Declining ambitions

[JF 694]

westcoastcanary wrote the following post at 02/01/2018 4:42 PM:

" ..... quick growth on weak foundations ....."

Sums up the Lambert years perfectly. And we''ve been paying the price ever since.

Please tell me this is a joke post!? The Lambert Year’s saved this club from financial ruin. The owners were seriously considering selling the stadium to survive

[Highland Canary 76]

It must be an ironic post JF. I am constantly amazed by the little ole Norwich posts on here. It’s no wonder the board appears to have no ambition since it seems to match that of many of our supporters, certainly on this site. No wonder we won’t be able to maintain the services of Maddison et al. What a shambles.

[Badger 2,413]

[quote user="JF"]1. I don''t think that we have to sell anyone vaguely decent, although accept that player sales will be necessary.

So your plan is that we will be self sufficient by selling the shit players that are costing us a fortune and can’t get in our team, whilst hanging on to our bright prospects but paying them far less than they can earn elsewhere? I can see a few minor flaws in this plan. Firstly we’ve been trying to get shot of the shit players for sometime now and guess what? No other mugs want them, especially on what we are paying them. Secondly the bright prospects in our team may have higher ambitions than to plod along in their career at a mid championship team, earning far less than they could get elsewhere. The reality is that the cream will have to be sold and the shit will either see their contracts out or we will have to subsidise their wages to get rid of them.[/quote]JF - we will certainly have to sell some players - not sure how many, until we have some sort of figure for forecast revenues 2018-19 - can anybody help here - c £28 to 30m?However, to suggest that we will have sell anyone vaguely decent is greatly exaggerated. Someone has suggested a gap (black hole) of £23 million on another thread but this seems high to me and I have enquired as to its source.

[JF 694]

JF - we will certainly have to sell some players - not sure how many, until we have some sort of figure for forecast revenues 2018-19 - can anybody help here - c £28 to 30m?

However, to suggest that we will have sell anyone vaguely decent is greatly exaggerated. Someone has suggested a gap (black hole) of £23 million on another thread but this seems high to me and I have enquired as to its source.

But we will have to sell anyone who is vaguely decent, most likely because we will need the money but anyone who is vaguely decent will want to be paid the going rate for their talent. That going rate will be far higher than the club could pay through its self sufficient model. And those vaguely decent players will have higher ambitions than to play football for a club who’s ambitions don’t match their own. We acquired these players when the club was on an upward spiral, we’re now on a downward spiral so after these are gone it will be nigh on impossible to attract these calibre of players again, certainly in this set up

[cornish sam 966]

Why must that be an ironic post highland? It is fairly accurate. Lambert took is forward far faster than we were expecting or set up for and we tried to hang onto it but couldn''t due to the lack of foundations, hence the few bad transfers crippling us financially and leaving us where we are now.

[Jim Smith 2,349]

[quote user=" Badger"][quote user="JF"]1. I don''t think that we have to sell anyone vaguely decent, although accept that player sales will be necessary.

So your plan is that we will be self sufficient by selling the shit players that are costing us a fortune and can’t get in our team, whilst hanging on to our bright prospects but paying them far less than they can earn elsewhere? I can see a few minor flaws in this plan. Firstly we’ve been trying to get shot of the shit players for sometime now and guess what? No other mugs want them, especially on what we are paying them. Secondly the bright prospects in our team may have higher ambitions than to plod along in their career at a mid championship team, earning far less than they could get elsewhere. The reality is that the cream will have to be sold and the shit will either see their contracts out or we will have to subsidise their wages to get rid of them.[/quote]JF - we will certainly have to sell some players - not sure how many, until we have some sort of figure for forecast revenues 2018-19 - can anybody help here - c £28 to 30m?However, to suggest that we will have sell anyone vaguely decent is greatly exaggerated. Someone has suggested a gap (black hole) of £23 million on another thread but this seems high to me and I have enquired as to its source.[/quote]

I suggested we will have to sell anyone vaguely decent over the next couple of years if we stay in the championship and I stand by that.

Our turnover last year was £75m with a parachute payment of £41m. This year it will obviously be lower due to the lower parachute payment which It has been suggested is around £12m lower so I would anticipate our turnover will be circa £60m,

Without parachute payments next year i would therefore expect our turnover to be in the region of £24m (I think thats not far off what it was last time we were down if you disregard the parachute payments) so we are potentially looking at a drop in income of around £36m whis is about the same as the drop we''ve experienced so far over 2 seasons since relegation.

Our wages as a % of turnover last year were 50% which suggests we had a wage bill of circa £37.5 million. That will have come down quite a bit already but probably still needs to come down by at least half again.

By way of comparison the sc*m had a turnover of £17.3m and a wage bill of £17.8m. They tend to run at a loss of anything between £4m and £7m a season with that debt being picked up by Marcus Evans who effectively enables them to run at a loss.

[cornish sam 966]

Just to be clear though, it was a great ride and I for one was expecting/hoping we would be able to make more of it than we have. And in no way was it Lambert''s fault.

[Jim Smith 2,349]

plus of course the point JF has made about wages. We will not be able to pay the sort of wages that anyone "vaguely decent" is going to want.

It has been suggested that our top bracket moving forward will be around £10k per week which is going to be on the low side for the championship.

[JF 694]

cornish sam wrote the following post at 02/01/2018 5:45 PM:

Why must that be an ironic post highland? It is fairly accurate. Lambert took is forward far faster than we were expecting or set up for and we tried to hang onto it but couldn''t due to the lack of foundations, hence the few bad transfers crippling us financially and leaving us where we are now.

Yeah far better had we stayed in league 1 and sold the stadium on our way to financial ruin. It’s only the first few days of the year but these suggestions are going to take some beating for the most ridiculous of the year.

[JF 694]

Southampton followed our quick route to the PL from League 1 and they seem to have managed the quick rise ok....

[Badger 2,413]

@JF - I think that you are being too pessimistic - a glass half full person?Norwich can still pay competitive wages. For example,

• Lewis and Maddison have both signed long-term contracts in the last 6 months as has Zimmerman (all 2021).
• Trybull is making positive notes about  his contract offer.
• Josh Murphy signed a new contract last January.
• Grant Hanley signed a contract until 2021 in August

Pritchard and Oliveira are only contracted until 2020, so might be the most obvious sales. Pritchard in particular would be a big loss, I agree.

Obviously, like you, I can''t see Madison seeing out his contract in the championship but unlike you, I don''t think that it''s a foregone conclusion that he will have to.

As for needing to sell players - we will need to sell somebody who we don''t want to, but more than 1 or 2, we can''t estimate without knowledge of projections for 2018-19.

[king canary 7,681]

Our parachute payments end this season. Our broadcast revenue will fall significantly as championship TV deal only pays out around £7m per season.

The £23m figure comes from knowing we have to be self sustaining so we need to bring our costs in line with turnover. Longer term that means a fairly drastic drop in the wage bill (£55m last season, apparently trimmed by £10m a year since those figures were produced) to bring it in line with turnover. However unless we can offload some of our less desirable high earners we''re unlikely to be able to trim the probable £20m off the wage budget in one go, meaning we will need to fill that hole with money from player sales.

So, for arguments sake we sell Maddison for £15m. This helps fill the hole in the short term but we won''t be able to invest that money back into the squad.

[Essjayess 307]

[quote user="Jim Smith"]What is bugging me at present is this "well we won;t go down and we won;t go up so its all about transition and rebuilding" attitude that seems to have spread amongst many in the fanbase to the extent that many seem happy just to write off this season (again). our best chance of promotion (which has to be the ultimate goal) remains through the playoffs this season. its a slim chance, admittedly, but we should be doing everything we can to try and take it.

quite why people think the team is likely to be better in 2 years time than it is nnow when we will have sold anyone vaguely decent who can command a fee is beyond me.[/quote]Agree totally with posters such as Lakey and Badger. Have quoted you Jim as what you say just might have some merit. I to am of the opinion that likely we will finish mid table, but goodness me its an opinion that''s not set in stone. We have had to wait half a season for the likes of Pritch and Jamal Lewis to regain fitness, also a couple of months or more for Tettey and Trybull to get their solid partnership back together. Now that the madness of xmas and new year is out the way and providing we keep this team together thru this transfer month, im eager to see what Farke''s main eleven can do on a sustained run of fixtures. Once Chelsea is done and dusted we have a pretty testing string of matches to really see what this team can do. Only 9 or 10 points outside 6th place, slim possibly yes, but with 20 games still to play we should still allow ourselves to dream because its still there for the taking.

[cornish sam 966]

Now then jf, I''m not saying it would have been better not to have happened, as I said, it was a great ride, we tried to make it stick but unfortunately couldn''t and are paying the price now. To compare us to Southampton is a bit unfair in this instance, they made it stick partly through being backed by a billionaire and selling their prized youth team sourced assets, but also making better managerial decisions than we did...

[JF 694]

Don’t mistake realistic for pessimism. Contracts mean naff all in modern day football. Maddison’s contract that he is on is utterly irrelevant after the performances he has put in this season. Anyone who thinks that the club can stand in the way of players leaving to progress their career and earn far more money is deluding themselves. As has been said if our wage ceiling is around the 10k mark then that is not competitive in the top half of the championship

[Badger 2,413]

JF - there''s no way that our wage ceiling is 10k per week. This is just a made up figure probably put out by one of the hysterics. I''m looking at the 23 million figure and doing some calculations - thanks for explaining your reasoning.

[Badger 2,413]

[quote user=" Badger"]JF - there''s no way that our wage ceiling is 10k per week. This is just a made up figure probably put out by one of the hysterics. I''m looking at the 23 million figure and doing some calculations - thanks for explaining your reasoning.[/quote]Sorry King Canary (KC), that should have been addressed to you. [:$]

[JF 694]

We will see badger. If I was to guess our starting 11 for the first game of next season I would have to say of the players that started yesterday’s game, 7 of them will likely be gone.

Gunn

Pinto

Klose

Tettey

Oliviera

Maddison

Pritchard

Of these players the only two I can see us retaining are Gunn if we can get another loan deal and Pinto.

[king canary 7,681]

I don''t think I said we had a £10k ceiling. I have seen it mentioned by journalists on twitter though. Webber and Stone mentioned they had significantly bought down the average wage though.

I see three tiers of players.

In an ideal world we can shift the high earners we don''t use- Naismith, Jarvis, McGovern being three obvious ones.

The next would be high earners we do use- Klose, Nelson and Pinto seem to fit this category.

The other is players others want but we don''t want to sell. Maddison, Pritchard and Murphy are the main three in my opinion.

If, somehow by June/July we''ve got Naismith, Jarvis, McGovern, Jerome and Martin off the wage bill then the pressure will be eased. However that is highly unlikely.

[Donkey dangler 0]

We are DOOM''d!

[PurpleCanary 5,587]

[quote user="Jim Smith"][quote user=" Badger"][quote user="JF"]1. I don''t think that we have to sell anyone vaguely decent, although accept that player sales will be necessary.

So your plan is that we will be self sufficient by selling the shit players that are costing us a fortune and can’t get in our team, whilst hanging on to our bright prospects but paying them far less than they can earn elsewhere? I can see a few minor flaws in this plan. Firstly we’ve been trying to get shot of the shit players for sometime now and guess what? No other mugs want them, especially on what we are paying them. Secondly the bright prospects in our team may have higher ambitions than to plod along in their career at a mid championship team, earning far less than they could get elsewhere. The reality is that the cream will have to be sold and the shit will either see their contracts out or we will have to subsidise their wages to get rid of them.[/quote]JF - we will certainly have to sell some players - not sure how many, until we have some sort of figure for forecast revenues 2018-19 - can anybody help here - c £28 to 30m?However, to suggest that we will have sell anyone vaguely decent is greatly exaggerated. Someone has suggested a gap (black hole) of £23 million on another thread but this seems high to me and I have enquired as to its source.[/quote]

I suggested we will have to sell anyone vaguely decent over the next couple of years if we stay in the championship and I stand by that.

Our turnover last year was £75m with a parachute payment of £41m. This year it will obviously be lower due to the lower parachute payment which It has been suggested is around £12m lower so I would anticipate our turnover will be circa £60m,

Without parachute payments next year i would therefore expect our turnover to be in the region of £24m (I think thats not far off what it was last time we were down if you disregard the parachute payments) so we are potentially looking at a drop in income of around £36m whis is about the same as the drop we''ve experienced so far over 2 seasons since relegation.

Our wages as a % of turnover last year were 50% which suggests we had a wage bill of circa £37.5 million. That will have come down quite a bit already but probably still needs to come down by at least half again.

By way of comparison the sc*m had a turnover of £17.3m and a wage bill of £17.8m. They tend to run at a loss of anything between £4m and £7m a season with that debt being picked up by Marcus Evans who effectively enables them to run at a loss.[/quote]Jim, you may not be comparing like with like here. I suspect that Ipswich Town wage-bill figure is actually for all staff costs. That is the category normally quoted when you see league tables of how much clubs spend on wages. If so, the relevant comparison figure for Norwich City is £55m rather than £37.5m.

[Badger 2,413]

1. Footballing costs are projected at 38.9 million for 2017-18. 2. I agree with JF''s post that we are likely to lose at least Tettey, Klose, Gunn from the starting line up yesterday - together with Wes, Reed and Paul Jones. 3. Apparently our average wage last year was £28,200 - I suspect Wes, Tettey and Klose would be on it or more probably above it, so you''d think that these outgoings would save us 8 to 10 million in wages but would bring little or nothing in from transfer revenues. 4. My understanding is that we will receive 2.6 million more in player receipts from previous sales than we will have to pay out.5. It is likely that we will sell players in the summer - or before. Oliveira and Pritchard seem the most likely (contracts expire 2020). I''d be particularly disappointed to lose Pritchard but if we did sell both I think that the transfer fees together with wages would more than offset the deficit and allow some surplus towards replacements - but a big challenge for the new recruitment team!Of course if we could get rid of those that seem destined not to play but are on big wages - Martin, Naismith, Wildshutt, McGovern it would give us more room and require fewer sales.I still think that we are left with a strong core of talented young players with careers to make - it gives opportunity to the likes of Goddard and Thompson. Of the above, only Pritchard is irreplaceable imo.However, if we lose Pritchard, Madison and Murphy - I''ll probably be as depressed as you (for a while at least)[:D]BTW - you didn''t say there was a 10K wage ceiling - it was JF - I got mixed up as I have been in discussion with both of you - sorry[:$]

[Badger 2,413]

Sorry, should have posted sources - I''m sure that you could do more with the first one than me Purple - it provides some update on the accounts.https://files.canaries.co.uk/canaries/AGM.pdfhttp://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/business/record-wage-bill-reliance-on-premier-league-tv-money-and-23m-to-pay-in-promotion-bonuses-what-accounts-reveal-about-norwich-city-1-5261729

[JF 694]

To be fair I didn’t say it was a 10k ceiling, I was quoting another poster and saying if it’s true.

[Badger 2,413]

[quote user="JF"]To be fair I didn’t say it was a 10k ceiling, I was quoting another poster and saying if it’s true.[/quote]No sorry you didn''t JF, you did just quote it. I did say that earlier it was just a figure put out by one of the hysterics (of which you are not one!) but ascribed this to KC, who also correctly pointed out that he hadn''t said it at all! [:$] [:$]Please accept my apologies.

[king canary 7,681]

I''d agree that some of our younger players can soften the blow in certain cases. For instance Tettey leaving is OK as we''ve got Godfrey coming back and hopefully Thompson can regain fitness. Raggatt should mean Klose leaving would not be too bad. Lewis means we don''t need a new left back and I have high hopes for Remi Matthews if Gunn doesn''t return. The best, most realistic case for me is we manage to shift Naismith Martin and Jerome while selling Klose and Nelson. We then sell one of Maddison or Pritchard, release Wes and Tettey and use the some of the money raised to bring in two new strikers.

However...

Worst case is we fail to shift Naismith and Martin or that we can only loan them out and have to subsidise their wages, Nelson and Klose don''t raise much cash and we have to sell both Maddison and Pritchard.

It''s also hypothetical as we don''t know how much money players will raise or if the club is willing to entertain some debt in order to soften the blow.

[Badger 2,413]

Like you, I''d be ok with the first scenario but depressed at the second!My understanding is that the club has an overdraft facility for 7 million in the summer, which is more than normal working capital, so it is giving itself room. On the bright side, by 2019 we will be rid of the really burdensome contracts and back on an even keel with a reasonably competitive turnover if it is used well.

[JF 694]

No worries Badger. I like reading your posts as you’re very rational in your thinking and I hope that you are right, and we can build something around some of this talent, and maybe push on next season. The problem that is nagging away at me though, is that this all seems to be going the same way as the pre Lambert years

[STFU 0]

Hey, what''s with all the doom and gloom? We still have the potential to be a yoyo club- between the Championship and League 1. 😳😳😳

[king canary 7,681]

The other issue of course is how can we increase turnover. For the foreseeable wages are going to rise as are fees, while our budget will stay flat.