Parma’s State of the Nation

Don J Demorr · April 24, 2023

Occasionally, when reading this best of all threads on this Forum I think maybe I can add something useful but then I don't do so because it feels like I might be intruding on a scene of private grief. If so, this is not a grief I share. I have seldom visited Norwich itself and have only once been to Carrow Road and that more than forty years ago. I know little or nothing of the goings-on on a football pitch. My interest here lies not in the affairs of your football club per se, but as a case study in the operation of an evidently failing enterprise and making an attempt to identify any opportunities for improvement.

In this particular time of woe, maybe there is a suitable opportunity to offer a few thousand ill-chosen and maybe even unwelcome words in an attempt to find a possible explanation of what is going on, why these problems are happening and possibly even propose what might be done about it.

This is a long post because the present dire situation is worthy of serious attention. I hope you agree and that I don't test your patience too much.

First and foremost, in my almost forgotten field of Management Consultancy it is regarded as virtually certain that a successful and enduring enterprise will have Constancy of Purpose. This might seem like one thing but in fact it is two. There must be a purpose and it must be constant. A few months ago the redoubtable Sheff exposed to us all the shambolic bafflegab of the purpose declaration in the NCFC Annual Report. This was regarded with some hilarity but in terms of organisation and management it is anything but funny. Confusion at this level will permeate the entire structure - and so it does. It is absolutely essential that this is fixed because a clear shared purpose drives cohesive behaviour and cohesive behaviour is essential for success. I will return to this later in the piece.

Next, if an organisation is to function efficiently it must have clear and distinct lines of authority and responsibility, both for actions and expenditure. Let me describe from experience how a successful organisation is most likely to work: -

1) At the ownership level the decision about the basic field of operation is decided, together with the level at which it will operate. (If the decision is made to be a grocer you also need to decide whether you intend to compete with Albert Arkwright or Fortnum and Mason).

2) Next is a management structure by which to achieve the objects of the enterprise, usually done the appointment of a Board of Directors. The leader of this team should be the Managing Director. His duty is not to manage the operations of the organisation but to manage the Board. Individual Directors then share the responsibility for executive action to achieve the purpose. They are the ones who do things. Each Board Director is a specialist with a defined area of responsibility for performance, with the concomitant agreed budget. No gaps, no overlaps.

3) Sadly it is not unknown for a Managing Director to take the organisation off in a direction other than that required to achieve the purpose. As a guard against this a Chairman of the Board should be appointed. This person is Guardian of the Process, not of the outcome. (The greatest Chairman of any organisation I ever worked for was Arnold Weinstock. He had not a clue about the high-tech business sector we were in but my goodness he knew how operate a business. A wonderful exemplar, whom I have never forgotten). I think it was the estimable Purple who wanted a powerful Chairman. With the greatest respect, sir, I disagree. I want a strong Chairman whose brief is just like that of the pilot of a ship, watching the course and guiding the vessel to the destination but who is forbidden to take control.

I have tried to discover how NCFC is organised to achieve whatever purpose is for the moment considered desirable. No doubt some of you will know from direct experience how the crew work aboard the "SS Carronia", but I find the rather inadequately published modus operandi to be worrisome. In particular: -

There is no clear purpose.

There is no Chairman.

The Board of Directors is declared to have the following members: -

Hall, Samuel Fergus - Legal and Governance Director

Attenasio, Mark - Shareholder. No specific responsibility

Foulger, Michael Martin - Shareholder. No specific responsibility

Smith, Delia Anne - Majority shareholder, no specific responsibility

Smith, Thomas Owen Bartlett - shareholder, no specific responsibility

Webber, Zoe Joanne - Executive Director, apparently many responsibilities, mostly unspecified

Wynne- Jones, Michael - Majority shareholder, no specific responsibility

It appears that of the seven members of the Board of Directors only two are employees with specified duties and only one of these is responsible for business outcomes. However: -

There are three employees with the title of Director but who are not Board members: -

Richens, Anthony - Finance Director

Jeffery, Sam - Commercial Director

Webber, Stuart - Sporting Director

Well, I'm told that Football is different but I fail to understand why there are five Main Board members who have no functional responsibilities whereas the vital Finance and Commercial Directors do not have a seat. I must admit that despite quite a lot of ferreting about I'm still unclear what exactly a Sporting Director does, except that it is clearly important because it is particularly expensive. I'm sure you all know and will no doubt explain if you so choose.

With all due deference to Delia Smith's legendary capabilities I venture to suggest that the resultant cake of this particular organisational recipe has failure baked in. IMHO it is absolutely necessary that this clearly dysfunctional arrangement is changed. Thanks to the upthread mentioned brilliant insight of Niccolo Machiavelli we know this will not happen under the incumbent regime. Seemingly, many of you think that it is Mark Attenasio's money that is vital to the future of your club, but I'm sure he knows very well that without these management organisational changes it would only serve to irrigate an already dampish wall. He will make the necessary changes, I'm sure. This is not his first rodeo.

With reference to operational changes, the only recent ones of note in practical terms have been the dismissal of two Head Coaches and the appointment of a third, which are personnel changes, not structural. All three are deemed by some folk to have failed. From my detached perspective it seems that the poisoned chalice of this position is analogous to that of a Production Manager in industries more familiar to me. Success or otherwise of performance is judged by the ability to produce output of the right quality in the required quantity to the required chedule. In practice there are so many crucial factors under the control of other people that conspicuous personal success at the task is virtually impossible. I'm sure you can see that this is exactly what a Head Coach can be up against. Additionally, an excellent manager can fail in a chaotic regime and an average one can look good in an organised and supportive environment.

We have it that three demonstrably competent Head Coaches have been tried and the outcome has not changed. Could it be they are not the problem? I see all three HCs as probably decent managers who are the inevitable victims of a suboptimal organisation. I have no doubt you will call it as you see it, of course.

On this Forum there is some pretty acidulous criticism of the Executive Director and , the Sporting Director. The charge laid against the only two Directors who have executive authority is that they control everything. Well, no squit, Sherlock - isn't that exactly what the shareholders employ them to do?

But this is all a bit analytical and analysis is easy, as any fule kno. Maybe now we can move on to synthesis, which isn't. We have looked at potential preferable changes to the management structure as such, but not at what it should be redesigned to do.

I have earlier emphasised that ......a clear shared purpose drives cohesive behaviour and cohesive behaviour is essential for success. We therefore need a clear shared purpose.

To formulate a purpose it is necessary to define the field of operation and he desired outcome. For NCFC the field of operation is the game of Professional Association Football and the latest declared desired outcome is said to be established as a permanent member of the English Premier League.

To define what is meant by "success" it is necessary to agree what it will look like when it is achieved. I guess this would be that enough points are won each season to ensure a safe league position. However it is dressed up, the simple objective is to garner points by winning games. To understand how this is to be done we need to take a look at the game of English Professional Football. But - is it a game at all?

To quote from Philosophy of Science (The official Journal of the Philosophy of Science Association at CambridgeUniversity)

"To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only the means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity".

In the case of Association Football the specific rules are the Laws of the Game. It is surely obvious from the most cursory observation of professional matches in play that it is universally accepted that nobody expects that these Laws are to be obeyed in some important aspects, whereas there are other unwritten (and variably applied) rules that are. It follows that Professional Association Football is not a game at all in the true sense - it is something else. Any team that follows the formal specific rules, believing that a game is being played, is more often than not going to score fewer goals and hence gain fewer points than an opposition that is not so constrained - which at this level seems to be all of them.

I understand that the published desired outcome is to be "a successful permanent member of the English Premier League". In that case it is clearly not a good idea to design an organisation that faithfully follows the Laws of Association Football. It is axiomatic that Purpose drives behaviour. Painful as it may be to those of us who value fair play and sportsmanship, saintly ethical behaviour either on the pitch or in the Boardroom is never going to succeed in this environment. The club will need to understand, organise and compete under Rafferty's Rules like the rest of them. If the club (including all you stakeholders) is not content with that the aforesaid desired outcome will be unattainable and either failure must be tolerated or the published purpose statement must be changed.

I think I'll leave it at that.

My best wishes to you all and to your beloved Football Club

Don.

(Il Padrino Non Tossico, per piacere Mr Parma!)

Edited April 24, 2023 by Don J Demorr
Correction of formatting

Parma Ham's gone mouldy · April 24, 2023

It is the right question @Big O.

Long before Webber I championed the Sporting Director model, believing it to be of fundamental importance to any club, though particularly essential to us - with very limited resources, fan owners with a tendency to zealotically embrace the new messiah, attracting charismatic-opportunistic-mercenary managers whose raison d’être is to survive another 6 months in the job - whether it costs a Yanic Wildshut or two, whether he is affordable or not.

The Sporting Director is there to amortise the eternal problems of football short-termism. To ensure a broad philosophical, methodological, operational sporting consistency of action is perennially maintained.

@Big O here are some broad principles and some correlating questions that need to be answered for us to understand what we need from a Sporting Director:

What is the deep-rooted culture of the club? What makes it different, unique even, to the fans, the loyal customers, the paying public?

There are 23k season ticket holders, the ground has very often sold out its 27k capacity, these fans - and one must assume that there are even more if it was cheaper to attend, tickets were more accessible, available together, more seats - turn up every year almost regardless of results, league position, color of manager, sexual orientation of directors, gender of owner, niceties or otherwise of CEOs.

Therefore we have something of a captive audience, we have little direct nearby competition, loyalty levels are high, customers cannot - and do not really - take their money and business elsewhere.

So let’s get to know them. What do they want?
‘We just want winning football’ they say. But they don’t. Because they turn up anyway.

So what makes them happy?

We don’t have to guess if we can read the book. Let’s go back to the last time fans were really happy. Farke and his distinct brand of Man City lite was in town and everyone wore the badge with pride.

There were wins, but it certainly wasn’t all about winning. It was a joy at being entertained, a sense of identifying with the style, of recognizing something artistic, beautiful even.

I would venture also - something I considered utterly fundamental in my charges when coaching - that there was great pleasure in (after a time) understanding what was happening, what would happen next, what the purpose of the movements were, what the intended patterns were, the sense that there was a harmonious recognition of what everyone’s role was and how it elegantly intersected with those around.

Football is an identity, a purpose, a style of playing, an approach to the game. Norwich is not rough-and-tumble. It is not low rent scrap for second balls. It is not even really counter-pressing and heavy metal football. It is passing angles, possession, elegance, control, through balls, number 10s, defenders comfortable on the ball, goalkeepers going short, through balls, springing offside traps, academy players being given first team chances earlier than most. Cruyffian ideals perhaps, though not - ultimately - requiring winning football. Just sometimes. ‘The right way’

Football is now about money and we don’t have it. So what are we going to do? What shall we aim to become? Crystal Palace lite? The dream of 15th every year?

Even if we achieved it - and we almost can’t without significant further funding - we wouldn’t be happy with it within a year or two. Why? Because it would look attritional, spoiling, negative, cautious, highly physical. In short the brand would be no brand. It would be the perennial angst of looking down. Of being ‘as less inferior as possible’. We are in any case light years from that. It would cost half a billion from here just to be that.

So here is flaw number one currently: Preparing for the Premier is a false premise for Norwich City Football club in the here-and-now. It is a glossy brochure leprechaun dancing at the end of a faraway rainbow.

Focusing on being too good for championship is a far more pragmatic and reasonable ambition. They are very, very far from the same thing. They have very different costs and wildly varying odds of success.

Ironically the first thing may well lead to great failure for the second. Whilst success in the second thing may eventually lead to the first.

We had a model that proved the second, which we - mistakenly in my view - flip-flopped from to chase a Prem-lite chimera of a model that suited almost none of our personnel, went against years of our established football teaching, hard-drilled psychological positional play, mental pathway tendencies and previous investment on very particular footballing characteristics. This constancy of sporting purpose, investment and ideals is what a Sporting Director is paid to direct, protect and maintain.

It is not that we simply tried to become Prem cheap lite, or that it wouldn’t work, it couldn’t have worked. We were years and hundreds of millions behind others that had done it for many years. Tens of clubs scout the kind of players we belatedly threw ourselves at - and they pay them far more money, offer them London or release clauses, plus far greater odds of success and more of a shop window. It is not to be negative about the club I love. You simply must recognize who and what you are, how you are seen by others. Even if you don’t like it.

It was a desperate sporting pivot lacking in consistency of method, long-term vision and purpose. It was a dice throw of a move.

It is precisely the kind of panicked desperation that a Sporting Director is employed and designed to avoid proctor hoc.

———

If Farke proved anything it is that methodology can trump players. So many cast offs, limited players and academy players became repeatedly valuable, central and effective. In fact it happened across 2 cycles of players.

I would go and speak to Farke. Often, repeatedly. That kind of knowledge, understanding and feel for the club, for positional play principles, for future academy teaching - you just can’t let it leave the building and never be heard of, understood or repeated again. Football is a closed industry, it can be lonely. Invest in maintaining some kind of link. Learn.

I also would not ignore the reality of Farke’s tenure being underpinned by a creator and a goalscorer. Accept this football reality. Act accordingly. Don’t pad the squad. If you have limited finance you cannot retain two senior players for each position. Forget it. Choose a different way. Limited money means more utility players. Identify a few Sorenson-like players and use them as cover for 5 positions. Run a squad of no more than 18 senior players. They are hard enough to keep happy anyway.

We need dramatic change to shift the horrible downward momentum vortex that sucks in all good. I would suggest having a Martin Peters moment. Invest what limited resources you have on someone who knows what real quality looks like. Someone that lifts all boats. I would suggest not a Huckerby in current circumstances, more someone like James Milner. Someone utterly professional - prosaic, ‘just’ functional even - who hates to lose, who runs, covers different positions, covers for the mistakes of others, sets standards, influences training levels, who won’t - can’t - accept low standards. Start from there. Offer him a player-coaching role, a senior coaching development pathway. Encourage him to bring some friends. Use his contacts.

As a sporting squad you must carry less players. You simply take more injury risks and accept the consequences. But what are those consequences? You use the academy. Not everyone is Lewis, Godfrey, Omobamidele, Aarons. But even now, if Idah is 3rd or 4th choice striker, everyone is happy with that aren’t they? You take a chance- if faced with multiple injuries - on those who might come good. The Academy must be trusted in this way at Championship level, otherwise what is the point?

Football is all about momentum. Goals camouflage a multitude of sins. You must have a goalscorer. At any cost. Even if you can only afford one player. It must be a goalscorer. anything else can pretty much be covered for. If you have to stop gap with a (to use easy examples) Jordan Rhodes, Chris Martin, Dwight Gayle, you just must have one. Others players need to know that there is someone who knows where the net is. They play differently if they know this. Sargent is yet to convince, even at this level. If you feel it, don’t you think the players know it too?

Of course it is all about Finances for Norwich, though you can choose how you cut the limited cake you have as a sporting Director. You can run a wide and deep squad, or a narrow, high and lean one. I repeatedly emphasised proctor hoc that keeping or attracting weapons, or peaks in your squad would always be my strategy. Amortising risks to be a bit better on average across the squad board just means you lose every game a bit less badly. I never liked it.

The counterpart to this strategy is to be brave. If you can’t buy right - with the limited funds available - communicate it, say it out loud. Tell the loyal fans you want limited, high quality, forensic signings or you simply won’t buy. You’ll trust those that got you there.

Upon promotion ‘21 It looked a little like Webber thought it might’ve been his opportunity to make his name. Did he try to convince himself that what was best for his career was also best for Norwich? Strong-minded people can convince themselves of any reality they choose. So did he do exactly what errant managers had previously done at Norwich and pressed and pushed for signings and sales that might work? Exactly what Sporting Directors are employed to prevent happening.

———

As for thinning our current - horribly weak and flawed squad - we have a number of immediate problems to address.

For a start who buys what we have, can they match current wages, would our players go there and how do you get them to leave the building?

Typically cash buyers only want what you want to keep. Having said that, there is not one single current player who I wouldn’t sell. That is pretty damning. No one has much value. Rashica we’ll see. £5m and add ons after some tough negotiations I imagine. Who else will buy him and stalking horse Gala?
I very much doubt the lurid numbers and Premier interest in Sara. He is well short of that level of consistency, positional awareness and defensive discipline. He has scored some great goals, though such things are not typically reliably repeatable. Tzolis is a sad, expensive story that needs a rewrite. Gunn a few bob, Sargent something to someone, Hanley a little, Gibson a little, Nunez a punt for similar money, Idah something for potential. Aarons might not get the kind of offer we would take, his stock has fallen as his top level flaws - much like us a club - have been concretised. High single figure millions as Prem back up maybe. Omobamidele has the highest value ceiling, though it’ll be a year or two away at the soonest. It really doesn’t add up to much of a total squad asset valuation. I dread to think how much less the playing staff is worth than the promotion ‘21 equivalent. That is real money gone.

Maybe we are waiting for Attanasio. How much money is there now? How much might be injected into the playing squad post takeover?

Clearly as Sporting Director we must manage upwards to Delia. Let’s find out clearly where are we at in a corporate and financial sense. Let’s get as much directional clarity as can be made reasonably available to us as Sporting Director. To drive football momentum change I need a good narrative, for players, fans, agents, potential signings, even the football grapevine. I don’t ignore the noise, I generate it. Use the sporting Director platform to sell the brand, the philosophy, the vision, the future. I think I want to get Attanasio talking more, let’s sell some rainbows, we must change the narrative off the field to help change the momentum on the field. Even if he never gets more involved than he is now, I can use him. Let’s do a bit of public dreaming together, a bit of American ambitionism can be a powerful football fan aphrodisiac. I never said I was Mother Theresa.

———

For now change has to come from out of contract players. Though the current Sporting Director - and Head Coach working under whatever parameters have been laid down - have further reduced options by choosing to keep Onel and Dowell. The opposite of change. Keeping previously rejected bit-part players.

What change can be achieved if we have pivoted our meagre current resources on Sara and Nunez? They likely have to succeed and must play. No change there then.

Krul plus Gunn looks too much for our needs, too much for our resources and too much to keep happy in mid-table purgatory. So change there, though de-facto backwards.

Omobamidele must play. It is time - not unlike Idah - we find out how good he is (and of course what his value ceiling might be). So no change there either then.

To change we desperately need a real defensive midfielder. I like Liam Gibbs. I want to know what his role is. I suspect he does too. So I’d like to get involved a little in his development. I’ll have several chats with the Head Coach about him.

Losing Pukki looks bad to the outside world. He is widely considered our only good player. ‘Everyone’s leaving Norwich aren’t they?’ Is the kind of football water cooler chat that is a world and a half away from ‘Guardiola watches them in his spare time you know…’. Don’t laugh. It matters.

If we believe in Idah let’s send him out on loan for a year. He needs 90 minutes a week for 30 games. L1 sides would be super grateful and he’d score goals. We’ll then go from there.

Tactically we’ll have a chat with the head coach and acknowledge our lack of weapons. I’ll accept his view that all we really have is Onel occasionally, Sara corners and Nunez free kicks. These are the only components of weapons we have now. After promotion, c£100m and the squad value we had in ‘21. And we’ve forward contracted £60m in parachute payments. Yes, we’ll have to do much, much better than that.

If Aarons and Giannoulis are a liability defensively, play a three. Omo-Grizzly-Gibson perfectly good enough for this level. Though exposing them too much via poor CDM play and over-attacking line ups is the issue, not defensive weakness or individual errors per se. They are consequences, not outright causes. Defensive mistakes typically come from ‘too much action’ and too high a quality of chances conceded. I don’t like my Head Coaches talking about ‘mistakes’. I can generally see at least 3 or 4 semi-errors - tactically or technically - before the more obvious final error. Very often - and this is what head coaches never say - ‘the opposition was better and applying consistent pressure to our weak points for a period before the goal’. If we’re worse, let’s look at it together.

As for recruitment don’t be completely obsessed about physicality. Yes the Premier is physical, athletic, hard-running, though Buendia was small, Pukki limited, Cantwell flaky, Skipp a ‘mercenary loan’, though all worked beautifully at times. At times is all you need. You win 10 games and you stay up. You don’t need to not get beaten in 30 games. You also don’t stand out in the championship with a load of Prem looky-likey ersatz players. It’s not how we got promoted. Twice. Easily.

Players don’t necessarily want to come as much they did in ‘21 upon promotion, so how do we attract them? Well, like it or not, we have limitations here. We don’t offer Wages, security, London. We could offer family happiness, friends of friends recommendations, we do pay agents well, the training ground is a professional place to work. Pep might send us a few if we adhered to positional play principles again.

We don’t really have a set up to compete at Prem level, that has been hard proven as others see it, so let’s stop spending limited and hard-earned resources now planning for something we can’t achieve, on players who don’t fit us and won’t be quite good enough at the top level anyway. Cold of course. So be it.

It is easy to sell dreams on the way up. Hard to sell reality on the slide downwards once you’ve been to the puppet show and had the strings cut. You just have to face that down as Sporting Director. Communicate the failings. Address the status quo reality, however far you have fallen. Identify the hurdle in front of you now. Forget about the one you fell at yesterday. Move on. ‘I used to be a contender’ butters no Norfolk parsnips. Give the punters something new to get hold of, to believe in. I still like ‘Guardiola watches us’. If he came on Saturday it was to see Swansea. That has to change for a start. I still liked watching us when we lost under Farke. There. I’ve said it.

By the way, we didn’t just beat Manchester City, we deserved it.

It was not a cup scalp, a park-the-bus, a 20/80 posssession luck-in. Just think about that for a moment. That was us. We rejected and gave away and sold all of this to try to be something we couldn’t be and wouldn’t want to be even if it had worked.

Our current precipitous slide does metaphorically, psychologically and sportingly all pivot on the sale of Buendia. Let me be clear though: You can, will and must sell Buendia.

However you can never, never, never - at any cost, lie, fight, drama - sell Buendia at the point of a hard earned promotion, with the football alchemist’s gold of momentum, with all the players positive, their agents getting bonuses, Pukki with his eye in.

The devastating effect on momentum, on confidence, on belief - ‘we got relegated first time to prepare for the second you said’ - to then sell the floor from under everyone. The slide - and it is catastrophically dramatic - began, pivoted and accelerated into an unstoppable mental, physical and sporting avalanche right there.

That is football. It spins on a dime. We played a tight, narrow window strategic hand, we couldn’t afford big errors like that. Our house of cards is always going to be built on riskier strategic foundations than others through our lack of owner funds. That was a horribly obvious mistake that showed zero understanding of players.

Make no mistake, players are everything. Like them or not, they are everything. Keeping them happy, compromising, lying, cheating, saying one thing publicly doing another privately is not just common and ‘normal’ in football, it is necessary. It is necessary for good reason.

Maintaining surface unshakeable beliefs is key to players, fans, agents, others. Though what goes on behind closed doors is so, so, so different. Players are a strange mix of ultra-professional, ultra-hard, fragile, searingly self-critical and weak as ****. Egos are both unbreakable and collapsible. Truth is what you make it at any given moment. Top sportsmen create their own reality. An incredible strength and empirically bollox all at the same time.

What has ‘honesty and straight-talking’ ever had to do with it? I’ll ignore that noise.

Parma

Edited April 25, 2023 by Parma Ham's gone mouldy

ron obvious · April 24, 2023

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

There were wins, but it certainly wasn’t all about winning. It was a joy at being entertained, a sense of identifying with the style, of recognizing something artistic, beautiful even.

YES! YES! THIS! A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!!

Well that was an absolutely amazing read. Post shmost - that was a philosophical essay, worthy of Bertrand Russell. Combined with the preceding post the two together made for the most absorbing, insightful twenty odd minutes I've ever spent on this forum.

All I can say is that if I was on the board I'd move heaven & earth to get Parma involved (if there's any way he'd consider it), even if that meant ruffling feathers, in fact even if a complete plucking were necessary. Let's face it, we are in a plucking mess ...

Tetteys Jig · April 24, 2023

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

It is the right question @Big O.

Long before Webber I championed the Sporting Director model, believing it to be of fundamental importance to any club, though particularly essential to us - with very limited resources, fan owners with a tendency to zealotically embrace the new messiah, attracting charismatic-opportunistic-mercenary managers whose raison d’être is to survive another 6 months in the job - whether it costs a Yanic Wildshut or two, whether he is affordable or not.

The Sporting Director is there to amortise the eternal problems of football short-termism. To ensure a broad philosophical, methodological, operational sporting consistency of action is perennially maintained.

@Big O here are some broad principles and some correlating questions that need to be answered for us to understand what we need from a Sporting Director:

What is the deep-rooted culture of the club? What makes it different, unique even, to the fans, the loyal customers, the paying public?

There are 23k season ticket holders, the ground has very often sold out its 27k capacity, these fans - and one must assume that there are even more if it was cheaper to attend, tickets were more accessible, available together, more seats -  turn up every year almost regardless of results, league position, color of manager, sexual orientation of directors, gender of owner, niceties or otherwise of CEOs.

Therefore we have something of a captive audience, we have little direct nearby competition, loyalty levels are high,  customers cannot - and do not really - take their money and business elsewhere.

So let’s get to know them. What do they want?
‘We just want winning football’ they say. But they don’t. Because they turn up anyway.

So what makes them happy?

We don’t have to guess if we can read the book. Let’s go back to the last time fans were really happy. Farke and his distinct brand of Man City lite was in town and everyone wore the badge with pride.

There were wins, but it certainly wasn’t all about winning. It was a joy at being entertained, a sense of identifying with the style, of recognizing something artistic, beautiful even.

I would venture also - something I considered utterly fundamental in my charges when coaching - that there was great pleasure in (after a time) understanding what was happening, what would happen next, what the purpose of the movements were, what the intended patterns were, the sense that there was a harmonious recognition of what everyone’s role was and how it elegantly intersected with those around.

Football is an identity, a purpose, a style of playing, an approach to the game. Norwich is not rough-and-tumble. It is not low rent scrap for second balls. It is not even really counter-pressing and heavy metal football. It is passing angles, possession, elegance, control, through balls, number 10s, defenders comfortable on the ball, goalkeepers going short, through balls, springing offside traps, academy players being given first team chances earlier than most. Cruyffian ideals perhaps, though not - ultimately - requiring winning football. Just sometimes. ‘The right way’

Football is now about money and we don’t have it. So what are we going to do? What shall we aim to become? Crystal Palace lite? The dream of 15th every year?

Even if we achieved it - and we almost can’t without significant further funding - we wouldn’t be happy with it within a year or two. Why? Because it would look attritional, spoiling, negative, cautious, highly physical. In short the brand would be no brand. It would be the perennial angst of looking down. Of being ‘as  less inferior as possible’. We are in any case light years from that. It would cost half a billion from here just to be that.

So here is flaw number one currently: Preparing for the Premier is a false premise for Norwich City Football club in the here-and-now. It is a glossy brochure leprechaun dancing at the end of a faraway rainbow.

Focusing on being too good for championship is a far more pragmatic and reasonable ambition. They are very, very far from the same thing. They have very different costs and wildly varying odds of success.

Ironically the first thing may well lead to great failure for the second. Whilst success in the second thing may eventually lead to the first.

We had a model that proved the second, which we - mistakenly in my view - flip-flopped from to chase a Prem-lite chimera of a model that suited almost none of our personnel, went against years of our established football teaching, hard-drilled psychological positional play, mental pathway tendencies and previous investment on very particular footballing characteristics. This constancy of sporting purpose, investment and ideals is what a Sporting Director is paid to direct, protect and maintain.

It is not that we simply tried to become Prem cheap lite, or that it wouldn’t work, it couldn’t have worked. We were years and hundreds of millions behind others that had done it for many years. Tens of clubs scout the kind of players we belatedly threw ourselves at - and they pay them far more money, offer them London or release clauses, plus far greater odds of success and more of a shop window. It is not to be negative about the club I love. You simply must recognize who and what you are, how you are seen by others. Even if you don’t like it.

It was a desperate sporting pivot lacking in consistency of method, long-term vision and purpose. It was a dice throw of a move.

It is precisely the kind of panicked desperation that a Sporting Director is employed and designed to avoid proctor hoc.

———

If Farke proved anything it is that methodology can trump players. So many cast offs, limited players and academy players became repeatedly valuable, central and effective. In fact it happened across 2 cycles of players.

I would go and speak to Farke. Often, repeatedly. That kind of knowledge, understanding and feel for the club, for positional play principles, for future academy teaching - you just can’t let it leave the building and never be heard of, understood or repeated again. Football is a closed industry, it can be lonely. Invest in maintaining some kind of link. Learn.

I also would not ignore the reality of Farke’s tenure being underpinned by a creator and a goalscorer. Accept this football reality. Act accordingly. Don’t pad the squad. If you have limited finance you cannot retain two senior players for each position. Forget it. Choose a different way. Limited money means more utility players. Identify a few Sorenson-like players  and use them as cover for 5 positions. Run a squad of no more than 18 senior players. They are hard enough to keep happy anyway.

We need dramatic change to shift the horrible downward momentum vortex that sucks in all good. I would suggest having a Martin Peters moment. Invest what limited resources you have on someone who knows what real quality looks like. Someone that lifts all boats. I would suggest not a Huckerby in current circumstances, more someone like James Milner. Someone utterly professional - prosaic, ‘just’ functional even - who hates to lose, who runs, covers different  positions, covers for the mistakes of others, sets standards, influences training levels, who won’t - can’t - accept low standards. Start from there. Offer him a player-coaching role, a senior coaching development pathway. Encourage him to bring some friends. Use his contacts.

As a sporting squad you must carry less players. You simply take more injury risks and accept the consequences. But what are those consequences? You use the academy. Not everyone is Lewis, Godfrey, Omobamidele, Aarons. But even now, if Idah is 3rd or 4th choice striker, everyone is happy with that aren’t they? You take a chance- if faced with multiple injuries - on those who might come good. The Academy must be trusted in this way at Championship level, otherwise what is the point?

Football is all about momentum. Goals camouflage a multitude of sins. You must have a goalscorer. At any cost. Even if you can only afford one player. It must be a goalscorer. anything else can pretty much be covered for. If you have to stop gap with a (to use easy examples) Jordan Rhodes, Chris Martin, Dwight Gayle, you just just have one. Others players need to know that there is someone who knows where the net is. They play differently if they know this. Sargent is yet to convince, even at this level. If you feel it, don’t you think the players know it too?

Of course it is all about Finances for Norwich, though you can choose how you cut the limited cake you have as a sporting Director. You can run a wide and deep squad, or a narrow, high and lean one. I repeatedly emphasised proctor hoc that keeping or attracting weapons, or peaks in your squad would always be my strategy. Amortising risks to be a bit better on average across the squad board just means you lose every game a bit less badly. I never liked it.

The counterpart to this strategy is to be brave. If you can’t buy right - with the limited funds available  - communicate it, say it out loud. Tell the loyal fans you want limited, high quality, forensic signings or you simply won’t buy. You’ll trust those that got you there.

Upon promotion ‘21 It looked a little like Webber thought it might’ve been his opportunity to make his name. Did he try to convince himself that what was best for his career was also best for Norwich? Strong-minded people can convince themselves of any reality they choose. So did he he do exactly what errant managers had previously done at Norwich and pressed and pushed for signings that might work? Exactly what Sporting Directors are employed to prevent happening.

———

As for thinning our current - horribly weak and flawed squad - we have a number of immediate problems to address.

For a start who buys what we have, can they match current wages, would our players go there, how do you get them to leave the building?

Typically cash buyers only want what you want to keep. Having said that, there is not one single current player who I wouldn’t sell. That is pretty damning. No one has much value. Rashica we’ll see. £5m and add ons after some tough negotiations I imagine. Who else will buy him and stalking horse Gala? I very much doubt the lurid numbers and Premier interest in Sara. He is well short of that level of consistency, positional awareness and defensive discipline. He has scored some great goals, though such things are not typically reliably repeatable. Tzolis is a sad story that needs a rewrite. Gunn a few bob, Sargent something to someone, Hanley a little, Gibson a little, Nunez a punt for similar money, Idah something for potential, Aarons might not get the kind of offer we would take, his stock as fallen as his top level flaws - much like us a club - have been concretised. High single figure millions as Prem back up maybe. Omobamidele has the highest value ceiling, though it’ll be a year or two away at the soonest. It  really doesn’t add up to much of a total squad asset valuation. I dread to think how much less the playing staff is worth than the promotion ‘21 equivalent. That is real money gone.

Maybe we are waiting for Attanasio. How much money is there now? How much might be injected into the playing squad post takeover?

Clearly as Sporting Director we must manage upwards to Delia. Let’s find out clearly where are we at in a corporate and financial sense. Let’s get as much directional clarity as can be made reasonably available to us as Sporting Director. To drive football momentum change I need a good narrative, for players, fans, agents, potential signings, even the football grapevine. I don’t ignore the noise, I generate it. Use the sporting Director platform to sell the brand, the philosophy, the vision, the future. I think I want to get Attanasio talking more, let’s sell some rainbows, we must change the narrative off the field to help change the momentum on the field. Even if he never gets more involved than he is now, I can use him. Let’s do a bit of public dreaming together, a bit of American ambitionism can be a powerful football fan aphrodisiac. I never said I was Mother Theresa.

———

For now change has to come from out of contract players. Though the current Sporting Director - and Head Coach working under whatever parameters have been laid down -  have further reduced options by choosing to keep Onel and Dowell. The opposite of change. Keeping previously rejected bit-part players.

What change can be achieved if we have pivoted our meagre current resources on Sara and Nunez? They likely have to succeed and must play. No change there then.

Krul plus Gunn looks too much for our needs, too much for our resources and too much to keep happy in mid-table purgatory. So change there, though de-facto backwards.

Omobamidele must play. It is time - not unlike Idah - we find out how good he is (and of course what his value ceiling might be). So no change there either then.

To change we desperately need a real defensive midfielder. I like Liam Gibbs. I want to know what his role is. I suspect he does too. So I’d like to get involved a little in his development too. I’ll have several chats with the Head Coach about him.

Losing Pukki looks bad to the outside world. He is widely considered our only good player. ‘Everyone’s leaving Norwich aren’t they?’ Is the kind of football water cooler chat that is a world and a half away from ‘Guardiola watches them in his spare time you know…’. Don’t laugh. It matters.

If we believe in Idah let’s send him out on loan for a year. He needs 90 minutes a week for 30 games. L1 sides would be super grateful and he’d score goals. We’ll then go from there.

Tactically we’ll have a chat with the head coach and acknowledge our lack of weapons. I’ll accept his view that all we really have is Onel occasionally, Sara corners and Nunez free kicks, These are the weapons we have now. After promotion squad ‘21. And £60m in forward contracted parachute payments. Yes, we’ll have to do much, much better than that.

If Aarons and Giannoulis are a liability defensively , play a three. Omo-Grizzly-Gibson perfectly good enough for this level. Exposing them too much via poor CDM play and over-attacking line ups is the issue, not defensive weakness or individual errors per se. They are consequences, not outright causes. Defensive mistakes typically come from ‘too much action’ and too high a quality of chances conceded. I don’t like my Head Coaches talking about ‘mistakes’. I can generally see at least 3 or 4 semi-errors - tactically or technically - before the more obvious final error. Very often - and this is what head coaches never say - ‘the opposition was better and applying consistent pressure to our weak points for a period before the goal’. If we’re worse, let’s look at it together.

As for recruitment don’t be completely obsessed about physicality. Yes the Premier is physical, athletic, hard-running, though Buendia was small, Pukki limited, Cantwell flaky, Skipp a ‘mercenary loan’, though all worked beautifully at times. At times is all you need. You win 10 games and you stay up. You don’t need to not get beaten in 30 games. You also don’t stand out in the championship with a load of Prem looky-likey ersatz players. It’s not how we got promoted. Twice. Easily.

Players don’t necessarily want to come as much they did in ‘21 upon promotion, so how do we attract them? Well, like it or not, we have limitations here. We don’t offer Wages, security, London. We could offer family happiness, friends of friends recommendations, we do pay agents well, the training ground is a professional place to work. Pep might send us a few if we adhered to positional play principles again.

We don’t really have a set up to compete at Prem level, that has been hard proven as others see it, so let’s stop spending limited and hard-earned resources now planning for something we can’t achieve, on players who don’t fit us and won’t be quite good enough at the top level anyway. Cold of course. So be it.

It is easy to sell dreams on the way up. Hard to sell reality on the slide downwards once you’ve been to the puppet show and had the strings cut.  You just have to face that down as Sporting Director. Communicate the failings. Address the status quo reality, however far you have fallen. Identify the hurdle in front of you now. Forget about the one you fell at yesterday. Move on. ‘I used to be a contender’ butters no Norfolk parsnips. Give the punters something new to get hold of, to believe in. I still like Guardiola  watches us. If he came on Saturday it was to see Swansea. That has to change for a start. I still liked watching us when we lost under Farke. There. I’ve said it.

By the way, we didn’t just beat Manchester City, we deserved it.

It was not a cup scalp, a park-the-bus, a 20/80 posssession luck in. Just think about that for a moment. That was us. We rejected and gave away and sold all of this to try to be something we couldn’t be and wouldn’t want to be even if it had worked.

Our current precipitous slide does metaphorically, psychologically and sportingly all pivot on the sale of Buendia. Let me be clear though: You can, will and must sell Buendia.

However you can never, never, never - at any cost, lie, fight, drama - sell Buendia at the point of a hard earned promotion, with the football alchemist’s gold of momentum, with all the players positive, their agents getting bonuses, Pukki with his eye in.

The devastating effect on momentum, on confidence on belief - ‘we got relegated first time to prepare for the second you said’ - to then sell the floor from under everyone. The slide - and it is catastrophically dramatic - began, pivoted and accelerated into an unstoppable mental, physical and sporting avalanche right there.

That is football. It spins on a dime. We played a tight, narrow window strategic hand, we couldn’t afford big errors like that. Our house of cards is always going to be built on riskier strategic foundations than others through our lack of owner funds. That was a horribly obvious mistake that showed zero understanding of players.

Make no mistake, players are everything. Like them or not, they are everything. Keeping them happy, compromising, lying, cheating, saying one thing publicly doing another privately is not just common and ‘normal’ in football, it is necessary. It is necessary for good reason.

Maintaining surface unshakeable beliefs is key to players, fans, agents, others. Though what goes on behind closed doors is so, so, so different. Players are a strange mix of ultra-professional, ultra-hard, fragile, searingly self-critical and weak as ****. Egos are both unbreakable and collapsible. Truth is what you make it at any given moment. Top sportsmen create their own reality. An incredible strength and empirically bollox all at the same time.

What has ‘honesty and straight-talking’ ever had to do with it? I’ll ignore that noise.

Parma

Surely there could be some middle ground though, right? We had that 10 game unbeaten run under Hughton with some very unremarkable but likeable players (pilks, Holt and co) until his brand completely soured.

Personally, I’d love us to find someone with the hustle that Holty had and combine them into a 5-3-2 style approach. Perhaps Idah could develop a thicker skin or something and become a bit more street wise and become that guy.

Pukki leaving is the end of an era but as you say above, it’s one of the few areas we can actually look at doing something different given we are invested in with the likes of Onel, Dowell, Sara and Nunez. I have found much of our recent recruitment rather slapdash and disjointed. Now is a chance to correct that. Perhaps for all Webbers recent failings, some of his longer term stuff might start bearing fruit? (Youth, scouting etc.)

Monty13 · April 24, 2023

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

Our current precipitous slide does metaphorically, psychologically and sportingly all pivot on the sale of Buendia. Let me be clear though: You can, will and must sell Buendia.

However you can never, never, never - at any cost, lie, fight, drama - sell Buendia at the point of a hard earned promotion, with the football alchemist’s gold of momentum, with all the players positive, their agents getting bonuses, Pukki with his eye in.

The devastating effect on momentum, on confidence on belief - ‘we got relegated first time to prepare for the second you said’ - to then sell the floor from under everyone. The slide - and it is catastrophically dramatic - began, pivoted and accelerated into an unstoppable mental, physical and sporting avalanche right there.

That’s a fantastic post Parma, thanks for the read.

You know I wholeheartedly agree with this bit though. Everything started to go wrong from that point and everything that’s gone wrong since has indeed just been a continuation of the avalanche of bad momentum that choice created IMO.

Its a long way back up the mountain from here.

Barham Blitz · April 24, 2023

A wonderful post @Parma Ham's gone mouldy - I agree wholeheartedly with everything in that and have been arguing the same - albeit less eloquently and holistically - since I've been posting on here.

The loss of the identity that was so painstakingly forged for such a misguided alternative is bordering on tragic - almost in the classical Greek sense given that appears to have been largely a result of the hubris of one central character ...

PurpleCanary · April 25, 2023

Delia in 2018:

“On the academy side I feel very passionate. Not many people listen to me much but when I first became a board director [in 1996] I went to visit a football club called Auxerre and their manager, Guy Roux. The first thing he said to me, and he didn’t speak much English, was: ‘I never buy footballers.’ The academy had their own little stadium, they had houses built on site. Roux knew all the youngsters by name. And the record is there, isn’t it? They played in Europe, they never went out of Ligue 1. And Auxerre is the size of Thetford. Wow. That’s the kind of club I want Norwich to be. I want it to feel like it is part of the community.”

-

Delia Smith hails Norwich’s new direction to improve academy | Norwich City | The Guardian

Edited April 25, 2023 by PurpleCanary

Don J Demorr · April 25, 2023

10 hours ago, Barham Blitz said:

A wonderful post @Parma Ham's gone mouldy - I agree wholeheartedly with everything in that and have been arguing the same - albeit less eloquently and holistically - since I've been posting on here.

The loss of the identity that was so painstakingly forged for such a misguided alternative is bordering on tragic - almost in the classical Greek sense given that appears to have been largely a result of the hubris of one central character ...

Indeed, Blitzen, what a totally brilliant post by Parma - a veritable Grido di cuore if ever I saw one. Wonderfully and eruditely written, sir. A hard act to follow!

However, from a jaundiced eyeball at 10,000 feet I see a vital need for some further and concominant work, not on the field but at the table in the Boardroom. If Blitz and Parma are are right, how can it possibly be that evidently business-strategic decisions can be made by one person, especially one at less than Board level? If that is possible, that is Corporate management with baked-in failure and such errors will recur in future. If they can't, and the Board gives approval then the Board is more culpable than the employee. In that case it is Corporate management with baked-in failure which will recur in future.

Whichever is true (and one of them must be) the Board as presently constituted is not fit for purpose. To achieve the dream obviously shared by so many of you and as so eloquently expressed by Parma, changes at Board level are a sine qua non.

As my old grandad used to say "If things don't alter, they'll stay as they are".

And that is unacceptable, is it not?

Don

Edited April 25, 2023 by Don J Demorr
Improved text

PurpleCanary · April 25, 2023

15 hours ago, Don J Demorr said:

Occasionally, when reading this best of all threads on this Forum I think maybe I can add something useful but then I don't do so because it feels like I might be intruding on a scene of private grief. If so, this is not a grief I share. I have seldom visited Norwich itself and have only once been to Carrow Road and that more than forty years ago. I know little or nothing of the goings-on on a football pitch. My interest here lies not in the affairs of your football club per se, but as a case study in the operation of an evidently failing enterprise and making an attempt to identify any opportunities for improvement.

In this particular time of woe, maybe there is a suitable opportunity to offer a few thousand ill-chosen and maybe even unwelcome words in an attempt to find a possible explanation of what is going on, why these problems are happening and possibly even propose what might be done about it.

This is a long post because the present dire situation is worthy of serious attention. I hope you agree and that I don't test your patience too much.

First and foremost, in my almost forgotten field of Management Consultancy it is regarded as virtually certain that a successful and enduring enterprise will have Constancy of Purpose. This might seem like one thing but in fact it is two. There must be a purpose and it must be constant. A few months ago the redoubtable Sheff exposed to us all the shambolic bafflegab of the purpose declaration in the NCFC Annual Report. This was regarded with some hilarity but in terms of organisation and management it is anything but funny. Confusion at this level will permeate the entire structure - and so it does. It is absolutely essential that this is fixed because a clear shared purpose drives cohesive behaviour and cohesive behaviour is essential for success. I will return to this later in the piece.

Next, if an organisation is to function efficiently it must have clear and distinct lines of authority and responsibility, both for actions and expenditure. Let me describe from experience how a successful organisation is most likely to work: -

            1) At the ownership level the decision about the basic field of operation is decided, together with the level at which it will operate. (If the decision is made to be a grocer you also need to decide whether you intend to compete with Albert Arkwright or Fortnum and Mason).

            2) Next is a management structure by which to achieve the objects of the enterprise, usually done the appointment of a Board of Directors. The leader of this team should be the Managing Director. His duty is not to manage the operations of the organisation but to manage the Board. Individual Directors then share the responsibility for executive action to achieve the purpose. They are the ones who do things. Each Board Director is a specialist with a defined area of responsibility for performance, with the concomitant agreed budget. No gaps, no overlaps.

            3) Sadly it is not unknown for a Managing Director to take the organisation off in a direction other than that required to achieve the purpose. As a guard against this a Chairman of the Board should be appointed. This person is Guardian of the Process, not of the outcome. (The greatest Chairman of any organisation I ever worked for was Arnold Weinstock. He had not a clue about the high-tech business sector we were in but my goodness he knew how operate a business. A wonderful exemplar, whom I have never forgotten). I think it was the estimable Purple who wanted a powerful Chairman. With the greatest respect, sir, I disagree. I want a strong Chairman whose brief is just like that of the pilot of a ship, watching the course and guiding the vessel to the destination but who is forbidden to take control.

I have tried to discover how NCFC is organised to achieve whatever purpose is for the moment considered desirable. No doubt some of you will know from direct experience how the crew work aboard the "SS Carronia", but I find the rather inadequately published modus operandi to be worrisome. In particular: -

There is no clear purpose.

There is no Chairman.

The Board of Directors is declared to have the following members: -

Hall, Samuel Fergus - Legal and Governance Director

Attenasio, Mark - Shareholder. No specific responsibility

Foulger, Michael Martin - Shareholder. No specific responsibility

Smith, Delia Anne - Majority shareholder, no specific responsibility

Smith, Thomas Owen Bartlett - shareholder, no specific responsibility

           Webber, Zoe Joanne - Executive Director, apparently many responsibilities, mostly       unspecified

          Wynne- Jones, Michael - Majority shareholder, no specific responsibility

It appears that of the seven members of the Board of Directors only two are employees with specified duties and only one of these is responsible for business outcomes. However: -

There are three employees with the title of Director but who are not Board members: -

Richens, Anthony - Finance Director

Jeffery, Sam - Commercial Director

            Webber, Stuart - Sporting Director

Well, I'm told that Football is different but I fail to understand why there are five Main Board members who have no functional responsibilities whereas the vital Finance and Commercial Directors do not have a seat. I must admit that despite quite a lot of ferreting about I'm still unclear what exactly a Sporting Director does, except that it is clearly important because it is particularly expensive. I'm sure you all know and will no doubt explain if you so choose.

With all due deference to Delia Smith's legendary capabilities I venture to suggest that the resultant cake of this particular organisational recipe has failure baked in. IMHO it is absolutely necessary that this clearly dysfunctional arrangement is changed. Thanks to the upthread mentioned brilliant insight of Niccolo Machiavelli we know this will not happen under the incumbent regime. Seemingly, many of you think that it is Mark Attenasio's money that is vital to the future of your club, but I'm sure he knows very well that without these management organisational changes it would only serve to irrigate an already dampish wall. He will make the necessary changes, I'm sure. This is not his first rodeo.

With reference to operational changes, the only recent ones of note in practical terms have been the dismissal of two Head Coaches and the appointment of a third, which are personnel changes, not structural. All three are deemed by some folk to have failed. From my detached perspective it seems that the poisoned chalice of this position is analogous to that of a Production Manager in industries more familiar to me. Success or otherwise of performance is judged by the ability to produce output of the right quality in the required quantity to the required chedule. In practice there are so many crucial factors under the control of other people that conspicuous personal success at the task is virtually impossible. I'm sure you can see that this is exactly what a Head Coach can be up against. Additionally, an excellent manager can fail in a chaotic regime and an average one can look good in an organised and supportive environment.

We have it that three demonstrably competent Head Coaches have been tried and the outcome has not changed. Could it be they are not the problem? I see all three HCs as probably decent managers who are the inevitable victims of a suboptimal organisation. I have no doubt you will call it as you see it, of course.

On this Forum there is some pretty acidulous criticism of the Executive Director and , the Sporting Director. The charge laid against the only two Directors who have executive authority is that they control everything. Well, no squit, Sherlock - isn't that exactly what the shareholders employ them to do?

But this is all a bit analytical and analysis is easy, as any fule kno. Maybe now we can move on to synthesis, which isn't. We have looked at potential preferable changes to the management structure as such, but not at what it should be redesigned to do.

I have earlier emphasised that ......a clear shared purpose drives cohesive behaviour and cohesive behaviour is essential for success. We therefore need a clear shared purpose.

To formulate a purpose it is necessary to define the field of operation and he desired outcome. For NCFC the field of operation is the game of Professional Association Football and the latest declared desired outcome is said to be established as a permanent member of the English Premier League.

To define what is meant by "success" it is necessary to agree what it will look like when it is achieved. I guess this would be that enough points are won each season to ensure a safe league position. However it is dressed up, the simple objective is to garner points by winning games. To understand how this is to be done we need to take a look at the game of English Professional Football. But - is it a game at all?

To quote from Philosophy of Science (The official Journal of the Philosophy of Science Association at CambridgeUniversity)

"To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only the means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity".

In the case of Association Football the specific rules are the Laws of the Game. It is surely obvious from the most cursory observation of professional matches in play that it is universally accepted that nobody expects that these Laws are to be obeyed in some important aspects, whereas there are other unwritten (and variably applied) rules that are. It follows that Professional Association Football is not a game at all in the true sense - it is something else. Any team that follows the formal specific rules, believing that a game is being played, is more often than not going to score fewer goals and hence gain fewer points than an opposition that is not so constrained - which at this level seems to be all of them.

I understand that the published desired outcome is to be "a successful permanent member of the English Premier League". In that case it is clearly not a good idea to design an organisation that faithfully follows the Laws of Association Football. It is axiomatic that Purpose drives behaviour. Painful as it may be to those of us who value fair play and sportsmanship, saintly ethical behaviour either on the pitch or in the Boardroom is never going to succeed in this environment. The club will need to understand, organise and compete under Rafferty's Rules like the rest of them. If the club (including all you stakeholders) is not content with that the aforesaid desired outcome will be unattainable and either failure must be tolerated or the published purpose statement must be changed.

I think I'll leave it at that.

My best wishes to you all and to your beloved Football Club

Don.

(Il Padrino Non Tossico, per piacere Mr Parma!)

Don, kind of you to think of me as admirable. I hope you won't mind if I repay the compliment by slightly disagreeing with you on the question of the directors and their responsiibiloities, or lack of them.

You mentioned GEC, and I worked for a Footsie 100 company, which at that time had about 40,000 employees. GEC may have had as many, or more. And my company had professional executive directors with specific responsibilities. The kind of people you mention. And I think there was a separate overseeing non-executive board. Either way, it meant the chairman could be the kind of strong but not powerful pilot you advocate as the ideal.

At the last count Norwich City Football Club plc employed 354 people! It is a tiny company, and suchlike tend not to have a host of professional executive directors with specific oversight duties. In fact I think you may have erred by including the one seeming such Norwich City have. Unless just appointed, Sam Hall is not a director. Which leaves only multi-portfolio Zoe Webber!

You might argue then that the non-executive directors should have oversight responsibilities for an area of the company's operations. I would agree with that, even though it would be an amateur assessment. But even with that, unless NCFC switches to the full-on professional executive director model, I believe it needs the chairman to have the power to administer the kind of muscular control and oversight that it may (only may) have been lacking now for some time.

hogesar · April 25, 2023

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy - an excellent post that really gets me thinking. I won't respond now, too much to take in!

Don J Demorr · April 25, 2023

13 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Unless just appointed, Sam Hall is not a director. Which leaves only multi-portfolio Zoe Webber!

Hi, Purps.

According to Companies House, Sam Hall was appointed to the Board as Secretary in February 2020. Presumably his title was changed subsequently. IIRC, (which I probably don't) this came from the NCFC website (which, by the way is very poor of its kind). The Head Coach, for instance, is not shown as a one of the key people!)

I think my point is not that NCFC needs a lot of Directors, more that the Board structure is flawed and needs changing. The questions of how and who needs to be addressed by people who know the club, not an interloper like me!

shefcanary · April 25, 2023

My TL:DR on the two mega posts.

The lack of a "strong" chairman (yep, my old governance complaint) led to the unchallenged change in sporting strategy from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3 and the sale of Buendia, mainly because the clubs' values, mission and vision were not clearly stated and understood by key people in the organisation.

We can and should be braver when relying on the academy players to cover for injuries - a like for like swap in. We have to test if the academy is working, to not do so does no-one any favours (forget the "it might damage them long term" calls, they are either good enough or they are not).

The Board needs to understand the motivation of the 27,000 regular attendees better, know your market and you can provide what they want.

In conclusion, a lot needs to happen at Board level before we truly get to see an improvement on the pitch. What we have at the moment is a bad case of organisational drift!

BigFish · April 25, 2023

58 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

At the last count Norwich City Football Club plc employed 354 people! It is a tiny company, and suchlike tend not to have a host of professional executive directors with specific oversight duties.

This point is key, and is forgotten about because of all the money, largely from TV and mega-rich owners, sloshing about the system. The conversation above is in danger of conflating football and NCFC as a business, and football as a sporting endeavor. The historic decision to constitute the club as a public company means it is remarkably transparent for an unlisted organisation. Should MA takeover it is likely he will take the club private and this will be a thing of the past, governance will be opaque and in the hands of one man or small oligarchy.

Whether this leads to sporting success is another matter. The sporting strategy has got the club into the situation it is today. The SD adopted a strategy of a broad squad of players bought with resale value in mind and paid for that by selling the teams best player. We know the result, we don't know the hypothetical outcomes of other strategies but we are where we are. I am persuaded by Parma's argument we need a smaller but better quality squad with the co-commitment risk of an injury crisis. As such I am bemused by the thinking behind Hernandez's new contract and the idea of retaining Dowell. I suspect there is a plan, or rather a number of plans, that will become more known between now and July/August. I hope they are better than the ones we have had for the last two seasons and I hope they work. We shall see in due course.

Edited April 25, 2023 by BigFish

Harry53 · April 25, 2023

13 hours ago, ron obvious said:

YES! YES! THIS! A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!!

Well that was an absolutely amazing read. Post shmost - that was a philosophical essay, worthy of Bertrand Russell. Combined with the preceding post the two together made for the most absorbing, insightful twenty odd minutes I've ever spent on this forum.

All I can say is that if I was on the board I'd move heaven & earth to get Parma involved (if there's any way he'd consider it), even if that meant ruffling feathers, in fact even if a complete plucking were necessary. Let's face it, we are in a plucking mess ...

Is there any way we can get MA to read these two posts?

aBee · April 25, 2023

This is a fascinating and erudite thread! I think where it’s coming out in recent long posts is that absolute clarity of purpose at a club, company and leadership level is essential. The difficult part of that is not identifying it but implementing it with the right people capable of executing it. Otherwise you say the right things, put in the right processes but don’t actually implement things effectively.

If anyone has a spare hour and listens to podcasts, you might find this one interesting: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4qLVD4cpoN32RPHEMM4VwU?si=fJK3RkrnSCqW2Jo65y8Xlw

Barham Blitz · April 25, 2023

2 hours ago, Don J Demorr said:

Indeed, Blitzen, what a totally brilliant post by Parma - a veritable Grido di cuore if ever I saw one. Wonderfully and eruditely written, sir. A hard act to follow!

However, from a jaundiced eyeball at 10,000 feet I see a vital need for some further and concominant work, not on the field but at the table in the Boardroom. If Blitz and Parma are are right, how can it possibly be that evidently business-strategic decisions can be made by one person, especially one at less than Board level? If that is possible, that is Corporate management with baked-in failure and such errors will recur in future. If they can't, and the Board gives approval then the Board is more culpable than the employee. In that case it is Corporate management with baked-in failure which will recur in future.

Whichever is true (and one of them must be) the Board as presently constituted is not fit for purpose. To achieve the dream obviously shared by so many of you and as so eloquently expressed by Parma, changes at Board level are a sine qua non.

As my old grandad used to say "If things don't alter, they'll stay as they are".

And that is unacceptable, is it not?

Don

Whilst I won't pretend a similar knowledge of company governance and structure to yourself (or indeed any of the other more expert contributors to this excellent thread) much of what you suggest rings very true to my comparatively amateur eye. I would caveat this with Parma's observations regarding the fact that football at the top level in this country is very much a money game and we don't have any - the established Premier league status that we aspired to is the wheel upon which we have broken ourselves, albeit quite possibly at an organisational level in large part for the reasons you have outlined.

I do agree with Parma that dominating the championship is the level to which we can and should aspire with the possibility that in the longer term this may lead to a more sustained and sustainable stay in the promised land (the first part at least of much and unfairly maligned 'Top 26' aspiration of pre -fall Webber.) The emphasis here is on 'may': selling our soul and identity to achieve it is not only high risk it is as has been demonstrated likely to be counter-productive. Palace-lite and clinging on to 17th place for season after season until economic gravity takes hold is not where I as a fan wish to be. I guess that this is where the fan and the management consultant diverge - not that it is a criticism given your open identification of your interest in proceedings.

To achieve even ths reduced vision will certainly require the restructuring along similar lines to those advicated by you, ShefCanary and Purple amongst others. As you so evocatively suggest, this is not Attenasio's first rodeo so I suspect that much of what your are suggesting will come to fruition in some way.

But thank you for the contributions - thought provoking - and also for bringing to my attention the term 'bafflegab' which I am fully intending to utilise in my own profession as soon as circumstances warrant !

ricardo · April 25, 2023

I will condense these long posts into just a few words.

We sacked Farke and needlessly threw away a unique identity for virtually nothing in return. You get what you deserve in the end but this was totally self inflicted. It felt to me that those in charge lost the courage of their convictions at the first real hurdle.

Like Parma, I also enjoyed watching us under Farke, even when we lost. I can even recall a game where the team was applauded off the field after losing at CR. I doubt it is something that will ever be repeated.

Edited April 25, 2023 by ricardo

Midlands Yellow · April 25, 2023

3 minutes ago, ricardo said:

I will condense these long posts into just a few words.

We sacked Farke and needlessly threw away a unique identity for virtually nothing in return. You get what you deserve in the end but this was totally self inflicted. It felt to me that those in charge lost the courage of their convictions at the first real hurdle.

Like Parma, I also enjoyed watching us under Farke, even when we lost. I can even recall a game where the team was applauded off the field after losing at CR. I doubt it is something that will ever be repeated.

Stoke at home?

sgncfc · April 25, 2023

Great topic.

I have one question for Don and Parma. Are we a business first and a football club second, or the other way around?

Does the structure come before the football? i.e. given we are a football club and what happens on the pitch is the very reason for our existence, is this dependent on the boardroom?

I know what I think the answer is, but I'd be interested to hear what you both think.

king canary · April 25, 2023

While I do respect you @Parma Ham's gone mouldy and your obvious knowledge, I read this long post and found myself disagreeing with something in pretty much every paragraph. For example this...

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

Norwich is not rough-and-tumble. It is not low rent scrap for second balls. It is not even really counter-pressing and heavy metal football. It is passing angles, possession, elegance, control, through balls, number 10s, defenders comfortable on the ball, goalkeepers going short, through balls, springing offside traps, academy players being given first team chances earlier than most. Cruyffian ideals perhaps, though not - ultimately - requiring winning football. Just sometimes. ‘The right way’

...Norwich can and absolutely has been all of those things. Grant Holt is a hero at this club and he was as scrappy as they come. Malky Mackay was venerated and never had a shred of elegance in him. Norwich was what you described for 4 years but it can be whatever it wants to be.

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

Even if we achieved it - and we almost can’t without significant further funding - we wouldn’t be happy with it within a year or two. Why? Because it would look attritional, spoiling, negative, cautious, highly physical.

Firstly, I disagree we wouldn't be happy with it in a couple of years. Because we clearly aren't happy as a fanbase with spending every season being the leagues whipping boys. It might be different if we weren't setting embarrassingly low points totals and basically being down by March each year but I believe a solid % of our fanbase would be more than happy with two or three years of finishing 15th, particularly if we could chuck a cup run in there. I also disagree it has to be attritional football- Brentford are a great example that you can survive and thrive without resorting to being Pulis era Stoke.

ricardo · April 25, 2023

12 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Stoke at home?

Yes, thats the one. I'd never seen anything like that before in all my experience at CR.

BigFish · April 25, 2023

8 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

Great topic.

I have one question for Don and Parma. Are we a business first and a football club second, or the other way around?

Does the structure come before the football? i.e. given we are a football club and what happens on the pitch is the very reason for our existence, is this dependent on the boardroom?

I know what I think the answer is, but I'd be interested to hear what you both think.

For me, and where I think @Don J Demorr is wrong, the answer is we are not a business. Football clubs run as businesses are vanishingly rare. Only Manchester Utd spring to mind and their customers, sorry fans are not very happy about it. How many businesses plan to make zero profit, or even a loss, every year forever? Football is a money process, in that you need table stakes to compete at the level you chose to operate. After that the governance/business side has little or impact on success on the pitch. It is perfectly possible for a basket case of a club to succeed (step on down Sheffield United) and equally perfectly possible for a well run club (as NCFC was recognised as such a couple of seasons ago) to hit the buffers.

Soldier on · April 25, 2023

Such a vacuum at the top of the club. We don’t hear from Webber (apart from Zoe’s boardroom notes ) we don’t hear from Delia and Michael. Such a lot of the Ill feeling in the fan base could be somewhat better with effective action and communication.

Nexus_Canary · April 25, 2023

Can we get @Parma Ham's gone mouldyyo as new sporting director please?

Best post I've read on here in years. Perfectly sums it up.

shefcanary · April 25, 2023

1 hour ago, king canary said:

While I do respect you @Parma Ham's gone mouldy and your obvious knowledge, I read this long post and found myself disagreeing with something in pretty much every paragraph. For example this...

...Norwich can and absolutely has been all of those things. Grant Holt is a hero at this club and he was as scrappy as they come. Malky Mackay was venerated and never had a shred of elegance in him. Norwich was what you described for 4 years but it can be whatever it wants to be.

Whilst I take your point, the players around Holt and Mackay (even back in the days of Forbes) were not what I would call scrappers. Whenever Norwich have had such characters in the team, those around them could play a bit in the "Norwich" way! The current side would look so much better for a Forbes right now without changing the entire personality of the team! This is why I've been so hard on Hanley, he's reached 30 as a CB without a harsh word to anyone or even a face up with an opposition player, far too mild mannered. Omo has actually shown some of the traits I have so wanted in Hanley, albeit without the experience to be able to put himself in the right place at the right time - that will come and why we need to persevere with him for a while yet!

Firstly, I disagree we wouldn't be happy with it in a couple of years. Because we clearly aren't happy as a fanbase with spending every season being the leagues whipping boys. It might be different if we weren't setting embarrassingly low points totals and basically being down by March each year but I believe a solid % of our fanbase would be more than happy with two or three years of finishing 15th, particularly if we could chuck a cup run in there. I also disagree it has to be attritional football- Brentford are a great example that you can survive and thrive without resorting to being Pulis era Stoke.

I think you miss Parma's main point. To stabilise as an EPL side by definition, would take at least two years, in which we would have to play some degree of "attritional" football. Look closely at how Brentford play where it is a lot of hard work forcing mistakes from the opposition, maybe @aBee can comment, would he still be happy with a third season of the current tactics without a sign of improvement? What Parma has said is our fans would after two seasons expect to see a much more positive approach to our play, not relying on forcing the opposition to make mistakes, but simply playing around them! Unless I've misread our fan base.

hogesar · April 25, 2023

1 hour ago, king canary said:

While I do respect you @Parma Ham's gone mouldy and your obvious knowledge, I read this long post and found myself disagreeing with something in pretty much every paragraph. For example this...

...Norwich can and absolutely has been all of those things. Grant Holt is a hero at this club and he was as scrappy as they come. Malky Mackay was venerated and never had a shred of elegance in him. Norwich was what you described for 4 years but it can be whatever it wants to be.

Firstly, I disagree we wouldn't be happy with it in a couple of years. Because we clearly aren't happy as a fanbase with spending every season being the leagues whipping boys. It might be different if we weren't setting embarrassingly low points totals and basically being down by March each year but I believe a solid % of our fanbase would be more than happy with two or three years of finishing 15th, particularly if we could chuck a cup run in there. I also disagree it has to be attritional football- Brentford are a great example that you can survive and thrive without resorting to being Pulis era Stoke.

I agree with your first point, but not your second.

On the first, yeah, you're right. And under Lambert in the Prem we played more long balls than any other side that season. But we had grafters, hard workers, trouble-makers that made things happen from balls down either side of the oppositions defence. We didn't need 30 passes to get to their goal, in fact, we didnt want 30 passes to their goal. We wanted to get it forward quickly and isolate the opposition, and give Holt the opportunity to bully them (Morison too).

king canary · April 25, 2023

6 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

Whilst I take your point, the players around Holt and Mackay (even back in the days of Forbes) were not what I would call scrappers. Whenever Norwich have had such characters in the team, those around them could play a bit in the "Norwich" way! The current side would look so much better for a Forbes right now without changing the entire personality of the team! This is why I've been so hard on Hanley, he's reached 30 as a CB without a harsh word to anyone or even a face up with an opposition player, far too mild mannered. Omo has actually shown some of the traits I have so wanted in Hanley, albeit without the experience to be able to put himself in the right place at the right time - that will come and why we need to persevere with him for a while yet!

You can draw distinctions between scrapers and artists to use a metaphor parma went with. Holt and Mackay were scrappers. You can't have a team of just scrapers sure. But you also can't have a team of just artists. This was, in my view, one of Farke's biggest failings. He couldn't work out how to use the less technically gifted but more physical players in our arsenal so we ended up with a team of lightweight who were nice on the ball but easily brushed out of the way by physical teams.

Also, there is no such thing as the 'Norwich Way' just as there is no such thing as the 'West Ham way' as much as their fans like to claim there is. It all false mythologizing of the past. Clubs styles evolve and change over time.

8 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

I think you miss Parma's main point. To stabilise as an EPL side by definition, would take at least two years, in which we would have to play some degree of "attritional" football. Look closely at how Brentford play where it is a lot of hard work forcing mistakes from the opposition, maybe @aBee can comment, would he still be happy with a third season of the current tactics without a sign of improvement? What Parma has said is our fans would after two seasons expect to see a much more positive approach to our play, not relying on forcing the opposition to make mistakes, but simply playing around them! Unless I've misread our fan base.

No I don't think I've missed his point. Any team has to play attritional football at some point. It is part of the game and there is nothing wrong with it. As the phrase goes 'styles make fights' and football would be boring if there was one homogenous agreed correct 'style' that everyone was aiming to play. The kind of swift, counter attacking football that we played under Lambert was just as exhilarating as anything we did under Farke in my view. The way we played when we beat Man U under Worthington was physical and solid and no less enjoyable for it. Similarly attritional football can, in doses be beautiful and enjoyable. There is something thrilling about a backs to wall defensive stand from a team under the cosh to superior opponent for example.

I don't view what Brentford do as attritional football. Yes they work hard and force mistakes but what isn't enjoyable about that? I'd love to watch a Norwich team do that in the Premier League, much more than I'd like to watch them play 40 passes around the back before giving it away and conceding yet another goal. Yes I'm sure they'll look to transition they're style a bit but I think if we played anything like Brentford for two or three seasons in the top flight our fanbase would be delighted.

Captain Holt · April 25, 2023

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

It is the right question @Big O.

Long before Webber I championed the Sporting Director model, believing it to be of fundamental importance to any club, though particularly essential to us - with very limited resources, fan owners with a tendency to zealotically embrace the new messiah, attracting charismatic-opportunistic-mercenary managers whose raison d’être is to survive another 6 months in the job - whether it costs a Yanic Wildshut or two, whether he is affordable or not.

The Sporting Director is there to amortise the eternal problems of football short-termism. To ensure a broad philosophical, methodological, operational sporting consistency of action is perennially maintained.

@Big O here are some broad principles and some correlating questions that need to be answered for us to understand what we need from a Sporting Director:

What is the deep-rooted culture of the club? What makes it different, unique even, to the fans, the loyal customers, the paying public?

There are 23k season ticket holders, the ground has very often sold out its 27k capacity, these fans - and one must assume that there are even more if it was cheaper to attend, tickets were more accessible, available together, more seats -  turn up every year almost regardless of results, league position, color of manager, sexual orientation of directors, gender of owner, niceties or otherwise of CEOs.

Therefore we have something of a captive audience, we have little direct nearby competition, loyalty levels are high,  customers cannot - and do not really - take their money and business elsewhere.

So let’s get to know them. What do they want?
‘We just want winning football’ they say. But they don’t. Because they turn up anyway.

So what makes them happy?

We don’t have to guess if we can read the book. Let’s go back to the last time fans were really happy. Farke and his distinct brand of Man City lite was in town and everyone wore the badge with pride.

There were wins, but it certainly wasn’t all about winning. It was a joy at being entertained, a sense of identifying with the style, of recognizing something artistic, beautiful even.

I would venture also - something I considered utterly fundamental in my charges when coaching - that there was great pleasure in (after a time) understanding what was happening, what would happen next, what the purpose of the movements were, what the intended patterns were, the sense that there was a harmonious recognition of what everyone’s role was and how it elegantly intersected with those around.

Football is an identity, a purpose, a style of playing, an approach to the game. Norwich is not rough-and-tumble. It is not low rent scrap for second balls. It is not even really counter-pressing and heavy metal football. It is passing angles, possession, elegance, control, through balls, number 10s, defenders comfortable on the ball, goalkeepers going short, through balls, springing offside traps, academy players being given first team chances earlier than most. Cruyffian ideals perhaps, though not - ultimately - requiring winning football. Just sometimes. ‘The right way’

Football is now about money and we don’t have it. So what are we going to do? What shall we aim to become? Crystal Palace lite? The dream of 15th every year?

Even if we achieved it - and we almost can’t without significant further funding - we wouldn’t be happy with it within a year or two. Why? Because it would look attritional, spoiling, negative, cautious, highly physical. In short the brand would be no brand. It would be the perennial angst of looking down. Of being ‘as  less inferior as possible’. We are in any case light years from that. It would cost half a billion from here just to be that.

So here is flaw number one currently: Preparing for the Premier is a false premise for Norwich City Football club in the here-and-now. It is a glossy brochure leprechaun dancing at the end of a faraway rainbow.

Focusing on being too good for championship is a far more pragmatic and reasonable ambition. They are very, very far from the same thing. They have very different costs and wildly varying odds of success.

Ironically the first thing may well lead to great failure for the second. Whilst success in the second thing may eventually lead to the first.

We had a model that proved the second, which we - mistakenly in my view - flip-flopped from to chase a Prem-lite chimera of a model that suited almost none of our personnel, went against years of our established football teaching, hard-drilled psychological positional play, mental pathway tendencies and previous investment on very particular footballing characteristics. This constancy of sporting purpose, investment and ideals is what a Sporting Director is paid to direct, protect and maintain.

It is not that we simply tried to become Prem cheap lite, or that it wouldn’t work, it couldn’t have worked. We were years and hundreds of millions behind others that had done it for many years. Tens of clubs scout the kind of players we belatedly threw ourselves at - and they pay them far more money, offer them London or release clauses, plus far greater odds of success and more of a shop window. It is not to be negative about the club I love. You simply must recognize who and what you are, how you are seen by others. Even if you don’t like it.

It was a desperate sporting pivot lacking in consistency of method, long-term vision and purpose. It was a dice throw of a move.

It is precisely the kind of panicked desperation that a Sporting Director is employed and designed to avoid proctor hoc.

———

If Farke proved anything it is that methodology can trump players. So many cast offs, limited players and academy players became repeatedly valuable, central and effective. In fact it happened across 2 cycles of players.

I would go and speak to Farke. Often, repeatedly. That kind of knowledge, understanding and feel for the club, for positional play principles, for future academy teaching - you just can’t let it leave the building and never be heard of, understood or repeated again. Football is a closed industry, it can be lonely. Invest in maintaining some kind of link. Learn.

I also would not ignore the reality of Farke’s tenure being underpinned by a creator and a goalscorer. Accept this football reality. Act accordingly. Don’t pad the squad. If you have limited finance you cannot retain two senior players for each position. Forget it. Choose a different way. Limited money means more utility players. Identify a few Sorenson-like players  and use them as cover for 5 positions. Run a squad of no more than 18 senior players. They are hard enough to keep happy anyway.

We need dramatic change to shift the horrible downward momentum vortex that sucks in all good. I would suggest having a Martin Peters moment. Invest what limited resources you have on someone who knows what real quality looks like. Someone that lifts all boats. I would suggest not a Huckerby in current circumstances, more someone like James Milner. Someone utterly professional - prosaic, ‘just’ functional even - who hates to lose, who runs, covers different  positions, covers for the mistakes of others, sets standards, influences training levels, who won’t - can’t - accept low standards. Start from there. Offer him a player-coaching role, a senior coaching development pathway. Encourage him to bring some friends. Use his contacts.

As a sporting squad you must carry less players. You simply take more injury risks and accept the consequences. But what are those consequences? You use the academy. Not everyone is Lewis, Godfrey, Omobamidele, Aarons. But even now, if Idah is 3rd or 4th choice striker, everyone is happy with that aren’t they? You take a chance- if faced with multiple injuries - on those who might come good. The Academy must be trusted in this way at Championship level, otherwise what is the point?

Football is all about momentum. Goals camouflage a multitude of sins. You must have a goalscorer. At any cost. Even if you can only afford one player. It must be a goalscorer. anything else can pretty much be covered for. If you have to stop gap with a (to use easy examples) Jordan Rhodes, Chris Martin, Dwight Gayle, you just must have one. Others players need to know that there is someone who knows where the net is. They play differently if they know this. Sargent is yet to convince, even at this level. If you feel it, don’t you think the players know it too?

Of course it is all about Finances for Norwich, though you can choose how you cut the limited cake you have as a sporting Director. You can run a wide and deep squad, or a narrow, high and lean one. I repeatedly emphasised proctor hoc that keeping or attracting weapons, or peaks in your squad would always be my strategy. Amortising risks to be a bit better on average across the squad board just means you lose every game a bit less badly. I never liked it.

The counterpart to this strategy is to be brave. If you can’t buy right - with the limited funds available  - communicate it, say it out loud. Tell the loyal fans you want limited, high quality, forensic signings or you simply won’t buy. You’ll trust those that got you there.

Upon promotion ‘21 It looked a little like Webber thought it might’ve been his opportunity to make his name. Did he try to convince himself that what was best for his career was also best for Norwich? Strong-minded people can convince themselves of any reality they choose. So did he do exactly what errant managers had previously done at Norwich and pressed and pushed for signings and sales that might work? Exactly what Sporting Directors are employed to prevent happening.

———

As for thinning our current - horribly weak and flawed squad - we have a number of immediate problems to address.

For a start who buys what we have, can they match current wages, would our players go there and how do you get them to leave the building?

Typically cash buyers only want what you want to keep. Having said that, there is not one single current player who I wouldn’t sell. That is pretty damning. No one has much value. Rashica we’ll see. £5m and add ons after some tough negotiations I imagine. Who else will buy him and stalking horse Gala?
I very much doubt the lurid numbers and Premier interest in Sara. He is well short of that level of consistency, positional awareness and defensive discipline. He has scored some great goals, though such things are not typically reliably repeatable. Tzolis is a sad, expensive story that needs a rewrite. Gunn a few bob, Sargent something to someone, Hanley a little, Gibson a little, Nunez a punt for similar money, Idah something for potential. Aarons might not get the kind of offer we would take, his stock has fallen as his top level flaws - much like us a club - have been concretised. High single figure millions as Prem back up maybe. Omobamidele has the highest value ceiling, though it’ll be a year or two away at the soonest. It  really doesn’t add up to much of a total squad asset valuation. I dread to think how much less the playing staff is worth than the promotion ‘21 equivalent. That is real money gone.

Maybe we are waiting for Attanasio. How much money is there now? How much might be injected into the playing squad post takeover?

Clearly as Sporting Director we must manage upwards to Delia. Let’s find out clearly where are we at in a corporate and financial sense. Let’s get as much directional clarity as can be made reasonably available to us as Sporting Director. To drive football momentum change I need a good narrative, for players, fans, agents, potential signings, even the football grapevine. I don’t ignore the noise, I generate it. Use the sporting Director platform to sell the brand, the philosophy, the vision, the future. I think I want to get Attanasio talking more, let’s sell some rainbows, we must change the narrative off the field to help change the momentum on the field. Even if he never gets more involved than he is now, I can use him. Let’s do a bit of public dreaming together, a bit of American ambitionism can be a powerful football fan aphrodisiac. I never said I was Mother Theresa.

———

For now change has to come from out of contract players. Though the current Sporting Director - and Head Coach working under whatever parameters have been laid down -  have further reduced options by choosing to keep Onel and Dowell. The opposite of change. Keeping previously rejected bit-part players.

What change can be achieved if we have pivoted our meagre current resources on Sara and Nunez? They likely have to succeed and must play. No change there then.

Krul plus Gunn looks too much for our needs, too much for our resources and too much to keep happy in mid-table purgatory. So change there, though de-facto backwards.

Omobamidele must play. It is time - not unlike Idah - we find out how good he is (and of course what his value ceiling might be). So no change there either then.

To change we desperately need a real defensive midfielder. I like Liam Gibbs. I want to know what his role is. I suspect he does too. So I’d like to get involved a little in his development. I’ll have several chats with the Head Coach about him.

Losing Pukki looks bad to the outside world. He is widely considered our only good player. ‘Everyone’s leaving Norwich aren’t they?’ Is the kind of football water cooler chat that is a world and a half away from ‘Guardiola watches them in his spare time you know…’. Don’t laugh. It matters.

If we believe in Idah let’s send him out on loan for a year. He needs 90 minutes a week for 30 games. L1 sides would be super grateful and he’d score goals. We’ll then go from there.

Tactically we’ll have a chat with the head coach and acknowledge our lack of weapons. I’ll accept his view that all we really have is Onel occasionally, Sara corners and Nunez free kicks. These are the only components of weapons we have now. After promotion, c£100m and the squad value we had in ‘21. And we’ve forward contracted £60m in parachute payments. Yes, we’ll have to do much, much better than that.

If Aarons and Giannoulis are a liability defensively, play a three. Omo-Grizzly-Gibson perfectly good enough for this level. Though exposing them too much via poor CDM play and over-attacking line ups is the issue, not defensive weakness or individual errors per se. They are consequences, not outright causes. Defensive mistakes typically come from ‘too much action’ and too high a quality of chances conceded. I don’t like my Head Coaches talking about ‘mistakes’. I can generally see at least 3 or 4 semi-errors - tactically or technically - before the more obvious final error. Very often - and this is what head coaches never say - ‘the opposition was better and applying consistent pressure to our weak points for a period before the goal’. If we’re worse, let’s look at it together.

As for recruitment don’t be completely obsessed about physicality. Yes the Premier is physical, athletic, hard-running, though Buendia was small, Pukki limited, Cantwell flaky, Skipp a ‘mercenary loan’, though all worked beautifully at times. At times is all you need. You win 10 games and you stay up. You don’t need to not get beaten in 30 games. You also don’t stand out in the championship with a load of Prem looky-likey ersatz players. It’s not how we got promoted. Twice. Easily.

Players don’t necessarily want to come as much they did in ‘21 upon promotion, so how do we attract them? Well, like it or not, we have limitations here. We don’t offer Wages, security, London. We could offer family happiness, friends of friends recommendations, we do pay agents well, the training ground is a professional place to work. Pep might send us a few if we adhered to positional play principles again.

We don’t really have a set up to compete at Prem level, that has been hard proven as others see it, so let’s stop spending limited and hard-earned resources now planning for something we can’t achieve, on players who don’t fit us and won’t be quite good enough at the top level anyway. Cold of course. So be it.

It is easy to sell dreams on the way up. Hard to sell reality on the slide downwards once you’ve been to the puppet show and had the strings cut.  You just have to face that down as Sporting Director. Communicate the failings. Address the status quo reality, however far you have fallen. Identify the hurdle in front of you now. Forget about the one you fell at yesterday. Move on. ‘I used to be a contender’ butters no Norfolk parsnips. Give the punters something new to get hold of, to believe in. I still like ‘Guardiola watches us’. If he came on Saturday it was to see Swansea. That has to change for a start. I still liked watching us when we lost under Farke. There. I’ve said it.

By the way, we didn’t just beat Manchester City, we deserved it.

It was not a cup scalp, a park-the-bus, a 20/80 posssession luck-in. Just think about that for a moment. That was us. We rejected and gave away and sold all of this to try to be something we couldn’t be and wouldn’t want to be even if it had worked.

Our current precipitous slide does metaphorically, psychologically and sportingly all pivot on the sale of Buendia. Let me be clear though: You can, will and must sell Buendia.

However you can never, never, never - at any cost, lie, fight, drama - sell Buendia at the point of a hard earned promotion, with the football alchemist’s gold of momentum, with all the players positive, their agents getting bonuses, Pukki with his eye in.

The devastating effect on momentum, on confidence, on belief - ‘we got relegated first time to prepare for the second you said’ - to then sell the floor from under everyone. The slide - and it is catastrophically dramatic - began, pivoted and accelerated into an unstoppable mental, physical and sporting avalanche right there.

That is football. It spins on a dime. We played a tight, narrow window strategic hand, we couldn’t afford big errors like that. Our house of cards is always going to be built on riskier strategic foundations than others through our lack of owner funds. That was a horribly obvious mistake that showed zero understanding of players.

Make no mistake, players are everything. Like them or not, they are everything. Keeping them happy, compromising, lying, cheating, saying one thing publicly doing another privately is not just common and ‘normal’ in football, it is necessary. It is necessary for good reason.

Maintaining surface unshakeable beliefs is key to players, fans, agents, others. Though what goes on behind closed doors is so, so, so different. Players are a strange mix of ultra-professional, ultra-hard, fragile, searingly self-critical and weak as ****. Egos are both unbreakable and collapsible. Truth is what you make it at any given moment. Top sportsmen create their own reality. An incredible strength and empirically bollox all at the same time.

What has ‘honesty and straight-talking’ ever had to do with it? I’ll ignore that noise.

Parma

I was going to say that.

TeemuVanBasten · April 25, 2023

49 minutes ago, Nexus_Canary said:

Can we get @Parma Ham's gone mouldyyo as new sporting director please?

Best post I've read on here in years. Perfectly sums it up.

Any chance of a 100 word summary?

McWrighty · April 25, 2023

Wow, impressive stuff. I reckon we'll be hearing snippets of Parma's post hackneyed around Norfolk pubs far and wide for years to come. Especially in the gents toilets.

'Thing is mate, Webber shouldn't be ignoring the noise - he should be generating it'

Parma’s State of the Nation

Recommended Posts

Don J Demorr 162

To quote from Philosophy of Science (The official Journal of the Philosophy of Science Association at CambridgeUniversity)

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,243

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

ron obvious 1,514

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Tetteys Jig 830

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Monty13 2,252

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Barham Blitz 664

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

PurpleCanary 5,585

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Don J Demorr 162

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

PurpleCanary 5,585

To quote from Philosophy of Science (The official Journal of the Philosophy of Science Association at CambridgeUniversity)

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

hogesar 9,760

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Don J Demorr 162

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

shefcanary 2,465

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

BigFish 1,988

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Harry53 212

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

aBee 152

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Barham Blitz 664

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

ricardo 7,402

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Midlands Yellow 4,083

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

sgncfc 1,259

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites