Where did it all go wrong Daniel, Stuart, Delia?

[king canary 7,609]

The thing I've advocated for awhile that I'd like to see is the majority shareholders work with the Trust or similar to sell a portion of their shareholding to achieve two things...

1- fan representation on the board

2- watering down the shareholding so we no longer have one person/couple owning the majority of the club and thus having full control.

Edited May 2, 2022 by king canary

[hogesar 9,676]

28 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

We just want to stay up, not compete with the top six. 

Yep, and we've seen people spend more nad not even manage staying up. Then once you stay up, you don't think other teams spend?

Brighton have spent crica £220 million in the past few years on transfer fee's alone, then have to cover the wages (the owner is owed significant money, etc).

[Midlands Yellow 3,994]

1 minute ago, hogesar said:

Yep, and we've seen people spend more nad not even manage staying up. Then once you stay up, you don't think other teams spend?

Brighton have spent crica £220 million in the past few years on transfer fee's alone, then have to cover the wages (the owner is owed significant money, etc).

£110m + this season from Sky to cover the majority of the wages. Sold a player for £50m pre season, I’d say their accounts are looking very healthy at present. 

[TIL 1010 4,748]

28 minutes ago, king canary said:

The thing I've advocated for awhile that I'd like to see is the majority shareholders work with the Trust or similar to sell a portion of their shareholding to achieve two things...

1- fan representation on the board

2- watering down the shareholding so we no longer have one person/couple owning the majority of the club and thus having full control.

Over 600,000 shares in circulation and the Trust own about 4,000 with a few hundred members so who will they be representing as it has taken them 20 years to get to their current position ?

If this in a parellel universe was to happen who do you have in mind from the Trust to be the front man/wpman on behalf of the fanbase as they account for a very small percentage of season ticket holders let alone members ?

Edited May 2, 2022 by TIL 1010

[hogesar 9,676]

14 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

£110m + this season from Sky to cover the majority of the wages. Sold a player for £50m pre season, I’d say their accounts are looking very healthy at present. 

I'm sorry, but do you not do any reading before making random claims?

This is Brighton who last year had to borrow £37 million from a financial institution (unnamed) due to significant losses (tripling, in fact), recording losses of £67.2 milion. The club are in debt to a tune of £306 million (ish).

They're the opposite of 'healthy looking accounts' - they're very fortunate their billionaire owner happens to be a life-long Brighton fan.

Brighton, ironically brought up by you, literally reinforce my point that a single £100 million investment isn't enough, when Tony Bloom has had to invest over £300 million to keep them in the Premier League.

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by hogesar

[Midlands Yellow 3,994]

7 minutes ago, hogesar said:

I'm sorry, but do you not do any reading before making random claims?

This is Brighton who last year had to borrow £37 million from a financial institution (unnamed) due to significant losses (tripling, in fact), recording losses of £67.2 milion. The club are in debt to a tune of £306 million (ish).

They're the opposite of 'healthy looking accounts' - they're very fortunate their billionaire owner happens to be a life-long Brighton fan.

Brighton, ironically brought up by you, literally reinforce my point that a single £100 million investment isn't enough, when Tony Bloom has had to invest over £300 million to keep them in the Premier League.

 

The debt includes the stadium cost of over £100m. Last season they lost over £50m (pandemic mostly to blame) the next accounts will show a profit. So to be clear I was alluding to recent business, it looks like they are on the right track. 

[chicken 2,627]

On 26/09/2021 at 12:57, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Norwich don’t have enough money to compete on an equal footing at this level. This is undoubtedly a massive hindrance and defines a number of macro imperatives that drive subsequent sporting decisions. 

I think several teams, including past Norwich teams, prove that this isn't 100% accurate. We spent next to nothing under Worthington and drew too many games, being a couple of points off staying up. Most people accept that Ashton in the summer, rather than Jan, when Worthington wanted him, would have turned at least one of those draws into a win thus keeping us up. Many of the players, like Huckerby and Drury, also agree with that conclusion.

We didn't break the bank with Lambert either, arguably one of the reasons why he left the club. Nor did we particularly in Hughton's first season.

Arguably, it would seem, Norwich tend to do better when they spend less money, not more. Brentford for example, reportedly have the lowest wage bill and likely spent less too. Burnley spent little, and tend to spend little relatively speaking. It doesn't have to be just about "not having enough money". Does it make it easier? I'm not sure. It just opens up the targets you can pick from. Lambert and Karsa could have opted for fewer more expensive players, but they didn't, E. Bennett, Pilkington - sub £3m players. Johnson was free. Morison wasn't a huge amount. We didn't have a "Huckerby" in that side either. The ability appeared to be spread. Holt was great, he dovetailed perfectly with the far less physical Hoolahan for example.

I agree with a fair amount of what you are saying I just think it's too easy to say it's ALL about the money.
 

On 26/09/2021 at 12:57, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Let us now shoot a canard or two to move the discussion forward.  It is unheard of to sell your best player and major weapon upon promotion. Unheard of. The timing of it is extraordinary. It was a huge gamble and - slightly - smells of a compulsive need-belief in ‘doing differently’ to the point where you try to reinvent the wheel in evangelical belief. 

Norwich did not have to sell Buendia. There have been thousands of footballers who pitched for a move, who got their agent to get spiky, who leaked some ‘come-and-get-me’ pleas, a thousand gentleman’s agreements in football that weren’t worth the toilet paper they weren’t wiped on. Norwich were premier League. Buendia was under contract. Promotion was fresh.

Norwich chose  to sell Buendia. 

This goes to the heart of the issue, as it combines the weaknesses of lack of finance with sporting strategy. 

This rather perpetuates a myth I am afraid.

The examples people have given in response to me are the likes of Kane, Zaha et al. Fundamentally those are poor comparisons. Why? They are not players on championship wages who feel they should be on good, solid premier league wages and possibly pushing for Europe. Kane is an England international and had his head turned by Man City who then decided Spurs' asking price was too much. Spurs know that Kane is vital to them finishing top six or even top four. He is a Spurs fan and is already on very good money.

There is a bit of a bigger change in going from, say, £20k to £60k, than there is from £150k to £200k, especially if you are also playing at a higher level at a younger age where you could then seal an even more lucrative move. Not forgetting that Spurs don't need the money for their model, there is no pressure on them to sell in the same way as us.

It also ignores the full extent of the story that is very well versed now. It is rare, but not unheard of to sell one of your best players upon promotion - perhaps rarer in the UK. However his sale was reportedly much more protracted, with an agreement reached with Villa in January/February. He was left out of the team earlier in the season over this too.

It also ignores that the other part of the argument is that you only sell when you are relegated, in which case it supports selling Buendia the summer after relegation and everyone arguing not upon promotion would have been vastly happier with that and potentially no promotion back to the premier league. Equally, these are often the same people that say that if players don't want to be here they should go. 

Either way, Buendia going should not be considered the issue. After all, we signed him for £1.5m and the same people who scouted him and arranged his signing are largely, presumably, still at the club. Replacing important players is part and parcel of a football team, whether that be due to retirement or being sold to a club that can offer them more. Wigan, a much, much smaller club, stayed in the premier league with this model for years, promising to give players a platform that they could use to showcase their talent.

For me, the replacements is where we should put our focus, not on whether Vrancic, Hugill, Hernandez should have been kept here or Buendia kept in a box etc. That was the task set. That is where we have come up short.

 

On 26/09/2021 at 12:57, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Buendia for pure ability to hurt the opposition and affect games, week in, week out. He cannot be ignored strategically by the opposition, they have to change their own preferred plans to adjust to his very presence. 

I also want to focus on this bit again because I think you hit the crux of the matter with our attacking play without actually mentioning it.

Buendia was a far more important player for the way we played. Not just being a direct threat, but passing the ball out and around teams. One of the things that stands out on the premier league website of his season with us is the amount of passes per game. That's vital. The other thing you sort of outline but don't touch on is what happens when as a team, you change your preferred plans to nullify a threat in an opposition team.

You hear people talk of "being found out" - typically meaning that a team only really has one way of playing, everything goes through that player and that player alone, or through a certain tactic which means teams learn how to play against you and by mid season you're left scratching your head as said team struggles to find another way to get around teams.

Arguably this is exactly where our more successful teams of the past have been better. More threat across our forward and attacking positions giving teams more to think about. Good set pieces is also an important part of that. Something we still lack IMHO.

So, when we think of Buendia being good last season, we probably also need to consider that we also had other players who'd get involved and take advantage of the focus being on him. Cantwell is the best example we have. Last time out in the Premier League there is no doubt that Cantwell took full advantage of the space afforded to him in terms of attention due to other players being more tightly and closely marked. To the point that some teams were also trying to mark him out of the game. It takes intelligent reading of the game for that as well.

Rashica struggled at the start of the season, but in all fairness, he's rarely had another player in CM or AM that has come close to a similar threat to him, bar the games we seemed to be picking up momentum with Pukki and Idah up front and Sargent wide right. Only then did we seem to provide at least a "handful" for the opposition to deal with.

If I'm defending, lets say a DM, against a team and I know their striker isn't physical and my CB's have him covered and my full back and winger (or wing back, whatever) have the measure of their best attacking midfield threat, I know as a DM I can push on a bit more. As a team, being comfortable in defence, you know you can take more risks going forward. You can drop a bit of the defensive responsibility and play a bit more freely.

We don't carry enough threat. Not just in one player, in Rashica who may actually be a decent enough threat, but in those players who are meant to step up next. I can't say enough how hugely disappointed I am in Cantwell. An experienced player now, a player not too far off peak for a footballer, and a player who should have been consistently delivering to the same levels as two seasons ago. That also left a huge, unpredictable hole in our squad.

[Badger 2,405]

31 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

I think Hoggy is implying an additional £100m added to the Sky pot would make a difference. Your the numbers man, what have a club like Brighton spent for a mid table finish this season? I doubt it’s anywhere near £200m seeming as they sold one player for £50m last summer. 

We don't have figures for Brighton's spend this year, the accounts for this won't be published until next April. They have the dream owner, who is a fan rich enough to subsidise his home team and content it seems to do so on a continuing basis - the sort of owner that we all dream of, but unfortunately are very rare.

Since Brighton were promoted Bloom has lent them about £140 million and there is also another £37 million in debt to the bank, so there seems to be a subsidy of broadly £40 million a year to stay up and before this year, it has been pretty close a 17th, 16th and two 15th positions. We would need a bigger annual subsidy (2 or 3 million pa?) because Brighton get bigger crowds than us (c 30,000). I'd love to have a Tony Bloom (the owner's name) but I'm not holding my breath.

There are other teams that have stayed up without being subsidised, most famously, Burnley but also Palace. Both of these clubs have less revenue than us from commercial activity and less gate money and therefore were poorer than us when they stayed up. It can be done, but involves greater pragmatism on the pitch than we have showed the last three relegations.

[Midlands Yellow 3,994]

10 minutes ago, Badger said:

We don't have figures for Brighton's spend this year, the accounts for this won't be published until next April. They have the dream owner, who is a fan rich enough to subsidise his home team and content it seems to do so on a continuing basis - the sort of owner that we all dream of, but unfortunately are very rare.

Since Brighton were promoted Bloom has lent them about £140 million and there is also another £37 million in debt to the bank, so there seems to be a subsidy of broadly £40 million a year to stay up and before this year, it has been pretty close a 17th, 16th and two 15th positions. We would need a bigger annual subsidy (2 or 3 million pa?) because Brighton get bigger crowds than us (c 30,000). I'd love to have a Tony Bloom (the owner's name) but I'm not holding my breath.

There are other teams that have stayed up without being subsidised, most famously, Burnley but also Palace. Both of these clubs have less revenue than us from commercial activity and less gate money and therefore were poorer than us when they stayed up. It can be done, but involves greater pragmatism on the pitch than we have showed the last three relegations.

Does that include new stadium costs Badger? 

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, king canary said:

1- fan representation on the board

The issue with this is would you get Lakey or Dean Coney's Boots? 😉

[Badger 2,405]

8 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Does that include new stadium costs Badger? 

This was built before they went into the Premier League (2011). They were £170 million in debt (to the owner) - I imagine that much of this was for the stadium which has a reported construction cost of £93 million. Their debt stands at £374 million in 2021 accounts.

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Badger
Correction

[chicken 2,627]

13 minutes ago, Badger said:

The issue with this is would you get Lakey or Dean Coney's Boots? 😉

Or Disco, or Big Vince or... or... or...

 

[king canary 7,609]

3 hours ago, TIL 1010 said:

Over 600,000 shares in circulation and the Trust own about 4,000 with a few hundred members so who will they be representing as it has taken them 20 years to get to their current position ?

If this in a parellel universe was to happen who do you have in mind from the Trust to be the front man/wpman on behalf of the fanbase as they account for a very small percentage of season ticket holders let alone members ?

Mentioning the trust is like sending up the bat signal for you isn't it? Jeez.

To be clear it is a hypothetical idea. I'm not a member of the Trust, it wouldn't have to be them hence the 'or similar' comment. Weirdly enough I don't have the whole thing planned out as it just a suggestion. 

It is funny how much any mention of them sets you off though.

[Rolf Harris 31]

Tell us that they could flip the players and buy better. 

[corbs 147]

In the 50 years or so that I’ve supported us, I cannot once remember a star player who wanted to leave being coaxed to stay. Of course under Chase I do recall players who didn’t want to go being told your off. I cannot once recall a serious offer from a big club being rebuffed for a player or manager of ours. Personally I always want players to go and go quickly if their heart is not in it. 

[Duncan Edwards 2,237]

34 minutes ago, corbs said:

In the 50 years or so that I’ve supported us, I cannot once remember a star player who wanted to leave being coaxed to stay. Of course under Chase I do recall players who didn’t want to go being told your off. I cannot once recall a serious offer from a big club being rebuffed for a player or manager of ours. Personally I always want players to go and go quickly if their heart is not in it. 

Didn’t Wes want to go to Villa? Didn’t celebrate when he scored against them and all the sh1thouse club stuff? 

[Monty13 2,235]

1 hour ago, Duncan Edwards said:

Didn’t Wes want to go to Villa? Didn’t celebrate when he scored against them and all the sh1thouse club stuff? 

Yes, short memory for someone with 50 years of them.

[chicken 2,627]

1 hour ago, Duncan Edwards said:

Didn’t Wes want to go to Villa? Didn’t celebrate when he scored against them and all the sh1thouse club stuff? 

Tbf, I think the report on that at the time was that Villa had made a very poor offer for Hoolahan. So bit of both. 

[BigFish 1,988]

On 07/04/2022 at 10:23, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Here is one solution to the canard. As espoused in Sept `21

 

…`….If we really want to ‘do different’ it is time to reach out to the SME world, to the Tifosys trading ground bond supporters, small investors, loyal individuals and create a genuinely inclusive French-Shared-Mortgage model whereby the small slices of ownership fluctuate according to investment size at any given moment. Whereby any small (vetted) investor gets a marketing share of brand usage, whereby the community and collective spirit is honourably leveraged to create a membership-style model that would truly be a fitting legacy to Delia’s wonderful era. She herself could and should be a major part going forwards.…‘

Parma 

I looked at their website, in part because I didn't understand a word of this, and there was the NCFC badge amongst the others? Is there something you know, @Parma Ham's gone mouldy?

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

Taking soundings.

Parma 

[BigFish 1,988]

1 minute ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Taking soundings.

Parma 

😀Personally I would guess that the fanbase collectively lack the capital or the motivation to make something like this work. Much easier to hang on to the pipedream of a billionaire benefactor who doesn't exist.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,551]

On 26/09/2021 at 13:57, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

Where did it all go wrong Daniel, Stuart, Delia?
 

I had a client who - aside from other things - was a leading National risk assessor for Health & Safety accidents at work. 

When thinking about apportioning blame for any perceived failure, I often think about his firmly-held belief - borne of repeated experience - that major failures are almost always the consequence of a string of (he would say predominantly-avoidable) smaller errors occurring in collective sequence.

These errors can be broken down into the strategic, the operational-systemic and the individual. The overriding driver for assessment is learning and structural improvement where necessary. 

Much as it is with Norwich. 

In the immediate aftermath of failure, my client would consider it highly unwise to leap to find fast answers and apportion useful blame. It is something of a human instinct, though it is a poor substitute for slower, more considered thinking. 

Norwich don’t have enough money to compete on an equal footing at this level. This is undoubtedly a massive hindrance and defines a number of macro imperatives that drive subsequent sporting decisions. 

Let’s start with the obvious. There are few Norwich fans who would argue against the statement that Buendia was our best player last year and that Skipp was our most important. Buendia for pure ability to hurt the opposition and affect games, week in, week out. He cannot be ignored strategically by the opposition, they have to change their own preferred plans to adjust to his very presence. Coaching definition: a weapon. Skipp naturally played the exact way that offered a key counterpoint to the way Farke likes to play and set up his sides. He instinctively acted as a third centre back when necessary, didn’t get sucked forward or out of shape when we were on top, smelt danger before it arrives and was fast into the fire at its outbreak. If he was not priceless to us, his role was. If not him, then someone had to bought to do that exact job. It is even more important at the top level. This is not hindsight, it was pretty clear to the vast majority of Norwich fans who watch their team regularly. 

Let us now shoot a canard or two to move the discussion forward.  It is unheard of to sell your best player and major weapon upon promotion. Unheard of. The timing of it is extraordinary. It was a huge gamble and - slightly - smells of a compulsive need-belief in ‘doing differently’ to the point where you try to reinvent the wheel in evangelical belief. 

Norwich did not have to sell Buendia. There have been thousands of footballers who pitched for a move, who got their agent to get spiky, who leaked some ‘come-and-get-me’ pleas, a thousand gentleman’s agreements in football that weren’t worth the toilet paper they weren’t wiped on. Norwich were premier League. Buendia was under contract. Promotion was fresh.

Norwich chose  to sell Buendia. 

This goes to the heart of the issue, as it combines the weaknesses of lack of finance with sporting strategy. 

It is not retrospective wisdom to note that at the top level teams are full of powerful, capable squads who have the top level nous to minimise on-field strategic weakness (and force the best to be brilliant, week-in, week-out). Weaker teams face more pressure and thus weaker players make more individual mistakes. Is this then really errors of the individual or the inevitable odds of the wheel of fortune?

Stuart Webber wisely stated that we would not try to compete with this, that we couldn’t, that we would focus on improving the first xi and not spread money around a vast squad of interchangeable (likely not-quite-as-good-as-everyone-else’s) players. 

Nevertheless the decision was made to sell Buendia - who not only a weapon in his own right, but also ensured that Pukki his compadre was at least half a weapon. That’s already good enough to trouble teams a bit. 

What has been bought are not weapons. They are good players. We are on average much better as a squad, yet conversely less dangerous to the opposition. There is the trade. It seems at odds with the early-in-pre-season statement. 

Daniel Farke can pick two good teams every week, though not an eleven that can trouble the opposition. This looks like an expensive mis-calculation. 

There may be a necessary asset investment angle to this. A Tzolis, a Sargent, a Rashica can flourish and suddenly be a valuable asset. They may stay and thrive in the Championship. This strategy may be a product of lack of finance. It would be hard to argue that it doesn’t sacrifice the here-and-now though. 

The painful truth may be that Daniel, Stuart and Delia have all done as well as they can with what they have. 

Demanding change now may be missing the point. Daniel may be wedded to a dominant footballing philosophy that flourishes exclusively against the weaker. Stuart may have ‘done different’ one too many times and succumbed to the - often wonderful - religious fervour of a new  Messiah. Delia may be right to rail against the dreadful capitalism of the whole thing….but….
 

…Maths is a terrible adversary however and all the numbers are against us with what we have. Unpicking the stitching in the dugout changes little if the over-arching fundamentals remain the same. Farke may be the lightning rod, Webber may seek pastures new and trade off well-earned previous glories, Delia may cling on with an ever-tighter grip like Miss Haversham in the crumbling manor…but what then? Does the cycle repeat….the wonderful, awful pain and joy of yo-yo greatness and awfulness? The railing against Murdoch’s millions while gobbling it up so it can be dribbled away to pay for the inevitable annual millions lost in the Championship?

Farke has an array of good players, though he has no weapons. Even Pukki is emasculated without Buendia. Of course when you have one or two weapons you are dependent. Of course you are one injury away from a real issue. Though even that wily old warhorse Steve Bruce - no-ones favourite for favourite manager of the year - essentially builds a solid, effective team then ‘gives the ball to the lad Saint-Maximin’ while the others players sit tight, watch and applaud. It is an effective strategy for the job at hand. Newcastle stay up comfortably (also not enough for fans of course, one must ever move forwards..such is top level sport). Unless you are a truly wealthy, incredible team you cannot hold many weapons for long though. Though the magpies do keep Saint-Maximin, Spurs do not sell Kane and nobody - but nobody - sells such a weapon at the point of promotion. 

Norwich are hamstrung by their ownership model. Self-sustaining to an absolutist degree is an extraordinary strategy in football. There is no money. Self-sustaining is not a philosophy or a laudable guiding principle, it is borne of necessity. Everything - selling Buendia included - flows from there. 

Unless Delia gives the shares away or bequeathes them to a group or individual, then they must be bought. They do have a value. Let us say that the club is worth £100m. To buy 65% of the club, an investor, new benefactor, lottery winner must spend £65m on a nameplate. Before anything else happens. £65m spent and not a single loan left back added yet. No wonder there ‘is no queue of investors lining Carrow Road’. 

So this is it. This is where the maths ends up and the road we tread again. Farke is a red herring. Sacking the manager changes nothing. I’m not even sure that 2 or 3 ardent fans would agree on what our best xi is, what shape it should be, where our best weapons are. I’m afraid simply railing that ‘we should get after them more’….or ‘we don’t go at teams from the off’ … or ..’we need to want it more’ is pointless, worthless nonsense.

We have spent Buendia on a lot of players who are better than we had before and a lot less not-as-good-as-everyone-else’s. Though we don’t have anything now to really hurt teams tactically with. ‘Both boxes’ as the old boys used to say. 

Our failure is a cascading collection of small weaknesses and inter-connecting sticking plasters to cover the gaping wound of lack of finance. All of it is understandable.

If we really want to ‘do different’ it is time to reach out to the SME world, to the Tifosys trading ground bond supporters, small investors, loyal individuals and create a genuinely inclusive French-Shared-Mortgage model whereby the small slices of ownership fluctuate according to investment size at any given moment. Whereby any small (vetted) investor gets a marketing share of brand usage, whereby the community and collective spirit is honourably leveraged to create a membership-style model that would truly be a fitting legacy to Delia’s wonderful era. She herself could and should be a major part going forwards. Like it or not, intended or not, the club has become a massively appreciated asset. It’s value has increased maybe tenfold from the very welcome, though contextually small investment of (anecdotally) £10m or less. 

The majority of the £100m is now Delia’s. She can hand it down to Tom. He can keep it or cash it in. Maybe it is a theoretical £100m that never sees the light of day. If you ask for that money from an investor, I would be reasonably sure it would never materialise. The ‘doors are open’ offer to sell is thus a somewhat theoretical one. It also would have no benefit to Norwich City. Not a pound would enter the club from such a share sale. Something of a circular reference self-fulfilling prophecy then….

..and so we have 20 odd good players and no Buendia. Nor any Skipp. Nor any points. 

Not really an accident at all.

Parma 

 

 

 

That was a very long-winded way of saying we haven't got enough money to just buy in the players to have a good chance of being really competitive in the Premier league, but it's correct that that's almost the entire reason we can't quite establish ourselves in the Premier League at this point. 

We continue to develop though, year on year; we've made played in the Premier League 6 of the last 11 years, two of which were pretty good seasons, and I'm sure the stars will align for us to establish ourselves sustainably in the Premier league eventually. 

Edited May 2, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[The Bunny 309]

14 hours ago, chicken said:

However his sale was reportedly much more protracted, with an agreement reached with Villa in January/February. He was left out of the team earlier in the season over this too.

People keep repeating this convenient lie, but there is no evidence for it. To quote Michael Bailey from the Athletic:

Quote

sources are adamant there was no previous agreement between the club and player to sell him following last season’s promotion

https://theathletic.com/3284500/2022/04/30/a-complete-failure-the-story-of-norwich-citys-relegation-from-the-premier-league/

Stop making excuses for them. It was a decision, and they should live with the consequences of it. 

[BroadstairsR 2,173]

I think that Parma's contribution was excellent but did, imo, simplify the Buendia matter.

Emi Buendia is no Harry Kane. There is every reason to believe that his well known petulance on the field of play might well have shown itself off the field of play, in a disruptive manner, should he have been denied his dream move to that bigger club which was able to offer him more chance of international recognition and European involvement, along with a massive financial boost that City could never have matched.

Of course, the player's professionalism might well have won through should he have been forced to knuckle down at Carrow Road, but the discontent would likely have still been in his head. Even Kane had an off period at the beginning of this season that some attributed to the Summer's events, and Kane is a Tottenham boy through and through. Emi is an itinerant Argentinian. Kane had reached the heights. Emi was still aspiring to them. 

Besides all this, the acquisition of getting on for £40m is a tidy sum which fits perfectly into that highly restrictive self funding model.

Selling our best is what we do. We even did that when we had our best prospects as a team ever (imo) and accepted £5m for Chris Sutton. Then again, Sutton was no Harry Kane either.

I just loved the Miss Haversham comparison, and shall probably refer to Delia in that way when I am in sufficient a 'bolshie' mood to have need to express my displeasure at her overstay in the Carrow Road hot seat.

Edited May 3, 2022 by BroadstairsR

[kenfoggo 247]

Much to be considered before the start on the next season. If the Club is to continue withe the self-financing model then assets  will need to be sold to balance the books, despite parachute payments. Cantwell (if he CAN be off loaded …to anyone) and Aarons will leave. Loan players that we had this season will leave. So where does that leave us for the 2022/2023 season? The same squad who performed so abysmally in this season, the same squad who showed no fight, commitment or character to compete ? The same Head Coach who was brought in to keep us up, but couldn’t? The same Sporting Director who failed to recruit a squad fit for purpose and can only give the job 90%? The same owners who are likeable and have good stewardship of the best interests of the Club but not the financial resources of competing owners? It all looks a little bleak.

[PurpleCanary 5,562]

31 minutes ago, kenfoggo said:

Much to be considered before the start on the next season. If the Club is to continue withe the self-financing model then assets  will need to be sold to balance the books, despite parachute payments. Cantwell (if he CAN be off loaded …to anyone) and Aarons will leave. Loan players that we had this season will leave. So where does that leave us for the 2022/2023 season? The same squad who performed so abysmally in this season, the same squad who showed no fight, commitment or character to compete ? The same Head Coach who was brought in to keep us up, but couldn’t? The same Sporting Director who failed to recruit a squad fit for purpose and can only give the job 90%? The same owners who are likeable and have good stewardship of the best interests of the Club but not the financial resources of competing owners? It all looks a little bleak.

No.

[Badger 2,405]

12 hours ago, BigFish said:

I looked at their website, in part because I didn't understand a word of this, and there was the NCFC badge amongst the others? Is there something you know, @Parma Ham's gone mouldy?

They were organisers for our bond scheme to pay for the training ground.

[BigFish 1,988]

3 minutes ago, Badger said:

They were organisers for our bond scheme to pay for the training ground.

Thx @Badger, rather indicates that there are experts round the club with innovative funding solutions.

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, kenfoggo said:

If the Club is to continue withe the self-financing model then assets  will need to be sold to balance the books, despite parachute payments.

No we don't.

I'm sure that we will sell players - Max Aarons being an obvious example, but it will not be to "balance the books." It will be to try to build a team that Smith is happy with.

Watford will have to sell to balance the books, as they have taken on a lot of debt in recent years. That's one of the advantages of a self-funding model.

[Petriix 2,838]

I'm still of the opinion that the emphasis has to be on being 'greater than the sum of our parts'. Having observed Buendia's struggle to make an impact at Villa as well as Cantwell's spectacular decline, I'm left with a clear view that these players probably aren't individually quite as good as we might have believed. So the question becomes more about what they collectively became and how that was lost.

I've, separately, pointed the finger at the summer recruitment and the change in system. For his last few months here, Farke was desperately trying to create some synergy out of the new squad. Ultimately he paid the price for this failure, but it's become pretty clear since that it was an impossible task. I'm now fairly clear that the (expensively assembled) squad didn't have that collective capacity.

We've repeatedly discussed the points of failure. The Buendia sale was the first (and arguably most obvious) act of self immolation. I focused more on the change of system. Many of us picked out individuals (Gilmour, McLean, Cantwell in particular - depending on your camp). There seems to be an overall consensus that the recruitment was poor, but I simply don't accept that the problem lies solely in financial limitations.

I was struck by an observation (apologies but I don't recall which poster or thread and I'm too lazy to find it) that Norwich have been more successful when they've spent less money on promotion. Now, I'm not sure on the absolute accuracy of this, but I'm totally convinced that continuity is a vital part of our recent success. The scale of the changes we made last summer made the survival task impossible.

Maybe it's reasonable to accept that better (more expensive) players would be quicker to adapt. Also that Farke, as a stubborn proponent of his own philosophy - which he'd spent 4 years embedding throughout the club - was probably poorly equipped to oversee such a radical reinvention. It begs the question of why we decided to change things so significantly rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of how.

I'm increasingly of the belief that this change was more driven by Webber than Farke - and I'm basing this on supposition, not tangible evidence. I don't think it's a coincidence that Farke had dropped Gilmour and reverted to a central number 10 in a 4-2-3-1 on the day he was sacked. It's almost as if he was making a statement.

Webber had already rolled the dice by shaking up the squad. And, like a gambler chasing his losses, he bet again on himself by sacking Farke. It's evident now that the overwhelming change in personnel has been a failure. While you could speculate that last season's squad, managed by Farke, would have been less successful in the Premier League this season, it would certainly have been a better choice in hindsight to stick rather than twist.

Spending money doesn't guarantee success. As proven by the other relegated teams in this and recent seasons, you can spend enormously and still fail. On the other hand we've seen some great recent examples of how teams can survive by focusing more on continuity. In any case, there is no realistic scenario in which we get to see the alternative - we'll never have £200m to spend.

Maybe it's change itself that caused our downfall. The need to be seen to have tried to compete. Perhaps this is the result of Webber's wanderlust when he might be better off staying still and looking for answers within...