Mr.Carrow
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Posts posted by Mr.Carrow
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[quote user="mystic megson"]Am I missing something? I thought the parachute money was in effect a bonus on top of our normal income, and that for the past two seasons we''ve had money that most other clubs in this division haven''t. The club has misused it appallingly, but we should not be in a worse position than 17 other Championship clubs next season (assuming we stay in this division of course), and probably better off than many. If we run into major money problems it is purely down to incompetent financial management.
In other words, Neil & Co, it''s your fault. Stop bleating and SORT IT OUT!
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Im glad you made this point mystic as im getting tired of stating the bleeding obvious....The team has been allowed to drift backwards over a spell when the club has been recieving huge extra income ON TOP OF normal income. Parachute payments,land deal money,hotel money,G.Watlings 1.5m loan written off, share offer money and just as icing on the cake, a massive profit on transfers. No doubt someone will bring up the wage bill for the last financial year however,if you include the 6m profit made on transfers (treated as "exceptional" in the accounts) the player wage bill is less than one third of overall income-most clubs run at over 50% of income on player wages. Dont forget many of the higher earners have now left.
So here we have a club which has been raking in the cash, with a paper thin first team squad devoid of investment and struggling near the foot of the table and a chairman who admits the club is "obsessed" with off-pitch issues. I think im starting to see a picture emerging here, can anyone else see it??
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[quote user="ricardo"][quote user="Smudger"][Exactly my point MR CARROW...
We have a far bigger pool of potential supporters to draw upon than the likes of Sheffield Wednesday...
Do some people think that if Sheff Weds were successful then all the people who currently follow Sheff Utd, Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster, Chesterfield and Leeds who live in the area are suddenly going to turn their allegiances?
As you rightly point out I haven''t even taken in to account the large numbers of football fans in Yorkshire who support clubs over the border in Lancashire.[/quote]
If that is the case one wonders why Sheff Wed, a team that have done nothing of note for a good few years now, have so far this season had 5 gates that exceed Norwich Citys maximum.
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Perhaps because Sheff.Wed are currently resurgent after years in the doldrums,playing good football and can occasionally two thirds fill a large stadium (which has very rarely been full to capacity in the last 20 years)-largely thanks to being able to give 5,500 tickets to away supporters which are sold out when Leeds and Barnsley come to town and are not far off when its Wolves,WBA,Sunderland etc. In contrast City`s stadium is almost sold out with season ticket holders,can only accomodate less than half the numbers of away fans and still easily sells out the bigger games despite the awful fare on the pitch. If we can sell out a game against Leeds 2 weeks in advance have you ever considered what sort of demand there would be for say, a local derby if we were challenging for a play-off place? The last time City played Chelsea in the cup at Carrow Rd, Doncaster stated afterwards that there had been 70,000 enquiries for tickets. Even allowing for the probability of multiple enquiries/Chelsea fans trying it on etc. this is the reality of the demand we are looking at for big games.
It is interesting that in your next post you twice mention the "percieved" size of the club. This goes to the heart of the point i am trying to make. Of course alot of the clubs you mention are percieved to be bigger than NCFC, often simply because of a history which counts for little more than bragging rights of certain clubs who still think they are major players in the footballing world but are very obviously not.
Norwich and Norfolk have changed dramatically in the last 10 years with one of the fastest growing populations, improved transport links and a booming retail centre which rates amongst the biggest Cities in the country by whichever figures you care to use. The football club is reaping the benefits of this development and growth and therefore peoples perception of the club needs to be updated. Unfortunately however, if a potential top 10 club is run more like a Crewe or Southend then the benefits will prove shortlived.
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To the web team: I wrote 2 responses to posts on this thread last night-1 in response to Ricardo and 1 in response to Branston Pickle. I have received 2 email confirmations that the posts have been cleared and added to the thread but only 1 is there (in response to Branston Pickle). Is there a problem? Many thanks Mr.Carrow. -
[quote user="Branston Pickle"][quote user="ricardo"]I am sorry Mr. Carrow but your plea for seniority over the likes of Leeds, Wolves, W.B.A. etc just does not hold water historically. You are talking about clubs with League championships and F.A. Cup wins to their credit. Something Norwich City unfortunately have never achieved. In the light of that, Norwich Citys ability to play to near full houses appears more of a triumph of hope over reality.
We may not like it and we may think we deserve better but the plain fact remains (and history has proved) that we are in a pack of a dozen or so clubs that can only achieve top flight status on a temporary basis. I had hoped that our good run in the eighties and early nineties might change this but as with the likes of Ipswich, we were unable to sustain it.
I am sure you don''t need me to remind you that Ipswich HAVE won a championship an F.A. Cup and a European Trophy and historically their gates have been similar to ours. Every claim you make regarding population and area can be equally applied to them. You could even make the same claim for Plymouth Argyle a city with twice the population of Norwich and a similar rural hinterland.
If it were just a case of mindset we could will it to be different but unfortunately the cold reality is we are a second flight club with top flight pretensions. It is nothing to be ashamed of and I look forward with pleasure to our next promotion to the big league, as do the supporters of Ipswich, Wolves, Derby and all those other clubs on a similar level to us.
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I have to agree with this - there are relatively few sides whose supporters don''t think their side is ''big'', either within their division or in terms of football in general, and they all have plenty of back up available to ''prove'' it; it is part of being a supporter that you expect better than you are getting from your side if they aren''t winning/in the top flight - if you didn''t want that you''d be mad.
Re: Wednesday, they are my second side as my Mrs is from up there. The simple fact about population is that Sheffield is the 6th biggest city in the country with a population of c600k, the entire county of Norfolk''s is 800k. If you want a ''sleeping giant'' you really could look no further, and they are ripe for investment. That''s not to say we aren''t - but we are a different proposition in many ways. As for the ground, it is one of my favourites, rather than being run down - it is amazing how people''s opinions differ!! - It has plenty of character and a huge kop end, though I guess the away end is a bit pants.
Just something to consider, though - one of my best mates is a Brighton fan, and if you are looking for a side similar to us they are quite a good one in many ways, they have a strong history in Div 3 South and then alternating between Divs 2 and 1, maybe not with our ''pedigree'' but not far off in terms of recent playing ability - but that is my point: they are a prime indication of how things can go tits up if you get the wrong guy in...I can''t be bothered to go into the details but basically they got someone in who ended up only being interested in selling their ground, which really left them shafted and they had to share with Gillingham for several seasons, and are only just recovering. It can easily work both ways.
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Sheffield is a fairly large city which is shared by TWO very well supported clubs with competion nearby from Barnsley,Doncaster,Rotherham,Chesterfield and Leeds and Manchester not too far away. Norfolk has a population of 840,000 with ONE established club and minor competition from a struggling club 45 miles away.
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[quote user="ricardo"]Agreed that it was a long time ago Smudge, but thats what the word Historically means. The honours they have won are just as relevant as those won by Norwich City in the same period of time.
I have never said that Norwich can not be a top flight team. My analysis is that we are the equal of a lot of teams with top flight ambition Derby, Ipswich, Sunderland, W.B.A. Coventry, Notts Forest, Southampton etc.
We have no more God given right to be in the top league than they have and no better backing in terms of crowd potential. I would also imagine that their supporters also think that they deserve to be top flight. Unfortunately there are only eighteen teams in the top league and Norwich, along with all those I have mentioned will only achieve that in their best years.
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Hmmm, none of the clubs you list can sell out their grounds,and probably wont until promotion is virtually guaranteed-just look at Sheff.Utd and Reading last season. We,on the other hand, still have more season ticket holders than any of those clubs and can sell out a game 2 weeks in advance (Leeds) despite the team being asset-stripped and performing dreadfully since we were relegated. Ever considered what the demand would be if we were actually any good? Even our board have stated that demand was there for regular 35,000 crowds over the last few years.
The Birmingham clubs are a good example of why this argument of "its a bigger city,so it must be a bigger club" is totally flawed. Wolves,Birmingham and West Brom all struggle to sell 20,000 seats per game yet they are all regarded as much bigger clubs than Norwich because they are in Englands second City. The fact is is that they are all competing-along with Villa and to a lesser extent Coventry and Walsall-for a small slice of a big pie. City,on the other hand, draw support from an area with a population of over 1 million (Norfolk+Waveney area of Suffolk) with very little in the way of competition. I think it is pretty obvious which is the best position to be in.
As Smudger has said the smallest thing about NCFC is the mindset of alot of its supporters-and unfortunately the people currently running the club.
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[quote user="Canary02"][quote user="Brian Burrell"]What is the single biggest mistake this board has made?In my opinion budgeting for relegation when we got to the prem, this was shown so clearly by not replacing Iwan until the January when Ashton arrived. That one single act cost our place in top flight football and the millions that went with it.FOOTBALL must come first at Carrow Rd.[/quote]
Although I agree that this cost us, how do you arrive at the conclusion that this was the boards fault? The cash was there for transfers but Worthington was the one who spent all summer chasing Gareth Taylor (again) and Linvoy Primus to no effect and who ended up with Simon Charlton, Darren Ward, David Bentley, Thomas Helveg, Matthias Jonson and Youssef Safri instead. It''s not the boards fault that he targetted a rubbish old target man that didn''t want to move to Norwich anyway and had no Plan B when he turned us down.
I think the biggest mistake the board made was in not removing Worthington with a few games of last season to go. Any earlier and they could be accused of not allowing his January decisions time to bear fruit, but by early March we all knew he was a dead man walking and he should have gone then. However, I''d rather have a loyal board than one who chops and changes managers every five minutes.
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Ummm, i think you`ll find that Crouch was available in the first few weeks of the Prem season for about £2million (Taylor was the previous season). He`d stated that he`d wanted to move to Norwich and Worthington had stated that he wanted him. The board would not pay out for him-and they`ve been showing their uncanny ability to look a gift horse in the mouth ever since.
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[quote user="7rew"]sold ashton: 7 m rising to 7.5m
-33% sell on to crewe = 5 m
brought Earnshaw: 2.75m rising to 3.5m
difference is 1.5m
take off agents fees, Earnshaws signing on fee etc. we are left with about 250k-750k and probably at the low end of that.
Considering the terms of the payment deal for Ashton (4yrs) and Earnshaw (3yrs) the money is cut pretty close.
[/quote]Blimey, this sell on clause to Crewe just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Even Doncaster admitted that overall payments to Crewe amounted to less than £4 million. The sell on clause was only appliable to the PROFIT made on Ashton. Also bear in mind that the "add-ons" for the Earnshaw deal will be mainly tied up with the prospect of promotion which is not going to happen, therefore the £2.75m figure is the one to use. We are MUCH more likely to eventually recieve the Ashton add-ons. I`m afraid we are well and truly back to the Chase days of asset-stripping the team to fund an "obsession" (Munby`s words) with off-field activities.
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The current regime have a breathtakingly negative approach IMO. An unwritten rule of football is that if you aim low you tend to achieve lower-ambition and a very evident drive for success are absolutely vital in inspiring everyone connected with a football club. Without it a club tends to stagnate,drift, and then of course the ill-feeling and recriminations set in (sound familiar...?).
One thing i find incredible is that the man still has the gall to promise supporters that should Earny be sold, the money would be invested in "the best quality replacements". The accounts for the last financial year showed a £6.2 million PROFIT in the transfer market. And we are STILL expected to swallow this c**p? The sad thing is that of course many will.......
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[quote user="GazzaTCC"][quote user="Smudger"][quote user="charlies dad"][quote user="GazzaTCC"]Oh dear, or dear Cluck. Here you go again on one of your rants.
"Lack of ambition by the Board"? Is this the same Board that''s spent £11M in transfer fees over the past two seasons? Believe what you want, but it''s a fact that Worthy was backed like no previous manager before him at this Club.
Your agruements would be more crediable if you avoided condescending remarks about "fans content to believe in Santa Claus" and stick with more credible opinions, such as, generally, what money Worthy did spend, he spent badly.
[/quote] SPENT £11 MILLION????? CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH THEY RECOUPED FOR GREEN, MCKENZIE, ASHTON, JONSON, FRANCIS, ETC ETC . Dear oh dear.[/quote]
Exactly CD... If you compare transfer outgoings to what has come in through player sales then we have indeed spent Sweet FA since the season that we were promoted.... yet still many of our foolish fans need this oh so obvious of statistics pointing out to them...
Until a lot more of our fans wake up and smell the coffee their is no chance whatsoever of this club turning itself around!!!
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The point, Smudger, is it''s actually impossible to compare transfer outgoings to what has come in through player sales.
Why, I hear you ask?
Because the figures quoted to NOT represent "the cash paid or received at the point of transfer and in most cases the payments are spread over a number of years". That''s the actual wording from the accounts, in case you''re wondering.
So, like it or not, we actually paid out over £11M over the last two seasons, just like we actually received in over £10.3M.
To expand on that further, whilst we know that there was £3M due to us at year end, we don''t know how much of the £6.1M we actually committed to player purchases last season we''ve actually already paid and how much is still outstanding to be paid over the next few seasons. There may, indeed, be further monies outstanding on the purchases made in previous seasons.
On the flip side, yes, we''re due a minimum of £2.1M from the subsequent sales of Green and McKenzie, but, again, we have no idea when these monies will be recieved.
Until such time as football pays for all transfer fees at the time of sale/purchase, you have to view fees due / received in that context and itis all about cashflow.
If your view over £11M spent since promotion is "sweet FA", i''d like to see your bank statements.
My apologies for offering one view of the facts on behalf of one of the Club''s "foolish fans"[:@]
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£11 million spent since promotion when set against the enormous extra income that brought in is an utter joke GazzaTCC. So we make £35 million tv money, record season tickets,sponsorship,catering etc, a £6 million land deal, £1.1 million for the hotel land, £1.5 million G.Watlings loan written off, £1.5 million in unredeemed `B`shares, and we STILL make a huge overall PROFIT in the transfer market. I think you`re trying to lose people in the details as regards fees due/recieved. All transfers are structured to be paid in instalments over a number of years so it works both ways. I believe the club have deliberately structured recent outgoing transfers to be paid over a longer than usual time-scale for tax purposes. Are you happy that the board are so loathe to invest in the team that they would prefer to see £600,000 gifted to the taxman out of the-lets face it-pointless profit shown in the accounts?
I notice the old chestnut of player wages has been brought out as excuse on this thread again. Player wages were pretty much paid for out of ticket revenue in the last financial year and when set against real income (ie.including the £6.25 million profit on transfers) is probably one of the the lowest ratios in the country. The real question is why the overall wage bill (including non-player wages) was over £15 million and why over £4 million was once again deemed neccessary for infrastructure costs.
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[quote user="jimmy500"]You are missing the point Mr Carrow, the dis-harmony is being created by fans with unrealistic expectations.
And as for buying players, can you tell me when the board has refused to back the manager on a signing. We wanted Darren Huckerby, we wanted Dean Ashton, we wanted Rob Earnshaw, we wanted Lee Croft, we got them all. Of course we missed out on Steve Howard, David Coterill and Peter Crouch but that was only because other clubs were prepared to pay over the odds. I am absolutely sure that if Peter Grant wants a particular player then the board will back him to the hilt to get him. Norwich have the muscle to compete with anyone in this division finincially, if they want to. What I like is that they will not be held to ransom and they will only pay a fair price, regardless of circumstance, they show prudence and control the club carefully, it is all too easy in this day and age to do a Leeds.
And also bear in mind, we are not a massive club, we do have to sell to survive!!!!!!
However much it hurts to see a good player go, the future of NCFC is the most important thing.....I honestly believe that this board really do have the clubs best interests at heart....
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If i am missing the point Jimmy im afraid you`re missing quite a few. The board signed Huckerby and Ashton because they were bankrolled by the share issues. The fees for Earnshaw and Croft account for about half of the fee agreed for the sale of Ashton- the rest seems to have found the same financial black hole as the £35 million tv money received in the last 3 years. We could have signed Crouch for around £2 million. Given that Southampton sold him within a year for £7.5 million how is that paying over the odds?
If "not being held to ransom" results in a team which is uncompetive in the event of a handful of injuries because the squad is "ridiculously small" (Adam Drury`s comment) then how can that be a good thing? As for the "sell to survive" thing, it used to be stated that the club needed 20,000 average gate to break even, but then i suppose that couldnt cover the costs of new restuarants,stand refits,land purchases or an off-field wage bill of £6 million......
If the club can compete with any other in this league financially, why havent we been doing so? I will be the first on this site to congratulate the board if they launch an ambitious team-strengthening campaign in January, however events of the last few years would suggest that the only way this will happen is if we first severely weaken the team by selling Earnshaw, reinvest a fraction of the agreed fee back into the team and then we`ll all wonder why people are up in arms and we continue to struggle.
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[quote user="One Flew Over..."]I don''t see what the problem is with selling players for a profit, the alternative is to sell them for a loss or trying to hold onto players who don''t want to be here in the cases of Ashton,Helveg, and Jonsson. Should we risk holding onto them risking "disharmony and acrimony" between the management and the players?
Hucks wanted to stay and so his contract demands were met. We will soon find out if this is also the case with Earnie.
Yes I think the board made a mistake in either not giving Worthington funds to invest in the team or sacking him, but we will see in January if they see money spent on the team as money wasted.
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My point is that in your original post you assume that money spent on the team would result in players being sold at a loss if promotion was not achieved. Evidence from recent years indicates otherwise. Money spent on the team stands a very good chance of resulting in success and its financial rewards, or big profits from selling on young,improving players. Given the appalling level of investment in the current team, resulting in a "ridiculously small squad" (the team captains words, not mine), I dont believe the board are interested in either.
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And with that, dear Cluck, you have removed every last shred of credibility, decorum and dignity from the debate you insist on raising daily... well done. It was only a matter of time before the KTF term was bandied about again. Personally, I''d like to see the mods take a hard line on this and refuse any posts throwing about such accusations, lest we descend into the Worthy Out era all over again.
As for people not discussing intelligently, well... boggles the mind! Many people have tried, many times, to raise the other side of the debate, but with little success since each such post is countered with an accusation that that person has their "head in the sand". It has been mentioned many times how our entire debt is a consolidation of the previous mess that Chase left us in, combined with current ground improvements that are visible for all to see, and future plans... it has been mentioned many times that were it not for the astute financial planning of this board, and Delia, this club faced going under following the ITV Digital debacle... "it has been mentioned many times that, when the chips are down, the board have found the money for what the manager wanted, whilst still under tight financial restraints (Darren Huckerby springs immediately to mind)..". and it has been mentioned many times that Delia - yes, that little crazy old fogey who is allegedly more interested in Sherry than the well-being of this club - was the one who invested the money when it was needed following Chase''s era.
That''s right, Delia! Not an Italian bloke, or some chap who decided to take his money down the A140 like a petulant child some years ago - Delia. Call it spin, but she has done some good in her time here and, whilst things aren''t exactly rosey and there are many questions, we have to give the board time to answer the call and make the decisions to turn it around.
As for the matter of a potential investor, well the lack of noise on that front speaks for itself. There are many businessmen in the area, and many of them are Norwich fans. Most of them will know of the current plight of the club, or would if it was as bad as those calling for Delia''s head would like us to think. If one of them comes forward with a wad of cash and asks to take over, then we''ll probably all nod our heads and think "yes, maybe". It will then be up to the board and the shareholders to decide if this is in the best interests of the club. We have no other influence on such things, unless someone''s willing to go out and get Bernard Matthews drunk, take some compromising photos, and blackmail him... any volunteers? Thought not...
January will be a compelling month... personally, I''d rather this club didn''t pay over the odds for players (many posters on here stated our initial valuation of Steve Howard was too much, then cried when we refused to pay way over for him), but we still need players in many areas. Peter Grant recognises this, as he has stated before that there are a number of players who have repeatedly let him down. He will report this to the board. They will sigh and wish they''d gotten rid of that Irish fella sooner, but you can almost guarantee one thing - They will NOT just sit back, cluck their tongues, and open up a bottle of Palo Cortado, flick on the floodlights and have themselves a money fight. They MUST act, they know this, and to assume that our board would be so ignorant and stupid is in itself ludicrous.
At least, that''s what I hope, anyway, and that is my genuine and valid opinion based on a knowledge of the game of football and of the club itself, garnered over many years of being a supporter. Just in case anyone feels like questioning me...
We will see...Please allow reality to enter your rosy little outlook on NCFC. Huckerby was paid for by the SHARE ISSUE, not by the board sticking their financial necks out, as was half of Ashtons fee. Most other signings have been paid for out of small fractions of fees received for outgoing players. The board have had ample opportunity to show they are prepared to stick their necks out and invest in the team-remember when Crouch and Ashton were available for around £2million at the start of the Prem season?
The chips were certainly down at the beginning of last season and the response was to sell Francis,Jonsonn,Helveg,Svennson for a combined £3.5 million and buy Hughes,Colin and Thorne for £700,000......The chips were down again at the start of the current campaign and having just sold Ashton for £7.5 million, and many people commenting that the squad had shrunk to a level incapable of mounting a challenge for promotion in such a physically demanding league, the response was to sign Croft-who actually turned down higher wages elsewhere to come here-for £600,000......How inspiring.
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[quote user="One Flew Over..."]What have the board ever done for us?
- navigating the collapse of ITV Digital, while building a squad capable of promotion AND keeping the academy running (which other clubs dropped)
- bringing in outside investment for the funding of otherwise unaffordable players (Huckerby)
- the building of the new stand and corner infill
- getting 20,000 season ticket holders so the lottery of managing a football club is slightly more predictable
- the catering..which will be bringing in an annual income of up to £750,000 for the club
- the hotel - which although I would have prefered a final infill, will also bring in a substantial annual incomeAn investor coming in with 10-15 million and spending it all on players would bring a good, but no means certain chance of promotion for one season, and then leave us with a huge wage bill. If we didn''t go up we would then have to sell these same players at a loss. Great management..
The current running of the board will eventually see talented players coming through the academy - players we would otherwise never be able to afford before they are contracted to a premiership club. It will also allow us to compete in the transfer market with the top 6 championship sides, and leave us with a ground to be proud of.
As for the hope of bringing in Norfolk''s rich business men to the board we already have directors of Banham poultry and Jarrolds. Are there any other large locally run firms (Bernard Matthews?).
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And there was me thinking that we sold Ashton,Helveg and Jonsson for a combined massive profit (£6 million is the figure in the accounts) and that we stand to make a further big profit if Earnshaw goes. And it seems generally accepted that the likes of Colin, Etuhu and Croft are young players who are gaining value rather than losing it.
I`m afraid you`ve summed up the negative attitude of the board- and the reason why supporters are starting to turn- very well. Any money spent on the team is seen as money wasted, yet its the team on the pitch which brings people to the ground, earns money-spinning cup ties, competes to achieve the Premiership bonanza and crucially has always provided the club with a way of covering over continued financial mismanagement (in my opinion) by regularly selling players at a profit.
There are different kinds of "risk" in football. One very obvious one is being too cautious to show ambition on the field of play and "risking" disharmony, acrimony, spats between players and fans and different factions of supporters, lack of passion and confidence on the pitch.....Namely all the things we are seeing right now.
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[quote user="SPat"]You really are pushing yourself into a corner Wiz, where can you go next?
Though reasoned argument is largely pointless here...you complain that Delia and co don''t invest in the team, though the evidence (Hucks, Ashton, Earnie) would suggest otherwise. Chase baulked at spending a fraction of that money on Dean Windass and lost potentially the best manager this club could ever have had. Players were sold without the manager even being told until after the fact. He was so stubborn that he let the club almost collapse before leaving and then, only because there was real fear of serious civil unrest. In what ridiculous world do you live where you think that Chase is better than the current board. But then, you probably don''t either believe that or live in the real world do you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
[/quote]SPat, Huckerby was paid for by the fans from the share issues, Ashton was only signed because of the £1.5 million budget boost caused by supporters not cashing in on the `B` shares and higher than expected tv revenue, whilst Earnshaw was Ashton`s replacement (handily, for less than half the fee received for Ashton....). It is spin of the most deceitful kind that the board try to take credit for these rare moments of ambition. Please name me one ambitious signing which hasn`t been paid for by the fans or out of a large incoming transfer fee? But then we`re skint of course.....only £35 million tv money,a £6.5 million land deal, a £6 million+ profit in the transfer market, a £1.5 million loan written off, record season ticket sales etc.,etc., in the last few years.
Having said all this i do agree with the rest of your post. Just because its becoming obvious that the current lot are just as bad as the fat controller is no reason to bring the idiot back.
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Chicken, how can you seriously say you are happy with the level of investment in the squad over recent seasons? You laud the board for "providing a big enough transfer kitty to compete with clubs at the the top of this division" (ummm, ok.......!) but you neglect to mention that this kitty amounts to a mere fraction of the incoming transfer fees we have recieved. So in effect, despite the premiership millions and the much talked about other income streams Delia and the board have created, City are as much a selling club as it always has been. If you bear in mind the players payed for by the fans in the share issues, the club has made a significant profit in the transfer market over the last 5 or so years. Why this is the case is of course a whole different question however, as Bury Green has alluded to, the massive investment in off-field projects over the last few years has certainly done anything other than damage the value of the holdings of the major shareholders at the club......
A senior player recently called our squad "ridiculously small" and the fact that you seem to think that we are even trying to compete with clubs at the top of this league in terms of building a squad strong enough for promotion i find amazing. Dont forget that Croft turned down higher wages from other championship clubs to come here, we only have one proper striker and only one senior player who can actually use his left foot!
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[quote user="Saint Canary"][quote user="I OWN THIS CLUB"]Big investors are going to look at teams in cities first e.g Muhammed al Fayed at Fulham, Abramovic at Chelsea and some iceland bloke at West Ham and Glazer at United. In London that is where players might not mind going, but its a bigger trouble getting quality players to come to country folk in Norwich.
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Norwich City would represent a very good investment for anyone, if I were pitching to potential investors I would point to the following.
1) I would say it would be cheaper to buy a Championship club like City, buy players to get promoted and stay there rather than buy West Ham. Look at Abramovic, he bought Chelsea for £140m and has spent (just under) £300m on players = Total spent £440m and two Premierships won. If he wanted to win the Premiership easier he could of bought Man Utd but investing in Chelsea has got him the title for a cool £330m less than Glazer paid for United. Ok Chelsea aren''t quite the money magnet Utd are but they are getting there. Buying City is cheaper than a Premiership club.
2) City have lots of potential to improve attendances and, in turn, more revenue. How many other League sides have a whole county to themselves? The urban population continues to grow.
3) I do not live in Norwich and have not lived or worked in Norwich for 5 years and this is not based on emotion for a place but despite popular belief Norwich is a very large City in some aspects. It is the 5th largest retail centre in the UK. More money is spent in Norwich than all but 4 other Cities/Towns in the UK.
Norwich is also highly sought after for land and property and this is reflected in the fact that 4 of the top 5 property companies in the world have an office there. Norwich produces good yields on property with office space in the City centre in high demand at high rates per square foot. Investment in Norwich in general as well as the football club is a feasible area any investor could look to make profits.
Dear oh dear, too much beer on the train home tonight me thinks.
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Keep necking the beers Saint, thats an excellent post. Unfortunately the smallest thing about Norwich as an area and a club is the mentalitiy of a large proportion of its citizens. I remember when Chase used to repeat like a mantra that "Norwich City only have a catchment area of 120,000 people" (thats basically the population within the inner ring road!) and it seemed the vast majority swallowed it without question.
City are a very big club waiting to happen- and it just might be that a canny investor may come along and realise the potential. However the clubs image is so poor that you get the impression that most investors wouldn`t even take a second glance in our direction before heading to clubs with a more assertive attitude.
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[quote user="Hayden"]This season I went halves with me dad, and he doesn''t really care if he goes or not so I got my ticket halp price heh heh. I did consider not renewing but you have got to support them haven''t you? You can''t bitch on this board about lack of investment if you aren''t prpepared to chip in yourself......
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20,000 people have invested in season tickets for the last two years and how much investment has there been in the team? Overall the club have made millions of pounds of profit in the transfer market despite those loyal fans and the parachute payments. Drury has today called our squad "ridiculously small" so it seems like morale within the team over the level of ambition at the club is none too high. No suprise there then.
I got sick of being made a mug of and gave up my season ticket of 15 years this season. I`m no fairweather fan-i used to help run a City fanzine and was involved in alot of the Chase out movement, however in terms of on-field ambition i dont feel we are any further forward than in those days. Anyone notice the 4 million spent on yet more stadium improvements in the accounts? Just think, if 4 million were spent on the pitch we might have more than one proper striker and more than one left-footer in the squad!
Keep throwing your money away and keep dreaming folks......
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[quote user="Troy Tempest"]The diference is Kevin: ''other investment.''
Norwich also attract support disporportionate to their population but they cannot attract wealthy and high paying sponsors or Board members.
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In what way does the club attract support disproportionate to the population? The club attracts support mainly from Norfolk and North Suffolk, an area containing over 1 million people. If anything we still underachieve.
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[quote user="Fat Barman"]This is the sort of excellent suggestion that you think of 5 minutes after the end of the ''fans forum''! I like the sound of it and hope you''re planning on an inspired email to the appropriate NCFC suit - is it Andrew Cullen at Sales & Marketing?
I don''t know if many season ticket holders would back the idea - they love knowing exactly which seat they''re going to be in - so you''d need to keep this innovation to one area. Lower Barclay would be popular, as you suggest.
On a connected topic, I''m sure the law never actually insisted on all-seater, it was the FA, so perhaps we could even push for the lower Barclay to become a standing terrace once more. I''d love to see City lead the way with an initiative like that. I think Lord Justice Taylor''s report recommended something like 85% seating in stadia, but the authorities decided to go the whole hog - something which has left many thousands of disgruntled fans.
[/quote]Funny, was only discussing this subject after the game tuesday. How great would it be if City were the first club to stick they`re necks out and introduce a totally safe standing area? It would help bring the capacity up to somewhere approaching what is required, would improve the atmosphere, would bring alot of dissenting fans back on side and would be (are you reading Doncaster?) CHEAP! If the club went a bit OTT on the safety side-loads of exits, barriers and stewards-i think the authorities would just look silly trying to take action against them.
Of course, Doncaster is more likely to take a nice shiny apple down to his meetings at the FA rather than do anything which might upset them......
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A good post indeed. However, the `fortress Carrow Rd.` thing was built during a period where everyone accepted we were a skint club desperately trying to punch above our weight. Many fans are sulking now because it has become apparent that over the last few years we have become a relatively wealthy club with absolutely no intention of being successful on the pitch. We have made a huge profit in the transfer market since the Prem season and all the income that entailed- and the squad is now weaker than when we went up.
I think most people are happy to get behind a club which is straining every sinew to achieve success on the pitch, but when it isn`t even trying??.....No chance.
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Stats like this are virtually meaningless im afraid. The 120,000 figure for Norwich only covers the central area and not the large suburbs such as Costessey,Hellesdon,Sprowston,Thorpe st.Andrew etc. which are actually under `county` juristiction. I saw an article recently about housing shortages in Norwich stating that the greater Norwich area had 350,000 people. And the fact is that the club draw over half its support from Norfolk and North Suffolk-a population of over 1 million.
Its often assumed that big city clubs always have the potential for bigger support, but this overlooks the obvious fact that they almost all have alot of competition from other clubs (often bigger and more successful) in the area. City are one of few clubs in the country who can pull from a large population with virtually no competion from other clubs (or even other sports). So when the board spout off about how they have built our crowds up by their clever marketing, dont believe it. The support is simply gradually getting up to the level it should be at.
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One thing which has just occurred to me about this thread is that noone has mentioned the fact that some of the the major signings in recent years were paid for directly by the fans through the share issues and the non-redemption of the `B`shares. Taking this into account the club have made a significant profit in the transfer market during a time of full-houses,30 million Prem tv money,land deal money,G.Watlings loan money,record catering and merchandising money.........
I`m afraid at any other club the fans would be up in arms demanding to know why the board have watched the team slide backwards whilst raking in cash from all quarters. Its the complacent little Norwich attitude rearing its ugly head again. But as long as we all agree who should or shouldn`t play right wing everything will be ok hey.....? Time to wake up and see the bigger picture.
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[quote user="chicken"][quote user="Mr.Carrow"][quote user="10Bryceland"]I agree in all major respects except one, I still see the board as fans like the rest of us. We could have a worse board and they are more open and approachable than most. I believe they Have put their money where their mouth is and all this piteous whining about ''where has the premiership money gone'' is a load of hogwash that ignores the economic reality of actually running a league football club.
Having said that, on the pitch we lack bottle and leadership. Its time to give youth a chance. Even with a good run from here on in we have still dropped too many points to be serious challengers. Lets give the youngsters some experience and hope that the door doesn''t stop revolving in January as the under achievers go and Grants cavalry arrives.
I feel better already, OTBC.
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In terms of finances unfortunately we can speculate till the cows come home but none of us really know the situation. The accounts dont make things much clearer-remember the 7.5million profit which was an "accounting quirk" (still entirely unexplained)? There are plenty of ways a good accountancy company can portray a situation in a very different light to how it actually is (write-downs against the value of fixed assets,exceptional income etc.).
The real question is why,during the most financial lucrative period of the clubs history, it cannot seem to compete with clubs with smaller crowds and no parachute payments? A thread recently compared Stoke`s first 11 to ours and it was generally agreed that on paper they were at least on a par-they have crowds 10,000 lower than ours and none of the Prem millions we have enjoyed. Cardiff are very similar and look at the players they have splashed out on in recent times-and they are being linked with several high-profile players in a bid to secure promotion. Ipswich have twice our debt but seem to be more succesful in the loan market,have stated they have money to spend in January and carry a squad far bigger than ours. Are these clubs playing by different rules to us? Surely in this league the costs of running a club are generally similar? Before someone spouts off about wages,we have one of the smallest squads in the division and most of the high earners have left. If the costs of running NCFC are so much higher than every other club, are people not at least a little curious as to why?
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Stoke have had some brilliant loan signings in Diou and Hendry. Russel having regular football has shown what we all believed he could be, but he wanted more than that - he wanted recognition and in a team where you have to fight to be the best he didn''t settle well. Cardiff is a different matter, small gates maybe, but untill recently anyway they had a multi-millionaire as a chairman. You don''t have to look far to find evidence of how that helps clubs!
Having said that there is only really one player I would take from their team and put straight into ours and that is Chopra. The other players are experienced players that know this division but nothing particularily special. And from what I can tell most are around the 30 mark in age other than Chopra and a youngster played for the first time against QPR. The problem with Dave Jones is that he is fantastic at getting teams to the premiership but pretty woeful at keeping them there and it could easily be argued that the Wolves team were better than most that go up and failed to stay there in a season that on paper looks a lot easier than the current climate. Chelsea with Ranieri still at the helm for example.
Football is a funny game, at the end of the day what is on paper is on paper but it will never be 100% reliable. We have bigger gates - not nessisarily more fans mind you but we don''t obviously have other factors like and incredibly wealthy owner (Jorbichan anyone?) and then there is the location factor, Hendrie and Diou from Villa and Liverpool, Stoke is considerably closer to the two. What we should be doing is going in for some of the London players. I hear that Niklas Jensen at Fulham wants to leave them in favour of first team football. Grant knows the guys behind the scenes at West Ham. Give it some time and I think you will see what the differences are.
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Hmmmm, so Cardiff have a multi-millionaire chairman chicken? Havent we got a multi-millionairess owner?
Your presumption about City`s location counting against us in the loan market of course COULD be true. Or it could be that we were not prepared to pay their wages, or that they took one look at our wafer thin squad and thought "no chance". Whatever, with the board facing increasing criticism dont you think if they had pursued such players only to be turned down despite their best efforts, they would come out and say so?
As for your point about Chopra, i think most Cardiff fans would look at our team,wish they could have Huckerby and Earnshaw and dismiss the rest as average as you have theirs.
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Shortly after the Howard situation occurred there was an interview with Worthington in the local press titled something like "Worthy-City must pay the going rate" where he basically bemoaned the fact that the club had not signed him. I think the board said something like there was 1 million in the kitty but they would not spend that on a 30 year old. Any links web team?
Doncaster - "Financial Panacea to clubs woe's" !!
in Main Discussion - Norwich City
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Am I missing something? I thought the parachute money was in effect a bonus on top of our normal income, and that for the past two seasons we''ve had money that most other clubs in this division haven''t. The club has misused it appallingly, but we should not be in a worse position than 17 other Championship clubs next season (assuming we stay in this division of course), and probably better off than many. If we run into major money problems it is purely down to incompetent financial management.
In other words, Neil & Co, it''s your fault. Stop bleating and SORT IT OUT!
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Im glad you made this point mystic as im getting tired of stating the bleeding obvious....The team has been allowed to drift backwards over a spell when the club has been recieving huge extra income ON TOP OF normal income. Parachute payments,land deal money,hotel money,G.Watlings 1.5m loan written off, share offer money and just as icing on the cake, a massive profit on transfers. No doubt someone will bring up the wage bill for the last financial year however,if you include the 6m profit made on transfers (treated as "exceptional" in the accounts) the player wage bill is less than one third of overall income-most clubs run at over 50% of income on player wages. Dont forget many of the higher earners have now left.
So here we have a club which has been raking in the cash, with a paper thin first team squad devoid of investment and struggling near the foot of the table and a chairman who admits the club is "obsessed" with off-pitch issues. I think im starting to see a picture emerging here, can anyone else see it??
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That is an interesting way to read the accounts. Transfer income or expenditure is such a variable item that it would no sense to include it in any argument that shows wages as a percentage of turnover. Doubly so when a large portion of transfer fees are phased payments.
However on page 8 of the 2006 Report it clearly states £6.1 million in player purchases and £10.1 million in player sales. It also says that we have in fact paid out £781,000 more than we recieved last year.
The main thrust of the transfer information is to show that over the last 6 seasons we paid £17.1 million for new players and recieved £16.6 million for those we sold. That represents a half million deficet. So where is this mythical pot of gold you seem to believe exists?
The only silver lining I can detect in these figures is that we are still owed nearly £3.6 million in phased payments (presumably for Ashton & McKenzie). Peoples perception of big profits from transfer income do not seem to be backed up by the figures in the accounts.
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Ricardo, on page 9 of the accounts under "exceptional items" it records a £6.15million profit on "player trading" in the last financial year. I must admit that the discrepency between the two figures is puzzling and i am by no means an expert on accounting so an explanation would be helpful.
I still think,even using the p.8 figures that my main point holds true. They seem to suggest that the club made a £4million profit on player sales and are still owed over £3million in phased payments over the next few seasons. If you bear in mind the Green/Mckenzie sales and the fact that some major transfers were funded by the share issues i think its obvious that the club has actually made a substantial overall profit in transfers whilst receiving all the extra income i listed earlier. And just look at the result-not pretty.