yellow hammer

5,850 miles 9,413 kilometres bearing to destination 322 degrees why am I doing this? It must be pre-season.

Good man, Tilly. I''d have sent a car round if you were stuck

ps. John Tilson is looking for a lift down

Twelve hours later and no takers, eh Til?

For me, one of the most exciting parts of looking forward to the new season is wondering just what Lambert will do. Last season he got it absolutely spot on, which just the right tactics to get us out of the Third division with the players available to him. This season, with the new signings, it looks as though we may be playing a different formation. With Lambert''s German coaching and with the success of the German system at the World Cup we could be seeing something very special in the months ahead. Whatever he does, I think he will take a positive approach. Last season we pressed forward on so many occasions where previously we might have defended. Of course we will be up against better defenders but I think Lambert, the next Martin O''Neil, will have the team in shape and fully prepared. An exciting season coming up, I suggest.

Can''t make it, sorry. Starting on a new mistress this weekend.

Gordon Bennett!! Isn''t it obvious??                   Warning: post may contain a slight woosh

[quote user="City penguin"] a few points i would like to make. Roeders loans just about saved us the year before relegation so the board had no option but to back him  in his loans. If they would of opposed him we might of got relegated anyway and you would be on here gushing about how the great saviour Roeder of the season 2 years ago that saved us and wasnt given the chance to do so again.   Delia has been the main owner and provided us with a competitive budget in every championship season we have faced, it is not up to her to oppose managers footballing desicions. Think about it the cook telling the footballing pros how to coach and manage a team. We would be even more of a laughing stock.   Where i do agree is that the operational directors of the previous board namly doncaster was not the right man for his job. And now we do have the right man and are on the up rather than stagnent or downwards. But doncaster did presided over our most successful period in the last 15 years. Our promotion and premiership season. We also bayed for the blood of Nigel Worthington when we were positioned 9th in the championship. That shows that we had expected such high standards from the team and the Club. And how well we we had been doing in recent history under doncaster and delia. Id much rather Delia than ticket tout and arms dealer Marcus Evans. She will always do the best for the club and she genuinly has passion for our club. She is as much a fan as you or I. [/quote]   Ok, my post was a long one but you need to go back and read it more carefully. Firstly you are merely speculating about what may or may not have happened. I would rather argue about what did happen. The board had plenty of options of what to do with Roeder''s disastrous loan policy. They could have continued to have backed him, or more rightly they could have sacked him, which eventually they did. So in the end they did oppose him, whereas you suggest they should not have opposed him. It is not up to Delia to make, modify or oppose footballing decisions, I think the first half of my post was making this very same point. She, and the rest of the board, along with Doncaster were not qualified to do so. And that is why I called way back in 2004 for a director of football whose main  funtion was to bridge the gap between what happened on the field and what decisions were made in the board room. The two cannot exist as two mutually separate entities. I think the evidence suggests that out brief rise and fall over the past fifteen years coincided with the appointment and departure of Nigel Worthington. We did have a period of what today seems like relative succes under Bruce Rioch but which at the time seemed to fall short of expectations, but the club under Delia could not hang onto Rioch, nor could they prevent Worthington from being everybodies favourite scapegoat for our relegation. Remember, Delia and her motely crew were at the helm for all of these fifteen years, and were the immediate managers of our coaches, apponted by them, controlled by them, and eventually sacked by them. So they really do have the responsibility for what happened. I covered that old chesnut about Delia''s passion. It simply is not a get out clause from responsibility. I don''t think she ever made a correct decision that was the result of some carefully thought out plan. The past few years have been more like FC Panic and she got lucky a few times. The danger is that in the excitement of promotion and having the best young manager in the country, we can easily foget where it all went so wrong. I''m reminding you so that it does not happen again. I concede that the lady''s role at the club has changed since McNally''s arrival and she is now doing those things she is good at. It''s clear that if the right people are in the right job then they will be happy and will perform better than if they''re being asked to do something they''re not good at. That''s where we used to be. So I won''t be joining First Wizard''s love in just yet, thank you, because the principals are, if not steering the ship, they are still on the bridge.   ps. I used a bigger font because typing a long thread was a strain on the eyes. Sorry for the offence.  

I first began posting on this site because I felt there was a huge gap in footballing administration experience at the board level that was having a detrimental effect on the playing side. One of my earliest posts called for a Director of Football to be appointed. I didn''t get much support at the time, mainly I believe, because the idea of footballing directors carried an image of either a wanna manager or some old has-been who is in denial than he just can''t cut it any longer. But I felt there was a huge gulf between the board at that time and the playing side. For example. The whole policy on loanees under Roeder was a complete shambles. How did the board come to sanction this policy? Did they fully understand the implications to morale in not having one''s own players. Did they ever ask where this policy had been tried and succeeded in the past?  Did they know even what questions to ask a manager? I suspect that too much was left to the manager''s discretion and not enough footballing desicions have been queried, simply because they did not know what to ask. The appointment of McNally was absolutely on the nail. He is much more than a CEO, he also fufils that role of Director of Football and bridges that gap between coaches/players and the board. He is a translator able to speak both languages. I will give you an example of what I mean. One of the reasons given by McNally for the dismissal of Bryan Gunn was that the manager did not know how to properly prepare the team for a match. Now can you imagine any other board member making a comment like that? Did you ever hear Doncaster say a similar thing during the time of his tenure?  Such a remark would have been laughable coming from Doncaster. In fact I doubt Doncaster ever had any idea how Gunn, or any other manager come to that, would prepare a team before a game. On match days, Doncaster would have been found at the front of the house meeting and greeting and making himself available to the great unwashed. Perhaps you are getting some idea of where I am placing the blame for our demise over the past few years. But while Doncaster wasn''t up to the job  that needed to be done, it wasn''t entirely his fault.His skills were in communications, coming up with the now infamous ''prudence with ambition'' mantra, which if you  take it at face value, has a certain easy-on-the-air charm about it. It''s not until you realise that it was a glib phrase that excused underfunding on the squad as neccessary to pay for the equally infamous ''tangible fixed assets'' that we all love to argue about, then do we really understand the damage done by the office of the CEO.   Doncaster was a good administrator and a good communicator. A lawyer and an MBA graduate makes him perfectly suitable for some plush burocrat''s office at the FA where he can talk the talk. But I suggest those qualities are perfectly unsuitable for the hurly-burly, rough and tunble world of soccer management. Those are the qualities that McNally possesses in spades. Consider the un-Norwich-like way in which we snatched , not just Paul Lambert, but his coaching team as well, from those unfortunate neighnour''s in Colchester. It was a smash and grab raid the like of which Queen Boudica would have been proud. So the question is how did we end up with McNally? Was it brilliant judgement, or was it a case that if you keep going for long enough, eventually you will turn up trumps? I think it was the latter because most of the board appointments, in fact most of their major decisions have fallen woefully short of average. You don''t need me to list the terrible managerial appointments since1996.  Or their lack of ability,as Nutty regularly points out, to hang on to the one single successful manager of our club before the arrival of Paul Lambert. We might add to that the inability to hang on to investors, viz the Turners, the inability to hang on to backroom staff, trainers, kit men and one of the best marketing guys in the business  who was arguably responsible for the runaway success of our season ticket program. Then we have to consider this overwhelming, middle-class obsession with property as an investment. This madness, this English disease, that drives millions into so much debt that they will boast about the size of their mortgage in the same way that a man with gout will boast about the size of his foot - this thinking was allowed to infect the mindfulness of our board, who saw themselves as land speculators rather than football administrators. Yes, I know many will say that ''how were the board to  know that the property bubble was about to burst?'', which misses the point completely. We are a football club and not wanna-be Donald Trumps.  We don''t do speculation unless it''s taking a chance on some18year-old kid from the minor leagues. So all in all, I think we got lucky with McNally. And like some kind of old Testament virtuous circle, McNally begat Lambert, and Lambert begat self-belief, and self-belief begat wins where once we looked at draws or even losses. And points brought the fans onside, and players  wanted to come  to City to play in front of  a full house of passionate fans. The big-bang pointing back to a singularity. We got lucky big time and we''re still riding the wave of success. And when the wind is set fair we often forget the storms that have passed our way. Unfortunately I''m not able to forgive and forget the navigators who steered us into those heavy seas. Yes, I perfectly well understand that our board always had the club''s best interests at heart, they were well-meaning and spent a massive amount of their personal fortune at a time when football''s finances were as out of control as the Greek economy. But the fact is their decision making was simply awful as I have tried to explain above. As an illustration, contrast the situation today with how it was a few years ago. Before, we were run by a couple of well-meaning amateurs and a board who you feel wouldn''t say boo to a goose. We had a series of woeful, inexperienced and, in some cases, arrogant managers who were given a free reign to do pretty much as they wished. We had a silky,smooth CEO, a master of spin, and a squad of overpaid journeymen hacks, who had no idea from one week to the next just who they would be playing alongside. Indeed whether they might be shipped back to parent club.         Today,on the other hand, in Bowkett and McNally we have two gentlemen whom you feel that you wouldn''t want to meet down a dark Norwich alley at night. Our owners are, at last freed up to do what they do best. That is, to champion the name of Norwich City in the corridors of the great and the good. We have a CEO who lets the results on the pitch do the talking, we have a manager the envy of League 1 clubs last season, and whom I am sure will go onto prove himself as a great coach in the Championship and beyond. We have our own squad of players who want to be here,or are otherwise politely shown the door, irrespective of their seniority. Like Arnie, we''re back. The one thing we mustn''t do is repeat the mistakes of the past in the euphoria of our current success. We mustn''t let the feelgood factor cloud our judgements. Our owners need to be led gentlely by the hand away from the tiller of our NCFC ship. There is still a massive role that they can play in our club, as money raisers, as the public image of our club, as roving ambassadors - but not as hands-on managers. Those dark days have to be left well behind us. Yellow Hammer

Six months ago, which is long enough for time to cover the tracks and protect the innocent, I was working on a mobile payments project with Tune Money,a Malaysian company, who''s owner is also involved in motor racing as well as other activities. I dropped the hint several times that a certain English football club would be a good fit with his Group. We discussed it a little bit. The Group owner felt that he was fully stretched building up his motor racing team at this point in time and could not afford much time for football. However, a seed of an idea has been planted and we will have to wait and see whether things develop further. That''s the current status - no more, no less. At this point in time its not worth speculating too much, but keep your eye on the motor racing. If a certain racing team comes on in leaps and bounds, it''s a positive for NCFC and you can start your speculating. If the racing team struggles then that side of the business will require more attention and gets the priority, being a cash hoover.

[quote user="lappinitup"][quote user="yellow hammer"]Any relation to John Tilson?[/quote]You think he should be put on "gardening leave " too, huh? [;)][/quote]   You can imagine it, Tilly sunning himself in his deck chair, Taddy lager in hand, while instructing his other half on how to dig the vegetable patch.  

Any relation to John Tilson?

[quote user="City1st"]"at people not actually seeing what Sky MONEY has actually done for the standards of English football"Yep, about 90% of clubs horrendously in debt. The game in this country virtually at bankruptcy and fans made to dance to the tune of some TV company.Perhaps some see the ''English game'' as a bit more than the top half a dozen clubs in the Premiership. [/quote] Strange, because I can never remember seeing Sky force any football club Chairman or Chief Exec into spending money that the club didn''t have. Oh and you do have a subscription to Sky don''t you? Pot, kettle, black?

[quote user="leedscanary"]I think its fantastic that we have been chosen as the opening fixture of the whole new football season on TV. I see it as a great honour, and a way for us to hit the ground running, with a packed FCR behind the boys - it should be a splendid advertisement for our club to the whole football community (new investors included)[/quote] Agreed 100% It is a great honour. It''s recognition that we are a force in football once more. We are back on the map. See the positive for once.

Can read and write in Thai script, fluent spoken Thai. Fluent French, not bad German. Had three months of Cantonese studies when living in Guanzhou but that really hurt the jaw trying to make sounds that do not exist in the English language. All due to working in these countries. Can slip into a Norfolk dialect when trying to make myself understood to members of the Iceni tribe. That one due to birth.

[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"] Six into five won''t go. [/quote] ''Nine into seven won''t go'' and you would have won it Mr. H.

Insted of saying "a high degree of flexibility", shouldn''t a masseur have a high degree in Flexibility?

I think that this year''s Royal Norfolk Show will much like previous years. Lot''s of bullocks, old goats, sheep baaa!, and rustic gentlemen mardling about their rural spreads.

And what does a tenner buy you these days, hey Tilly?

I went out with a lady for a few years who had an enormous vuvuzela. She said that she might like to donate it to NCFC. Would anyone like to see a vuvuzela at Carrow Road or would it spoil your match day experience?

Tilly wrote: "Captain Holt stated that Gunn and Green were two of the best players in the Club''s history. I suggested RECENT history was more appropriate. I also feel that if Green and Gunn played in goal together for the same team in the same game Kevin Keelan would still show them what goalkeeping is all about. Simples." Erm, Green and Gunn playing in goal at the same time for the same team?? Notwithstanding the rules of football, in which position do you have Kevin Keelan playing? And don''t say goal keeper, old chum, because you''ve got two there already.... apparently...I think one of us is having a senior moment... could be me... can any one help explain what JT is on about??

Tilly, have you been drinking? I can''t understand a word of your post!!

Heskey comes from a deep position to put England one up.

I think she alluded to some mental health issues recently. Probably better if everyone got off her back and give a bit of space for a while.

Gee Mello, I''ve been outed at last....