Out of sheer curiousity.....

[Unhinged Canary 375]

This isn''t a dig or a moan at anyone, just something that always pops into my head at times like these, and I''m genuinely interested what peoples thoughts are.Regardless of fee, but at the moment its the 13,14, 15mil or whatever it is for McCormack (Sp?)I just wonder what peoples issue is with how much we spend on players when we do. If the club is prepared to spend x amount of pounds on someone, why do some people get their knickers in such a twist about it? It''s not like it''s your money is it? The club wouldn''t spend x amount of pounds on someone if it was going to financially cripple us. Contrary to popular belief, I''m sure we do have people at the club who know what they''re doing with regards to money and such. It just always amazes me how some people talk about the money involved for transfers like it''s coming directly out of their back pocket. I know indirectly some of it is with season tickets, shirts sales etc etc... But that''s by the by.Also, as a slightly connected side point. Why do people get so concerned about age and ''re-sale value'' for players. Can''t a player just be bought for what they can do now? Like many other posters have said, if RM comes in for say 15 million quid, scores 20 goals this season and gets us promoted, then surely his cost has been justified? Maybe he''ll stay for a few more seasons and score 10 more a season for another 2-3 years. So what if there''s no sell-on. Can''t we just buy someone for what they can do now, regardless of worrying what they might be worth in the future?Anyway, that''s my thoughts. As I said, not a dig or attack at anyone. Just thoughts that I''ve had for a while and never got around to posting.Probably because I''m very lazy and can never be arsed to type this much.....This is definitely my longest post, EVER! Yay!OTBC[<:o)]  

[Move Klose 303]

I think the problem is people know we haven''t loads of money to throw about so I think people worry its a gamble. Because like Naismith he''s 29 highly doubt full either of them will be sold on for any profit. Clubs like ours like to be signing players of around the 18-25 hope they have a great season and can be sold on for huge profit like Swansea did with Bony. We kind of did it with Fer, Snodgrass, Redmond and probably will do with Brady too. Was probably the plan for Wolfswinkel but didn''t quite pan out that way.

[Yellowbeagle 0]

I''ve been there a few times now over close calls with the clubs future we even came close under this ownership. I''d prefer not to see that again. But mainly we all know we don''t have endless money so to spend such a vast amount on a older player who doesn''t even fit with how we play seems a bad use of those resources.

[Chemical Bro 0]

Because it''s something to moan about

[kick it off 2,062]

Probably because we''re financially limited as a club and if we spend £15mill on McC then presumably we won''t be able to afford to bring many others in. If he scores 20+ and we go up then fine, but it is a risk to put all our eggs in one basket, and some people think the money would be better spent bringing in a striker + strengthening another position. Klose cost us 8 mill, or thereabouts and Afobe cost Bournemouth 10 mill. If we could get a similar calibre CB to Klose (I know we''re not in the Prem etc, but humour me here, if we could) and someone like Afobe in for similar money, which would you prefer? One aging Ross McC or ship a couple of fringe players to add to the pot and get Afobe with his best years ahead of him plus another classy CB to play alongside Timm?

That''s why people get frustrated. We have limited resources and if the reported fee is right, it''s potentially a bad use of those resources, plus no-one likes to see their club get ripped off.

[Hairy Canary 753]

We absolutely have to get in at least one striker, even if we do nothing else.

I''m sure the club know that to go with just Jerome as a credible striker for a whole 46 game season would be suicide so I''m confident one will be on his way. Having said that I would have liked some movement before the start of the season which to be honest is beginning to look unlikely.

[Barking Mad Barclay Boy 13]

Great Post O.P i 100% agree with you.

[jeagle 0]

Its always been thought that young players aren''t attracted to Norwich.

Whereas older (28+ - albeit not that this is old in the grand scheme of things) players with young families love the area, proximity to the coast etc.

I guess what I am saying is Norwich probably isn''t viewed as a stepping stone, both in life and football...

[Fuzzar 1,861]

Great post kick it off. 100% agree with you.

[Chip20 69]

Should never have bought Huckerby. Feck all resale value...

[Chip20 69]

Lost a fair bit on that Roberts fellow and his buddy McKay as well...

[kick it off 2,062]

[quote user="Chip20"]Lost a fair bit on that Roberts fellow and his buddy McKay as well...[/quote]

Oh yeah, I forgot Roberts, McKay and Iwan had cost us 15million each. Spending 1.5mill or 500k and not having resale value is slightly different to doubling your record ever transfer fee, and spending 15 million on a player who will be 30 when the season starts. I''m not trying to say that your point is invalid, but you''re making it using very poor examples that don''t really stand up to comparison.

[Chip20 69]

[quote user="kick it off"][quote user="Chip20"]Lost a fair bit on that Roberts fellow and his buddy McKay as well...[/quote]

Oh yeah, I forgot Roberts, McKay and Iwan had cost us 15million each. Spending 1.5mill or 500k and not having resale value is slightly different to doubling your record ever transfer fee, and spending 15 million on a player who will be 30 when the season starts. I''m not trying to say that your point is invalid, but you''re making it using very poor examples that don''t really stand up to comparison.[/quote]

Was £15m the going rate for a decent striker back then? Are you saying the outlay for those players was peanuts for us in those days? Was the broad principle not similar? Ok, the McKay example was poor (I think he ''only'' cost quarter of a million). But Hucks and Iwan were still a very significant investment for a club that had not benefited from any TV millions back then and both were heading into the twilight years of their careers. I don''t see how either would have had huge re-sale value. The money that has flowed through NCFC coffers over the past five years massively dwarfs what went through the same coffers in the same period before we invested in Roberts and Huckerby. I''m just agreeing with the OP''s point that, in football, one doesn''t necessarily always invest with an eye to making a profit. One invests with an eye to achieving a goal (pardon the pun). Why so much focus on potential re-sale value all of the time? Why not just purchase a player for what they can achieve for the Club?

[Indy_Bones 444]

[quote user="Chip20"]Was £15m the going rate for a decent striker back then? Are you saying the outlay for those players was peanuts for us in those days? Was the broad principle not similar? Ok, the McKay example was poor (I think he ''only'' cost quarter of a million). But Hucks and Iwan were still a very significant investment for a club that had not benefited from any TV millions back then and both were heading into the twilight years of their careers. I don''t see how either would have had huge re-sale value.[/quote]Iwan cost us 850k, at a time when players like Sheringham and Holdsworth were going for 4 mil and overseas players like Hasselbaink cost Leeds about 2.5 mil, so a significantly smaller figure that we paid for Iwan than the going rate for strikers.Also, Hucks joined us aged 27 - almost 3 years younger than McCormack would be, and again we paid around 1 mil for his services, when teams like Arsenal were dropping 17 mil on Reyes and Blackburn were paying 7.5 mil for Barry Ferguson!Yes, we didn''t have huge funding (hence why we needed help with Hucks transfer fee!), but compared to what other people around us were paying and the quality of player we got for the money, it WAS peanuts in overall terms.With McCormack we are talking about DOUBLING our record transfer fee and probably paying more for the privilege than it''s cost Man Utd to sign Ibrahimovic (even though we would never pay 220-250k per week, and Ibra would never join us) and you don''t think we should be raising a few eyebrows - especially when McCormack doesn''t really seem to fit into AN''s system unless we''re dropping Wes/Naismith...

[Essjayess 307]

I see nothing wrong in Alexs desire to sign players at age 29 such as Naismith and McCormack (should he be the one) as long as he tempered that with also signing young promising players who could  likely fetch  much bigger fees if sold in future seasons. In Maddison and Canos, two exciting 19 year olds, i think Alex has done exactly that. If we were devoid of such signings as those, then id be more likely to whine .

[Chip20 69]

Indy, you appear to be referring to the going rate for strikers in Premier League teams with years of Premier League income behind them at the time. I am not talking about overall terms; I am talking about specifically in our terms. Getting on for £1m was not peanuts to us at the time. The point I am trying to get across is that NCFC (following a decade of dwindling income in the Championship) invested fairly heavily (for us, at that point in time) in players with a fair few miles on the clock specifically with the target of getting out of the Championship in mind and b0llox to their potential re-sale value. It didn''t look to me as though these players were bought with an eye on making a tidy profit from their sales in the future once they had done their bit (or not). Sometimes we should invest (in a careful and targeted manner) to succeed; not always to balance the books and I think it is unfair to criticise the Club for doing so.

[Indy_Bones 444]

[quote user="Chip20"]The point I am trying to get across is that NCFC (following a decade of dwindling income in the Championship) invested fairly heavily (for us, at that point in time) in players with a fair few miles on the clock specifically with the target of getting out of the Championship in mind and b0llox to their potential re-sale value.[/quote]But NEITHER of them were even close in value to being our record transfer fee, and Hucks was 27 ffs, arguably in or close to his prime!Only 2 years before we signed Iwan, we shelled out 1mil on Mike Sheron!In truth, we only started spending significantly from about 2011 onwards and at no point since then have we been even close to spending 12-15 mil on a player who will be 30 next month and has only ever scored well outside the Prem. As pointed out already, the potential outlay we could put on McCormack could be greated than Man Utd are paying Ibrahimovic for a season, and it''s not even funny the gulf in ability between the two of them, and whilst of course we could never have signed Ibra (nor would he have come here), the idea that we''re going to spend more on McCormack is beyond madness to a whole new level of complete freaking insanity!!!

[Tetteys Jig 851]

To answer OP, I think it''s because we come on here to debate about all things Norwich City and feel entitled to our opinions.

Now I agree it shouldn''t phase us how much we spend on particular targets, we should simply be worried about the football. The problem is, we''ve seen what wasting money can do at other clubs in particular and worry that perhaps we may end up like them one day (looking at Leeds for example). We''ve seen it at Norwich some years to an extent as well.

While none of us can claim to be experts in running a football club and within the 4 walls of Carrow Road (think the two may be mutually exclusive anyway...) but Football is a very front facing and interesting business and some of us may have opinions on how we feel the club is being run. Things like player age versus fee etc are quite simple business concepts to get a basic grasp of understanding on and people have opinions either way on how long or short term we should be building our recruitment strategy.

For what it''s worth, I think we have a nice back up plan if we fail to get promoted in the next two years with the promising bunch of youth coming through that we can and should afford to give an instant prem return a real go if we can find the right players to increase our chances of success. I certainly don''t fear for our immediate future at this level if we get stuck here as a Villa or Newcastle fan may do.

Some clubs around the world are fan owned which means their opinions do really matter quite literally. I''d say that the opinions of supporters contributes massively in all aspects of the way Norwich are run too even if we haven''t got controlling stake in the club.

[Chip20 69]

Those are mainly fair points, Indy. But then we''ve never even been close (to the best of our knowledge) to spending 12-15 million on a player who will be 23 or 24 or 25 next month either.  They may not have been NCFC transfer records but they were still substantial investments for the time. The figures have only gone up so dramatically in the past four or five years because the income (from TV money, season tickets/gate receipts and player sales) has rocketed.

I think the point still stands that in sport you occasionally have to make a risky investment in a targeted manner to succeed in your aim and not purely with a view to making a tidy profit (or even to minimise your losses) if it doesn''t work out. The comparison with Ibrahimovic actually seems to bear out the OP''s point, the respective contract prices vs their remaining years in the game notwithstanding. Or do you think United are looking to recoup a good portion of their expenses on Ibrahimovic when he moves on? Presumably they have purchased him to do a specific job for them now; not with an eye on cashing in if he doesn''t have the expected impact.

As others have pointed out, though, I doubt very much that we will be shelling out the quoted transfer fee and the speculated wages. I am confident that if McCormack does sign for us it will be for a fee we can afford and within a wage structure we can afford. I suspect we would just be replacing Redmond''s fee and wages with McCormack''s. Alex Neil is better placed than I am to determine whether he can utilise McCormack in a system that suits the rest of the squad at his disposal and whether that offsets the loss of Redmond''s contribution adequately.

[Indy_Bones 444]

[quote user="Chip20"]The comparison with Ibrahimovic actually seems to bear out the OP''s point, the respective contract prices vs their remaining years in the game notwithstanding. Or do you think United are looking to recoup a good portion of their expenses on Ibrahimovic when he moves on? Presumably they have purchased him to do a specific job for them now; not with an eye on cashing in if he doesn''t have the expected impact.[/quote]The key differences being:1) Ibra is so much better than McCormack from an ability perspective, it''s not even a competition, yet we''d potentially be paying MORE for McCormack - in what world does that make sense???2) Man Utd can afford to pay big money on transfer fees and/or wages - we can''t3) Worst case for Man Utd is that Ibra has a poor season and they release on a free next year and they still have more than enough money to repeat ad nauseum for the next 10 years or more, however we''d probably be stuck paying 30-50k a week wages for McCormack on likely a 3 year contract, with the risk that if as with RvW no suitors come in, we''ve got a crippling wage on a player who wasn''t worth what we paid to begin with and will likely have to move on a cut price deal in the process, AND we don''t have the financial support that the top sides in the prem do!

[Lessingham Canary 108]

Tettey''s Jig wrote ***** POST OF THE DAY ********

To answer OP, I think it''s because we come on here to debate about all things Norwich City and feel entitled to our opinions.

Now I agree it shouldn''t phase us how much we spend on particular targets, we should simply be worried about the football. The problem is, we''ve seen what wasting money can do at other clubs in particular and worry that perhaps we may end up like them one day (looking at Leeds for example). We''ve seen it at Norwich some years to an extent as well.

While none of us can claim to be experts in running a football club and within the 4 walls of Carrow Road (think the two may be mutually exclusive anyway...) but Football is a very front facing and interesting business and some of us may have opinions on how we feel the club is being run. Things like player age versus fee etc are quite simple business concepts to get a basic grasp of understanding on and people have opinions either way on how long or short term we should be building our recruitment strategy.

For what it''s worth, I think we have a nice back up plan if we fail to get promoted in the next two years with the promising bunch of youth coming through that we can and should afford to give an instant prem return a real go if we can find the right players to increase our chances of success. I certainly don''t fear for our immediate future at this level if we get stuck here as a Villa or Newcastle fan may do.

Some clubs around the world are fan owned which means their opinions do really matter quite literally. I''d say that the opinions of supporters contributes massively in all aspects of the way Norwich are run too even if we haven''t got controlling stake in the club.