The Transfer Committee and our future

[Yellow and Green 334]

Gutted about McNally leaving, however there was an interesting point on Canary Call (of all places!) which highlight, in my eyes, McNally''s only major failure: recruitment.

Since the Transfer Committee was created 2 years ago, we have signed the following players:

Adams:

Grabban

Lafferty

O''Neil

Cuellar

Jerome

McGrandles

VOO

Thompson

Miquel

Neil:

Andreu

Dorrans

Mulumbu

Brady

Kean

Pinto

Godfrey

Klose

Naismith

Adams

Maddison

The point that was made was, ''Which of these players have actually improved Norwich City Football Club?''

The answer they gave was short: Robbie Brady.

Of the other potential candidates, I would say that:

Klose looks great, but only played a few good games for us. He will probably be off next year.

Pinto looks OK but hasn''t really done anything to suggest that he has improved us.

O''Neil has fought well but wouldn''t challenge our original midfield duo of Tettey and Howson.

Jerome was good in the Championship

Grabban was good in the Championship and we sold him on for a profit.

We have signed a few young players, who could be good, but they also haven''t done anything for us yet.

It is a depressing list to look at and highlights a few issues with our set-up.

1) Scouting. The chief scout/head of recruitment position has been chopped and changed for a few seasons and has denied us any chance to get a network established. This has restricted us each time we have got into the premier league and is the sole reason why we have got relegated this year. Our current players have worked hard but it is a simple lack of quality why we can''t score goals or keep a clean sheet.

2) Personnel. Are Ricky Martin, Lee Darnborough/Barry Simmonds/whoever good enough to identify and attract players to our club? What experience do they have that led McNally/Delia to believe that this would help us compete with the best in the world? We have to be so much more ambitious and hire experienced, proven staff who have the knowledge and contacts to attract the best players to our club.

Being tight: The summer was, quite frankly, embarrassing. Every Norwich fan could have told them that we need two centre backs and a decent centre forward. They knew that, surely, however the manner that they went about it was so amateurish and time wasting.

The Robbie Brady transfer really highlighted the ridiculous nature of our transfer strategy. I''m glad Steve Bruce publicly laughed at us because it showed them up for being tight penny pinchers. The fact that we lost on so many players is one reason: money. Now I''m proud that we are debt free and living within our means, but not investing in the summer cost us £170 million next season and put the future of our club in jeopardy.

Organisation: It also seemed like we were simply going from one target to the next - receiving rejection after rejection. It almost seemed like we had gone through all of the names on the list and were scratching our heads thinking up more names.

I partially put the summer down to Alex Neil''s inexperience and lack of time to identify players who have enough quality to play in the premier league, however this is exactly what this committee was set up to do - ensure that, even if the manager changed, the club would have a team to provide consistency in this area.

I thought McNally was great for us, however this is the one, important area where he failed us.

We seem to have an annoying tendency to appoint from within, instead of poaching the best talent available to us. We did it with Doncaster, Gunn and Adams and it has screwed us over every time. It screams of ''Little old Norwich''.

The only defence I can think of is that it''s the manager who has the final call on transfers, however they completely failed to deliver on AN''s top targets and were inevitably left him with second best - 4 months too late.

I hope that our next Chief Executive has the contacts within the game to identify the best staff available to us and take us to the next level.

[Katie Borkins 1]

a) Hindsight is a wonderful thing

b) Some of the players named are long term investments (Maddison, McGrandles, who I believe subsequently broke his leg, Godfrey, Adams)

c) If you look at the list of players Neil has signed, without knowing how things would turn out, I think most City fans would be okay with it. It is only with hindsight that the list looks disappointing because of performances, which are about tactics and game plans as much as individual player ability.

I think it''s easy to call people "penny pinchers" when it isn''t your money that you''re spending, but having been so close to administration in 2009-10, I am not surprised the current management team have taken some persuading to loosen the purse strings.

And as Darren Eadie said on Radio Norfolk, it''s about wages - if you pay the wages, players will join you.  Our wage structure is in place to safeguard the club''s long term viability, i.e. we have chosen to gamble with what we''ve got rather than gamble by pushing the boat out.  I suppose it depends on your risk/reward balance but I''m still okay with that strategy.

[king canary 7,606]

It is BS to say that it is only in hindsight that our dealings look poor- they looked poor in the summer and quite a few people said it then...

[Tetteys Jig 830]

The wage structure is too tight and was last time we went down. A bit more Ambition as opposed to prudence and we''d still be in that Premiership about to see £150m come through the coffers. £20m and we''d have Afobe and Koulibaly as opposed to Bassong and Jerome. I don''t think that would have been that bad a risk either as both would have sold for decent amouts if the worst happened.

[Yellow and Green 334]

@Katie

a) It''s absolutely not hindsight. As mentioned above, everyone was highly unimpressed about the summer dealings.

Like-wise, I seem to remember people being sufficiently underwhelmed when the ''Football Committee'' was announced.

b) I have no qualms about the long term investments - they are a low-risk investment that could pay off massively in the future. However, the original point was asking whether they have improved NCFC this season... They haven''t benefited us at all this season - when it mattered.

c) Yes, if we had signed them at the start of the season. However we wasted half the season before we invested the money we had.

The strategy to get was penny pinching - and time wasting. The assembly of the Transfer Committee was also penny-pinching - going for our Academy Manager and Burnley''s failed Head of Recruitment. Where was the ambition there?

I do wish DM had stayed to put this right. He was one to actively try to learn from his mistakes and this would have been the obvious area.