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TeemuVanBasten

Is 'The Model' flawed?

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3 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

I don't think there would be a problem borrowing money short term either but they clearly are not prepared to do it other than to cover what they absolutely have to (e.g. the bridging loan/overdraft we took out this summer which has already been repaid).

Re the second point I accept that there is an element of risk to taking into account the value of your assets in terms of determining spending but for example, we have Pukki, Arrons, Lewis, Buendia, Godfrey who collectively, even with our/their current drop in form and ignoring the other players we have, must be worth £60m plus (and that's being conservative). Its inconceivable that all will have career ending injuries or be rendered worthless by a poor season for us in the premier league. Given this, I would regard spending an extra £20-£30m or so in the summer as pretty low risk should he worst happen and we get relegated as they are all saleable assets as, indeed, would any signings we made also be. Webber is big on "being honest" with the fans. If he explained that to people (i.e. if you want us to spend a bit then we would have to sell someone if we got relegated) then I will bet good money most fans would prefer us to try that rather than go down with a pathetic whimper as it looks like we may do. 

Fundamentally though what the recent financial figures have shown is that we have owners who cannot afford to own a sustainable premier league club or indeed championship club without parachute payments and who are undoubtedly holding us back through their stance of not even considering new ownership. 

This simply isn't true. Read their EDP interview from January - they have put the executive committee (Webber, Ward, Kensell) in charge of considering and meeting potential investors. You may speculate that they have no interest in entertaining any such approach, or that they have told the executive committee that they are not interested in finding or considering external investment, but there are no facts to back up that assertion.

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7 minutes ago, Feedthewolf said:

This simply isn't true. Read their EDP interview from January - they have put the executive committee (Webber, Ward, Kensell) in charge of considering and meeting potential investors. You may speculate that they have no interest in entertaining any such approach, or that they have told the executive committee that they are not interested in finding or considering external investment, but there are no facts to back up that assertion.

All true Wolfo, we are lucky to have such caring owners who won't just sell to the highest bidder ( have there even any approaches, let alone bids).  At the moment we are not an attractive proposition to buy into.....no debt , many assets, geographically isolated etc. We were a much more attractive proposition a couple of years ago with our financial troubles, run down training ground etc. Let's just back the Club as supporters should and see where this project takes us in a couple of years, it may fail, it may succeed, but it has to be given time, at least until Webber leaves, to see whether we are are in a better place than when he joined. As you, me and others have pointed out , this is our chosen path,  that was made clear at the start of it. No one said it was going to be easy , the level of spending required for almost instant, almost guaranteed success, is pie in the sky, nothing less.  

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On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2019 at 09:23, hogesar said:

I think we could have spent more. I think we chose not to. I guess we were only willing to go for the 'perfect' signing, I.e plan A, and not move down the ladder.

I believe from Webbers comments they believe that with a fully fit squad and a bit of luck and good fortune we can compete in this division. I tend to agree

Is this not just another unrealistic utopian vision though? I said the same last time you said something similar, about a week ago. Injuries in football are on the rise, expecting 'fully fit squad' is completely unrealistic. As a result you need to have sufficient depth.

Current injuries:

  • Manchester United - 11
  • Aston Villa - 7
  • Watford - 7
  • Chelsea - 6
  • West Ham - 6
  • Newcastle - 5
  • Everton - 4
  • Man City - 4
  • Tottenham - 4
  • Wolves - 4
  • Norwich - 4
  • Brighton - 4
  • Liverpool - 3
  • Bournemouth - 3
  • Crystal Palace - 2
  • Burnley - 2
  • Arsenal - 2
  • Southampton - 2
  • Leicester - 1
  • Sheffield United - 0

Sheffield United the only club to be currently reporting a 'fully fit squad' in this league, although they had 3 injured two weeks ago. Seems like the chances of having a fully fit squad at any given time are approx 5%.

Falling back constantly on 'ifs' and 'buts' suggests an endemic victim mentality being perpetuated, we keep telling ourselves that we've got it worse than everybody else and life just isn't fair... a defeatist attitude which doesn't win points.

When applying relatively and dealing only in numbers, our injury crisis was over weeks ago. We could perhaps entertain the idea that we've been extremely unlucky at centre back, at least have a debate about that, but all this talk of of a 'fully fit squad' needs to be knocked on the head... its a hypothetical scenario which is a very rare occurrence in real life.

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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3 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Is this not just another unrealistic utopian vision though? I said the same last time you said something similar, about a week ago. Injuries in football are on the rise, expecting 'fully fit squad' is completely unrealistic. As a result you need to have sufficient depth.

Current injuries:

  • Manchester United - 11
  • Aston Villa - 7
  • Watford - 7
  • Chelsea - 6
  • West Ham - 6
  • Newcastle - 5
  • Everton - 4
  • Man City - 4
  • Tottenham - 4
  • Wolves - 4
  • Norwich - 4
  • Brighton - 4
  • Liverpool - 3
  • Bournemouth - 3
  • Crystal Palace - 2
  • Burnley - 2
  • Arsenal - 2
  • Southampton - 2
  • Leicester - 1
  • Sheffield United - 0

Sheffield United the only club to be currently reporting a 'fully fit squad' in this league, although they had 3 injured two weeks ago. Seems like the chances of having a fully fit squad at any given time are approx 5%.

Falling back constantly on 'ifs' and 'buts' suggests an endemic victim mentality being perpetuated, we keep telling ourselves that we've got it worse than everybody else and life just isn't fair... a defeatist attitude which doesn't win points.

When applying relatively and dealing only in numbers, our injury crisis was over weeks ago. We could perhaps entertain the idea that we've been extremely unlucky at centre back, at least have a debate about that, but this concept of a 'fully fit squad' needs to be knocked on the head... its a hypothetical scenario which is a very rare occurrence in real life.

The problem is you seem to repeat this 'other teams have injuries' like people aren't aware. We all know other teams have injuries. Have all other teams had to regularly play midfielders in central defence? That is a unique situation which I think is costing us. So when I say fully-fit - I mean 11 players playing in their preferred position.

If you don't think a Zimmerman / Klose plus Amadou in his actual position wouldn't make us more competitive then that's your prerogative. I've not looked, but I didn't see you calling us out as being awful before or during or just after the Man City match.

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43 minutes ago, hogesar said:

 I've not looked, but I didn't see you calling us out as being awful before or during or just after the Man City match.

Eh? I have no idea what you are talking about, are you making stuff up? And what on earth does that have to do with your prior post or my reply to it?

I think you probably should have 'looked'.

I predicted us to lose the week prior to the game, like every other person on this forum bar Lakey. Hardly a controversial prediction.

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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51 minutes ago, hogesar said:

If you don't think a Zimmerman / Klose plus Amadou in his actual position wouldn't make us more competitive then that's your prerogative.

Of course I think that would improve things at least a little, I just find your use of the phrase "fully fit squad" really bizarre because we are never going to have one of those and we need to accept that most teams will go through periods in any season where they have bad injury problems.

We may have been the first (with Watford) to suffer an injury crisis, a few others have followed, but there has to be a point where we stop blaming our results on an injury crisis which by any objective measure has not existed for some time when we're talking proportion of the squad.

We have to consider the possibility that we went into this season with insufficient depth, particularly when also considering that Hanley was clearly not up to the required standard and deemed as such when we tried to get rid of him in the summer.

Injuries play a part in our problems this season, but alongside failure to invest in quality in the summer and I personally think an unwillingness of Farke to experiment tactically or rotate in areas where we've had some alternative options.

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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1 hour ago, hogesar said:

You don't think a Zimmerman / Klose plus Amadou in his actual position wouldn't make us more competitive

Ps. What's your opinion on Farke dropping Amadou for Tettey, and then preferring to pick Trybull as defensive mid? 

I have no idea if Amadou is superior to Trybull as a DM because we've not seen him there yet. 

You seem very confident that he's an upgrade, but as far as I'm aware Amadou was fit to start Friday and Farke doesn't seem to agree.

I'd like to see him given a run at DM, but if you are insistent that he'd improve our XI and make us stronger are you saying this is a selection error?

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2 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

Re the second point I accept that there is an element of risk to taking into account the value of your assets in terms of determining spending but for example, we have Pukki, Arrons, Lewis, Buendia, Godfrey who collectively, even with our/their current drop in form and ignoring the other players we have, must be worth £60m plus (and that's being conservative). Its inconceivable that all will have career ending injuries or be rendered worthless by a poor season for us in the premier league. Given this, I would regard spending an extra £20-£30m or so in the summer as pretty low risk should he worst happen and we get relegated as they are all saleable assets as, indeed, would any signings we made also be. Webber is big on "being honest" with the fans. If he explained that to people (i.e. if you want us to spend a bit then we would have to sell someone if we got relegated) then I will bet good money most fans would prefer us to try that rather than go down with a pathetic whimper as it looks like we may do. 

Fundamentally though what the recent financial figures have shown is that we have owners who cannot afford to own a sustainable premier league club or indeed championship club without parachute payments and who are undoubtedly holding us back through their stance of not even considering new ownership. 

1. We cannot know without the figures but as I have said before, I suspect that we could have afforded £20-30 million in purchases + wages if the right players became available. The fact that we did not spend this money suggests that they did not.  

2. We have, sensibly imo, relied quite heavily on the loan market. If we had purchased Amadou, Farhmann, Roberts it would have taken more than the £20-30 million that you refer to. Would that have made them better players?

3. Indeed, it is quite possible that Amadou and Fahrmann, in particular, would have been unlikely to have come on a permanent deal at this stage, given the dangers of moving to newly promoted clubs and a desire to re-establish themselves where they are currently playing. To have bought permanent replacements to them would have been buying players with a greater degree of risk and adding more untested players to our own untested ones.

4. I thought that the five players we bought/ loaned in the summer looked to be good signings and filled the main gaps that needed filling. How many extra players do you think that we should have bought? Three, four, five - the more you add, the more you disrupt the side that got us here in the first place and deny them the chance to prove themselves at a higher level. A big part of the model is developing our own players.

5. "I personally think an unwillingness of Farke to experiment tactically or rotate in areas where we've had some alternative options" - this is not a failure of the model (as per the thread title), but a belief on your part that the manager has failed in some areas.

6. In essence, "your model" such as it is, is to borrow money and hope for the best - to gamble on the future/ "take a punt" and hope. There are so many examples of this failing.

7. Despite all the moans at present, it must make sense to build progressively and steadily rather than have a sh1t or bust gamble which could leave us in the doldrums for years. 

8. Despite the lack of confidence of some on here - I believe that returning players will make us stronger and I suspect that we will buy/ loan extra cover at centre back in January - it is not the number of injuries that has damaged us, but their concentration in particular places. Unlike some on here, I am not ready to give up on the season yet - but if we do go down, I would prefer to see us in a stronger position that we were in Sept 2018 rather than one where it will take us years to recover.

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44 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Ps. What's your opinion on Farke dropping Amadou for Tettey, and then preferring to pick Trybull as defensive mid? 

I have no idea if Amadou is superior to Trybull as a DM because we've not seen him there yet. 

You seem very confident that he's an upgrade, but as far as I'm aware Amadou was fit to start Friday and Farke doesn't seem to agree.

I'd like to see him given a run at DM, but if you are insistent that he'd improve our XI and make us stronger are you saying this is a selection error?

I didn't think Mclean and Trybull worked the week before and didn't want to see it again. However I understand Amadou wasn't fully fit and was only available in an 'emergency' situation. 

With him fit i'd like to see Amadou in midfield alongside Leitner, personally. And an actual CB in defence. Can even see us trying Amadou alongside Tettey in away matches.

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1 hour ago, Badger said:

1. We cannot know without the figures but as I have said before, I suspect that we could have afforded £20-30 million in purchases + wages if the right players became available. The fact that we did not spend this money suggests that they did not.  

2. We have, sensibly imo, relied quite heavily on the loan market. If we had purchased Amadou, Farhmann, Roberts it would have taken more than the £20-30 million that you refer to. Would that have made them better players?

3. Indeed, it is quite possible that Amadou and Fahrmann, in particular, would have been unlikely to have come on a permanent deal at this stage, given the dangers of moving to newly promoted clubs and a desire to re-establish themselves where they are currently playing. To have bought permanent replacements to them would have been buying players with a greater degree of risk and adding more untested players to our own untested ones.

4. I thought that the five players we bought/ loaned in the summer looked to be good signings and filled the main gaps that needed filling. How many extra players do you think that we should have bought? Three, four, five - the more you add, the more you disrupt the side that got us here in the first place and deny them the chance to prove themselves at a higher level. A big part of the model is developing our own players.

5. "I personally think an unwillingness of Farke to experiment tactically or rotate in areas where we've had some alternative options" - this is not a failure of the model (as per the thread title), but a belief on your part that the manager has failed in some areas.

6. In essence, "your model" such as it is, is to borrow money and hope for the best - to gamble on the future/ "take a punt" and hope. There are so many examples of this failing.

7. Despite all the moans at present, it must make sense to build progressively and steadily rather than have a sh1t or bust gamble which could leave us in the doldrums for years. 

8. Despite the lack of confidence of some on here - I believe that returning players will make us stronger and I suspect that we will buy/ loan extra cover at centre back in January - it is not the number of injuries that has damaged us, but their concentration in particular places. Unlike some on here, I am not ready to give up on the season yet - but if we do go down, I would prefer to see us in a stronger position that we were in Sept 2018 rather than one where it will take us years to recover.

Bit confused here Badger, you've included a quote from one of my posts in there - point 5 - but it appears to otherwise be a response to a different poster (Jim Smith)?

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3 hours ago, Feedthewolf said:

This simply isn't true. Read their EDP interview from January - they have put the executive committee (Webber, Ward, Kensell) in charge of considering and meeting potential investors. You may speculate that they have no interest in entertaining any such approach, or that they have told the executive committee that they are not interested in finding or considering external investment, but there are no facts to back up that assertion.

Interesting. I had missed that bit of news.

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2 hours ago, Badger said:

1. We cannot know without the figures but as I have said before, I suspect that we could have afforded £20-30 million in purchases + wages if the right players became available. The fact that we did not spend this money suggests that they did not.  

2. We have, sensibly imo, relied quite heavily on the loan market. If we had purchased Amadou, Farhmann, Roberts it would have taken more than the £20-30 million that you refer to. Would that have made them better players?

3. Indeed, it is quite possible that Amadou and Fahrmann, in particular, would have been unlikely to have come on a permanent deal at this stage, given the dangers of moving to newly promoted clubs and a desire to re-establish themselves where they are currently playing. To have bought permanent replacements to them would have been buying players with a greater degree of risk and adding more untested players to our own untested ones.

4. I thought that the five players we bought/ loaned in the summer looked to be good signings and filled the main gaps that needed filling. How many extra players do you think that we should have bought? Three, four, five - the more you add, the more you disrupt the side that got us here in the first place and deny them the chance to prove themselves at a higher level. A big part of the model is developing our own players.

5. "I personally think an unwillingness of Farke to experiment tactically or rotate in areas where we've had some alternative options" - this is not a failure of the model (as per the thread title), but a belief on your part that the manager has failed in some areas.

6. In essence, "your model" such as it is, is to borrow money and hope for the best - to gamble on the future/ "take a punt" and hope. There are so many examples of this failing.

7. Despite all the moans at present, it must make sense to build progressively and steadily rather than have a sh1t or bust gamble which could leave us in the doldrums for years. 

8. Despite the lack of confidence of some on here - I believe that returning players will make us stronger and I suspect that we will buy/ loan extra cover at centre back in January - it is not the number of injuries that has damaged us, but their concentration in particular places. Unlike some on here, I am not ready to give up on the season yet - but if we do go down, I would prefer to see us in a stronger position that we were in Sept 2018 rather than one where it will take us years to recover.

Point 5 wasn't me so not sure why you've included that.

Point 6 is not accurate. You borrow, primarily, against the guaranteed future TV monies just as we did but perhaps to a greater extent. You also don't necessarily need to borrow if you have a wealthy owner who can lend the money to you or plug the gap which was my initial point.  

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24 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

You also don't necessarily need to borrow if you have a wealthy owner who can lend the money to you or plug the gap which was my initial point.

Of course it is still borrowing - most owners charge interest to the club to whom they have lent money. Others secure it against the clubs assets - e.g. the ground or the training ground. You either get an investor who is seeking to take money out of the club in the long term or a donor - someone who is prepared to give tens of millions for nothing. Great if you can find a generous benefactor - I wouldn't turn it down - do you know of anyone?

Unless you can find someone to gift the club money, you are left with two alternatives - live within your means or borrow. The latter is in essence gambling with your future to meet present needs and would be particularly worrying if we had an "investor" as an owner - someone whose interest in Norwich is to make money for themselves or their company - they would have little compunction in liquidating assets, like the ground or training ground to recover losses on a failed gamble.

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10 minutes ago, Badger said:

Of course it is still borrowing - most owners charge interest to the club to whom they have lent money. Others secure it against the clubs assets - e.g. the ground or the training ground. You either get an investor who is seeking to take money out of the club in the long term or a donor - someone who is prepared to give tens of millions for nothing. Great if you can find a generous benefactor - I wouldn't turn it down - do you know of anyone?

Unless you can find someone to gift the club money, you are left with two alternatives - live within your means or borrow. The latter is in essence gambling with your future to meet present needs and would be particularly worrying if we had an "investor" as an owner - someone whose interest in Norwich is to make money for themselves or their company - they would have little compunction in liquidating assets, like the ground or training ground to recover losses on a failed gamble.

Yes quite a few owners charge interest but looking at the Guardian's breakdown of various Premier League club finances the interest is generally pretty minimal compared to the amounts loaned/invested (however you want to describe it). For example Palace paid a net interest of £1m against £21m in loans from company directors, Brighton paid £0.8m against loans of over £200m and Bournemouth paid £2m against loans of nearly £70m 

Also, fundamentally, the best way for an owner to keep getting paid interest/get their loan money back comes from keeping the club successful.

How do you define someone like Denim at Bournemouth for instance- is he an investor (£2m a year in interest on loans put in) or is he a benefactor (£69m loaned to the club with presumably minimal chance of getting it back if they got relegated?

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21 minutes ago, Badger said:

Of course it is still borrowing - most owners charge interest to the club to whom they have lent money. Others secure it against the clubs assets - e.g. the ground or the training ground. You either get an investor who is seeking to take money out of the club in the long term or a donor - someone who is prepared to give tens of millions for nothing. Great if you can find a generous benefactor - I wouldn't turn it down - do you know of anyone?

Unless you can find someone to gift the club money, you are left with two alternatives - live within your means or borrow. The latter is in essence gambling with your future to meet present needs and would be particularly worrying if we had an "investor" as an owner - someone whose interest in Norwich is to make money for themselves or their company - they would have little compunction in liquidating assets, like the ground or training ground to recover losses on a failed gamble.

Its not really any more "gambling with your future" than me having a mortgage on my house though is it? What we are saying is we intend to live mortgage free, despite the fact we actually have millions and millions of assets and future revenues coming in. 

I'm not and I don't think anyone else is seriously suggesting spending hundreds of millions. We would need new owners to do that. However, even under the current owners we could arguably be a bit more bullish/ballsy in my view. 

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5 hours ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Is this not just another unrealistic utopian vision though? I said the same last time you said something similar, about a week ago. Injuries in football are on the rise, expecting 'fully fit squad' is completely unrealistic. As a result you need to have sufficient depth.

Current injuries:

  • Manchester United - 11
  • Aston Villa - 7
  • Watford - 7
  • Chelsea - 6
  • West Ham - 6
  • Newcastle - 5
  • Everton - 4
  • Man City - 4
  • Tottenham - 4
  • Wolves - 4
  • Norwich - 4
  • Brighton - 4
  • Liverpool - 3
  • Bournemouth - 3
  • Crystal Palace - 2
  • Burnley - 2
  • Arsenal - 2
  • Southampton - 2
  • Leicester - 1
  • Sheffield United - 0

Sheffield United the only club to be currently reporting a 'fully fit squad' in this league, although they had 3 injured two weeks ago. Seems like the chances of having a fully fit squad at any given time are approx 5%.

Falling back constantly on 'ifs' and 'buts' suggests an endemic victim mentality being perpetuated, we keep telling ourselves that we've got it worse than everybody else and life just isn't fair... a defeatist attitude which doesn't win points.

When applying relatively and dealing only in numbers, our injury crisis was over weeks ago. We could perhaps entertain the idea that we've been extremely unlucky at centre back, at least have a debate about that, but all this talk of of a 'fully fit squad' needs to be knocked on the head... its a hypothetical scenario which is a very rare occurrence in real life.

 

We could have a debate about that.... I'll need to find time after I finish my debates on other forums about whether the Earth is flat and Evolution vs "Intelligent Design".

 

Seriously, I've been following City for 25 years and I can never remember us having more than four specialist CBs on our books at the start of the season, especially given this season it was known that Amadou could fill in there if necessary.  Yet here we are, after numerous games where we've had to have a midfielder filling in at CB and more recently it's even our 2nd choice midfielder for CB cover that we've had to draft in.  Anyone who thinks that's not a serious injury problem has just shot any credibility for their views on football IMO.

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3 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Its not really any more "gambling with your future" than me having a mortgage on my house though is it? What we are saying is we intend to live mortgage free, despite the fact we actually have millions and millions of assets and future revenues coming in. 

I'm not and I don't think anyone else is seriously suggesting spending hundreds of millions. We would need new owners to do that. However, even under the current owners we could arguably be a bit more bullish/ballsy in my view.

Oh Jimbo, consider this , your house is bought and paid for , as is the Club, would you risk that by using it as collateral for a risky business venture that if it failed could see your house ending up being someone elses? One quick look at Dragons den would tell you what experienced business investors think of that as a plan.

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2 minutes ago, wcorkcanary said:

Oh Jimbo, consider this , your house is bought and paid for , as is the Club, would you risk that by using it as collateral for a risky business venture that if it failed could see your house ending up being someone elses? One quick look at Dragons den would tell you what experienced business investors think of that as a plan.

Why is it such a "risky business venture" to buy a couple of players for several million pounds who, if scouted well, will most likely retain their value or indeed could possibly increase in value?

We have probably circa £250m of TV revenues owed to us over the next 4 seasons even in a worst case scenario. We have saleable assets in players worth close to £100m I would say. That's before you even get to the value of the other property assets the club has.

Taking it back to the mortgage analogy, if I lost my job for any prolonged period of time I would be struggling to make mortgage payments. I'd probably have to sell the house because I don't have 5 valuable cars sitting in the garage that I could sell off if necessary to raise some funds. 

To be honest, if any club or organisation could afford to "take a bit of a punt" then its a premier league football club.

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3 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yes quite a few owners charge interest but looking at the Guardian's breakdown of various Premier League club finances the interest is generally pretty minimal compared to the amounts loaned/invested (however you want to describe it). For example Palace paid a net interest of £1m against £21m in loans from company directors, Brighton paid £0.8m against loans of over £200m and Bournemouth paid £2m against loans of nearly £70m 

Also, fundamentally, the best way for an owner to keep getting paid interest/get their loan money back comes from keeping the club successful.

How do you define someone like Denim at Bournemouth for instance- is he an investor (£2m a year in interest on loans put in) or is he a benefactor (£69m loaned to the club with presumably minimal chance of getting it back if they got relegated?

Re Palace - yes this is a point in case where the owners charge interest on the loans and presumably at some stage will want the capital back. The rate of interest is hard to calculate as the there was extra money loaned to palace during the year, but fag packet calculations suggest it is over 5% pa. Their ownership is largely American but nobody knows exactly who owns the holding company that owns over two thirds of the club as Delaware companies do not have to reveal their owners. Palace have already been in administration twice but as a London club remains attractive to investors. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_F.C.)

I know little of Maxim Denim's interest - I don't think anybody does. Sky Sports says "Beyond that, his business background remains a mystery…" (https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11743/9827260/who-is-afc-bournemouths-russian-owner-maxim-demin) My guess, and it is only that, is that he is a benefactor.

Tony Bloom, Brighton owner, would be a dream owner. Local lad, fan and has a big charitable foundation that gives away millions. Clearly a benefactor, not sure that there is a Norwich equivalent - if one cropped up, I would happily accept them, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

In the meantime, given a choice between Palaces' owners and our own, I think that I would have more faith in our owners than the ones who seem to have gone to some length to hide their identity which is the case with Palace.

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2 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Why is it such a "risky business venture" to buy a couple of players for several million pounds who, if scouted well, will most likely retain their value or indeed could possibly increase in value?

We have probably circa £250m of TV revenues owed to us over the next 4 seasons even in a worst case scenario. We have saleable assets in players worth close to £100m I would say. That's before you even get to the value of the other property assets the club has.

Taking it back to the mortgage analogy, if I lost my job for any prolonged period of time I would be struggling to make mortgage payments. I'd probably have to sell the house because I don't have 5 valuable cars sitting in the garage that I could sell off if necessary to raise some funds. 

To be honest, if any club or organisation could afford to "take a bit of a punt" then its a premier league football club.

But if the mortgage is paid off,  why risk the house when you are growing produce in the garden that you can not only eat but sell off any that is surplus to requirements. Consolidate, build slowly, minimise risk, seems sensible enough to me.

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27 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Its not really any more "gambling with your future" than me having a mortgage on my house though is it?

Yes it is gambling. A player's value is far more volatile than a houses. Naismith is a good example - we paid 8 or 9 million for him in January and couldn't give him away a few months later! Ditto Wildshutt (though less) and Jarvis. I do take your point that players are realisable assets, but the resale value of players is highly unpredictable. How much of the £32 million will Palace get back for Benteke - their big money purchase (+ wages that must take it closer to £50 million) and he was a top player, well beyond our means?

What we are saying is we intend to live mortgage free, despite the fact we actually have millions and millions of assets and future revenues coming in. 

No, we are not. The club in effect took out a mortgage with the bond issue for training facilities. It was happy to take on this debt, because there was a strong investment case for it and it is less of a gamble than speculating on a player with potential.

I'm not and I don't think anyone else is seriously suggesting spending hundreds of millions. We would need new owners to do that. However, even under the current owners we could arguably be a bit more bullish/ballsy in my view. 

I cannot possibly know, but I suspect that they were prepared to spend if the right player became available. There was some talk of a French starlet (attacking midfield/ winger, I recall) for £10 to 15 million that turned us down? Better to get the right player than just spend it because we have it and live to regret it later.

 

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36 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Why is it such a "risky business venture" to buy a couple of players for several million pounds who, if scouted well, will most likely retain their value or indeed could possibly increase in value?

But the trouble is that players often don't retain their value - particularly those for whom you pay "a few million" and then want them to make a big contribution in the premier league. Players are not just assets, they are liabilities as well - you don't have to look much further than Steven Naismith to see this. I biggest ever purchase at £9.1 million according to Wiki and we couldn't sell him; we couldn't even give him away - we just had to pay his huge wages for the next three years, sucking money out of the club.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Norwich_City_F.C._records#Transfers

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16 minutes ago, Badger said:

But the trouble is that players often don't retain their value - particularly those for whom you pay "a few million" and then want them to make a big contribution in the premier league. Players are not just assets, they are liabilities as well - you don't have to look much further than Steven Naismith to see this. I biggest ever purchase at £9.1 million according to Wiki and we couldn't sell him; we couldn't even give him away - we just had to pay his huge wages for the next three years, sucking money out of the club.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Norwich_City_F.C._records#Transfers

Steven Naismith was an idiotic purchase of a player we didn't really need given he played the same position as Hoolahan (probably because he had an agent who had links with Neil i suspect) coupled with Mcnally losing the plot and not including the usual safeguards in the contract. It was a lazy signing thayt suggested we had a very poor scouting network at the time. I would agree with you absolutely that we would not want to buy a load more Stephen Naismiths but that is not a typical example of the sort of players clubs going up into the premier league have tended to sign and I am very confident that is not the sort of player we would sign based on our general recruitment strategy. Stephen Naismith cannot and should not be used as evidence that we should never push the boat out to sign players again.  

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1 hour ago, It's Character Forming said:

We could have a debate about that.... I'll need to find time after I finish my debates on other forums about whether the Earth is flat and Evolution vs "Intelligent Design".

Seriously, I've been following City for 25 years and I can never remember us having more than four specialist CBs on our books at the start of the season, especially given this season it was known that Amadou could fill in there if necessary.  Yet here we are, after numerous games where we've had to have a midfielder filling in at CB and more recently it's even our 2nd choice midfielder for CB cover that we've had to draft in.  Anyone who thinks that's not a serious injury problem has just shot any credibility for their views on football IMO.

There is still a debate to be had about this.

When we started this season we had four specialist centre backs, one of them was injured and had missed the entirety of pre-season and was expected to miss the start of the season which he did.  

Another was almost loaned to a Championship club, presumably because he was deemed not good enough for this league. He was the whipping boy on here within a few games if you remember? 

That left us with Klose and Godfrey as fit players deemed good enough, and a player we knew wasn't good enough should either of those get injured. 

One of the two who are Premier League standard has a history of knee problems, missing a fair bit of football because of those problems last season. 

So you can't be surprised if that player with a history of knee problems gets a knee injury even if it looked like a freak injury. Once you damage a ligament it never fully recovers, it becomes weaker and you are left with scar tissue or in some cases with simply less tissue full stop. 

So one injury and we are left using a player that we almost flogged to the Championship, much to the dismay of everybody on this forum. We went into the season with a centre back who isn't good enough as 3rd choice.

Then we unveil a rushed back Zimmermann in some sort of harness, clearly not fully fit, and surprise surprise he gets targeted by the opposition and crocked. 

We are supposed to all unite in the opinion that this is a big bit of freak bad luck which was unlikely to ever happen? Players suffer additional injuries as a result of a injury or reoccurance of injuries all the time, Zimmermann actually underwent surgery on a left medial tear in July, you can't just assume his return would not be without hiccups. Injured players have set backs, its not unusual for a player to be out with a knee injury and then come back and have an ankle injury because its got weaker after having not put weight on it for months.

If you go into a season with four central defenders and one is an ageing defender with reoccurring knee problems, one is a defender who had just had surgery on a tear in a knee ligament, and one who is a defender who isn't good enough even if he is fully fit.. then how can people argue that this is about as likely as getting 5 numbers and the bonus ball? 

We had two spaces left in our squad and could have utilised one of them for a Hanley improvement or a defender to insure against a Zimmermann reaction or a Klose knee injury. 

Your inevitable comeback will be about finances, but we had a domestic loan spot left.... or an overseas one if we simply didn't register Srbeny. We aren't talking £10m here, we're talking about a loan player who could have done us to cover the Zimmermann injury or tide us through to January when if Zimmermann or Klose were fit we could have allowed Hanley to leave. Either a talented kid from a big side or a try before you buy deal on somebody more experienced. 

People like to include Amadou as a fifth centre back when it suits them, but on the other hand like to point out that our midfield would be stronger if he was in it. Well he can't play two positions at the same time, and he definitely doesn't look comfortable at centre back. So I'm not going to. Can't argue that we've got a centre midfielder at centre back in one breathe, and then claim that he was brought in as centre back cover in the next. Either he can play there or he can't.

Anybody who can't see that going into a Premier League season with 2 fit potential Premier League standard centre backs, one of those injury prone over a few years, isn't a big risk has just shot any credibility for their views on football IMO.

This isn't the huge surprise people are making it out to be, many of those who call this bad luck were calling for us to sign a centre back in the summer!

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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46 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Steven Naismith was an idiotic purchase of a player we didn't really need given he played the same position as Hoolahan (probably because he had an agent who had links with Neil i suspect) coupled with Mcnally losing the plot and not including the usual safeguards in the contract. It was a lazy signing thayt suggested we had a very poor scouting network at the time. I would agree with you absolutely that we would not want to buy a load more Stephen Naismiths but that is not a typical example of the sort of players clubs going up into the premier league have tended to sign and I am very confident that is not the sort of player we would sign based on our general recruitment strategy. Stephen Naismith cannot and should not be used as evidence that we should never push the boat out to sign players again.  

Yeah, I hate the 'but Naismith!' argument for not spending money. He was a bad signing for a whole host of reasons, none of which were really related to his fee.

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3 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yeah, I hate the 'but Naismith!' argument for not spending money. He was a bad signing for a whole host of reasons, none of which were really related to his fee.

He was a bad signing because he didn't really want to be here and we practically bent over backwards to get him here, he never really fancied it.... should have moved to Plan B when that became apparent. 

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53 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Steven Naismith was an idiotic purchase of a player we didn't really need given he played the same position as Hoolahan (probably because he had an agent who had links with Neil i suspect) coupled with Mcnally losing the plot and not including the usual safeguards in the contract. It was a lazy signing thayt suggested we had a very poor scouting network at the time. I would agree with you absolutely that we would not want to buy a load more Stephen Naismiths but that is not a typical example of the sort of players clubs going up into the premier league have tended to sign and I am very confident that is not the sort of player we would sign based on our general recruitment strategy. Stephen Naismith cannot and should not be used as evidence that we should never push the boat out to sign players again.  

OK - how about our second biggest purchase - Ricky Van Woolfswinkel? Or the £7 million for Yanic Wildshut. £6 million for Gary Hooper. £5 million for Nelson Olivera etc. 

None of them were easily re-sellable assets. They were liabilities that didn't really work as players and drained resources for years as we couldn't sell them. We lost the transfer fee (at least the vast part of it) + we paid their wages for years on top.

The idea that we are buying assets with a reliable resale value is deeply floored. Buying players is a multi-million pound gamble not an investment in reliable assets. That is not to say that we buy nobody, but it that we shouldn't go into debt with such gambles.

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We massively overpaid for Wildschut and it was an obvious desperation move.

Nelson clearly had the ability, but something else was going on with him that finally lead to his demise at the club (I wonder if we'll ever know?).

Both RvW and Hooper were good players who were simply mis-used, and it was their misuse that caused the inevitable value drop.

All that aside, the point stands somewhat, you can't just assume a player will hold or even increase their value just because we want it to, and there's a similar chance that they will also lose value if they fail to live up to expectations/promise.

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5 minutes ago, Badger said:

OK - how about our second biggest purchase - Ricky Van Woolfswinkel? Or the £7 million for Yanic Wildshut. £6 million for Gary Hooper. £5 million for Nelson Olivera etc. 

None of them were easily re-sellable assets. They were liabilities that didn't really work as players and drained resources for years as we couldn't sell them. We lost the transfer fee (at least the vast part of it) + we paid their wages for years on top.

The idea that we are buying assets with a reliable resale value is deeply floored. Buying players is a multi-million pound gamble not an investment in reliable assets. That is not to say that we buy nobody, but it that we shouldn't go into debt with such gambles.

All you're arguing is that we previously gave bad managers and scouting teams the chance to spend a bunch of money. Plus the failure with RVW and Hooper in one window was offset by the profit made on Fer and Redmond, both who cost more than we spent on anyone this summer.

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10 hours ago, Jim Smith said:

 

Fundamentally though what the recent financial figures have shown is that we have owners who cannot afford to own a sustainable premier league club or indeed championship club without parachute payments and who are undoubtedly holding us back through their stance of not even considering new ownership. 

I struggle with this Jimbo. Last year you said this and you also said Marcus Evans was keeping the binners afloat. That doesn't bear scrutiny now does it?

So your answer is what it always is. They will be holding us back in the future. So, is that last year's future or this year's?

Oh, and the binners sunk🙃

Edited by nutty nigel

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