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BarclayWazza

An open letter to Delia

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After nearly 20 years as a season ticket holder and a further 10 as a member, today is the day I''ve decided enough is enough.  And while you (or Tom) sit as owner of this club, I shall not be returning.  You''ve somehow enjoyed the unwavering support of the fans for the last 20 years and I can say on reflection that while you should be thanked for investing to keep the club afloat, aside from Bowkett/McNally/Lambert, I cant think of any appointment you''ve made which has shown any kind of business or footballing acumen. Whether its the appointments of the luvvies (Stephen Fry/Ed Balls), the clueless (Hamilton/Grant/Roeder) or the sentimental (Gunn/Adams) while blindly backing managers months after most clubs would have sacked them, the club seems to be run at your whim. You''re a cook who''s talent in life is not running a football club. Actually, extend that to any business. And while you inexplicably manage to sell out Carrow Road, more through the blind loyalty of some and the "what else am I going to do on a Saturday" of others, you''re not being challenged.  And this is where I make my stand.

This season has been a catalogue of situations which show how out of touch you and the club have become. 

Firstly, your refusal to see that football is changing and that to succeed at a club you need additional investment that your cook books cannot cover WILL condemn us to at best a mean position of Championship mid table as other clubs overtake us. I mean, with a bit of investment Sheffield Wednesday are now a team that can beat us 5-1.  And should we go up, with the lack of investment and football knowledge within the club, we''re on a hiding to nothing.  Furthermore, your insistance of grooming Nephew Tom to the top seat can only make this worse.

Secondly, selling the announcement that you''d "managed" to freeze season ticket prices is taking the mickey out of the fans. I think we were in the top 10 in the PL for most expensive season ticket and the most expensive this season. The least I expected was a freeze.  But to sell it as a positive is taking the fans for mugs.  Not forgetting the FA Cup ticket debacle.  If that was Jez''s doing, its another poor appointment.

Thirdly, your unequivocal backing for Alex Neil. For me this epitomises everything that is wrong with you at the club.  Hughton was terrible for the club, he stayed probably a season longer than he should, and by the time you did sack him it was too late to do anything about staying up. Neil Adams should never have been appointed and its a joke that if after Europe was scoured he was the the best available.  Then, yes Alex Neil did amazingly in the playoff season but it soon became very clear he was out of his depth in the PL.  The fact he still has unequivocal backing is a disgrace.  But then again, I dont trust you to appoint a decent alternative.  We''ve had an amazing opportunity provided to us over the past 5 seasons.  Bowkett/McNally/Lambert did an amazing job, clearing the debt and enabling us to go out and invest in the squad (albeit badly under CH/AN).  And just as we sleepwalked to League One before them, we appear to be en route to doing the same again now.

So for now, until something fundamental changes, I''m sadly deciding that someone else can have the opportunity to pay top whack prices for my seat.  I just wonder how much of a waiting list there will be.

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[quote user="Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB"]Alex Neil is merely a symptom of our woes, Delia and MWJ are the problem, time for them to move on methinks.....[/quote]Spot on 

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Wouldnt even bother wasting your time mate. Might aswell speak to the wall. They don''t wanna sack him coz he''s a lovely man who''s really trying. Sack him tonight. Give it to Rowett, let him make up his mind on these players and let''s start planning now for august.

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I don''t know why people write open letters. Why not actually write to Delia instead of posting on a forum she probably doesn''t read ?

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This is spot on, I hope she reads it and fully reflects on its contents, she has served her time and its time to pass it on to professional directors, ones of the ilk we had for a short while Bowkett/Mcnally, until then its more misery ahead

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Football isn''t changing a great deal now, it underway a change from a sport to an entertainment business a good few years ago and if you haven''t seen Delia displaying any business acumen then frankly you must have been looking the other way.She is now running two successful businesses, one which she built from scratch and the other which she rescued from a big debt and possible bankruptcy which is now debt free and one of a tiny group of football clubs that has actually made a real profit.All businesses lose customers but most also gain new ones. In the case of NCFC season tickets I think there will be plenty of people happy to see existing season ticket holders give up - you may not be one of the quiet ones but the Carrow Road crowd needs a shot of freah blood almost as badly as the team. Its getting ridiculous quiet there, and I''m not just talking about this season.

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I don''t understand the one sided blind loyalty to managers above every other member of staff and group of fans.

It hasn''t, over the years helped us attract more established and proven names, it hasn''t stopped managers who do well from quitting for other clubs and it hasn''t lead to us being established in the PL.

I don''t understand why people get so sentimental about one, extremely well paid person when they lose their job for under performing. Background staff who live paycheck to paycheck lose their jobs when the club under performs...nobody cares, players get let go or sold....people care little, a manager gets sacked and everyone acts like the sacking club has committed some harsh atrocity.

AN or any other manager is not as important as the club. We shouldn''t be giving him more time incase he eventually gets it right, we owe him nothing and if he was successful and an Everton/WHU approached him he''d be off in a flash.

Unless, as I''ve been suspecting for a while that the Board are happy for us to remain in the Championship as long as we pass the ball in pretty triangles and bring through some youth then he needs to be sacked and soon. He simply isn''t good enough, he might be one day, but he''s obviously a slow learner and we can''t continue to let the club suffer just for his sake or some arbitrary and misplaced sense of loyalty.

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You''re on a roll creative midfielder.

The board started planning for the future long before this result. They cant afford not to have two plans in place. One if we''re promoted and one for another season in the champs.

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As far as this being a successful business - the club was run as a shambles, relying on sales of land bought by Chase and an ever growing overdraft. We limped into League One amid threats of administration and its only the acumen of Bowkett and McNally and a run on the pitch that was frankly unexpected that turned things around. Now those names are out of the door its heading that way again. No successful business persists with a consistently underperforming manager.

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This Chase nonsense is the biggest red herring ever posted. It was 20 years ago. Football has changed beyond belief since then and the owners of the last 20 years have guided the club through that change.

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nutty nigel wrote the following post at 2017-03-05 12:51 AM:

This Chase nonsense is the biggest red herring ever posted. It was 20 years ago. Football has changed beyond belief since then and the owners of the last 20 years have guided the club through that change.

The current owners have stumbled from one disaster to another, and do not appear to have guided the club to anywhere other than being a sinking ship on more than one occasion, particularly in the last two years! History is history, no one should look back, only forward, football is moving at a very fast pace, and you either want to be part of that, or you don''t. There is little point in taking a club to the brink because you don''t like what''s happening in the game, as our owners media interview suggested recently. You don''t like it, then get out of the kitchen and let someone else take over. Chase was a very poor owner, but the current ones are doing themselves no favours with their stubborn intent, after all, as rightly suggested in other posts today, they are mere custodians of the supporters football club. Without them, there would be no club, and no club for them to own.

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Of course it has, and I''m no Chase apologist. However bar appointing McNally/Bowkett, who i consider responsible for the relative recent success on and off the pitch, she did preside over us dropping to league one for the only time in my life time and the current failure to consolidate on our recent success.

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[quote user="BarclayWazza"]As far as this being a successful business - the club was run as a shambles, relying on sales of land bought by Chase and an ever growing overdraft. We limped into League One amid threats of administration and its only the acumen of Bowkett and McNally and a run on the pitch that was frankly unexpected that turned things around. Now those names are out of the door its heading that way again. No successful business persists with a consistently underperforming manager.[/quote]That may be your view but I''m not sure who this consistently underperforming manager is - if you mean AN he is most certainly not managing the business and he''s not been around for that long so I assume you mean Delia.Businesses

succeed or fail purely and simply on their financial performance, and

that is exactly my point - no matter what you think of how the club is

run or how the team is performing on the pitch the financial performance

of the club has unquestionably been in a different league (apologies

for the mixed metaphor!) under Delia.Chase may have made some

astute land purchases and the football wasn''t too bad either but

financially his track record is that he ran us into the ground. Delia, by

contrast, has cleared the debt, massively increased the revenue and the

asset base, and also turned a profit - that is a successful business and despite some embarassment this afternoon I would say its financial prospects for the next few years are still pretty rosy compared to the majority of UK businesses.

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]

The board started planning for the future long before this result. [/quote]If there was forward planning by the Board then we would have had a replacement for Hughton sorted out long before it was too late, we wouldn''t have had either Gunn or Adams as panic appointments and Neil would have gone either midway through last season or at the latest, before the transfer window in January.As far as I can see there is absolutely no forward planning at all, we don''t even have one plan let alone two.There is only lurching from one bad decision to another in the hope that they might get lucky and it''ll be alright in the end.Once in a blue moon, like every losing gambler, they get lucky (Lambert) but most of the time they don''t.

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Agree that shes built the non core revenue stream over the last 20 years but before the Bowkett/McNally era we were far from successful on and off the pitch. Bowkett famously negotiated deals with the lenders to ensure we didnt go under. And only at the last AGM was it announced that we were due to lose something like 10 million without PL football.

By unsuccessful managers, I mean sticking with Hughton/Neil for much longer than we should.

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20 years ago the Evening news ran the headline "Let Chase know it''s time to go"...are they feeling brave enough to do something similar for Delia now?

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Creative Midfielder wrote the following post at 2017-03-05 1:12 AM:

BarclayWazza wrote:

As far as this being a successful business - the club was run as a shambles, relying on sales of land bought by Chase and an ever growing overdraft. We limped into League One amid threats of administration and its only the acumen of Bowkett and McNally and a run on the pitch that was frankly unexpected that turned things around. Now those names are out of the door its heading that way again. No successful business persists with a consistently underperforming manager.

That may be your view but I''m not sure who this consistently underperforming manager is - if you mean AN he is most certainly not managing the business and he''s not been around for that long so I assume you mean Delia.

Businesses succeed or fail purely and simply on their financial performance, and that is exactly my point - no matter what you think of how the club is run or how the team is performing on the pitch the financial performance of the club has unquestionably been in a different league (apologies for the mixed metaphor!) under Delia.

Chase may have made some astute land purchases and the football wasn''t too bad either but financially his track record is that he ran us into the ground. Delia, by contrast, has cleared the debt, massively increased the revenue and the asset base, and also turned a profit - that is a successful business and despite some embarassment this afternoon I would say its financial prospects for the next few years are still pretty rosy compared to the majority of UK businesses.

Delia did not clear the debt - the debt was restructured with the bank by McNally and Bowkett. How has she increased the revenue - the football under Lambert, and successive promotions, and time in the PL increased the income. And how do you know the finances are pretty rosy - on the contrary, the fact we had to sell to buy should give you an insight into that statement. The longer the club languishes in the championship, the revenue will decrease, particularly when you have less income and players taking £70,000 weekly in wages, as some at this level, and this club, do.

That is quite simple in business terms. Undoubtedly we will be looking for another CEO and chairman to restructure forthcoming debt, because as sure as eggs are eggs, it will happen unless the current owners wise up to football ownership and management.

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And looking forward, shes aiming to run the club in line with her outdated opinion of how football should be. Fail to move with the times, you get left behind.

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We''ll of course if the good things and success on and off the pitch that have happened during Delias time have nothing to do with her just the people she appointed then the same must be said of Chase.

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It was absolutely no coincidence that our rapid rise from League One happened during NcNally''s tenure. He totally revolutionised the ways the club went about their business. Whilst not every one''s cup of tea, he treated us as customers and tried to get as much money out of them as possible, whilst streamlining other business operations. And he and Bowkett turned the finances around incredibly and put us in the decent financial position we are now. This had absolutely nothing to do with Delia Smith - McNally turned us into a ruthless force both on and off the pitch, with the sacking of Gunn and quick appointment being a prime example. We were heading into football and financial oblivion after years of mismanagement at board level - and we could head there again without a forward thinking Chief Exec. We need a character to challenge the views of the owners who seem perfectly happy to run a mediocre football team.

We should be thankful for the owners helping out 20 years ago, but for me their lack of football knowledge has been holding back the club. Apart from Worthy for a period,, Lambert and Neil momentarily, what success have they actually had? Roeder, Grant, Hamilton were all mistakes, Adams and Gunn were odd and unsucceful appointments and Neil is taking us backwards.

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So if the success we enjoyed under people the owners appointed has nothing to do with them how on earth does what''s happening now have anything to do with them?

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Maybe this thread isn''t for you nutty, I can see that it angers you that posters dare to criticise the owners. Whilst not being a ''Delia hater'' as you put it on anothe thread, and very much appreciate what they''ve done for the club, I believe we will never kick on with them as owners. Whilst some may just be happy with mid table mediocrity, I like to dream that one day we could establish ourselves as a top flight team.

Yes, they appointed McNally and deserve credit for this, but the club''s turnaround was his doing. The owners have been responsible for one or two managers being given far too much time despite failure based on what I assume is a naive hope they''ll turn it around or because of sentimentality of past achievements.

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Spend 50 million go bankrupt like Rangers .. that makes sense lol ..you can''t buy a team unless you are Chelsea man utd arsenal blah blah..

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Every thread is for all of us Hoola.

My view is that you can''t pick and choose what parts of the last 20 years have anything to do with the owners.

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