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Webbers full interview, out now

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Just now, By Hook or Ian crook said:

We haven’t improved over the last 10 months though we’ve gone back now even further than when we went down with McNally a the helm. At least you looked at that squad and knew 100% it would compete in the championship I don’t feel that now. 

Look I am not getting into a debate to justify the last season, but we could have easily picked up another 6 to 7 points and the atmosphere right now would be different, we didn’t and now everything is gloomy. Our address club has great facilities, and I think in a pretty good position for next season, people see it differently, that is their choice.  Let’s enjoy the next season.

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1 minute ago, Terminally Yellow said:

I'm sorry but I think the one thing you can't say is that Webber is "doing the same things and making the same mistakes". 

First Prem season we went up and gave everyone a new contract, spending next to nothing on new players. Second time we went up, sold our best player and bought £50m worth. That's hardly "doing the same things" is it? 

I mean just to reinforce the point he sacked Farke specifically because he felt doing the same things was not going to keep us up.

I think Webber can be accused of a lot of things, but you're wide of the mark on this.

When we went up under McNally we sold our player of the season to Derby County. So selling our player of the season is nothing new if still stupid each time it happens. 
 

I would point out that just because we spent 50 million doesn’t mean we’ve got 50 millions worth of talent from what I’ve seen. 

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4 minutes ago, SwearyCanary said:

Honestly I’d rather have had neither 

We needed a CB though last summer that was clear, not sure who else would of come with our wage structure and recruiting structure 

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6 minutes ago, Newtopia said:

Look I am not getting into a debate to justify the last season, but we could have easily picked up another 6 to 7 points and the atmosphere right now would be different, we didn’t and now everything is gloomy. Our address club has great facilities, and I think in a pretty good position for next season, people see it differently, that is their choice.  Let’s enjoy the next season.

Why not? Isn’t that what this site is for debate? 🤷‍♂️

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1 hour ago, Big O said:

I thought it was a pretty open, honest and blunt interview. 

Define 'open' in this context please, as a club employee only willing to be interviewed by somebody being paid by the club strikes me as the complete opposite to open? 

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6 minutes ago, Terminally Yellow said:

I'm sorry but I think the one thing you can't say is that Webber is "doing the same things and making the same mistakes". 

First Prem season we went up and gave everyone a new contract, spending next to nothing on new players. Second time we went up, sold our best player and bought £50m worth. That's hardly "doing the same things" is it? 

I mean just to reinforce the point he sacked Farke specifically because he felt doing the same things was not going to keep us up.

I think Webber can be accused of a lot of things, but you're wide of the mark on this.

Ok maybe it didn’t come across as I meant it, What I should have said was recruiting  mistakes. Season 1 after promotion, no one, Season 2 too many and not what we needed (DM and players with strength and athleticism) there doesn’t seem to be a lessons learned element.

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25 minutes ago, Highland Canary said:

This is the fundamental issue. Webber had an impossible task. Buy premier league quality players. But those players also must appreciate in value. And, if the worst was to happen, wages need to be manageable in the championship without the need fir the club to take on external debt.

Only new investment can break our cycle of failure. 

Although nobody was calling for him to risk the future of the club. Signing 3 or 4 better quality players for the same net spend instead of 8 or 9 would not have risked the future of the club. 

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7 hours ago, WD40 said:

Absolutely one of the most delusional, disingenuous, ego-maniacal things I’ve read going from the quotes in Pinkun article.

Get the f*ck out of my club you charlatan. 

Best off watching the interview.

You will still consider him a disingenuous ego maniac and charlatan, but the article quotes were a bit selective and did him no favours.

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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2 minutes ago, Channon’s Windmill said:

Ok maybe it didn’t come across as I meant it, What I should have said was recruiting  mistakes. Season 1 after promotion, no one, Season 2 too many and not what we needed (DM and players with strength and athleticism) there doesn’t seem to be a lessons learned element.

Ahh ok, fair enough, good points 👍

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6 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Define 'open' in this context please, as a club employee only willing to be interviewed by somebody being paid by the club strikes me as the complete opposite to open? 

Open as in he said what he was feeling, rather than it being full of cliche or what he believed would placate the people who have been criticising him. Not the logistics of the interview which as you point out is somewhat controlled, rather this is my take, this is the views I care about, this is how I see it.

I fully get that he divides opinion but he is not without one himself, which I personally like. 

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35 minutes ago, By Hook or Ian crook said:

We don’t really know because it’s a completely different squad to the one that last won the championship. The players that made us tick last time in the championship Buendia, Vrancic, Skipp, all not here anymore. Cantwell has lost the plot and the new signings would  look awful at any level for my money. 

Kind of true but at this very moment of time, we could name a team along the lines of 

krul, Aarons, Giannoulis, Gibson, Hanley, McClean, PLM, Cantwell, Dowell, Rashica and Pukki which would actually only be 2 players different to the team that most people would have picked as our strongest  x1 2 years ago.

i do accept Skipp and Buendia are quite a difference but the above is a strong championship first x1

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11 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Best off watching the interview.

You will still consider him a disingenuous ego maniac and charlatan, but the article quotes were a bit selective and did him no favours.

Concur TVB, you need to watch it in full to get the context. Like everything else nowadays people want to take a couple of quotes in isolation and blow them out of proportion.

the bloke has an ego without doubt, but a level of that is probably what makes him successful 

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I have spent quite a bit of effort on this forum defending Webber against some pretty wild criticism. He will leave the club in a better position than before he came. It is hard to argue he hasn’t.

That said, my enthusiasm to defend him Has waived and this interview doesn’t do anything to change that.

I get that he can’t pick out players and say they were rubbish but some acknowledgement that they collectively have been lacking wouldn’t be amiss.

It left me quite unsure about the future as I found it represented a distorted reality and of a board very much out of step with its fans and community.

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14 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

Although nobody was calling for him to risk the future of the club. Signing 3 or 4 better quality players for the same net spend instead of 8 or 9 would not have risked the future of the club. 

Jim, we are trying to square a circle. Those 4 better players would not have come on the wages we are willing to pay in the PL or are able to pay if relegated. Let’s not forget we couldn’t even get Ajer! I suspect even with the lower quality players we brought in we’ll be in danger (again) of administration if we’re not promoted next season. Sadly, the quality of the playing squad feels worse today than two years ago. Our business model is broken. Increasingly, we’ll find even being competitive in the championship difficult/impossible. We are entirely hamstrung as a club in the absence of new investment.

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3 hours ago, king canary said:

I've certainly seen a few who I'd normally view as sitting more towards the 'happy clapper' end react negatively to this. 

I am pro-Webber, in the sense I think he still has a fair bit of credit in the bank, and I'm glad he's staying, and I thought what he said was generally OK, and often sensible and to the point.

It is just that if you cultivate this persona of being blunt-speaking and not afraid to upset people but then refuse to be interviewed by proper journalists who might ask awkward questions you make yourself look like an idiot.

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Ok. Have just finished listening to the video. My feeling is there are parts of the interview which are dealt with well, some are dealt with badly and some are a total car crash. 

Let's start with the good. 

1. I liked the comments about his stewardship of the club, wanting to move the club in the right direction and leave a real legacy - that's all music to any fan's ears. 

2. I liked his qualification of the Times interview and how he reiterated his commitment to his position.

3. I thought he was very fair to Dean Smith and clarified why he took the view that Farke needed to go. 

Bad 

1. Calling the recruitment "alright". Now I get it - with the club needing to sell to buy, going into an interview slamming those that might need to be moved on is like a car salesman admitting what he's trying to sell you is a bit **** really. But I think anyone who knows football can see the recruitment just hasn't worked. 

2. The contradictions - There were so many! Fans gave up but most cheering them off the pitch. Money spread too thinly - but didn't acknowledge we still spent a record amount for this football club. You could have just spent it on fewer players? Saying we were a mid-table Championship side in the pecking order of things - but aren't we supposed to be a top 26 English football club? 

3. Excuses. A poor pre season? We weren't the only ones. Disrupted by COVID? The whole league in the same boat. Injuries? Part of the game. I hate directly comparing us - but how did Brentford get these things so right despite comparable issues?

4. Recorded the day after the Spurs game. What took until Thursday to bring it out? 

The Car Crash 

1. Marginalising local media. The club's interview was entirely lacking in certain areas. Nothing from the interview was particularly new or shocking. It felt like a watered down interview that we might have got from other sources.

2. Webber Vs Fans - Talking about twenty fans with a bedsheet, suggesting that fans are obviously on board because of season ticket sales, saying the fans gave up (!!!) Wrong, obviously so. 

My overwhelming impression of Stuart Webber is that he's a guy with very obvious ability, knows what he wants and believes in his way of how to get it. But like many leaders of organisations, becomes defensive, irritable and frustrated that others don't see his vision how he does. He answers questions to defend him and his ways of work - blaming others, with excuses, with explanations - rather than accept the shortcomings in his methods. Some will call it straight talking. And what he is saying is refreshing and most definitely above and beyond what most clubs will say. But this interview will only drive a wedge between him and supporters who are most definitely questioning him even more. This interview should have been more conciliatory, more contrite, a recognition of fans unending support this season. To say fans gave up early in the season is absolutely wrong. My opinion has not changed that he should be leaving the club.

Although that may still happen. Has he signed his new deal yet? Perhaps this is the "exciting news" - a restructure that sees Webber move into a more consultancy role and hand over the formal running of the club to someone else? We'll have to wait and see.  

Edited by Terminally Yellow
To finish the post off; apologies I was knackered yesterday and went to bed early!
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3 minutes ago, Highland Canary said:

Jim, we are trying to square a circle. Those 4 better players would not have come on the wages we are willing to pay in the PL or are able to pay if relegated. Let’s not forget we couldn’t even get Ajer! I suspect even with the lower quality players we brought in we’ll be in danger (again) of administration if we’re not promoted next season. Sadly, the quality of the playing squad feels worse today than two years ago. Our business model is broken. Increasingly, we’ll find even being competitive in the championship difficult/impossible. We are entirely hamstrung as a club in the absence of new investment.

We could afford Ajer. We weren’t willing to get in a bidding war over wages that we didn’t think he was worth. That said, the money wasted on Kabak, Ajer looks like a bargain now.

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2 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

I am pro-Webber, in the sense I think he still has a fair bit of credit in the bank, and I'm glad he's staying, and I thought what he said was generally OK, and often sensible and to the point.

It is just that if you cultivate this persona of being blunt-speaking and not afraid to upset people but then refuse to be interviewed by proper journalists who might ask awkward questions you make yourself look like an idiot.

Yep.

I've said before Webber clearly wants to cultivate a personal brand but I've always found the people who have to tell you how little they care about criticism usually care quite a bit.

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5 minutes ago, king canary said:

Yep.

I've said before Webber clearly wants to cultivate a personal brand but I've always found the people who have to tell you how little they care about criticism usually care quite a bit.

Agreed and in this respect he mirrors The Cook. Both arrogant and thin skinned when anyone dares challenge them. 

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4 minutes ago, hertfordyellow said:

We could afford Ajer. We weren’t willing to get in a bidding war over wages that we didn’t think he was worth. That said, the money wasted on Kabak, Ajer looks like a bargain now.

But this is the issue. We couldn’t afford the wages or, at least, we couldn’t afford the wages in the championship if relegated. Our business model does not allow us to make the necessary investment in the PL to be competitive because the associated wages will not be sustainable in the championship if relegated. Only with new investment might our cycle of failure be broken.

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1 hour ago, By Hook or Ian crook said:

We haven’t improved over the last 10 months though we’ve gone back now even further than when we went down with McNally a the helm. At least you looked at that squad and knew 100% it would compete in the championship I don’t feel that now. 

Based on what metric?

Edited by littleyellowbirdie

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9 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

I am pro-Webber, in the sense I think he still has a fair bit of credit in the bank, and I'm glad he's staying, and I thought what he said was generally OK, and often sensible and to the point.

It is just that if you cultivate this persona of being blunt-speaking and not afraid to upset people but then refuse to be interviewed by proper journalists who might ask awkward questions you make yourself look like an idiot.

Spot on Purple. I can actually take a lot of positives from the interview and there’s a lot he’s said I either agree with or at least understand. Mainly happy he at least seems committed.

I still have three main issues.

1- I don’t understand why such a straight shooter wants to be embroiled in a spat with local media, it just comes across like he can’t handle criticism.

2 - Why after a season like that would you attack the fans level of support? It’s seriously tone deaf.

3 - He completely glossed over the summer transfer activity. I don’t think it was “alright” personally and I don’t think anyone does, so some critical look at that and a bit of personal humility wouldn’t go a miss.

I’d also like to understand his position, he’s come out sounding super committed but we still have no idea what’s going on with his contract.

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3 minutes ago, Highland Canary said:

But this is the issue. We couldn’t afford the wages or, at least, we couldn’t afford the wages in the championship if relegated. Our business model does not allow us to make the necessary investment in the PL to be competitive because the associated wages will not be sustainable in the championship if relegated. Only with new investment might our cycle of failure be broken.

That wage limit is defined by us and can always be changed. The point being made is we could have signed 3/4 good players instead of 8 hit and hope signings. In terms of overall wages it would be the same amount. Ajer isn’t on 100k for example and I’m sure he has a relegation clause in his Brentford contract. 

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21 minutes ago, Terminally Yellow said:

Ok. Have just finished listening to the video. My feeling is there are parts of the interview which are dealt with well, some are dealt with badly and some are a total car crash. 

Think your post is a very fair summary.

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I just don't see what Webber brings to the club anymore.

How often does he contradict himself  there?

We need togetherness, from the club and area, but at the same time lets freeze the local media out? Who many in the area rely on and support. 

The fans gave up, the fans are great.

The fans don't make Carrow Road are hard place to be (too nice) (negative), then, I get more support than not from the fans, they are so nice when I meet them out and about (nice now positive). 

Such a tame, staged interview. TBH, I think I'm more anti-Webber now than before the interview. And that's purely from the angle of him looking out of his depth and far from the messiah once thought. I don't know... all a bit meh.

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If this interview had been anymore soft ball, she'd have been asking the questions while tossing him off wearing a silk glove.

Read/watch any interview he's done in the last few years and you knew exactly what you were going to get - this one just happens to have been stage managed to within an inch of its life.

I'm amazed that any of you, whatever you think of Webber, are taking anything from this interview at all.

OTBC

Edited by Disco Dales Jockstrap
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6 minutes ago, Monty13 said:

Spot on Purple. I can actually take a lot of positives from the interview and there’s a lot he’s said I either agree with or at least understand. Mainly happy he at least seems committed.

I still have three main issues.

1- I don’t understand why such a straight shooter wants to be embroiled in a spat with local media, it just comes across like he can’t handle criticism.

2 - Why after a season like that would you attack the fans level of support? It’s seriously tone deaf.

3 - He completely glossed over the summer transfer activity. I don’t think it was “alright” personally and I don’t think anyone does, so some critical look at that and a bit of personal humility wouldn’t go a miss.

I’d also like to understand his position, he’s come out sounding super committed but we still have no idea what’s going on with his contract.

1 - There’s something more to this and he’s taken umbrage. Didn’t he reference lies? I mean, putting it straight would probably be the best thing but🤷🏻‍♂️. I’ll also, for balance, add that I don’t think the Archant chaps taking it in turns to have digs will help any thawing of relations.

2 - I thought he said how great the support was numerous times, the commitment of the fans going to Leicester when already down, the season ticket take-up despite the season etc. As I mentioned earlier, people did give up early. There are plenty of threads on here to show it. Even when we did score in games it rarely felt like we really “believed”. But that’s a reflection of what we see in front of us, but I think he also acknowledged - perhaps not strongly enough - that too. Said they accepted being average way too quickly (along those lines).

3 - Completely agree. It wasn’t alright. But he can’t come out and say that when we’re either going to need to recoup some of our outlay or rely on these players next season. He won’t want to slag the loans either because we’ll no doubt want to use the system again next season and beyond. Parent clubs aren’t going to want their players heading to a club ready to throw them under the bus if things don’t go as planned. Reputationally it’s important we remain to look an attractive proposition.

Like you, I thought he mostly came across ok, he can be a bit clumsy at times but that’s just him I suppose. 

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35 minutes ago, Highland Canary said:

Jim, we are trying to square a circle. Those 4 better players would not have come on the wages we are willing to pay in the PL or are able to pay if relegated. Let’s not forget we couldn’t even get Ajer! I suspect even with the lower quality players we brought in we’ll be in danger (again) of administration if we’re not promoted next season. Sadly, the quality of the playing squad feels worse today than two years ago. Our business model is broken. Increasingly, we’ll find even being competitive in the championship difficult/impossible. We are entirely hamstrung as a club in the absence of new investment.

I don’t disagree generally on the business model but we could have got Ajer and the other holding midfielder who wanted £60k wages. That’s the frustration.

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1 hour ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Best off watching the interview.

You will still consider him a disingenuous ego maniac and charlatan, but the article quotes were a bit selective and did him no favours.

That made me laugh, I am pretty sure having an ego and ‘being a charlatan’ or as I word it ‘winging it sometimes, whilst being certain you are right’ are vital skills for any Director.  Not sure he is disingenuous, or a mania I think we have seen an unexpected sensitive side.

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