BarclayWazza

I think the point has been addressed and it is you that is still falling for the one extreme or another approach. A reasoned approach to finding ourselves where we are now is neither unsustainable spending nor is it spending just a couple of million. I don't know of anyone that wants to see us doling out huge fees and contracts but the alternative doesn't need to be what it is. Could you now please address the point that actually spending perhaps £20m on some young players with resale value doesn't necessarily represent us spending large sums of money on hefty contracts that will doom us if we go down and might actually represent an low risk approach that gives us a better chance of staying up?

It's not about turning us into a footballing giant though, it's about our ambition as a club. Personally, I think anyone that is just happy fluctuating between PL and Championship without seeing the potential that the club has embodies that "little old Norwich" mentality. That we should be happy just to be here and should know our place and we should be untrusting of any outside investment.

Well its kinda relevant - for example you don't sign a 29 year old player with little resale value/potential on a 3 and a half year deal when you know you will only have 2 years of parachute payments if you go down 🙂 We didn't have any of that type of player on long term deals when we went down under Hughton.

Someone talking sense by identifying there is a middle ground between spending millions on Naismith types and spending nothing which many on here dont seem to be able to do. What KC says in the bit I've quoted makes absolute sense. Versus some people who dont talk sense by trying to deflect the idea that relegation will be a massive factor in whether Godfrey and Aarons stay. Yes they are destined for greater things than us in the long term but in the short term why not do our best to keep them as part of the next couple of years. These guys have the potential to be £40-50m players - we're never going to be spending that amount on players so why not do your best to keep them while you can. Investment in young improving players isn't going to leave the club in a Naismith situation and will in fact actually improve the squad and their resale value, indeed it's what we did last season. I'm staggered to see that some people still blindly argue against it for this season.

At last, someone talking sense. Nowadays you have to spend upwards of 5 million for a decent attacking player in the Championship. We went different and got in young and/or cheap forward players on modest wages and performed a miracle in getting promoted. Now absolutely no-one is suggesting we go out and spend £20m on a 28 year old and put him on a 4 year contract, but what I expected in the close season is for us to do the same to improve the team. So far the only player that you'd expect to be an improvement on the first 11 is Amadou. And I'm quite happy to continue bleating on about this because its mind boggling that some seem to think it's ok that we've spent peanuts but we have potentially 5-6 proper class players in our side and relegation is likely to see maybe 2 or 3 of those move on. We are financially stable, putting the behind the scenes stuff in place and building the foundations for this club to push on. So why not spend some proper money on some decent younger players (with a resale value if it does go wrong) to give us the best chance of having a PL status to match that and keeping the likes of Aarons and Godfrey.

Sorry I don't think you got the point I was trying to make - I think with 3 players who are all young and developing, I think you need an experienced body alongside them. Klose would imo fit the bill but has had too many injuries, I don't think Zimbo is experienced enough and I don't think Hanley is ultimately good enough. And I'm not saying it should be a mega bucks player on 100k a week, just someone with a bit of top flight experience who can guide the others on the pitch.

Would you call no meaningful additions to a back line that shipped over 1 goal a game last year continual improvement? If you're going to have 3 of your back line as promising but inexperienced at the top level youth products you need something better than someone who is injury prone (Klose), inexperienced at the top level (Zimbo) or not quite good enough at this level (Hanley) to be that 4th player. In fact I wouldn't call spending 750k on a back up player, a few quid on a couple of loans and a few more quid on players for the development team continuous improvement. In a season where we can expect c.£100m in TV money, I would expect an outlay of £20-30m on well scouted players to be a controlled amount.

I do agree that outside of the top maybe 6-8 teams now that it is a bit of a myth. But you will find many teams that have had a good run of 5+ seasons in the top flight that are very similar size, average attendance and stature to us - Leicester, Brighton, Southampton, Palace, Burnley, Bournemouth, Watford, West Brom, Swansea and Stoke have all done this in recent years. The main difference between them and us is the owners bank balance.

Again, it depends on your ambition. IMO we should be aiming to be a relatively settled PL side. We've failed to do that 3 times in the last 15 or so years. I've said this hundreds of times now as well but I strongly believe we have at least 5 potential £30m + players in the squad and building a side around those 5 is our best chance to establish ourselves. I just think its madness that we've spent next to nothing going into a season that could see some of them gone if we go back down. Yes I know we had to shell out extra for Buendia. Yes i know we had to pay out promotion bonuses. Yes i know we don't get all the PL money at once. But had we had an owner that could put in a short term £20-30 million rather than waiting until January we would surely give ourselves a better chance.

Football and finances have of course changed, we haven't. 15 of the 20 clubs in the PL are owned by billionaires. 3 of the rest are hundred millionaires. Unsurprisingly Delia and MWJ are the poor relations (estimated £25m). In fact if you add the Championship to that list they rank bottom of the top 44 teams. As you said, footballs changed, we're still trying to get by with poor owners.

I guess what this all boils down to is our definitions of success, whether we are want to see the club over achieve or whether we're just happy with our lot. What side of that fence you sit on probably dictates whether you see 4 promotions and 3 relegations (just talking PL here) in 15 years as success or a consistent failure to capitalise on the chance to have a decent run as a PL club. As someone who wants to see the club over achieve and take the next step (relative safety in the PL/perhaps a decent cup run), I can't see us ever doing that under Delia and I worry that this season, with the emergence of 4 real potentially PL class players from the youth, their potential loss after a relegation would see us wreck our best chance of taking that next step. I'll add that the alternative to Delia doesn't need to be someone with billions in their back pocket, I'd have felt a bit more at ease had we gone out and spent £20-30m in the pre season. We've been caught out before and then either bought too late in January (imagine if we'd bought Dean Ashton in the pre season) or panic bought (Naismith). The one time I felt we'd had a decent PL pre season was under Lambert.

I see that this black and white comparison is still going on then. Some fans deluding themselves that Delia is the best out there and that anything else should be looked upon as something that's going to ruin the club. We spent next to no money in the summer and we've got a self financing model purely because Delia cannot fund the club. This is another year we're trying to do the PL on the cheap and if anything this is the year we dont want to be - we go down we likely lose 4 of the best prospects this club has had in years.

Well Villa seem to be doing well enough now with their stinking rich new owners. Meanwhile the only thing Delia can afford to fund are a few busses to London to protest Brexit.

I've always felt the self funding model limits what we're capable of. Last season we had 4 players emerge through the ranks and a free transfer who all ended up being magnificent for the side. But 3 of those 4 are young defenders in a team who still conceded over a goal a game over the season. So, foresight? 3 young defenders, Klose (injury prone), Zimmerman (unproven at this level) and Hanley (not PL quality). I thought we needed more than what we started the season with. And lo and behold, we're conceding 2.5 a game. Thinking we're ok? That's poor hindsight! We could have named a full 25 member squad. We named 23. What I said before about 4 class youth players coming through? That's once in a generation for us and those players are likely to leave if we go down. As others have said, very little up front. Like a few decent signings would have cost us up front. 2005-06 we needed goals and waited until January to buy Ashton. Too late. 2016 we needed defenders and bought Klose in January. Too late. Other teams have managed to pay out promotion bonuses and have spent on improvements. We've got such an opportunity in front of us - I just dont want us to balls it up by not learning from previous lessons. Of course, were it not for the fact that our owners could only afford to invest enough to buy a half decent strikers big toe, we might be able to compete on a more even keel.

So what.... we never buy any players again in case they dont make us better or become a Naismith? For what its worth, given his track record I dont think Webber would ever be held to ransom like Naismith did with us and unlike the period in which we bought RVW and Naismith, we're now buying players to fit into an overall plan. What's clear is that we went into the season short of a few players defensively (esp defensive midfield) and it's ridiculous if the excuse for not buying them is frugality.

Who the owners of Villa could shell out some proper money to buy. We get a £750k back up right back and are expected to be grateful.

No-one that properly understands what we are trying to do is calling for us to spend millions on journeyman players and bankrupting the club. Stop deriding the people who think it is criminal that our additions to the first team squad for a premier league season amount to a free transfer, 2 loans and a £750k back up right back. Its madness that this is all we've spent in the summer. We were crying out for improvements in the defensive midfield position and we get 1 guy in on loan who is having to fill in at CB so we now have 2 players better known for their attacking qualities filling in at CDM. We will earn around 100 million this season, theres a mid ground to spending nothing and blowing millions on journeymen. We need to be in there somewhere.

I said on another thread at the start of the season that I was worried about the lack of investment. We've had a spell where the stars have aligned - the emergence of 4 absolute quality youth players from the academy, and a couple of inspired free transfer signings gave us half of a championship winning team for free. Our best hope to develop as a club is to build our team around Godfrey, Aarons, Lewis and Cantwell. We want these guys to stay with is for as long as possible and the best way of doing that is to remain in the premier league. You give yourself the best chance of doing that by putting a bit of money in, otherwise if we go down, chances are we'll lose the academy players at the end of the year. We might have £100m or so in the bank for them but theres no guarantee that money will be re-invested, more players come through the academy or new signings will work out. I'm not by any means suggesting we go back to signing the Naismiths of this world but surely a couple of decent £5 - 8m players wouldnt have broken the bank? Another promotion where our impoverished owners think we can survive on the cheap, their model that most of us seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker exists solely so they can retain control of the club. It worked last season, it's looking increasingly like it won't this year.

https://www.twtd.co.uk/forum/466047/man-city-have-installed-a-new-scoreboard-for-todays-game./#11 Ignoring the fact that the game is at Carrow Road of course...

I think it's clear that for most games against teams outside London and the top 6 the demand wont be so high. Perhaps anything that ends up being an important game will be difficult.

Rather generous of you to offer the oppo a 1 man advantage each game 😜

I think the inconsistency is that Laporte "handled" the ball while his arms were in a natural position, not making his body unnaturally big etc. If a defender was to have touched the ball in the same way in the same situation it wouldn't have been given as a penalty so it seems unfair that a striker is penalised in the same way.

I dont know - I mean we do have some proper PL quality in the squad but i feel that this doing it on the cheap will ultimately let us down. No-one is suggesting that we go out and spend 20 million on one player but on the other hand we're 2 days from the transfer window and we've spent 750k on a back up right back plus whatever the loans cost us. If we were to go down this year then we can pretty much wave goodbye to Aarons, Godfrey, potentially Buendia and Lewis which IMO would be hugely damaging in the long run.

I think there is much that can be done to improve the state of the womens game but I think you have to market it as something separate to the mens game rather than something that needs to be made more equal as the two are completely different things that are likely to appeal to different groups. While I think you need to market the game separately, the first way you're going to improve the quality of the game is to ingratiate their teams more with the mens teams, much like Manchester City. Allow them to use the same training facilities and have the games played in the main grounds, perhaps give tickets away to increase exposure. I guess in time it will be seen whether womens football can stand as it's own commercial entity but I dont think it will be helped by trying to equalise it to the mens game.

The part I find wrong is the people who make comparisons between the relative pay of mens and womens football in an attempt to suggest they should be equal. In any sport, the salary of the competitors is a function of the money generated through ticket sales, TV coverage and other commercial activities which has some correlation to the quality of the product on offer. In every variable above, the top level of the mens game will dwarf that of the womens so imo from a purely economist view, they absolutely should not have salaried artificially inflated for "equality" reasons.