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aBee

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aBee last won the day on April 18 2023

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  1. To be fair we’d turned a profit in Y1&2 not far short of what we bid for Johnson. A shame Cooper threatened to walk when their board accepted a bid of less than half that in their promotion season! I’m sure those of us who’ve had a go at competing without breaching FFP will applaud the stand Forest say they’ve taken to look out for the little guys if they appeal their deduction down at our expense!
  2. I think you’re right that just to stand still you’ve got to improve. But that isn’t just about money (plenty have spent a huge amount to little avail). It’s underappreciated how big a part is played by management/training/tactics. The old school rigid managers are gone and even City has had to make major style adjustments despite having all the money. In fact their two biggest buys in phillips and Grealish have played little part in that. I wonder whether you might not do better after being promoted with a highly pragmatic manager making do with what he has in the context of the requirements of the league than trying to play in a style which can only be implemented against opponents whose underlying quality is much weaker.
  3. What a weird idea. You make it sound like Brentford’s been in the PL forever just pocketing the cash and twirling its evil moustache as plucky EFL clubs come up potless. We both went up together and you had parachute payments that season! It’s tough this season but I think most outside our respective fanbases would probably consider in our last two seasons each in the PL we added a bit more than you guys did. Getting into the top 6 is very tough but not impossible for “the other 14”. Two clubs managed it last season (and another 2 got Europa League places) and while Chelsea remain bad at least one will again. Why would you want to make that near impossible for a club of Norwich’s stature? Does having been down a couple of seasons mean all you want is to bring down a few smaller clubs who’ve managed to make a better fist of going up and chuck a bit more at Championship clubs who despite being bigger can’t scratch the play offs?
  4. We have missed through injury for much of the season our first choice LB and RB, two of our 3 first choice CBs, Mbeumo and Schade and of course Toney through his ban. We also lost three regular starters to Afcon/Asia Cup (2 getting to SF one to Final so away for all January and half of Feb). We’re second only to Newcastle for missing players and despite them having Saudi billions behind them they’re also like us 6 places lower in the table than they finished last season. It’s hard to evolve when you’ve suffered a mass extinction!!!
  5. Ampadu seems to think he plays for Leeds Rhinos
  6. Possibly, but the point I was trying to make was that the investment was to move us from only being sustainable as a lower L1/L2 club (which the supporters trust had got us to when rescuing the club from the big debts run up by Ron Noades whose plan had been to build houses on the ground and move us to groundsharing with non-league Woking- imagine if someone proposed moving you to share with Diss!) to becoming sustainable in the way Norwich is now. Or rather, at a lower level of revenue as the Gtech has a capacity about 10k smaller than Carrow Road and a lot more local competition for commercial uses. I’m not so sure if Leicester, Leeds and Southampton come back up they’ll all comfortably avoid relegation. Leicester are most likely to but Leeds are severely lacking in defence and still quite reliant on Bamford as their senior striker. Southampton’s young buys that took them down might have matured enough to make a better fist of things now but like Leeds I think they’ll need a style change to be pragmatic enough. Burnley have demonstrated how hard carrying Championship dominance through is. Benjamin Bloom has done some interesting videos on second season syndrome and concluded, having looked at the data over the seasons since the PL went to 20 teams the probabilities of relegation fall substantially in 2nd and 3rd seasons up and after that are identical to the probabilities for clubs who’ve been up for longer than 4 seasons. You’re right though that the challenge becomes replacing and upgrading the core promotion squad. That was what Leeds tried to do and failed at. I don’t know whether we’ll be as good at buying £30-40m players as we were at buying £5m ones.
  7. While it’s true Benham has put a fair bit in that needs to be seen in the context of being done over 15 years and including building a whole new ground (iirc about half the amount). The rest largely supported an operating loss in L1/Championship of c£8-10m a year, which is relatively modest. On the other side of the equation is net profit on transfers of about £140m between 2014 and 2019. He’s not put anything in since 2018-19 and the club ran at a profit the first two PL seasons. The amount Norwich paid Pukki when he joined (who Frank knew and managed at Brondby) was (from the thread on here about whether he should be offered a new contract) towards the top end of what we pay players now. Apart from the early spending to compensate for having a rickety ground to bring us nearer to the advantages of bigger clubs with the revenue of larger grounds and commercial facilities over the period we’ve been self-sustaining. But the point made further upthread is good- while lots recruit with data etc it is not as simple as that and Brentford have done more and differently, mainly from the people and culture side so as to use that data well. It takes time to embed (eg Warburton left in 14-15 despite having taken is to our highest position since WW2 because he simply did not buy into it, we had a rough 15-16 because we tried to do too many things at once and integrate too many new players from abroad too quickly). Now we’re in the new situation of seeing whether the recruitment strategy to turn £1-5m players into £30m sales and/or competitive PL performers can scale up to buying at £15-40m, having the next move be for players to go for £60-100m and the team to establish in at least upper midtable. Jury’s out on that. Luton might not quite make it but what they’ve done and we did is to focus on what is needed as style and strategy to make the best of their chances with what they have and can afford. So it’s just not realistic regardless of how well you can look like Man City in the Championship to try it as a promoted club. Which I think is where you really fell down in 21-22, Burnley are doing now and I’d predict Leeds may do next season (look at who they have in defence and tell me there’s the basis for survival). At least with Wagner you have a manager who knows how to grind into and survive the PL even if it isn’t that pretty at times.
  8. Got to do it consistently over a season though. Adam Armstrong went for £15m after 19 and 28 goals and his PL record suggests that wasn’t great value.
  9. Have to say I’m looking forward to visiting the Emirates on Saturday less and less as this game goes on. Particularly having somehow contrived to lose at Bramall Lane and missing our entire back 4.
  10. Well if he’s looking for a big payday Brentford is probably not the club for him! Our wage bill even now is lower than yours was when we went up together 3 years ago and our highest paid players are well short of the average PL wage of c£85k a week. I’d imagine Sargent as a player who you bought in the PL may have had a wage cut on relegation but we probably wouldn’t be offering a huge uplift on his PL wage at Norwich. I’ve been a bit surprised at how few clubs get sucked into relegation musical chairs. Apart from the promoted clubs the others tend to be bottom 6 regulars unless they make big errors like last season. We’ve really only been dragged into it by having an injury list second only to Newcastle’s and they’ve both dropped a lot from last season’s levels and had a much greater set of starting resources. Palace are perennially mediocre and missing their only two really good players but are likely to survive comfortably.
  11. I think it goes to both of these problems. I know a bit about the Brentford scheme as a ST (who travels a 400 mile round trip for home games) and one of the fan representatives on the Fan Advisory Board. The problem we had the last two seasons was that we had 18000 members, 11000 STs and about 3000 tickets available to members which sold out for pretty much every game but also on average about 1000 unused ST seats. That made long term fans without STs annoyed when they couldn’t get tickets. It also was a financial problem for the club because they were losing out on about an average of £15 extra they could make for each unused ticket. Now while £285k over a season is still peanuts compared to TV money, for a small and tightly run club it’s not nothing. While the appeal of a midweek against Rotherham may be marginally lower than one against Wolves (the most recent home game I passed up) there are I’m sure still local folks who’d buy those tickets if reasonably priced and reliably available. A couple of hundred thousand a season pays for another promising youngster. Our scheme involves issuing “Yellow Cards” if STs are unused and not put on the exchange with the right to renew suspended pending appeal or exceptional circumstances for 4+ before the start of renewals at the end of March (about 2/3 rather than Leeds’ 80%). Under 50 people have accrued 4+ Yellow Cards and there are no more home games before the cut off. The level of unused seats has dropped by over half on average. It has still rather annoyed some fans who’ve taken the view “I paid my money, what’s it to anyone if I choose not to go” but they have in fact gone or passed tickets on to friends even if they haven’t used the club to resell. Next season the club is guaranteeing a pro rata refund even if the ticket isn’t bought as long as it was listed over 7 days jn advance (about 35% of listed tickets are put on in the 24 hours before kick off so are harder to sell to those who can’t change plans at short notice). It broadly works well.
  12. Thanks- I’ve been occasionally lurking but with us being rather closer to the bottom three than I’d like have deliberately not got too involved in the Championship, particularly as there’s not even the fun of seeing Leeds fall flat. Having bought Thiago who seems to have a very Toney skill set it’d be quite bold if we bought another central striker. That said, as a young player with no English experience, maybe having more options and competition up front would be a thing the club wants, particularly after this season’s experience of a lack of squad depth. Having made profits in our first two seasons up and probably a sub £10m loss this season if we stay up I think there would be budget within FFP for a major squad refresh and upgrade, particularly if Arsenal keep Raya and someone pays £50m+ for Toney. So I’m not ruling it out. Well i’m only a fan so admit to having limited time to watch you! But our scouting operation will have done a lot more if interested and typically will have looked and made quiet contact very early (we didn’t get him in the end but approached Forest for Brennan Johnson when he was still on loan at Lincoln). That early interest and follow up has helped to establish us with players and good agents and clubs as offering good pathways. The club rather liked a few of Leeds’ young US players even after they were panned last season so can see beyond surface stuff. And we got Toney when others wanted to wait and see if he could cut it at Championship level. Also, having mentioned him before, if we don’t exercise the option on Maupay and you stay down, he’d probably be offloaded by Everton cheaply and would easily score heavily in the Championship for you for a lot less than you might sell Sargent.
  13. I suspect the rumour may be agent talk more than anything else. Quite a few agents have realised whispering out loud about interest from Brentford or Brighton can fish out interest in players from richer clubs on the basis of both having a good record of buying young and undervalued players. With the caveat that I haven’t seen Sargent playing this season, I’m not sure from what I remember previously he fits the pace and power model we’ve said we want in the PL. His recent scoring form is v good but only over a third of a season. If he finishes on 25 for the season he’ll certainly have shown potential to step back up as still young (he’d then have about the same 2 Championship season tally as Maupay at a similar age going to Brighton or Gyokeres) but extrapolating his current form over the rest of the season is somewhat blunt as an analysis. £30m would sound a lot, particularly if it meant we didn’t exercise our option to buy Maupay for £8m as he’ll probably end up with about 10 goals this season (similar level to Pukki in the PL even if Dyche has described him as absolute rubbish!). But if he is on the radar I think it’d probably be more for a wide forward role when Mbeumo is sold than as a Toney replacement as that seems already to have been secured in buying Thiago from Club Brugge. It’s not been the best season so far but still OK after having had so many players out for so much of the season. If we manage to eke out another 3 wins I think we’ll be safe and do much better next season. It ought not to be too disappointing a move even if you get promoted.
  14. £300m promotion prize money across the three who go up plus zero future parachute payments, and prize money reduced by any parachute payments received since last promoted might make some sense in giving clubs the money to compete rather than money to cushion failure. Or the accelerated receipt might make more overextend to gamble on promotion. Distributing more evenly down the divisions would just grow the gap between the big 6 and everyone else.
  15. Your 21-22 wage bill was higher than Brentford’s 23-24 one!!!
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