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a1canary

To all the poor unfortunate folk who think McNally should resign

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]If he hasn''t he should do. In all his 6 seasons at the club we''ve only had 4 seasons premier league and 3 promotions. It''s simply not good enough and to think only a few years before the cook and her cohorts could have shown a modicum of ambition and given the club to Cullum or made us more attractive than the binners were to Evans. Or something like that....[/quote]

I can only imagine that people who call for McNally''s resignation are either young or just have no understanding whatsoever of what it takes to run a football club.

You can''t train in running a football club. It''s possibly the most unique job there is.

When someone takes over a club, there are two things that fans should be hoping and praying for. That they have experience of running a football club, and that they will have a non-financial interest in the club. Consider The Gillette brothers, Vincent Tan, Tony Fernandes, John Henry... As all these and more show, being a business guru counts for very little.

We are doubly lucky in having an owner who only has the interest of the club at heart, and who hands operational responsibility to a CEO who feels likewise about the club and whose experience and knowledge is unrivalled. Not to mention his record as Nutty well points out.

People need to realise running a club requires the CEO and board to make repeated judgements, mostly binary judgements, the consequences of which can not be fully known. Do we sign this manager, do we buy this player, do we agree this player contract, do we sack the manager... It is humanly impossible to get all those decisions right, or to even know if they are right until long after you''ve made them. But of course fans always now exactly what the right decision is because they''re there, always, 24/7 ready to scrutinise every decision and say it''s wrong. In the end, all you can do is trust that the people in charge of your club are well equipped and experienced to make sound judgements. Would you trust Vincent Tan to get any single one decision about the club correct? If you think it''s hard to replace players, just try replacing McNally. I dread to think who we might end up with when he does leave.

So it may be a cliche, but those who want rid of him really need to be careful what they wish for.

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Whoops, I''m pretty sure nutty nigel''s post was completely sarcastic towards the people calling for McNally''s head.

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FFS, of course i know it''s sarcastic!! I know Nutty - in a message board rather than the biblical sense - well enough to know that. Isn''t it obvious from the comment about McNally''s record "as Nutty points out"

Well, sorry if it''s not obvious, but Nutty''s post is not the point anyway, that was just context!!

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"People need to realise running a club requires the CEO and board to make repeated judgements, mostly binary judgements, the consequences of which cannot be fully known."

I think you''re only describing the role of any senior manager/director in a large commercial organisation. From my experience, large commercial organisations are considerably more ruthless than football clubs - but then a club like Norwich is not a large commercial organisation so it can indulge itself more.

I''m not calling for anyone''s head either, just pointing out the difference between NCFC and, say, a blue chip company.

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I agree, that''s preciseley the problem with a lot of these owners who think football clubs CAN be run like blue chip companies. They can apply some of the methods, and McNally has done so in terms of cost cutting and making NCFC a slicker commercial operation, but the it''s the team, making it successful and keeping the fans supporting the team and the club that make it very different.

I disagree that the club can "indulge" itself though. Indulge in what? How has NCFC indulged itself under McNally? Yes a blue chip company has to make decisions too but they don''t face the same kind of scrutiny from a group of people (fans) who can ultimately cause resignations. You can compare fans to shareholders but shareholders don''t tend to have the same power as fan power except where a single shareholder owns a large stake.

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[quote user="woostercanary"]"People need to realise running a club requires the CEO and board to make repeated judgements, mostly binary judgements, the consequences of which cannot be fully known."

I think you''re only describing the role of any senior manager/director in a large commercial organisation. From my experience, large commercial organisations are considerably more ruthless than football clubs - but then a club like Norwich is not a large commercial organisation so it can indulge itself more.

I''m not calling for anyone''s head either, just pointing out the difference between NCFC and, say, a blue chip company.[/quote]Not if we talking about football managers rather than football CEOs! There footbal clubs outdo the Borgias for ruthlessness. The average "life" of a manager in the Championship is less than a year, and it is hardly a much more secure existence in the Premier League. At the deep-blue-chip company I worked for the "life" of the equivalent of the football manager was generally a decade, and even the one failure they appointed lasted three years.

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NCFC indulged itself by pretty much universal job retention (except Hughton) despite relegation - that would not happen in a blue chip company.

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"Not if we talking about football managers rather than football CEOs!"

PC, I don''t think a football manager is synonymous with a blue chip CEO. I don''t even think a football CEO is synonymous with a blue-chip CEO, that''s my point.

A football manager is more akin to a blue-chip brand manager - if successful they stay around and prosper but otherwise they''re in post for no more than 2-3 years.

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[quote user="woostercanary"]NCFC indulged itself by pretty much universal job retention (except Hughton) despite relegation - that would not happen in a blue chip company.[/quote]Obviously outside of sport you normally don''t get an event as clear-cut as relegation but if the board decided Hughton was the main cause of that relegation then sacking him was pretty much the equivalent of what a non-sport blue chip company would do if it made a big loss. Who ever was deemed chiefly to blame - the CEO or the CFO or whoever - would be sacked. I am not sure a blue-chip company would have a bigger cull of executives unless they were deeply implicated in the failure.

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[quote user="woostercanary"]"Not if we talking about football managers rather than football CEOs!"

PC, I don''t think a football manager is synonymous with a blue chip CEO. I don''t even think a football CEO is synonymous with a blue-chip CEO, that''s my point.

A football manager is more akin to a blue-chip brand manager - if successful they stay around and prosper but otherwise they''re in post for no more than 2-3 years.[/quote]Wooster, I understand that point but I think comparing a footballing manager to a brand manager seriously underplays the importance of the former. A comparison that I would say is much more valid is to the editor of a national newspaper, who is absolutely crucial to its success or otherwise. The best-run (by its CEO) newspaper will nevertheless fail if the editor is no good. In fact that is a business, and not just at the tabloids (the Daily Telegraph for example) that really does rival football for brutality, with editors having short shelf-lives.

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[quote user="woostercanary"]NCFC indulged itself by pretty much universal job retention (except Hughton) despite relegation - that would not happen in a blue chip company.[/quote]

Sorry Wooster but the idea that retaining Hughton was an indulgence on the part of the club is a nonsense. The Hughton scenario is a perfect example of the simple but critical choice the club had to make. Keep him, or sack him. His appointment was a good one at the time, in the wake of the turmoil of Lambert''s departure, because against the odds he gave us two further years in the Premiership which helped the club massively. In the end, we were one win against West Brom from staying up in that third year. Fine margins, and that''s how close he was to it being deemed the ''right'' decision to keep CH. McNally admitted he got that decision wrong but even then we can''t know if he had been sacked in January (or even at the start of the season) that this would have kept us up in that third year. It was an incredibly tough call. But there is no question that he has made up for it in finding and appointing AN and getting us straight back up. Some of the clueless ''sack McNally'' types regularly say the Lambert appointment was a fluke and he couldn''t keep living off that. Those same people and plenty more would never have believed that he could pull off the same trick again. Well he has done it again with AN which could well prove to be an even better appointment. But will the clueless brigade acknowledge this? Will they b******s!

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a1canary,

I agree with your original point. There is no doubt that McNally is one of the best CEO''s around and we are lucky to have him. I also don''t agree that our transfer window was a disaster, I think we got most of the bases covered. I''m sure we will do well, not the season of struggle that has been predicted.

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"PurpleCanary""woostercanary""Not if we talking about football managers rather than football CEOs!"

PC, I don''t think a football manager is synonymous with a blue chip CEO. I don''t even think a football CEO is synonymous with a blue-chip CEO, that''s my point.

A football manager is more akin to a blue-chip brand manager - if successful they stay around and prosper but otherwise they''re in post for no more than 2-3 years.

Wooster, I understand that point but I think comparing a footballing manager to a brand manager seriously underplays the importance of the former. A comparison that I would say is much more valid is to the editor of a national newspaper, who is absolutely crucial to its success or otherwise. The best-run (by its CEO) newspaper will nevertheless fail if the editor is no good. In fact that is a business, and not just at the tabloids (the Daily Telegraph for example) that really does rival football for brutality, with editors having short shelf-lives.

I always think that the Football Industry , with the immediacy of need for results , gets away with non compliance of certain aspects for employment law , and I''m surprised there aren''t more challenges on both sides.

On the one hand, a KPI for any Manager would be success in the relative league, and obvious failure (being bottom) could result in the contract being terminated. On the other hand a manager getting the sack , gets the sack . No period of trying to put things right, no redundancy- style at risk notices, just BANG.

Longevity of contract is a sign of this practice. NCFC favoured the rolling 12 month contract but the LMA I think have put paid to this , so managers get 3 years, and are paid up if it all goes wrong.

CEO''s however , including McNally, will enjoy full recourse to employment law if he feels the need.

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