Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Jim Smith

Those on twitter have a look at McNally tonight. Getting some stuff off his chest

Recommended Posts

It''s Saturday night, I''m on my third 75cl bottle of Leffe Blond, yet I still haven''t posted anything on Twitter I might regret in the morning.
In fairness, I think David McNally was a very good financial guy, I''m not convinced with his footballing nous. As said, RVW, Naismith and Jarvis were all signed under his watch, and we''re still paying the price.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="Icecream Snow"]
It''s Saturday night, I''m on my third 75cl bottle of Leffe Blond, yet I still haven''t posted anything on Twitter I might regret in the morning.
In fairness, I think David McNally was a very good financial guy, I''m not convinced with his footballing nous. As said, RVW, Naismith and Jarvis were all signed under his watch, and we''re still paying the price.
[/quote]
You''re not getting the hang of this game Icecream. Find someone who is at the club now and blame them for the mistakes. I think RVW was down to Delia''s mum and the boy Tom was responsible for Naismith and Ed Balls for Jarvis....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Lol he is going for it! I dunno about this "money invested" tho, we sold about £40m worth of players in the last year and a half and spent about £10m

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Overall McNally did a good job, and he was a fan of mine ("Always good to hear from you, PurpleCanary!") but there is some serious rewriting of history there. Asked why we didn''t sign a good centre-back that Neil promotion summer he blames it on a lack of cash, and linking that to the owers having their debt repaid.
The reality, as he explained some time later that season, was that the club made the money available for a high-class centre-back, with the fee and the personal terms all agreed, and the deal fell through at the very last moment only because the selling club (probably Napoli) couldn''t find a replacement.So we missed out not because Smith and Jones demanded their money back but because we went, presumably on McNally''s advice, as the director in effective charge of transfers, for a very high-risk strategy, with a high chance - as happened - of failure.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
McNally has joined the rest of us in the back seat of the car. And it''s very easy to say he would have achieved promotion last year had he been driving it.

He did a lot of good while he was here but presumably he has to also take some responsibility for sanctioning the signings of Naismith, Jarvis et al, the effects of which are still greatly tieing our hands in the transfer market now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
How much did the Directors get paid back? Enough for a quality player? I didn''t think the money that was owed, was earth shattering, well, not when you compare it with transfer fees for a top player?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Interesting indeed but no way of knowing if what he says it right or not.

Financially speaking I think we were debt free in may2016 when he left so could argue the financial issues happened after he left. But he left when relegation was on the horizon which is like being debt free with a £50m bill coming in the post.

The McNally years were the best and most exciting I can remember with Lambert.let leave it with those memories.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
You can only degrade the squad so far before you join tier three. He doesn’t appear to share the ambitionless happy clapper view on the current state of the club.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I think McNally did a great job and I like the way he still refers to the club as "we".

I dont agree with him here as he ls basing his argument on money = success. This was not the solution for the promotions that he was involved with. In fact every time we spent big money it coincided with a drastic loss of form.

Our big mistake was Moxey but we''re starting to get back on the right track

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="glory.win or die."]Interesting indeed but no way of knowing if what he says it right or not.

Financially speaking I think we were debt free in may2016 when he left so could argue the financial issues happened after he left. But he left when relegation was on the horizon which is like being debt free with a £50m bill coming in the post.

The McNally years were the best and most exciting I can remember with Lambert.let leave it with those memories.[/quote]
As far as us being left without an upgraded central defender is concerned, we have his on-the-record explanation, which, I think, he thought exonerated him, putting the blame on Napoli/unforeseeable events. In fact, since the events were perfectly foreseeable, he was actually pointing the finger at himself as, in effect, the football director.
To change the story now and claim we didn''t have the money because the owners wanted repaying, when his previous version had our offer being accepted by Napoli (assuming it was them), with the board having provided the money, strikes me as not very clever. I know which version I believe. A shame, since on balance McNally, though capable of serious mistakes, was a force for good.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Is his point not more the timing of our “transition.” His philosophy seems to have been go hard to achieve promotion whilst you have the parachute monies whereby we have entirely wasted the two years of parachute payments.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

[quote user="Jim Smith"]Is his point not more the timing of our “transition.” His philosophy seems to have been go hard to achieve promotion whilst you have the parachute monies whereby we have entirely wasted the two years of parachute payments.[/quote]
No. You can argue we wasted the first year. But that failure meant we then had to start the process of cutting back.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
How much of a risk should we have taken? What signings last season would have resulted in our promotion?

Or would it have put us near to Villa''s current position if we failed - on the brink of financial meltdown.

It''s all very well saying we wasted the premier league money but the reality is if you''re not one of the big 6 (or 7 if you include Everton) I think the chances of your team being relegated within 5 - 10 years is very high indeed. On top of this is that the longer your stint in the premier league the higher your wages are going to be which then become a burden when your time ends and you drop back down.

I love what McNally achieved with this club but it wasn''t all great and if living within our means to sustain our football club instead of rolling the dice and risking it all is the direction our club is going in then I can''t say I have too many complaints.

Ive noticed on forums like ours (and other clubs -Derby/Villa etc) after high spending failure fans suddenly become all for 3 year plans and bringing through young talent only when the club is hovering around mid table suddenly its not good enough and we should be so much more - so maybe its more of a "1 year spend less but still romp the league" kind of plan.

Whatever, all I know is I find it a lot easier to get behind the efforts of Trybull, Maddison and Gunn than whatever it is Naismith is supposed to have contributed the last 18 months.

lets compare our progression using last season and the upcoming season, if things have gone backwards its time to complain. If Farke/Webber addresses the shortcomings in the team we will have no need to worry about who''s at the helm. But to compare our team with the Norwich of 2 seasons ago (with the money that was being spent) is a disservice to Farke and Webber. Perhaps the failure was finishing 10 points off the playoffs last season, not the 15 we finished behind them this season.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Well it sure looks like a book may be in the offing given the amount of retweets he''s given to that topic.
Currently running a restaurant back in his hometown of Bromsgrove, which is on the way to my parents. Maybe I should pop in and see if I can get him to divulge anything else [;)]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I respect what he did and am grateful for it, but I do think his tenure had run its course. He didn''t (and still doesn''t) seem to appreciate that we did not have the resources to fail in gambling again this season. However, I am pleased that he still refers to us as ''we'' and obviously still cares about the club...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I seem to remember McNally and Twatter late in the evening is not a very good combination.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Seem to recall the transfer policy they wanted to pursue from around the summer of 2013 was getting in players for a reasonable amount who would have a high sell on fee if all worked out and that two of the names doing the rounds back then were Toby Alderweireld when he was at Ajax and Kalidou Koulibaly...both might just have been OK! There was criticism at the time that we were going for unattainable targets and losing out on other, more realistic ones, whilst we were in a perceived chase to sign either of them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Spending every last penny to get promotion - which is what McNally suggests is what we should have done is exactly why Villa are in such a jam.  Fine if you succeed, but if you don''t, the whole club is in peril.  Spending every last penny to stay in the PL or to get promotion might have seemed right five years ao, but times are changing and some clubs - the better ones - are now looking at a more sustainable way of doing it.
The spend, spend, spend strategy is becoming out of fashion - unless you have a super rich owner and even then there are no guarantees.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
"Currently running a restaurant back in his hometown of Bromsgrove"Well at least Delia taught him something😊

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

McNally''s gravest error ... filling a Paul Lambert shaped hole with Chris Hughton.

If a like for like manager had been hired (as at Swansea) we would have put down roots.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="kick it off"]Well it sure looks like a book may be in the offing given the amount of retweets he''s given to that topic.
Currently running a restaurant back in his hometown of Bromsgrove, which is on the way to my parents. Maybe I should pop in and see if I can get him to divulge anything else [;)]
[/quote]Just give his eaterie a 5-star rating on trip advisor and he''ll sing like a canary.....[;)]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="Cantiaci Canary"]McNally''s gravest error ... filling a Paul Lambert shaped hole with Chris Hughton.

If a like for like manager had been hired (as at Swansea) we would have put down roots.[/quote] Paul Lambert like for like????? Not even Paul Lambert managed to be like Paul Lambert after leaving Norwich. Anyway, Swansea''s success was down, first and foremost, to their adopting, and persisting with, a fit-for-purpose, thoroughly modern, style. They then appointed head coaches committed to that style of play. There''s no point in appointing like-for-like managers to play "however many you score, we''ll score more than you", charge of the Light Brigade football. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Swansea also saw the need to evolve- Laudrup was less possession obsessed that Rodgers but still retained the desire to control games and attack.

Any Lambert replacement would have needed to be a bit more defensively minded but appointing a manager who basically approached every game with the mentality of ''let''s keep this 0-0'' was far too far in the other direction.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
[quote user="Cantiaci Canary"]McNally''s gravest error ... filling a Paul Lambert shaped hole with Chris Hughton.

If a like for like manager had been hired (as at Swansea) we would have put down roots.[/quote]

To be fair to McNally, it is a bit more complicated than that.

Chris Hughton was a good appointment at the time as a promising manager with a decent track record. The whole point of that appointment, and the money we spent under his tenure, was the long term aim to solidify Norwich as an established Premier League club. Sadly the signings turned to flops and it didn''t work out. But in a business logic those decisions made sense at the time.

I liked McNally, he did a grand job whilst he was here. And he''s allowed to voice an opinion that he''s disappointed with how things have gone since - it''s not like anyone on here would disagree they are disappointed with where we are now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I don;t think he is suggesting doing a Villa (because they were irresponsible) but I think it is certainly the case that McNally''s strategy was to do everything they could to get straight back up at the first or second attempt so as to avoid having to basically go back to square one. In our first season down for example you could argue that the board''s approach to sacking the manager and then appointing his successor showed that they gave up on promotion extremely early in proceedings and essentially wasted a season where we still had a very good squad and a financial advantage.

In the interests of balance he was certainly part of some poor decisions towards the end of his tenure (I think he lost the plot somewhat around the middle of the second Hughton season) and I''m not sure his timeline on repayment of the directors loans is quite right (my impression from the accounts is they were repaid either at the end of that prem season or possibly even after we came back down) but the general point about the directors taking their money back out of the club at a time when they knew loss of parachute payments was imminent and the club was moving to a different financial landscape is an interesting one for debate. Of course they were absolutely, 100% entitled to have their loans repaid and again in the they did not charge interest on those loans.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...