Will it happen.

[curious yellow 184]

For Hughton''s last few games the players weren''t turning up let alone grinding out results.

Alex Neil got us promoted against the odds and deserves at least another season. We are in this position because of bad luck, awful ref decisions and trying too hard.

Alex Ferguson was in the same position once, so was Martin O''Neill at Leicester.

It is not the answer to bring in some manager that nobody else wants.

[Van wink 2,994]

morty wrote the following post at 07/03/2016 9:19 AM:

Vanwink wrote:

Morty " this new money deal won''t actually net us any more money" How did you calculate that?

The general consensus is that all that will happen is that wages will increase and transfer fees inflate.

And, all said and done, we will still be the cash poorest club in the Premiership.

We need more money but crucially we need what we have to be spent more wisely.

We would still quite possibly be the poorest club in the PL but the reality that we now face is that the gulf between ourselves and the PL will become even wider making our relative position even worse.

[morty 0]

[quote user="Vanwink"]morty wrote the following post at 07/03/2016 9:19 AM:

Vanwink wrote:

Morty " this new money deal won''t actually net us any more money" How did you calculate that?

The general consensus is that all that will happen is that wages will increase and transfer fees inflate.

And, all said and done, we will still be the cash poorest club in the Premiership.

We need more money but crucially we need what we have to be spent more wisely.

We would still quite possibly be the poorest club in the PL but the reality that we now face is that the gulf between ourselves and the PL will become even wider making our relative position even worse.[/quote]When you don''t have the money to buy what you want, you have to compromise, which is what we do in the majority of our transfers. The reason that Alex Neil has to chop and change so much is that we really don''t have enough genuine Premiership quality to play every week. We need 4 or 5 players who basically pick themselves every week.If you are talking about us being in the Championship, then that league will still remain what it is, it will be no more difficult to get out of than it was before. And the gulf, for a club of our means has always been massive anyway.Regardless of how much the Premiership gives us, the answer still comes back to extra investment to buy the quality we need to survive.

[OldRobert 38]

[quote user="morty"][quote user="Vanwink"]morty wrote the following post at 07/03/2016 9:19 AM:

Vanwink wrote:

Morty " this new money deal won''t actually net us any more money" How did you calculate that?

The general consensus is that all that will happen is that wages will increase and transfer fees inflate.

And, all said and done, we will still be the cash poorest club in the Premiership.

We need more money but crucially we need what we have to be spent more wisely.

We would still quite possibly be the poorest club in the PL but the reality that we now face is that the gulf between ourselves and the PL will become even wider making our relative position even worse.[/quote]When you don''t have the money to buy what you want, you have to compromise, which is what we do in the majority of our transfers. The reason that Alex Neil has to chop and change so much is that we really don''t have enough genuine Premiership quality to play every week. We need 4 or 5 players who basically pick themselves every week.If you are talking about us being in the Championship, then that league will still remain what it is, it will be no more difficult to get out of than it was before. And the gulf, for a club of our means has always been massive anyway.Regardless of how much the Premiership gives us, the answer still comes back to extra investment to buy the quality we need to survive.[/quote]Which we ain''t gonna get with the present board setup.................

[whoareyou? 0]

[quote user="morty"][quote user="whoareyou"]As i said before, of those 4 seasons in 5 we have been in the Premier League we have struggled and been uncompetitive in three of them.That''s why i believe the current Board will never make City a competitive consistent Premier League club.[/quote]Are we still going round and round in circles with this?The answer is "we need more money" and so far, there ain''t anyone willing to give it to us.[/quote]Despite disagreeing with me earlier, you now seem to be in agreement. We need a new Board, who can attract investment and with a different philosophy.I would never diss what Delia and her husband have achieved but to move the club onto the level of being able to compete properly in the Premier League, we need a change of ownership. Winning 6 games a season is no fun at all.

[morty 0]

Not sure how "We need more money" equates to "Sack the board?

[whoareyou? 0]

Who said sack them? They just need to realise they have taken the club as far as they can and find someone else to take it further. Not easy i know but it doesn''t appear that we are doing anything positive in that way. In fact they appear to be going backwards and appointing board members who have no experience of football at any level.

[OldRobert 38]

[quote user="morty"]Not sure how "We need more money" equates to "Sack the board?[/quote]I don''t wish to denigrate Delia and her husband either, but if we agree that more money is needed, this board seem unable to attract the necessary investment, therefore we need a board that can...................simples!

[norfolkbroadslim 223]

It''s not all about money and anyway Delia and MWJ are never going to do a Peter Grant. So how else do we address the problems? Or do we just do nothing and hope they go away? Similarly to those who hope our bad luck goes away so that we can win again?

[morty 0]

[quote user="OldRobert"][quote user="morty"]Not sure how "We need more money" equates to "Sack the board?[/quote]I don''t wish to denigrate Delia and her husband either, but if we agree that more money is needed, this board seem unable to attract the necessary investment, therefore we need a board that can...................simples![/quote]So a new board would automatically attract investment?

[Tumbleweed 106]

I''ve explained why in my opinion it is not about the money so much (and arguably our most successful years happened when we shopped in the Spurs bargain basement bucket).

My main issue with Delia and MWJ is therefore not the lack of a personal fortune but the toleration of failure and how they deal with it. Other clubs seem much more decisive and sometimes I think we need to have less culture where sentiment allows hard decisions to be delayed and more which recognises that it is a results business and action is needed as soon as material cracks start appearing. Arguably Sunderland, for instance, are only still in this league because they have had such a policy the last few years and the one per season changes have kept them up when failing to act would almost certainly have sent them down.

I am not advocating a fire at will policy, but it seems to take a heck of a lot to change things at NCFC and I''m beginning to think that this may really have held us back over the last generation or so. The current run is truly abysmal and to trot out the usual excuses of bad refereeing, individual mistakes and bad luck is to turn a wilful blind eye to rank underperformance and a failure to get the most out of what we have.

[norfolkbroadslim 223]

Well said mr tumble

[morty 0]

Yeah its been awful, what with the 4 seasons out of 5 in the Premiership, and that Wembley thing....

[93vintage 16]

[quote user="morty"][quote user="93vintage"][quote user="TIL 1010"]It is the acceptance of the situation and the big picture that sticks in my throat. We never ever learn from top to bottom at this club. my club, our club. A short time ago we gained Category One status for Colney which everybody i am sure saw as a flagship of excellent facilities and now McNally tells us it is a hinderence to signing top drawer players that needs upgrading. Well now if that is the case how the hell did it get Cat One ?The boardroom is like a revolving door .....in come the Turners who we all saw as just the kind of people we wanted, rich, locally based and fans. They left with no explanation as quick as they came. In comes Stephen Fry out goes Stephen Fry but who replaces him.....Delia''s nephew who plainly has no more business nous than a corner shop keeper. What the hell happened to Bowkett? The man who charmed the banks back in 2009 not McNally. If it is not right at the top and mistakes are not learned it seeps right down to the bottom and out onto the pitch. Jeeesus i could write a blog [:D] but enough for now.[/quote]I think you''re in the right area when you criticise the owners/board. Part of the problem is that Delia and Michael don''t seem to have it in them on their own to run the show and get to grips with understanding the points in my earlier post regarding transfer strategy.Following on from this is the fact that our owners seem to leave general transfer/football strategy wholly up to one person, ie McNally. There''s not much evidence that Bowkett or anyone else on the board have provided much in the way of footballing input, it''s largely one person calling the shots.It would be fine if McNally got things largely right and we were sat in Bournmouth''s position thinking about who we''re going buy next season. But this hasn''t happened.All of the above people have done a lot right. But it''s the things they''ve done poorly, in some cases very poorly, which is what''s frustrating many fans.[/quote]So 4 seasons in the Premiership in the last 5 couldn''t be considered that we / the board / the club have got a fair few things right?As far as I am aware, McNally picked Lambert and Alex Neil, he was over ruled and the rest of the board picked Neil Adams.I''m not calling him some sort of God, like a few dafties imply he is treated by some fans, but I would say that he has got a fair few things right.Delia and Michael pretty much admitted they didn''t have the nous to run this properly, which is why they employed McNally. And I would venture that since he has been at the club, could be viewed as a fairly successful period,[/quote]Going back to my previous post a couple of pages ago, I highlighted a change in transfer strategy post-Lambert.You can say that McNally did well picking Lambert and did well getting Alex Neil in, and has done a lot of other good things. But having a flawed transfer strategy will eventually undo any good work due to it''s pernicious negative nature (similar to what happened under Roeder).If we don''t take action now then I fear that the 4 Premier League seasons in 5 ratio will decrease substantially.What worries me is that McNally has not even noticed where we''ve gone wrong, and hence won''t take action to dig us out of the hole that we''re in. Others on the board should have warned him, but presumably didn''t because they were similarly ignorant of the issues involved.

[Van wink 2,994]

Money isn''t the begining and the end here, we have spent money on recruitment but often squandered it on the wrong players.

A club with such a low relative budget needs to give its recruitment team and strategy the highest priority, we have failed to do this.

[PurpleCanary 5,563]

[quote user="93vintage"]

Since Lambert left, the transfer market mantra of ''Young & Hungry'' has been discarded in favour of ''We don''t need to sell''. Fans once sneered at the notion of buying older ''hired hand'' types of player, through fear they would be too comfortable and less motivated, only interested in the fat paycheck used to lure them to a club. Far better to buy the cream of the lower leagues who''d have a point to prove and hence be willing to put the effort in.[/quote]The facts do not support the idea there ever was such a long-sighted policy under Lambert when we were in the Premier League, or when we were in the Championship.In his first season (in League One) he signed Russell Martin, McNamee, Whitbread and Oli Johnson. You can argue that McNamee were youngish and possibly hungry, but very much players at that level who were cheaply discarded as we moved on up.In his second season (the Championship) he signed Crofts, Fox, Surman, Ward, Steve Smith, Ruddy, Simeon Jackson, Barnett, Wilbraham and Tierney. Of those Ruddy fits the young, hungry and talented enough description, but none of the others. It is actually a list full of gnarled old hands. Surman was already in his mid-20s then. And only Ruddy and Surman are still playing in the Premier League.In his third season (the PL) he signed Vaughan (aged 22), Morison (27), Elliott Bennett (22), Bradley Johnson (24), Pilkington (23) and Ayala (20), and in the winter, when we were seemingly well-placed, Howson (23) and Ryan Bennett (21). To be fair there are some youngsters there but old hands as well, particularly in the crucial summer window. And this was our first season back in the PL, with a limited amount of money to spend, so buying some youngsters as well as older players was a financial necessity. Again, significantly, of those youngsters only Ryan Bennett and Howson are playing in the PL.---PS I would like to apologise to posters for reminding them of some players in those lists whose names they may well have been trying very hard to forget.[;)]

[Tumbleweed 106]

Don''t you think Morty that 4 out of 5 years in the PL and the Wembley trip are indeed the sort of emotional responses which can generate an overly sentimental approach to some issues? We feel AN deserves time because of that great day and the lead up to it. But remember also that on some occasions we were poised to really bag automatic and it didn''t happen, so there is often a different lens to look at things through.

When you look at this season in my opinion we have greatly underperformed, and considering past triumphs can distort one''s view on how to rectify matters.

The difficult question is when that happens. There are some who hold the view that after such a poor run that time is now, and presumably that determination takes into account whether they believe things can be turned round. If you conclude that this is not possible then you have to contemplate a managerial change. Last May is already in footballing terms ancient history and arguably irrelevant to our current situation.

I seem to recall that Malky and Iwan didn''t get their chances at the Prem under Worthy back in 2004. No sentimentality there and they may have been the right decisions. But in both cases they had been key parts of promotion winning teams. That didn''t guarantee them a squad place and in my view Wembley 2015 should not cloud objective assessment of Alex Neil''s current performance.

[Green and Yellow 0]

Yeah its been awful, what with the 4 seasons out of 5 in the Premiership, and that Wembley thing.

And that Morty is why the board is happy and content. Happy clappers.

[morty 0]

[quote user=" Green and Yellow"]Yeah its been awful, what with the 4 seasons out of 5 in the Premiership, and that Wembley thing.

And that Morty is why the board is happy and content. Happy clappers.[/quote]C0ck[Y]

[Green and Yellow 0]

Morty. I might be a COok but I don''t bottle a bet.

[morty 0]

[quote user=" Green and Yellow"]Morty. I might be a COok but I don''t bottle a bet.[/quote][:D]