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Felixfan

Sunday Times article re. Norwich City and my reply.

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You may not have seen Alyson Rudd’s article last Sunday in the Times  re. Yo yo clubs and Norwich City in particular but I was so incensed that I had to reply and was so lucky that my reply was printed today. 
I have tried in my clumsy way to reproduce both items for you to share and I hope it had worked and if anyone else feels like writing please do so

 

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Articles like that are written by people who look at the Championship table for 2 minutes and think 'oh, they're yo-yoing back up again' and make their conclusions shortly after, without doing any research whatsoever.

Compare that to the article (never thought I'd say this) in the Daily Mail, and you can see how a reporter has identified the growth of the club over the past four years. 

We may go down again, however you can be sure that we'll have a better squad, better facilities and more points than the last time we were there. 

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I understand why your upset OP but I actually think she made a valid, if clumsy and tone deaf, wider point. 

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Agreed and my letter was edited slightly in that I did praise Alyson Rudd for her usual perceptive reporting but indicated that she probably had not seen many Championship games. My main point was that the Championship is a very competitive and exciting league and if yo yo is purgatory then I am all for it.

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Considering the excellent interview with Max Aarons by Henry Winter a couple of weeks ago in The Times, I would'nt care too much about an article from a journo who you can be fairly certain supports a 'big six' team and would never be interested in  just how Norwich have been able to achieve something very few teams have,in the way they have, in such unusual times and circumstances.

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Good response OP to a pretty silly article. If she’d thought about it maybe she’d have realised football purgatory is clubs like Sunderland or Wigan who fall down out of sight from the top.

 

Our ability to bounce straight back should be praised and there are plenty of Champs clubs that are very well resourced but don’t make promotion.

 

lazy journalism.

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It is clear to see that the Parachute Payments are getting too large for the relegated clubs in relation to the incomes of most Championship clubs. If they are not changed it is possible to see a future where fewer and fewer clubs get promoted and the same old 5 or 6 clubs bounce between the leagues. 

I can see why from a neutral point of view Norwich and Watford (and likely Bournemouth) bouncing back up is fairly boring. Hopefully this season is a bit of an anomaly and the Championship can remain competitive but with Covid impacts on the budgets of all those clubs without parachute payments, there is a real risk of the best feature of the Championship, its competitiveness, being lost.

 

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Bethnal  - I think you are falling into the same trap. One could debate endlessly about the merits or otherwise of parachute payments but they were brought in for a reason and yes this season looks like a exception. We have been astute enough to use the payments wisely where others have not. 
We may or may not yo yo forever but to say it is purgatory or sucking the life out of the Championship is just nonsense.

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The same is also evident in relegation from the leagues.

Two coming down after one season and the third after two seasons.

And studying others, Rotherham look like going down again. Hull are coming back up. Wycombe straight down. Northampton straight down. Swindon straight down.

Maybe football is becoming more and more about clubs too good for one league but not for the next one up.

 

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23 minutes ago, Felixfan said:

Bethnal  - I think you are falling into the same trap. One could debate endlessly about the merits or otherwise of parachute payments but they were brought in for a reason and yes this season looks like a exception. We have been astute enough to use the payments wisely where others have not. 
We may or may not yo yo forever but to say it is purgatory or sucking the life out of the Championship is just nonsense.

I think the article has probably come a little to soon - I think in 3 or 4 years we could see a real split between top Championship clubs and a middle tier who have little hope of getting promoted. As Norwich fans, we probably have a very different view of the enjoyment in the Championship to fans of a club like QPR who don't have the financial stability the parachute payments provide. The more the parachute payments increase, relative to Championship TV revenue, the more the league will become less and less competitive.

This has been one of the worst Championship seasons for a long time - whether it is an exception or a sign of things to come will become more clear in the next few years. 

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A simple solution to the arguments against parachute payments is to change Premier League rules to make sure all player and staff wages reduce in line with revenues on relegation. Otherwise you're just condemning the relegated clubs to bankruptcy.

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It's worth noting that in the previous ten Championship seasons before this one, only two of the 30 relegated sides had achieved automatic promotion. 

Obviously this season the top two are both relegated clubs, but it's an anomaly. It's a bit of a myth that relegated clubs have such a massive advantage, as the stats don't back this up. It'd be interesting to see the stats from before parachute payments to see if the relegated top flight clubs were more or less likely bounce straight back up.

Besides, football needs parachute payments. With no parachute payments, one of two things would happen: either relegated clubs would go bust upon relegation, or the entire Premier League bottom half would have to halve their expenditure whilst there  which would create an ever bigger chasm between the top six and the rest.

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14 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

I think the article has probably come a little to soon - I think in 3 or 4 years we could see a real split between top Championship clubs and a middle tier who have little hope of getting promoted. As Norwich fans, we probably have a very different view of the enjoyment in the Championship to fans of a club like QPR who don't have the financial stability the parachute payments provide. The more the parachute payments increase, relative to Championship TV revenue, the more the league will become less and less competitive.

This has been one of the worst Championship seasons for a long time - whether it is an exception or a sign of things to come will become more clear in the next few years. 

 I don't know if you were trying to be ironic in choosing QPR as an example. Of course they DID have parachute payments - TWICE!!!

The fact that over a three year period from about 2012 to 2015 they gave a 'master class' in catastrophic financial mismanagement, driving a coach and horses through Financial Fair Play rules and gambling insanely recklessly explains why they are where they are now - nothing to do with the inherent fairness or otherwise of parachute payments. 

 

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Are parachute payments any more or less unfair than being financially backed by a billionaire owner?

Fact is when we were promoted two seasons ago, we had one of the tightest transfer and wage budgets in the league, with the sale of our star player essential in us balancing the books.

To attribute our success purely to the parachute payments ignores the fact that we earned those payments thanks to fantastic leadership from top to bottom within the club. That same stewardship also turned a mentally broken team at the end of its relegation campaign, into a title winning side the next season. Or was that the parachute payments too? 

Are people saying that the gap between the champs and prem two seasons ago much less than it is now, so easier to punch above our weight back then but not anymore?

Just thinking of the last couple of years, us, Sheff United and Leeds have all been promoted with relatively small budgets. Swansea and Barnsley are right up there despite spending very little / needing to cut back on spending. Brentford have been there or there abouts for the last few seasons. 

So are things going to now erode with only the recently-relegated competing at the top of the champs? I seriously doubt it. 

I can see how things could widen when looking at it on paper, with COVID a clear factor and the importance of the parachute payments increasing, but in practice football is much more unpredictable than parachute payments = success, no parachute payments = failure.  

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Also isn't taking away parachute payments simply moving the goalposts for where the 'fairness' line ends in terms of competitiveness?

At the moment, with parachute payments, you can say that the only teams who benefit from the PL broadcasting revenues are the PL clubs, plus all relegated clubs over the course of the last 3 years - with everyone outside of this bracket not benefitting at all. 

If the parachute payments are taken away, then the only teams who benefit will be those 20 in the PL for any single season. 

Would that not widen the gap between the champs and prem even more; championship clubs wouldn't be able to stretch their championship budgets for PL transfers and wages knowing that nothing is in place to service them if they go down, and the established teams in the PL would happily continue spending £££ on the basis the promoted teams can't even remotely compete with them? 

Taking this scenario to the same extreme, we would maybe see different championship clubs promoted each season, but they'd just come straight back down again! 

Edited by Hank shoots Skyler

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Both Bournemouth and Watford spent five consecutive years in the Premier League. In Bournemouth's 18/19 accounts (I'm deliberately avoiding any accounts with a covid impact) they had a turnover of £134m and a wage bill of £110m.They whole point of the parachute payments was to allow clubs to wean themselves off the TV money and cover the reduced wage bill for 2-3 seasons to allow them to stabilise.

Covid's screwed the transfer market meaning that we're stuck with Leitner, but other players like Sarr, Buendia, Danjuma, Brooks that normally would have moved on have been forced to stick with their relegated teams, with mixed results.

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45 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

I think the article has probably come a little to soon - I think in 3 or 4 years we could see a real split between top Championship clubs and a middle tier who have little hope of getting promoted. As Norwich fans, we probably have a very different view of the enjoyment in the Championship to fans of a club like QPR who don't have the financial stability the parachute payments provide. The more the parachute payments increase, relative to Championship TV revenue, the more the league will become less and less competitive.

This has been one of the worst Championship seasons for a long time - whether it is an exception or a sign of things to come will become more clear in the next few years. 

This was mentioned in an Athletic article recently- one exec saying the Championship is 'finished' as clubs without parachute payments are now so skint they will struggle to compete. I think it might be a bit soon to say that but it could be correct.

 

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41 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

 I don't know if you were trying to be ironic in choosing QPR as an example. Of course they DID have parachute payments - TWICE!!!

The fact that over a three year period from about 2012 to 2015 they gave a 'master class' in catastrophic financial mismanagement, driving a coach and horses through Financial Fair Play rules and gambling insanely recklessly explains why they are where they are now - nothing to do with the inherent fairness or otherwise of parachute payments. 

 

Indeed. They also had the pined for Fernandez as an owner.

It seems...

Parachute money and Fernandez is not as good as Parachute money and Smith & Jones.

Who'd have thunk it....

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This year parachute payments will greatly benefit the EFL as 2 possibly 3 amounts will be redistributed.

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I regularly read The Times but I never read anything that she writes. She has a brain the size of a pea. One of the small French peas. 

Edited by dylanisabaddog

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The only way to make every club financially stable, competitive and entertaining is a salary cap with set squad numbers. Without that there’s always arguments for parachute payments each way. 
 

This will never happen as we see the greed of the top six to control football finances!

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8 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Redistributed to Premier League clubs...

No. It goes to EFL clubs.

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4 hours ago, Felixfan said:

Thank you Db. I hope someone at the club sees it.

Looks like Alyson was getting late with her copy deadline . As a result she just clumsily follows Rick Parry’s silly support of Man Utd/ Liverpool’s daft Big Picture . 

If you didn’t have parachute payments you would only be able to offer players a one year contract . Premier League players wouldn’t accept such contracts and therefore you would have even less of a chance of staying up. 
 

Result ? A league that is in practice closed if FFP in the Chumps is robustly applied . No team could afford / risk to put players on three year deals at even approaching competitive prem money. 
 

There was a very good reason why The Big Clubs wanted the Big Picture - which is exactly why it should be resisted . 

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My (online) reply to the 'article'

More than a touch 'rich' coming from a supporter of one of the so-called 'Big Six' - forensically and factually inaccurate as well and as noted elsewhere . . . no mention of the likes of Sunderland , Hull , Portsmouth, Wigan and Bolton all currently plying their trade in League 1 or below. Selective journalism and opinion at best . . . . poor.

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