Parma Ham's gone mouldy

When I saw the thread title I immediately thought of that game too. They were awesome 🙌 An absolute lesson. Parma

Tombola. Parma

If you’d asked the same question of the same people after a game where we lose 0-1 and Forson does not score 2 in injury time, you would have got different answers. Parma

Goodness me! The eighth wonder of the universe revealed!!…🫶🏼🫶🏼✨✨✨…the answer to the hitherto mythical* question: ’wass they doin up thar a’ Colney?????’ Who knew…..???….. Parma

@nutty nigel sagely asked at the outset : ’Why does a Baseball fan from Mikwaukee buy a football club in Norwich?’ Everything else is window dressing, distraction and mis-direction. The £43m may indeed be challenged, though it was recorded at the AGM deliberately. It isn’t nothing and it’s probably quite a lot of something. Yet it all came so cheaply. With £6m a year net-net-net interest as a sweetener, plus ownership of the capital asset ‘equity gain’ for so little. Most of the liquid ‘investment’ went on players. They are assets too don’t forget. Super active Trading is really the essence of the business now. In fact it’s where the future side hustle is! Access to the big game is-was priceless. Who knew?! Parma

https://theconversation.com/why-america-is-buying-up-english-football-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-soccer-240695 Parma

Indeed @BigFish, we are talking about limited supply assets here. Delia and Michael majority owned such an asset. There are 92 clubs in the league and I believe around 40 of them are now owned or have significant American ownership. Why would that be? Altruism? Or a different game being played out over the pond as I have long indicated? In that context a ‘weak P&L’ (monthly losses-profits on trading) is not critical as it would be for a ‘normal’ business. Norwich City’s ‘Balance Sheet’ was very strong in any case: owned their own stadium, owned their own training ground, owned additional development land, a full squad of playing assets worth many tens of millions just for basic, tangible starters. Like it or not, Delia and Michael - until recently - owned a majority of all those assets. They could do what they wanted with them. Sell them, leverage them, manipulate them. Yes I know, they wouldn’t. Fans, continuity, legacy, connection…..indeed. But it is ‘just’ an asset. Lenders can lend without collateral - lending on belief- or the more classical ABL (Asset Based Lending). Despite what some on here think, football clubs are almost gold-plated assets. They incredibly rarely go bust. They often get preferential treatment, sweetheart deals, time to pay, soft bail outs, other white knights appear - as Delia did - when the ‘**** hits the fan’. Norwich were an exceptional purchase due to our exceptional recent corporate history. Again, like it or not, what Delia and Michael did was extraordinary. They could afford to buy the asset, but could never really afford to run it. They put all they could into owning it, and they tried to operate it without much free cash, investment or liquidity. Frankly that they managed like this for 25 odd years is quite incredible. Self-sustainability was so anathema to the football zeitgeist and reality of global interest and investment into sporting assets (the game goes far beyond ‘soccer’) that it was great skill or luck that it lasted as long as it did. It was perhaps fortunate timing of premier ascents as big money rolled in, or great soft skills in attracting the right people and creating great loyalty via their decency. Choose your interpretation. Nevertheless we are talking about a scarce business asset. One with a strong list of assets of its own. No borrowings (until recently note!) and a record of being not far away from the top level. To assume that such an asset has no value because it loses money pcm lacks a wider global perspective. The only ‘risk’ that really matters to fans is a drop in sporting performance. I have long feared that self-sustainability would lead to a form of modern-day Crewe Alexandra-style feeder-club-for-Manchester City due to serious sporting decline. Though of course our ‘asset’ filled the rafters even in the third tier. Thus - under self-sustainability - there is no need to ever sell, you just have to accept sporting decline (or the elevated risk of it versus your peers). As for the recent debt, a few questions: 1. Who benefited? 2. Who encouraged? 3. Who acted in character and who acted out of character? We have been part of a little soap opera here. Though only one side really knew the script. I have seen this play before: Parma

‘That’s an 85% stake for £21.359m for a total of 2,792,874 shares. That’s an average of £7.64 a share. Anyone still want to question whether it was a good deal?’ Indeed @GMF Now go back to the start. What happened did indeed make it all a fait accompli. Though imagine if this deal had been offered at the start? And with the £6m per annum of interest payments? And re-financing? And full ownership? At £7.64 a share??? We are where we are because one side knew where they were going and the other side ‘believed’. The rest is corporate engineering. I know because I do it. I take @dylanisabaddog and @TIL 1010’s observations too. Parma

The reason that both Burnley and Sheff Utd want him is that he is a structural weapon. What he does must be adjusted for by the opposition. He is unusual and awkward. He also does the same things week after week and causes the same issues for the opposition repeatedly. They must adjust. You cannot leave him alone. This is useful at certain times and in certain scenarios. If you look at the squads of better teams, they have more ‘scenario planning’ options in the event of particular situations. You don’t need someone to do everything, just be a piece of the puzzle you can clearly define and rely on. I too never especially felt he was a Norwich player, though as @TIL 1010 points out, Webber went all-in for his mate and tried - expensively and incorrectly again - to polish his own CV buttons (and this time he actually did leave the building as planned). Bit selfish that. Parma

Instead they allowed for a ‘free’ transition - without taking a penny as they had promised @essex canary - and sat back as Attanasio took debt on ‘for the club’ (and onto the club) which only he could then realistically convert or refinance (more accurately). Some of this debt has been ‘sold’ to the club and generates £6m interest per year and counting for Attanasio related companies. Attansio now owns the lot and the reported-estimated £43m equity has slipped quietly into his future pension fund. Delia will get a plaque, though his risk is super low and his input elegantly offset by his gain and ownership of the whole capital asset. Attanasio is liquid and Delia and Michael never were. He might do ok, he might sell all or some. My guess is that he’ll sell off chunks at increasing prices over time, retaining overall asset control in the group. In effect selling off say 40% whilst the 60% remains worth significantly more than he will actually ever put in. All whilst having a bit of sport and - crucially - having achieved buy in to the wider SSG game. This is his real driver. This - he - is never what Delia intended, but the music had stopped. Cash-only self-sustainability - based on a restrictive proforma-style only-what-cash-we’ve generated already - was putting us too far behind the curve of even our current peers. Capital projects drifted into ‘always tomorrow’ territory. I was delighted that Delia and Michael’s extraordinary generosity was formally recognised and numerated at £43m. I suspect others were too. It was manoeuvred into the only show in town. There was significant ‘mission creep’ from the early flirting introductions. The red in tooth and claw American capitalists barely had to show their teeth at any point. Let’s be clear though. Given what they wanted and why they did it, the buy in was so, so low and on such soft, soft terms. They did their homework all right. ‘I looked at clubs for 10 years’ he said. Oh yes. And chose carefully. Parma

Well, was it? Parma

I think the Crnac purchase is so interesting. It is such an expensive data-led gamble, so unusual, so out of Norwich character, so odd for a Championship side, such a lot of money that is pretty distant from the here-and-now that it could imply that Sporting considerations are not as central as financial ones. Selling equity chunks of a cheaply-obtained asset in the second tier could be made more attractive by isolating playing assets and using them to share out returns made. A sort of internal player stock market. If the overall Team benefits great, though by definition it isn’t the main economic or strategic driver is it? Parma

Noted @Petriix though we were expensively ‘wide and low’ as a squad, not ‘narrow and high’ as per Brentford. They kept Toney and bought Eriksen. We sold Buendia and negated Pukki. Football suicide. We also had too many players on the books. Something Webber attributed to ‘Covid’ (injuries, more players likely to be missing). Ludicrously expensive and flawed strategy Further Blowing the budget on Tzolis, Rashica and Sargent was Webber polishing his own buttons for a tomorrow job. Utterly disastrous for Norwich. Taking a selfish machete to already low odds. Parma

Broadly answering points or inferences from @hogesar @PurpleCanary and @Monty13 - and very much at the risk of swimming massively against the tide - I am not at all sure that transition and smooth ISO:9001 progression into the top tier ‘reasonably safe’ zone is anything more than a wishful mirage. Like Purple I think Farke’s reign was our style apotheosises. However I don’t think any style bridges the massive financial, operational and playing staff gap from Upper Championship to ‘safe Premier’. What is evident is that the ‘shock change’ (note not at all ‘transition’) - from dominant championship side to inferior, mostly defending, up against better overall players in nearly all positions - is simply too much for teams to bridge. To clumsily and simplistically attribute this vast gap to ‘style’ is horribly flawed in my view. To repeat: ‘when you are better lots of styles work, when you are inferior not many do’. Fine. So what does work? (Or perhaps better ‘what can?’) Let’s keep it simple and make a list: 1. Weapons 2. Low blocks 3. Fast counters 4. Goalscorers (limited poachers fully embraced here) 5. Lots and lots of running 6. A well coordinated press (containing min 5 players working selflessly and in unison) 7. Set pieces for (inc a good free kick taker, inc reliable penalty taker, inc centre back who can get on the end of one or two) 8. Set pieces against (inc solid, even boring, Goalkeeper, see centre back above) 9. No obvious weaknesses (this one is so, so important. And so, so hard to achieve from 2nd to top tier ascension). It goes without saying that if upon ascension to top level you sell any of the above - particularly if you don’t have many of them - then you can kiss goodbye to any meaningful odds of survival, which were slim anyway. If it should include a weapon or goal scorer then it is an act of unspeakable and unforgivable self-harm. One that will reverberate around the changing room and seep into the perceived ambition and (negative) culture and image of the club. Oh Webber. You knew the mechanics of football so well and the minds of footballers so little….you forgot* that they are the talent (‘*didn’t want to accept’ is better). Even baseball-loving American financiers know that. You will all note that I haven’t mentioned style. I think that’s largely a red herring. Farke didn’t fail. Our style didn’t fail. Our finances failed. The club couldn’t bridge the huge operational gap that has opened up between mid-lower Premier and the rest. They have no weaknesses. They have reserves who are good enough not be targeted as a weakness. ‘Fans just want winning football’ . Even Manchester United are learning that this isn’t possible. Strategists and tacticians far cleverer than me know that attacking means coming out of shape, coming out of shape means opening weaknesses, weaknesses are tactical vulnerabilities, even lower level Premier sides are super well drilled at waiting for these moments and forensically leveraging them: It is not possession football versus lower rent, lower risk football per se. Possession football is also defensive football as Guardiola has long taught us: The only question - really the only point - is to maximise the odds available to you. They will mostly be against you whatever you do at the top level. So you just work night and day to make them a little less bad. And this may well still not be enough: Start with all of my 9 points above. All of them. And if it doesn’t work it still isn’t Farke’s fault. Or his style of football. Parma

Hmm. Keeping it broad and as we approach January, there are questions that we might be asking: 1. Inconsistency - For a cool, composed Dane who never talks about referees we are talking about lot about referees. This creates short term internal ‘them and us’ gain, though teeters dangerously close to the slippery slope of excuse making (Regardless of course of whether we are right to be aggrieved or not). 2. Weapons - These are the times that weapons show their value. Lucky goals, goals out of nothing, holding opposition back from their absolute preferred approach as they do - or even just could - get up a head of steam. 3. Sainz cannot - and has not - put them in the top corner every week. That is no slight on him. It was amazing he did it as often as he did. The margins are so, so fine. I’m not saying this is true, though it is fractions between hero and pissing* off your teammates shooting from low rent angles. For clarity, ‘fine margin maybes’ are the antithesis of a repeating tactical weapon. 4. Opposition changes: The structural defensive flaw - and subsequent tactical adjustment- that Middlesborough saw and acted on down our left side has caused us to change (correctly), though has - of course! - weakened our own attacking key outlet. This is your tactical plusvalenza writ large. 5. Club strategy - Young and appreciating assets are a dream plan on spreadsheets. And on grass in the here and now? What one often sees when things go strategically awry, is a an over-lurch in the opposition direction. We are indeed not gnarly old pros grinding it out. Oh no. 6. Injuries - yes, lose the wrong players and it hurts you. The injured all do become twice as good as they really are when results aren’t great mind. 7. Investment - Norwich spending £8.5m on a player like Crnac (not quite ready for the here-and-now, a ‘one day’ player, fabulous data attributes not yet truly seen on grass) is super-interesting, though unheard of for us and at our level. To appreciate notably - which has to be the intention all day long - he must be, or must one day be, a striker. That is the only place where the maths make sense. 8. Transition - does of course explain much of the above. Lovely idea at the start of a season…ooh new! …how does it feel on a wet Tuesday in lower mid-table? Parma