even worse than that, no decisions are being made at all. Things are happening by default or by ad hoc reaction. Sometimes it almost doesn't matter what decisions you make as long as it is clear to everybody that a decision is made that then guides the actions of others. Stasis is a killer. Momentum matters, even if it is in a suboptimal direction. Regards to all, Don

DCB: perhaps more accurate comparisons are…..Stacey>Byram and Duffy>Hanley (at least until New Year) and at a push Barnes~Pukki (last season’s version at least). Whether Sainz proves> Dowell will hopefully be shown in the near future. look on the bright side for once. It is quite refreshing.

The problem we face wasn’t due to sacking Farke whose time was up despite him being a legend for us. The problem was failing to replace him. We needed a smooth transition to another manager able to keep our identity alive. Instead Webber decided we needed to bin the whole thing and went, in a knee jerk reaction, for dean Smith. This proved a very, very bad decision because our entire ethos, identity and purpose went up in smoke leaving us back where we started when Webber arrived. Factor in total lack of money and we are now signing ageing champs journeymen in the hope of bedding down for a slog in mid table. Make no mistake- so far we see no signs of promotion push. Barnes < Pukki. Stacey < Aarons. Duffy < Big Andy (over next few years)

We will never know if things would have been different, but IMO Farke’s sacking can be traced back to the poor choices of that summer. We didn’t throw the identity away when we sacked Farke, we’d already done it. Farke was, IMO, an inevitable casualty of those choices. To be fair my argument has always been they were choices he went along with and that’s why he ultimately got sacked. I wasn’t desperate to see him gone but I understood why it was going to, and probably needed to, happen. Some very discreet targeted surgery that summer with a continuation of philosophy and I think we would have done better. Would we have stayed up? Probably not, the odds were and always will be stacked against us currently, but I personally believe we’d be in a far better place right now.

Thanks Parma. I guess it's what makes football so great, there's always the expectation of the next game, the next season. We cannot rerun it anymore than we can rerun life. To paraphrase Paul Lambert, "We go again".

It looks lively and an average lower age than was expected. Fair play for turning up mate. You next to Til back row 2nd left?

Hate to be a smart4rse , but other than running in straight lines I couldn’t see any talent at any point . In fact if it wasn’t for line on the grass he would still be running . Hopeless.

Wagner just said something about no-one cheering if you play like ****! lol, gotta love that comment.

Absolutely brilliant! Kudos young man. There's an argument to be made, perhaps, that Webber's greatest achievement wasn't Farke, per se, but was in hiring a manager who would finally instill an identity to the Club that COULD work long-term. Norwich have serious constraints BUT ... pretty possession football + savvy recruiting + player friendly + youth development + spirit is a good combination. In other words ... we should have never ditched the 4-2-3-1 and the desire to build from the back!!

Farke's sacking looks dumber by the week. At the time it felt correct to me, but then I'd also love to go back even all the way to the summer of 2019 and not have this be our damn list of incoming players: Josip Drmić, Aidan Fitzpatrick, Rocky Bushiri, Charlie Gilmour, Sam Byram, Patrick Roberts, Ralf Fährmann, Ibrahim Amadou Abysmal. It's hard not to put that failure together with the summer of 2021 among other dealings and start to wonder if Webber wasn't the main problem instead of Farke. And, yes, the club massively misses the esprit de corps and thus identity of the Farke years even at the expense of PL. I just want to feel good again. Someone make that happen please.

Cambridge was saving that for another new thread so now you have gone and blown it.

Underrated would be Gibbs for me, he has so much potential to go on to be a star for us Overrated has to be Aarons sadly, he’s way past his best for us but people still think he’s the dogs danglies

If we are buying him he soon will be.

I'm quietly confident. Plenty of experience already through the door mixed in with the young south Americans and the Spanish lad could result in a glorious 18/19 flavoured cocktail of football filth. Or we could get relegated.

Any discussion on Farke is not fair unless you separate his Premier League record out by pre project restart, post project restart and then 21/22. Pre Project restart we at times very good particular at Carrow Road we beat Man City, drew with Arsenal etc… The issue was we didn’t invest in the team and we’re light weight for what was required and weren’t helped by a massive injury crisis particularly at centre half. Post Project Restart- Well looking back it was a strange time and I think the club after the defeats to Everton and Southampton kinda of threw in the towel. 21/22 - To be honest I’m totally done with discussing 21/22 imo one of the worst season the club has ever had literally nothing went right on or off the pitch. BK8, covid destroyed pre season, a ridiculous fixture list which again after a ridiculous var called meant to lost to Leicester instead of a much needed point meant the Watford game became a must win and we lost. Little changed covid again reared its head we had lots of injuries meaning we rarely able to pick out best eleven. More VAR against us. A totally car crash the shadow which is still over the club now. Personally if I was Leeds I would bite Farke hand off.

GMF, It looks very much as if you are correct. If indeed you are this leads directly to Parma's "Nexus of weakness" because the wrong people are making the wrong kind of decisions. In yet another analogy, the owner buys the car, the owner decides the destination, then employs a driver to get there. That is the long term view - the vision or mission, if you like. The driver then decides what route to take and how fast to go. These are executive decisions, not strategic ones. The "blame" seems to be with the driver(s). The problem might be that there is no defined destination for the vehicle. Don

Do us all a favour and shut up about your bloody shares. Get a new hobby that doesn't involve counting your money, you might find a little more happiness and satisfaction in your life.

That's the yeast of our worries....

Oh fück off about Billy Gilmour.

It's primarily only you who brings up Gilmour. He was a waste of a signing for us, did nothing. If he does well then great to him. If he doesn't I also don't care.

In former times I used to stagger home with my dad’s copy of the Sunday Times. Now the worthy Parma has written one of his own! (I’m still staggering about but not necessarily for the same reason). It is most flattering (and not to say embarrassing) to be given so many references but amongst them there is the challenge I have quoted here. Firstly, by “our self-awareness” I presume that “our” means the NCFC. In that, I do see a generic weakness which I think needs to be addressed. I don’t see anybody who is going to ensure that this gets done and this is certainly a weakness and the weakness is, I believe, built in, at and around the top. Whoever designed it the present management paradigm is flawed. In reading this please do not think I believe that this is because of any personal inadequacy, particularly that of the owners. In exactly the same circumstances an even older and certainly wiser companion once remarked that most people spend their lives trapped in a cage that they themselves have built. I’m more than sure that Delia and Michael did not foresee their current difficulties when they made their initial investment and now their cage door is troublesome to find. It might turn out that there isn’t one if Michael Attanasio walks away. I have previously written at some length about what I think the management structure should look like, so no more of that. Even with a new structure there would be work to be done. Without doubt all of you want the club to be a success. The question is what will success be like when you get there? One standard criterion is that the club will have a large and faithful cohort of “delighted” customers. This is the root of the problem that is causing and will cause the dilemma for any club management. The customers are the paying supporters of all kinds, and they are clearly delighted by different outcomes. At one extreme are the purists who want to see wonderfully skilful football and at the other those who want the club to win as many points as possible, which is done by cheating. I can no more reconcile these extremes than anybody else and it is not for me to do so anyway. One thing I might do is to try to analyse the question as to whether these extremes do in fact reflect good and bad corporate behaviour. I base the following on personal experience. Patience, per piacere, I’ll get back to NCFC in a minute or two. The Soviet Union disintegrated thirty years ago. Shortly after that I was asked to go out and establish new business ventures in those territories. I spent the next four years living there, in two different countries, with a local office in a third. The few expats who were there at that time lived in in their expat bubble in the grotty ex-Intourist hotels. In each country I chose to live as my newly recruited colleagues lived, in an apartment that they found for me. That decision opened my eyes not only to their society but to a new understanding of the fragility of my own. People wanted to talk - over the dinner table, at work, during invitations to spend time at the University and at State Enterprises. Of the many surprises was (and is) the nature of “corruption”. Corruption in what had been the Soviet Union was not at all a shortfall from exalted standards, it was (and still is) the standard operating procedure without which the society simply could not function. It is endemic. Everybody knows, everybody does it; it is absolutely normal and universally accepted. Fortunately, our business was with western companies so I was not directly affected. The very simplistic corollary is that if you try to run a business using the Western paradigm in those states you will inevitably fail. You have to play the game according to their rules. Which brings me back to the choices facing NCFC. My conjecture (which I have mentioned before) is that the putative game of Association Football has two similar but different paradigms. The first is that there is a game in the unpolluted meaning of the word, in which all contestants agree to follow the official written Rules of the game and the outcome is decided by skill and athleticism in “fair” competition. This game is considered to be pure and attractive. It is played at schoolboy and maybe a bit higher level (plea of ignorance here). The second paradigm is that there is a game called Association Football that is played at the professional level. In this paradigm most(?) of the Rules are the same but some are always ignored by general consensus and are replaced or added to by sketchily enforced unwritten agreement. This is despised as “cheating”. The whole point of the Soviet analogy is that this is not cheating – the participants are playing a different game by a different set of “agreed” rules. It meets all the criteria for a game but that game is not Association Football as we know it, Jim. For NCFC and any other aspirant club, if you bring a naive game plan into a more “sophisticated” contest where your contestant plays by unwritten rules and you don’t, you will lose. Every time. As you do. The club and you supporters have a choice to make. Maybe, my friend Parma, that is a “weakness” that needs to be resolved. Grazie a tutti, Don

I'll be honest it was really weird seeing grown men online, on here and other networks, constantly discussing Todd's hair and attire. Some of you were in your 60s and 70s and the lad was 19 or whatever. Creepy and weird.

You mean he went from the shoes up?

A great deal of sense in that post, and those from Robert and Petriix. Last season was pretty dire, but in some quarters there has been a touch of an over-reactive catastrophism. Yes, there has been a serious rupture in what seemed to be the vision for the club, but that doesn't mean it will be impossible to return to the chosen path. We ended up in mid-table in the Championship, not relegated to League One and/or bankrupt... I would make a couple of supplementary points. Even though Attanasio has not yet taken over (and I do not expect him to for some while yet) he is a director. And if, as some knowledgeable posters believe, as do I, that there has been a serious lack of managerial oversight in the boardroom then I expect his presence will help to put that right. As to Webber leaving, he said at the outset he would recommend his successor, and I have not heard anything to indicate that won't happen. That the job is definitely not going to Adams suggests some outsider approved by Webber (and perhaps also by Wagner) has been or is being lined up. If so then the continuity at the heart of the SD+head coach system might well be kept.

Based on Farke's and Webber's words, otherwise known as the proverbial horses mouth... Yes, still with a pinch of salt. Still better than a conspiracy theory.

Did my first Glasto 20 years ago back in 03. Its definitely different now to what it was back then, more mainstream. Ive enjoyed watching some of the artists on TV this year, kind of feel like as each year goes on, I see fewer acts on the lineup which interest me, which also means, I'm getting old!