Proof that "the model" is sustainable!

[Jim Smith 2,365]

15 hours ago, Badger said:

I have just posted about this above. Our revenue will be greater than Watford's (excluding TV performance payments). Our crowds are bigger; our commercial revenues are greater + we do not have to finance the debt that Watford carry. We could afford a higher wage bill than them if we chose to do so. Watford decided that they could not afford to buy players and instead gambled on a few "golden oldies" and gave them one last big pay cheque.

If they stay up, it will be money well invested but it was a strategy necessitated by financial weakness rather than strength.

Regardless it’s currently looking like a better strategy for achieving what we both want so maybe we need to be more flexible. 

[Jim Smith 2,365]

8 hours ago, sgncfc said:

Except that isn't what Webber is quoted as saying. So either Webber is deliberately misleading the supporters when he says that Buendia gave them no option, or you are mistaken.  Buendia was all of the things you mention but his "strop" apparently didn't disappear.

 

 

Of course we had an option. Even if he did have a strop. It’s funny how we always had no option when these players get sold. Howson springs to mind again. No doubt the same will happen with Todd too. 

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,246]

As a lower Premier Club - if I had a Sarr, a Zaha. a Saint-Maximin - do I spend £50m on several better-than-my-current-average players or do I keep my weapons?

What do such people do?

Parma 

[Badger 2,414]

12 hours ago, Son Ova Gunn said:

Badger, if you like Delia’s ownership just say it, each to their own but trying to make out that it doesn’t put us at a financial disadvantage compared to our competition is just crazy talk ...

I have no particular affection for Delia: I would prefer a multi-billionaire able to throw money at us without any concern. However, unlike you, I don't think that there is a long queue of such people waiting to give their money to us.

The running model imposed upon us by lack of rich owners resulted in a summer transfer window in which we failed to recruit what is needed to compile a PL team...

And yet, we spent far more than Watford and Brentford. How do you explain that?

The model allows free agents like King and Cahill to be missed out on, targets like Ajer to go elsewhere ...

We could have afforded King and Cahill - both would have been cheaper options than we eventually pursued. We thought that we would be better served with other options: it was a recruitment choice: not one forced on us by financial necessity.

it means paying championship wages in the PL and not being able to attract proven performers at the top level or even outstanding players from the tier below... 

You have no evidence that this is the case. Our wage bill in previous seasons has been lower than average but similar to other teams of our size. Our wage bill this year will be much higher than Brentford's just as it was much higher than Sheffield Utd's two years ago.

ultimately if the board and owners say we are unable to financially compete in this tier then I see no reason why they would make it up.

Again we come back to the simple point that we spent far more than most teams this summer and much more than the teams that came up with us.

The simple fact that you fail to recognise (and perhaps don't understand) is that many "rich investor owners" don't GIVE MONEY to their clubs. They buy the clubs to make a profit, and aim to take money out of the club, not put it in. Have a look at the finances of Burnley, Southampton Watford etc and see for yourself and you will see that the picture is not as rosy as you think. You might also want to look at the number of clubs that have sold their grounds to another one of the owner's companies. (This is sometimes for FFP reasons, like Villa, t it is also done to provide the owners with financial security in the event of things going wrong with their investment.)

But back to your original point, if there was an ethical multi-billionaire out there ready to pump loads of money into the club I'd accept it in a heartbeat - I just don't think that there is one. Above all else, I want to avoid investor owners who want to take money out of the club.

 

[Robert N. LiM 4,655]

25 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

As a lower Premier Club - if I had a Sarr, a Zaha. a Saint-Maximin - do I spend £50m on several better-than-my-current-average players or do I keep my weapons?

What do such people do?

Parma 

Or to put it another way, as a recently relegated club, do you cash in on your best player, or do you do whatever you can to keep him, even if this involves promising he can go at the end of the season?

[Badger 2,414]

24 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

As a lower Premier Club - if I had a Sarr, a Zaha. a Saint-Maximin - do I spend £50m on several better-than-my-current-average players or do I keep my weapons?

What do such people do?

Parma 

I guess that they do what they believe is the best for the club. I cannot believe that they did anything to deliberately weaken the club - why would they? Apart from anything else it is their reputation and careers.

If Norwich go down meekly again this year, it is hardly a feather in the cap of Webber and Farke and will weaken their CVs.

PH, I know that you have more inside knowledge than me, but I can't believe that Webber/ Farke would deliberately do things to weaken the club. There are things that we will never know abut the background to events, but the most we can really say is that it may have been misjudgement.

[PurpleCanary 5,601]

33 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

As a lower Premier Club - if I had a Sarr, a Zaha. a Saint-Maximin - do I spend £50m on several better-than-my-current-average players or do I keep my weapons?

What do such people do?

Parma 

With respect, Parma, I don't think that is a fair comparison.  Watford had five consecutive seasons before one in the Championship. Palace have had eight and counting. Newcastle United four and counting. Their 'average' players whom one might replace are likely to be better (and crucially with much more EPL experience) than our 'average' players. So less forced need to sell the prime weapon because less necessity to bring in so many replacements.

[Badger 2,414]

46 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Regardless it’s currently looking like a better strategy for achieving what we both want so maybe we need to be more flexible. 

You could be right - it will be easier to judge at the end of the season and easier still in two years.

But if we take Josh King as an example, we are talking about a striker who has scored 56 goals in 287 games - less than one in five. He's nearly 30 and unlikely to get better. Sure he scored a couple the other week but it's hardly a certainty that he will turn out to be better than Sargent, Rashica and Tzolis.

[Midlands Yellow 4,118]

Anything been concluded yet, does the model work? 

[Disco Dales Jockstrap 1,899]

18 minutes ago, Badger said:

but I can't believe that Webber/ Farke would deliberately do things to weaken the club.

Deliberately, no.

But selling your best player doesn't tend to improve your team.

5 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Anything been concluded yet, does the model work? 

I'm still not certain how we even judge if the 'model' is working or not.

Bottom of the table with 2 points can't be a good omen.

OTBC

[Herman 9,855]

13 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Anything been concluded yet, does the model work? 

The model gets you to your destination. Staying at your destination is the tricky part.

[hogesar 9,808]

24 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

With respect, Parma, I don't think that is a fair comparison.  Watford had five consecutive seasons before one in the Championship. Palace have had eight and counting. Newcastle United four and counting. Their 'average' players whom one might replace are likely to be better (and crucially with much more EPL experience) than our 'average' players. So less forced need to sell the prime weapon because less necessity to bring in so many replacements.

I do think that's a big difference. Let's not forget Emi was bought for an initial £1.5 million to play for a Championship club.

Sarr was bought by Watford as a Premier League club for £30 million, with the associated wages too.

[Ian 1,141]

15 minutes ago, Disco Dales Jockstrap said:

Deliberately, no.

But selling your best player doesn't tend to improve your team.

I'm still not certain how we even judge if the 'model' is working or not.

Bottom of the table with 2 points can't be a good omen.

OTBC

Agree with that, but equally the club has come quite a long way in a few years so perhaps the criteria of whether the model is working should be widened a bit?

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,246]

25 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

With respect, Parma, I don't think that is a fair comparison.  Watford had five consecutive seasons before one in the Championship. Palace have had eight and counting. Newcastle United four and counting. Their 'average' players whom one might replace are likely to be better (and crucially with much more EPL experience) than our 'average' players. So less forced need to sell the prime weapon because less necessity to bring in so many replacements.

It is an entirely fair comparison as we are comparing market strategies.

It is a counterpoint to the ‘we spent more on transfers than our competitors x,y, z’ 

Those competitors chose - at almost any cost (including perhaps investing less in new players - to retain their weapons. 

I can give you examples where all of those players were ‘not happy’..’desperate to leave’…‘getting huge offers from other clubs higher up the food chain’…

Winston will write his history as he wishes, but ‘events, dear boy, events’

Parma

[Jim Smith 2,365]

56 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Or to put it another way, as a recently relegated club, do you cash in on your best player, or do you do whatever you can to keep him, even if this involves promising he can go at the end of the season?

I don’t believe we ever promised that. It just seems to have been assumed as fact but there is no evidence for it that I’ve seen.

just as I don’t believe that Emi said he’d never play for the club again. 

[Jim Smith 2,365]

15 minutes ago, Ian said:

Agree with that, but equally the club has come quite a long way in a few years so perhaps the criteria of whether the model is working should be widened a bit?

I don’t put the model as the number 1 cause of our current woes. A contributing factor yes but much cheaper and much worse players can be coached and drilled into playing a lot more effectively than our team currently is. If they were playing even vaguely well and still bottom it would be different but I don’t think we’ve played really well in a single game this season. 

[Ian 1,141]

Just now, Jim Smith said:

I don’t put the model as the number 1 cause of our current woes. A contributing factor yes but much cheaper and much worse players can be coached and drilled into playing a lot more effectively than our team currently is. If they were playing even vaguely well and still bottom it would be different but I don’t think we’ve played really well in a single game this season. 

Can't disagree with that, but let's just say for the sake of argument that we improve over the course of the season and finish around 30 points, would that change whether the model is working?

[Jim Smith 2,365]

5 minutes ago, Ian said:

Can't disagree with that, but let's just say for the sake of argument that we improve over the course of the season and finish around 30 points, would that change whether the model is working?

If we get relegated this season then it’s a failure. And the model might be “working” from a financial perspective but the jury will have to remain out on whether it can work from the perspective of meeting our target which is to be a consistent top 17 club.

[PurpleCanary 5,601]

31 minutes ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

It is an entirely fair comparison as we are comparing market strategies.

It is a counterpoint to the ‘we spent more on transfers than our competitors x,y, z’ 

Those competitors chose - at almost any cost (including perhaps investing less in new players - to retain their weapons. 

I can give you examples where all of those players were ‘not happy’..’desperate to leave’…‘getting huge offers from other clubs higher up the food chain’…

Winston will write his history as he wishes, but ‘events, dear boy, events’

Parma

Parma, as it happens I haven't made the 'we spent more...' argument. That aside, we will have disagree on the main point. Comparing market strategies only works if the overall situations at the companies or clubs are similar, and I don't believe they were in this case.

[Ian 1,141]

48 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

If we get relegated this season then it’s a failure.

Interesting.

[Disco Dales Jockstrap 1,899]

1 hour ago, Herman said:

The model gets you to your destination. Staying at your destination is the tricky part.

So 'the model' is the plane journey...but how do we pay for the holiday?

At least the return flight is sorted.

OTBC

Edited October 28, 2021 by Disco Dales Jockstrap

[Badger 2,414]

2 hours ago, Disco Dales Jockstrap said:

Deliberately, no.

But selling your best player doesn't tend to improve your team.

So, do you think that Webber didn't realise that?

Or, perhaps that he thought that keeping an unhappy player would be too disruptive? 

Forgive me if I think that he might have been in a better position to judge than you or I.

[Badger 2,414]

1 hour ago, Jim Smith said:

If we get relegated this season then it’s a failure. And the model might be “working” from a financial perspective but the jury will have to remain out on whether it can work from the perspective of meeting our target which is to be a consistent top 17 club.

If performance on the pitch is the sole judge of whether a club model works, we have therefore to assume that the Donor owner model is failed as well because QPR, Stoke, Bournemouth, Fulham etc have failed to establish themselves "consistently" in the top 17.

The model has given us a competitive budget - it cannot guarantee that the budget is allocated correctly and the coaching will work effectively. What we know is that we have invested hugely on the club's infrastructure and spent more in the transfer market than we have ever done before. We also know that we have spent more heavily than our promotion rivals. 

The simple fact is that most promoted teams get relegated in the first year, and a lot of those that don't are relegated in the second. By not taking on huge debt, however, we have progressively become stronger.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,246]

3 hours ago, Parma Ham's gone mouldy said:

As a lower Premier Club - if I had a Sarr, a Zaha. a Saint-Maximin - do I spend £50m on several better-than-my-current-average players or do I keep my weapons?

What do such people do?

Parma 

@PurpleCanary This was the market strategy I referred to. The number of years in the Premier - which is a statement of fact that I accept of course - is thus a non-sequitur in relation to the binary choice of whether you do or don’t  keep your relative weapons. 

The players of any of the clubs you refer to are on average ‘weaker’ than better clubs. They have ‘unhappy’ players, players in demand from United rather than Everton and so forth. 

The issue is therefore how you achieve your relative objectives (winning the champions league, buying great players who play superbly every week, mostly play well, hurt teams enough to win points)

We needed enough points for around 10 wins or so. Not 40 wins. We therefore can ‘afford’ to focus on players who are sometimes good enough to hurt opposition teams to win some games, sometimes. Not all the time. 

We calculated and chose to raise the average level across the squad. In my view, from ‘a long way not good enough on average’ to simply ‘not good enough in average’

To achieve this we sold out occasional winning points weapon (Emi) and sold out our corollary half-weapon (Pukki). These were our prove. occasional points winner chances. 

As a coach, I look at our new, better-average-than-we-were team / squad, and there is nothing much that jacked me change my own blueprint. Thus I am free to ‘go at’ Norwich more than I normally would against other sides. So we have to defend more. So we make more mistakes. So we lose more.

This was a choice. A deliberate one. It was quite an aggressive strategy. Perhaps the resale value of the assets we bought will rise over time and provide the necessary sustenance to maintain the ‘no overdraft’ financial model. 

Any model is typically sold on dreams of the top tier though, isn’t it? So it can’t completely write out competing from it’s strategy document. It did for one year already don’t forget. All admitted that was a painful necessity to allow competition next time. 

This season is a watershed. It is the top level test. Nobody denied it. It is on trial. How hard will Dimi and Ben Gibson work for you next year in the Chsmpionship? What dream will sell to the next Tzolis. 

This is competitive top level football. This is the life we have chosen.

Parma 

[Disco Dales Jockstrap 1,899]

20 minutes ago, Badger said:

Forgive me if I think that he might have been in a better position to judge than you or I.

Indeed! Why bother to express an opinion at all? Take it all as a matter of faith ay? No wrong thought allowed! Great stuff! 

24 minutes ago, Badger said:

So, do you think that Webber didn't realise that?

Or, perhaps that he thought that keeping an unhappy player would be too disruptive? 

Don't you think Webber and co can handle one moody player? Are we that collectively weak? Where's your faith gone Brother Badger? You must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total relegation.

OTBC

[Kenny Foggo 1,122]

Or, perhaps that he thought that keeping an unhappy player would be too disruptive?

 

Anyone seen Todd?

[Badger 2,414]

13 minutes ago, Disco Dales Jockstrap said:

Indeed! Why bother to express an opinion at all? Take it all as a matter of faith ay? No wrong thought allowed! Great stuff! 

 

No, not at all as you know I didn't say that, but you are trying to justify yourself by inventing what I said to make your point seem less silly. Neither of us know what went on behind the scenes. We both recognise that Buendia was an important player to us, and my guess is that Webber did too and yet he sold him. He must have thought that it was the right thing to do. I think that he was in a better position to make that judgement, but you seem to think that you were. Sorry, I disagree, but you are entitled to your opinion just as I am entitled to disagree with it.

For the record, I think that there have been plenty of wrong things over the years but for some reason you talk as if everything is in some sort of simplistic binary world where everything is either black or white. There's a lot of grey in the real world.

21 minutes ago, Disco Dales Jockstrap said:

Don't you think Webber and co can handle one moody player? Are we that collectively weak? Where's your faith gone Brother Badger? You must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total relegation.

It's dead easy to handle a disgruntled employee - you can sack them or like Watford did with Hughes make them train and play with the Under 23s. The issue is whether this is to the benefit of the club or not. Tough stances are often popular with the fans (as they are politically) but they don't always work - it's a judgement issue - will the player perform at his best or at all, might be considerations. For every story you hear about a tough line working, there will be others where is didn't and is it a good way to start a new season to have a star player training with the Under 23s??

 

[Badger 2,414]

21 minutes ago, Kenny Foggo said:

Anyone seen Todd?

Is this a "football issue?" Somebody suggested that there was a terminal health issue within his family (in which case not our business).

[Greavsy 2,475]

4 minutes ago, Badger said:

Is this a "football issue?" Somebody suggested that there was a terminal health issue within his family (in which case not our business).

Totally agree if that is the case Badger, where have you seen this suggestion. Plenty of suggestions on here, and I guess other socal media platform, and these will continue until something official / substantial is issued. 

Also, if someone close to him is suffering from a terminal health issue, which is stopping him training, and hence getting picked for the first team, then surely that should also put a stop to his trips to NFL, London restaurants and the like, as posted on his social media. I know it would me. His post with his dog also seem quite upbeat too. 

[Canaries north 151]

3 hours ago, Badger said:

You could be right - it will be easier to judge at the end of the season and easier still in two years.

But if we take Josh King as an example, we are talking about a striker who has scored 56 goals in 287 games - less than one in five. He's nearly 30 and unlikely to get better. Sure he scored a couple the other week but it's hardly a certainty that he will turn out to be better than Sargent, Rashica and Tzolis.

I've got a feeling he's already scored in one game as many as Sargent has averaged in a whole season in a weaker league over his career. 29 more games to go so he might just beat it. Can you really see Sargent beating kings 16 premiership goals in a season. Rashica and Tzolis are not even getting starts so I guess we will never know 🤪 We have gone for young unproven to try to get a sell on value rather than looking at the here and now. King averages a goal every other game in the premier League when he starts. That would do for me.