BarclayWazza

It wasn't praise. Fully believe we're being held back as a club by the owners inability to put money in where needed.

Perspective on Norwich's owners - they account for 1/3000th of the total value of Premier League owners.

Arsenal fans are just gonna complain when Bournemouth insist on being called AFC Bournemouth

All anything is right now is speculation. I would say there is an extremely high chance that the Premier League have something written into their "rules" which will say what happens in the event of the season needing to be voided. This might be a little naive of me from a legal perspective but as all teams sign up to these rules, would that not head off any legal challenges?

Not the first time hes stuck one in to something that already screwed

Anything must be better than a board with Morty as a moderator 🤣

The euphoria of Wembley and winning the league last season was very quickly followed for me with the knowledge that the following season was likely to be the antithesis of euphoric. Be it the inevitability of failing after once again trying to do it on the cheap due to the restraints of our owners or the big 6 leanings of the officiating, you quickly realise that promotion is more a curse than a blessing from a football perspective. For this reason, it's now been 3 seasons I think since I've had a season ticket and to be honest I dont see myself getting another at the very least until someone a bit more ambitious than Delia/Tom are at the helm.

Absolute nonsense. If Delia is not in a position where she can fund the club even if it a short term loan until the TV money rolls in then if she truly had the best interests of the club at heart rather than retaining ownership then it's on her to court investment. She's explicitly said that she's not doing that without giving up ownership so if you're suggesting that I go out, source a list of potential investors and present them to the owners when they've come out and said they arent selling then I'm suggesting that in the absence of a sensible argument you are suggesting something you know to be folly to deflect from that.

Little old Norwich. Let's just accept what we've got, enjoy our day out at Old Trafford and back down to where we deserve to be next season. Nah mate, some of us think with the right backing the club has much more potential than that.

Has approximately 1/20th of the personal wealth of the 19th richest owner in the Premier League, let's not kid ourselves that the self funding model some have swallowed as good for the club is in place for any other reason than as a mechanism for her to remain owner of the club. When this lack of investment causes relegation likely leading to 4 outstanding young players to be sold rather than become the future of the club, you cant claim any longer that it's in the best interests of the club for them to remain owners.

I cant believe how much of an incredible f up the FA or whoever is running this has made of VAR. It could be so simple - each team has 2 reviews which can be used for anything. Ref goes to Stockley Park and if they can't decide within a sensible amount of time or its unclear then the refs decision stands. Or the ref reviews in the screen next to the pitch. We've had a couple of shots that have taken deflections but given as goal kicks recently. Within seconds it was clear on the telly that it went the wrong way so why not have this available to be overturned. Football is so depressingly behind other sports in how technology is used and to the ordinary supporter it just seems so illogical. VAR has the potential to improve the game but is being horrendously misused. In it's current format, get rid.

Aah the good old days of challenging at the top of the league and cup runs. Who would imagine now that we were once contenders for a league and cup double. Had a lot to think big Bob Chase for

1. Ok so let's spin this around. If the recent promotions are down to Delia, is the failure to build on that not also down to her? 2. My point is that there is not ever a guarantee of return to the Premier League, and there's no point in having all this money and being the richest club in the championship. We're here now, and have been 3 times in the last 10 years. Ironically the only time we made a decent fist of the summer transfer window was first time around when we were trying to pay back £30m odd in debt. 3. You missed the past tense - I believed in that moment that the way that the club was headed, mid table champs was the about par for our situation and very little leading up to that stage suggested we were due a promotion push let alone what we did achieve. We were a club in decline being made to suffer for bad decisions in the previous few seasons. I still await your admission of amazing hindsight saying that you did see this coming. 4. If your opinion is no more valid than anyone elses on this board then please accept that and dont go out of your way to attack other views. I'm happy that I was wrong about last season but let's be honest, no-one saw it coming and was based out of what I saw happening at the time. I stand by my "glass ceiling" view and we currently see a lack of summer investment and likely failure once again to capitalise on another PL opportunity. Like I said, I'd be happy for you to pick this up again in 15 months if we're sitting mid table in the PL towards the end of next season. 5. You really need to move away from this obsession of needing to compare us to other clubs with money. As I've said many times, I'm only interested in comparing our performance against our potential. By extension, using your method we could lose every game 5-0 this season but that would be ok because Derby have spent a load of money but arent in the Premier League. I see this clubs potential and set up as being something more than just being happy to be in the PL and taking the money.

Really? There are 2 ways of thinking and both are understandable? You wouldn't think it from some on here 🙂 I jest but I simply cannot fathom those that dont just disagree with but attack views that are ultimately rooted in wanting better for the club.

1. I challenge anyone who saw any of what we were putting out up until the 1-1 against Ipswich to suggest that the remainder of last season was what we had around the corner. Credit to Farke for that change though, my belief is that the change was down to bringing the youth through and bedding in Buendia but nevertheless could anyone have foreseen the impact they ultimately had on the side? If you can honestly say after getting humped 3-0 by Leeds that you saw this coming then you're either Nostradamus or a huge bullsh*tter. 2. Realistically what counts as success for Norwich? I know that you're one of those that has bought into this self funding model idea so I'm sure you're delighted that we've got lots of young exciting players that will make us oodles of money when the bigger boys decide to wave their cheque books out. Each successive promotion has lost the gloss for me because as great as last season was, as we are being hamstrung by the owners inability/unwillingness to invest in the summer, our current position has to be expected. I'm sorry but I'm not exactly excited by the thought of coming back down with oodles of cash but likely minus the likes of Godfrey/Aarons/Pukki that got us here in the first place and no guarantee of return. I don't particularly wish to celebrate Delia's influence in this. Sorry/not sorry. 3. My belief was that our natural position would be mid table in the Champs. Concurrently, my belief was and still is that the limit of our ability under Delia and her self funding model is only a little higher than where we currently are. They are 2 different things and can co-exist. 4. I really struggle to understand your motivation for pretty much everything you post on this board. I understand that for some, Delia is a goddess but you and some others still act as a bastion of defence for her, ignoring and often attacking any views that dont align with your own and then coming up with some sort of hyperbole to attempt to diminish alternative motivations. "Mythical owners" have been found at plenty of other clubs, but ours have publicly flat out refused to engage with anyone. For me, along with their seeming insistence on gifting the club to Tom, just looks like a narrow minded approach to the detriment of the club.

"Barring a miraculous change" - anyone who predicted the turnaround after the start we had last season can give me a call because I could use a lottery win just before Christmas! My belief has always been that under Delia, we've got a glass ceiling to our potential that sits around the area of PL survival (I know you like spending your time searching through my post history so you'll likely find comments to that effect in there) and I think the way this season is going so far that this is being proven correct. Of course I'd be delighted if things have changed in such a way that you feel the need to drag this post up again in 15 months time and call me embarrassing.

Any stage over the last 10 years or so when it's become blatantly obvious that someone with a personal fortune of c.£20m is vastly underfunded to be anywhere near a top flight football club. I cant work out whether you're stupid or for some unfathomable reason trying to deflect by making a ridiculous comment. I've got absolutely no time for whatabouttery - yes there are a bunch of teams with money that we are doing better than but it's also plainly true that there are a bunch of teams with money that are doing a lot better than us. The measure that we should be concerning ourselves with is our potential with a comparatively poor owner at the helm and our potential with someone who can stick £40m in at the start of the season.

Which is the juxtaposition of this club in a nutshell. Given the level of current investment we are massively overachieving but can we honestly say that we're happy with the glass ceiling that this current investment creates? I want to see the club do as well as it possibly can, not limited to being PL also rans because we dont have owners who can put money into the club. I'm not interested in the "what about all those other teams with money that we're above" arguments, I just think that once again we're failing to capitalise on a magnificent opportunity.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant by that 🙄 Seeing as I have to state the obvious, they've stated they are not selling the club, they are by far the poorest owners in the Premier League and this unwillingness to sell means this model is a necessity to the detriment of the potential of the club in the hands of an owner with money. They've played an absolute blinder in convincing large parts of the fan base that this is the best the club can hope for, that it's a good thing that we spent next to no money over the summer and how following a couple of decent results that still leave us in the bottom 3 that all is all of a sudden ok. The club is brimming with saleable assets so I absolutely fail to see how spending a bit of money sensibly over the summer would have been disastrous. The only reason I can think of is that they simply did not have the money. If that's the case then please make way for someone that does.

Isnt it rather convenient that its the only model that fits in with the capacity of their wallet though?

You're trying to find stuff that isn't there fella. A previous post jokingly questioned my ambition if I didn't want us to be a footballing giant. As a passing comment I happened to mention that I'm just old enough to remember the time that we could have possibly be considered that. Nothing more/less than that in the intention. I happen to think that we shouldn't be making comparisons with our perceived place in a footballing hierarchy but instead be making comparisons with our potential. I think we have the potential to establish ourselves in the PL if only for a few years and it's my opinion that the lack of spending for whatever reason this summer will be a massive inexcusable factor should we go down. Should you feel that you sit in the group of people who might think "well that's ok that we went down, what about all the teams that want to be in our place", then you will fall in the group of people who in my opinion have a "little ole Norwich" mentality. If you disagree or feel triggered by that, I'm sorry but I dont really care.

I did much the same yesterday but I looked at the players bought by those teams and do you know what? Most of them were in the 21-25 year age range and most were in the £5m - £15m bracket. Imagine if we go down this year having spent next to no money and sell Godfrey/Aarons in the summer.... we'd be the richest Championship club in history!

You might have missed the part where I said on another post that I hold little value in whatabouttery. I have no interest in how teams that were in those divisions at that time fare now - in fact, rather than a stick to beat the club with (which is what I've assumed you thought I meant by that) I only brought those years up as a reference to a time where we could be possibly considered a top side, and even then from what I remember given my young age, we were considered to be relegation fodder. What I was saying was that the view that we should respect our place in some kind of football hierarchy and that we should consider ourselves grateful to even be in the PL is symptomatic of the "little ole Norwich" mentality many display. Why shouldn't we strive for further improvement? Why shouldn't we highlight failings in past approaches and identify ways to learn from that in the future, and if we dont learn from our mistakes, question why? As for Bill.... I really dont know where to start with that but my aim from my post before was to completely destroy your ridiculous argument with fact and logic. I think most will agree that I highlighted extremely clearly that there is a viable low risk third way which is in between the aforementioned two extremes that appear to be the only outcomes you can envisage. If you deem that nonsense then that's on you old chum. Just know that all you've done in that post is to REALLY prove Wicky correct 😘

Really not sure what your point is here? You sure as heck didn't answer my question. In fact, in attempting to dodge it, I think you've unintentionally come full circle because I think you're proving my point. Onel and Buendia are both young players that we got in for small sums of money (albeit with add-ons for promotion) which have proved to be a success. Webber obviously saw these players (and previous scouting teams saw Max/Jamal etc) with the view of them being a low risk signing but with potential for development. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM ADVOCATING WE SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE CLOSE SEASON. The difference is, if you want to do that at this level, you cant get by shopping for players in the £1m bracket in the European lower divisions, but you are still looking at buying players who are on the up in their careers. Perhaps you're giving them a 3 year contract at £30,000 a week, that works out at £1.5m a year. A relative drop in the ocean when your TV income alone is £100m. And if you get relegated, you still own a young player on the up in their career so either you sell them or the £1.5m doesn't make a massive dent in the parachute payments and you have a player who can help gain promotion. But the key thing is if that doesn't work out, he's out of contract when the parachute payments end. Look at the players that got us into the mess we got in over the last couple of years. Naismith (aging, no real sell on value, huge wages, contract 1 year longer than parachute payments) and Jarvis (aging, notoriously injury prone, decent wages, contract 1 year longer than parachute payments) caused the main issues but look at some of the other players we signed ready for the first team around that time? Robbie Brady (bought for £7m at the age of 23, sold for £13m), Nathan Redmond (bought for £2.5m at the age of 19, sold for £10m after helping us regain promotion), Alex Pritchard (bought for £8m at the age of 23, sold for similar). These are exactly the types of player that I'm talking about. It's brilliant that we've scouted players from a young age like Godfrey, Jamal and Max and hopefully there are more to come of that production line but they aren't ready now and not spending anything means that we're relying on the players who we bought in as Championship players to make a further step up. So far, it looks like most of our midfield aren't doing that. My issue with our lack of ambition is that we've had 3 promotions now in the last 10 years and not capitalised on it because we've tried to do it on the cheap each time. "Whatabouttery" is never a valid argument. I don't care what any of those teams have done or are doing or how similar in size or investment they are to us. I care about our potential and with some sensible investment in scouted players that are on the rise in their careers, we give ourselves more of a chance at capitalising on this promotion than we do by spending a couple of million. If you're looking where we are in football's "pecking order", seeing that as below "bigger" teams or those with more investment than us (which fwiw would put us close to the bottom of the 92) then sorry, but you are looking as us as "little ole Norwich". By refusing to take opportunities to improve that for fear of something that happened because of bad decisions made 4 years ago only compounds that. Dearie, dearie me. By not managing to answer my question and the confused waffle that followed, Winky might have a point. I would keep batting these back but what is it Mark Twain said about arguing with a fool?

Funnily enough, a pub discussion topic from the other night. I'm just old enough to remember the UEFA Cup run and the days of finishing 3rd/4th/5th in the top division which is probably the closest we can say we've been to that. But you're right, there's something extra special being a Norwich fan and turning over a Man City or the one trip to Wembley I've had in my time following Norwich. I'd suggest that a Man Utd fan in the mid 90's to mid 00's didn't get the same pleasure out of yet another PL title. Personally, both in terms of football and elsewhere in life, I like the feeling of overachievement and progression. In the short term, we've certainly progressed but if you go back further, we're still not learning from previous relegations.