Parma’s State of the Nation

[BigFish 1,988]

55 minutes ago, Don J Demorr said:

I suppose I should get used to this but yet again an artfully simple question originating from @Parma Ham's gone mouldyknowing full well that the answer is not going to be a one-liner, So, here we go: - (Warning - this might get a bit metaphysical)

1.       A good corporation provides what the customer wants.

After following this Forum for about two years I have no more idea about what the NCFC fan base wants than when I started. The voice of the customer is a cacophony, a shapeless howl. How that would shape the overriding objective is beyond me.

2.       An excellent corporation provides what the customer needs

If the wants problem is a puzzle the needs conundrum is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  The customer might not know what the needs are.  Needs are deeper than wants and are closer to the soul. The needs of a football crowd are hidden in it’s psyche. Is there a Football Psychologist in the House? Frankly, not ever having been a follower of the game, I have no idea.

Maybe we should forget about the customers and think about the overriding objective with respect to the organisation itself. These are of course prescribed by Law but the law says nothing about behaviour, nor about the problem of psychological needs of any of the Directors themselves. Whenever this is discussed the usual reference is to the seminal work “The Hierarchy of Needs” by Abraham Maslow. This relates to the behavioural motivation of living organisms but maybe it is not too much of a stretch to extend this to a corporation. Maslow would say that the most fundamental need is to survive. This does not sit well with a policy of “Self Financing” unless there is the provision of a ready safety net of available low-risk funding.

Best to all,

Don

Easy questions @Don J Demorr, the clubs fans 1) want to win football matches and trophies and the more they win the more they will want to win. The club fans 2) need the club to be there, to provide a sense of identity, belonging, emotional connection and meaning to their proverbial Saturday afternoons e.g. the very tip of Maslow's hierarchy

[astro 363]

57 minutes ago, Don J Demorr said:

2.       An excellent corporation provides what the customer needs

IMO this is exactly the reason for the current apathy of the crowd on match days - for a long while we’ve had what we want (a relatively successful football club) - but just for a while we had what we need ( a true sense of togetherness, a team of washed up heroes punching above their weight, people flocking to the banner, flags flying high and plenty of noise!).

Sorry if I’ve derailed this most excellent thread. 

[BigFish 1,988]

1 hour ago, king canary said:

I agree with @BigFish that a football person on the board to provide some oversite or accountability would be welcome. But I can't buy the idea that Webber isn't at fault because the board agreed to his strategy. That is a principle that makes sense in 'the real world' so to speak but not in football.

Too right @king canary, it was Webber's mistake. Given the choice of sticking or twisting he decided to twist and it didn't come off. I don't think all the checks and balances in the World can mitigate for that sort of mistake in football. However, if the club recognised the situation as @Parma Ham's gone mouldy articulated above, it wouldn't have happened e.g. acknowledged that relegation was probable and continuity was important. Not that the fans would have appreciated dodging the bullet they never saw the implications of.

[essex canary 497]

21 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Too right @king canary, it was Webber's mistake. Given the choice of sticking or twisting he decided to twist and it didn't come off. I don't think all the checks and balances in the World can mitigate for that sort of mistake in football. However, if the club recognised the situation as @Parma Ham's gone mouldy articulated above, it wouldn't have happened e.g. acknowledged that relegation was probable and continuity was important. Not that the fans would have appreciated dodging the bullet they never saw the implications of.

A budgetary control issue in some respects. Surely there should have been a Non-Exec Director with their finger on the pulse to ensure that the wage bill didn't get that large.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

37 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Too right @king canary, it was Webber's mistake. Given the choice of sticking or twisting he decided to twist and it didn't come off. I don't think all the checks and balances in the World can mitigate for that sort of mistake in football. However, if the club recognised the situation as @Parma Ham's gone mouldy articulated above, it wouldn't have happened e.g. acknowledged that relegation was probable and continuity was important. Not that the fans would have appreciated dodging the bullet they never saw the implications of.

Indeed.

Though going forwards Attanasio is not going to give anyone his chequebook for them to sign. 

He is going to expect clear presentations and justifications. Then he’s going to check it with a different source. And then another. 

Then he’s going to build his own contacts book, his own understanding, team of quiet watchers, spies and counter spies. 

 

I suspect that the internal due diligence reports include the possibility that Buendia did not absolutely, categorically have to be sold. That there could have been other ways, other decisions. Baseball understands weapons. 

I suspect that same unseen, unpublished, undisclosed report alludes to the possibility that Webber was (understandably) exploring future career moves, that he was ‘one of the 800 right backs’ on such-and-such’s database, thoughts, line of enquiry, possibles…

That any good Sporting Director’s CV must have an alchemist’s purchase and sale of prime widget on it. 

Like a Buendia. 

Parma

 

[Unthink road 132]

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

Indeed.

Though going forwards Attanasio is not going to give anyone his chequebook for them to sign. 

He is going to expect clear presentations and justifications. Then he’s going to check it with a different source. And then another. 

Then he’s going to build his own contacts book, his own understanding, team of quiet watchers, spies and counter spies. 

 

I suspect that the internal due diligence reports include the possibility that Buendia did not absolutely, categorically have to be sold. That there could have been other ways, other decisions. Baseball understands weapons. 

I suspect that same unseen, unpublished, undisclosed report alludes to the possibility that Webber was (understandably) exploring future career moves, that he was ‘one of the 800 right backs’ on such-and-such’s database, thoughts, line of enquiry, possibles…

That any good Sporting Director’s CV must have an alchemist’s purchase and sale of prime widget on it. 

Like a Buendia. 

Parma

 

Lets be honest, we can go on about this and that, but you and me are no football top dogs. If we were, you and I wouldn't be posting on here, we'd be busy preparing teams for the FA cup. We are fans with our own football philosophies. When you were at Parma and the the club I was playing football was very different. Money, brands and agents run this sport. 

For me the existence of NCFC overrides anything in football. It is in the soul of so many. 

You rightly have discussed the team set up in the last game against Southampton. This is the most poignant point for me. We know the current coach wants to protect his reign. He had a decent result in the end, but it didn't ignite the fan base. 

This club wants more. 

We need a Wes.

 

[Robert N. LiM 4,420]

3 hours ago, BigFish said:

Easy questions @Don J Demorr, the clubs fans 1) want to win football matches and trophies and the more they win the more they will want to win. The club fans 2) need the club to be there, to provide a sense of identity, belonging, emotional connection and meaning to their proverbial Saturday afternoons e.g. the very tip of Maslow's hierarchy

This is a brilliant comment. Throws a lot of comments on this site into a new light. Thanks, @BigFish (and @Don J Demorr for prompting it)

[Don J Demorr 162]

33 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

This is a brilliant comment. Throws a lot of comments on this site into a new light. Thanks, @BigFish (and @Don J Demorr for prompting it)

Absolutely agree, superb observation @BigFish. Sometimes a simple question causes a complex and puzzling analysis but if you persist and are diligent you arrive at a new simplicity. In the jargon this is that simplicity which lies on the far side of complexity.

Is that where we are? I think maybe so, but you all know better than I do. Happy to be of service, Robert.😇

Thank you all, good stuff everybody. Enjoyed it.

Best to all,

Don

[Morph 19]

@Don J Demorr could you explain what power and responsibility a football person on the board might have over the football strategy being implemented by the club?

Say City appointed a Director of Football (say @Parma Ham's gone mouldy or @Unthink road or @Barham Blitz) what would be their remit?

[Don J Demorr 162]

59 minutes ago, Morph said:

@Don J Demorr could you explain what power and responsibility a football person on the board might have over the football strategy being implemented by the club?

Say City appointed a Director of Football (say @Parma Ham's gone mouldy or @Unthink road or @Barham Blitz) what would be their remit?

Well, Morph, I'm a bit flattered to be asked this question but apart from the fact that my little old brain can only cope with one simple task at a time, I know little or nothing about football, and as we all know football is different, so I am not competent to answer your question. You have (I think correctly) three excellent candidates - Perhaps they would like to respond. I hope they do. Like you I would be very interested to know.

Oh, and by the way, a so-called Management Consultant will never answer a question. We deal in process, not advice. Our task is to ask the right question of the right people at the right time. Then they unearth the answers for themselves.

As we have just seen.

Best,

Don

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

3 hours ago, Morph said:

@Don J Demorr could you explain what power and responsibility a football person on the board might have over the football strategy being implemented by the club?

Say City appointed a Director of Football (say @Parma Ham's gone mouldy or @Unthink road or @Barham Blitz) what would be their remit?

Morph, I have referred before to the structure at Bayern Munich which I think is optimal.

There are very clear roles and responsibilities, lines of demarcation, yet there is also a ‘whigs and tories’ type main board and shadow board to ask the questions at the right time that @Don J Demorr refers to.

There are some business-like ex-players, some cultural architects, some business heads that have learned football, some finance and some over-arching structural protectors. 

There is something of a boot room idea, plus an All Black’s sense of greater historical resonance and a dash of Barca’s ‘mas que un club’ for broader outreach and eternal purpose. 

I’d just copy that. 

Parma 

Edited January 6 by Parma Ham's gone mouldy
I think we do have elements of some of the above

[Morph 19]

Removed the org chart I found as may not have been up to date…..

Presumably the shadow board that Parma refers to is the supervisory board as it is described on several pages referring to the FC Bayern corporate structure 

Edited January 6 by Morph
Invalid

[Don J Demorr 162]

 

22 hours ago, BigFish said:

Easy questions @Don J Demorr, the clubs fans

1) want to win football matches and trophies and the more they win the more they will want to win. The club fans

2) need the club to be there, to provide a sense of identity, belonging, emotional connection and meaning to their proverbial Saturday afternoons e.g. the very tip of Maslow's hierarchy

I just love this. Think back to the half-baked word salad from the Board that @sheffcanarydug out of their Report from the AGM of 2022. @BigFish has brilliantly distilled all the relevant discussion on this thread into just two short and punchy sentences which seem to me to encapsulate all the meaning and ethos of NCFC. All that is needed to turn this into a powerful and resounding Raison d’être is some wordsmithing from a professional, of whom we have so many here! @BigFish casts his precis from the viewpoint of the fans, so all that is needed is to translate that into declared club intentions. Customer and provider.

If this can be done I am absolutely certain that it would tell me, as an interested outsider, all I need to know and all I would ever need to know about NCFC as a proud representative of a fine city.

I think that Mark Attanasio would be delighted with it and be more than happy to fix it to his masthead.

Think also how this would look to a youngster who might be considering an offer to this club rather than another. Motivation, or what?

Great stuff, y’all!

My best ones,

Don

[PurpleCanary 5,569]

2 hours ago, Morph said:

Removed the org chart I found as may not have been up to date…..

Presumably the shadow board that Parma refers to is the supervisory board as it is described on several pages referring to the FC Bayern corporate structure 

Many big companies have that kind of extra board. Usually comprised of the great and the good and who are not beholden or tied to that company, either financially or emotionally, so they can be independently minded. Norwich City have never had that kind of shadow board, or indeed any directors of that kind on the board there is.

[Indy 3,307]

15 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Many big companies have that kind of extra board. Usually comprised of the great and the good and who are not beholden or tied to that company, either financially or emotionally, so they can be independently minded. Norwich City have never had that kind of shadow board, or indeed any directors of that kind on the board there is.

As I said yesterday!

The independent member would be best coming from a management background with knowledge of a continuous improvement process, one who can sit comfortably knowing that they can carry out a risk assessment on strategic choices without any relationship to the existing board members.

It’s a system I don’t know if it’s ever used in this industry but many big companies such as BP use risk management tools for optimal choices in their business. They’re doing OK…. Just saying my opinion.

[Don J Demorr 162]

As usual, I’m afraid this is quite a long posting and probably for some of you much of it will be a statement of the bleedin’ obvious.

We know that the owners of NCFC aim for the club to be self-financing.

Knowing nothing about either professional football or NCFC, At first I thought nothing of this, since in my ancient experience many businesses are exactly that, and for the most part successfully.

The more I read in these hallowed pages and the more I think about it, the more I realise that Football is Different (Chapeau to @BigFish again). My conclusion is that with this policy a club might survive but it can’t be successful except in the short term by a piece of luck or alignment of the stars.

Much of industry and commerce is about selling products or services. In all cases (that I can think of, anyway) both these are sold at a profit in competition with others who are in the same line of business.   

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that as I have written before the most successful professional football teams are the ones who garner the most points. These teams are most likely (IMHO) to have a cohort of players in the prime of their physical development who have been coached into learning extraordinary skills that can be delivered without thinking, who can recognise, maybe unconsciously, @Parma Ham's gone mouldy's subtle patterns of attack and defence and react accordingly - the best being able to do this in anticipation of events. Then they must be trained to act together and to be highly motivated in favour of their team.

Such players as these can only be recruited in two ways. Either the club finds and develops naturally talented players, or it buys them.

 A self-funding club is almost by definition going to be routinely short of money. It is very unlikely to be able to buy many players to fit straight into the prime team. Anybody who can be bought in is going to be either a naturally talented but callow youth who needs training and development or a once-accomplished player who is towards the end of their physical best and not highly desired by other clubs.

It would appear that for the policy to work at its best, NCFC must find and develop the finest young people to form a competitive team. At the highest level these will be few and far between, but they will exist. Then the problems start.

In normal business you sell your product to a second party in competition with others. However, in order to be self-financing a club like NCFC must sell its best embryonic products at fire-sale prices TO THE COMPETITION. This is the policy of the madhouse. Further, the products are not widgets, they are ambitious young people who see their counterparts leaving their yellow Aventador in a blue space and want some of that please, Agent. Spot the destructive motivation for all parties? The only way is down.

How can this policy ever be imagined to be the one to achieve the aim of garnering the most points possible to claw the club up the slippery slope? Don’t ask me, I’m only a (long-retired) Management Consultant. It could, of course be wishful thinking on the part of owners who haven’t got the wherewithal to adopt a different strategy. If only it would work, eh?

So money is the problem in professional football then?

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Money talks but of itself money has no agenda. Money talks in the voice of the people who have it and how they use it. Here, maybe we need to look at a picture wider than NCFC.

In what sadly now has to pass for a career I was twice assigned by my company to start a new operation in a new country. In each case I was warned that the country was corrupt and that I should be wary. Twice, instead of hiding in the expat bubble of a hotel, I deliberately chose to rent an apartment, sought friends amongst the people and tried to find out what made things tick.

In both countries I found the same thing. Their society is not a degenerate form of ours, it simply works in a completely different and arguably valid way. What we consider to be corruption in their society is the normal way things have always worked and probably always will. Everybody does it, all the time. It is not seen as morally wrong, whatever that may mean outside our ethical reference frame. Our “ethical” norms are often seen as weaknesses to be exploited. Many of them are admirable people and I have made some good and personally honourable friends. It is no good going there and thinking that our ethical rules apply. They don’t.

Some of these folk manage to become stinking rich. What, then, if a few of them decided to have a bit of fun by buying their way into the sphere of Western sports? Does anybody seriously think that they would change their successful business model or their ethical mores? Naive, or what?

How fortunate we are, then, that all our sports; Football, Rugby, Cricket, Athletics, Swimming, Boxing, Formula 1, Golf, Horse Racing, Snooker, Bowls, Chess, Darts, Netball, Tiddlywinks, Rounders, Lacrosse, Cribbage, Hoopla, Shove Ha’penny, Hopscotch and Dominoes are protected from possible unethical contamination by their incorruptible, wise, far sighted, energetic and diligent supervisory bodies. Otherwise, funny things might happen and apparently they don’t, or so they tell me. But then I don’t follow any sport, so how could I be sure?

With this possible calamity in mind surely your NCFC owners would be well advised to find a proven ethically sound financial partner from our own society like, say, the USA. Such a person would undoubtedly be welcomed and quickly approved. Of course they would. Obvious, really.isn't it?

Then all they have to do is to get off the pot and rest in glory.

Patience, patience.

All my best for 2024,

Don

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

Parma Ham's gone mouldy     2,136

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Posted 2 minutes ago

An odd game. 

I said to my brother before the game that it many ways it was the kind of game that could allow Wagner to present ‘Exhibit A’ in defense of his style and methodology. 

Powerful, dynamical, athletic Prem-lite teams like Watford - with certainly pockets of top level quality and know-how - were often the bete-noire for Farke teams. 

Should Wagner be able to demonstrate that we have developed a physicality, a resilience, a press and counter-press that upsets such sides, negates their approach and which still allows us to have good moments, then that would be a clear statement and a definable direction of travel. 

I think we saw quite a lot of that. I think we were better. I think we deserved to win. 

Though he can’t help himself but be a bit of a contrarian. A bit of a school teacher fiddler and tinkerer. 

I suppose you might make a (weak) case that that sounds a bit like Guardiola too. I’m afraid Wagner is a long way from that. 

I can increasingly see what he is asking the players to do and why. Though I am continually left with the feeling ‘why do it that way?’ …’why create your own structural problems to then be forced to solve them in contorted ways that require somewhat unnatural behaviors from the players? Why be forced to over-complicate to correct such an extent because of something that is flawed in the very set up of the way you want to play?

The concept of machine-like pressing out of possession and Litmanen-cool with the ball is not new. It is a utopia rather than an apotheosis. 

The staggering errors by MacClean and Barnes should have brought two goals against us. I must attribute both to the fact that those two players epitomize what Wagner does want. 

Farke would gleefully point out that that is your coaching trade-off. Pretending you can have it all is fool’s gold. They get physically tired and then they get mentally tired. Both errors were simple 5-10 yard passes under no pressure in a key defensive area of the pitch. There was absolutely no need to worry about the passes, they were both quite safe and sensible choices. ‘Messing around at the back’ or ‘across your own box’ is outdated nonsense. A 5 yard push pass is as simple a technique as it is possible to have in football. Easy. No risk. Play it every time.

But they both made horrible technical, tactical and strategic errors in single passes. Responsible, diligent, fit, hard-working senior professionals. Exactly the types Wagner wants to make his system work. 

Sorry David. There is a compromise.

Nevertheless you could certainly argue that we looked superior because of the press. That it laid the foundation and wore them down, disrupted their fluency, disrupted their intended patterns. 

Personally I thought that they looked surprisingly passive, short of confidence and momentum from almost the first minute. They were a pale, timid shadow of previous iterations of Watford sides in recent years. 

This brings us to the booed substitutions. Like it or not striker Sargent and wide attacker Onel, for solid midfielder Fassnacht and deeper-lying Nunez, is very much a lurch to the defensive. 

I am not sure that I saw anything in the Watford side to justify such a large net switch to defensive. 

Except of course if you are recognizing that as Barnes and Sargent get tired, opposition players start to run past them - and in Watford’s case they started to let their left-sided Centre back roam and Lewis go higher and often tuck into an inside midfield role - which only serves to highlight the structural flaw in our set up from the outset: our key central midfield areas are too often vacated and exposed. It is a product of the initial set up, personnel and instructions. 

Wagner really is a bit of a contrarian.

Then he turns on the fans. Why? At perhaps his highest point -  great win, his system had merits, a game in previous years that would have shown up the compromises ‘of the other way’ - in contrarian fashion he then immediately burns up the goodwill he’d worked so hard to earn? Odd indeed. 

Why? Perhaps he is a bit school-teachery. Perhaps deep-down he doesn’t feel he commands full football respect, perhaps he doesn’t inherently feel like ‘one of us’ in football terms? 

So he tinkers. He holds players back. Leaves them out of the side. Makes them wait. Uses ‘injuries’ to get them begging. Uses erratic, random, changing team selections and pairings to keep them on their toes. To make them act in contorted ways on the pitch. 

To engender an authority that deep down he doesn’t really feel that he has?

Parma 

Edited just now by Parma Ham's gone mouldy

Edited February 14 by Parma Ham's gone mouldy
Copied from Ricardo’s match thread. Liked it.

[Morph 19]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy if you were making those substitutions feeling you had to to save Sargent and Hernandez for other games would you have gone for like for like subs? Say Fassanacht and Van Hoojidonk? Was there even a need to change the approach?

It seems odd, nay contrarian, to believe that Barnes can lead the line on his own. A different type of player to Sargent. Yet that’s the second game he’s made such a change.

[king canary 7,623]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy- totally agree with you about how Watford looked- not the powerful, dominant forces we'd seen before against Farke teams. They won't be troubling the top 6 in this form any time soon.

I think where I also agree is that I do sometimes understand the changes Wagner makes but they are often changes that are needed to fix issues he's created, rather than the opposition. We came out in the second half so timidly and without any plan and an equaliser felt inevitable at points- so a proactive switch makes some sense- Nunez helping us keep more of the ball, calming the pace down a bit- but it didn't work initially because we created another issue, mainly that Barnes and Fassnacht are no threat in behind, nor are they going to hold the ball up well and thus you let Watford start to push higher and not worry about balls in behind. There was a 10 minute spell of just pure low quality pinball where both teams kept gifting the ball to each other only to make poor decisions and give it straight back before any advantage could be taken. A better team than Watford would have taken advantage of the gifts we gave them at times but a better team than us would have done the same with the constant misplaced passes and turnovers from Watford. 

I'm still concerned by the constant mental issues Norwich teams seem to have had for years now. We make one mistake and it snowballs into four or five and suddenly you get spells like the last 5 minutes of the first half. People are (not unreasonably) blaming the fans for not helping the players at times last night but the silly errors and mistakes were happening long before any booing of substitutions so the mental weaknesses can't be blamed on poor fan support. 

I feel for Wagner at times because he's not wrong for expecting a bit more respect from fans considering our current run of form but I also completely understand why fans lack faith in him as everything we do seems unconvincing. We played excellently for 30 minutes last night then looked dreadful for the next 30, before getting going again later. These kind of huge swings in form within 90 minutes don't inspire confidence, even if we seem to be able to do enough to overcome them more often than not. 

[king canary 7,623]

Also to add...

There is clearly a stubborn streak in Wagner. He'll be aware of the criticism he got for the subs v QPR so to make the same type of systemic shift at the exact same score line as the weekend was bound to invite questions. To do it anyway is a bit of a 'I know best' middle finger directed at his critics and it's paid off for him here. If it hadn't he'd be getting hell this morning. 

[Robert N. LiM 4,420]

8 minutes ago, king canary said:

I think where I also agree is that I do sometimes understand the changes Wagner makes but they are often changes that are needed to fix issues he's created, rather than the opposition. We came out in the second half so timidly and without any plan and an equaliser felt inevitable at points- so a proactive switch makes some sense- Nunez helping us keep more of the ball, calming the pace down a bit- but it didn't work initially because we created another issue, mainly that Barnes and Fassnacht are no threat in behind, nor are they going to hold the ball up well and thus you let Watford start to push higher and not worry about balls in behind. There was a 10 minute spell of just pure low quality pinball where both teams kept gifting the ball to each other only to make poor decisions and give it straight back before any advantage could be taken. A better team than Watford would have taken advantage of the gifts we gave them at times but a better team than us would have done the same with the constant misplaced passes and turnovers from Watford. 

Agree with the whole post, but this bit is especially good. ^^^

[Robert N. LiM 4,420]

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

Then he turns on the fans. Why? At perhaps his highest point -  great win, his system had merits, a game in previous years that would have shown up the compromises ‘of the other way’ - in contrarian fashion he then immediately burns up the goodwill he’d worked so hard to earn? Odd indeed. 

Interesting post as always. Been thinking about this bit. If you're going to turn on the fans (and I'm aware that it rarely ends well) - the time to do it is surely after a win, when you've just got the team into the top six, after a good run and a long unbeaten spell at home. It probably needed saying, tbh.

Edited February 14 by Robert N. LiM
Typo

[Mason 47 1,388]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy 

I thought to myself last night, if one could summarise the Wagner approach as microcosm, it would the Sargent penalty last night. A relatively poor penalty, down the middle, but the rebound scored with a header.

A positive way to resolve a negative situation caused by poor execution

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

All excellent contributions 

@king canary

@Robert N. LiM

@Mason 47

…I’d go with all of that …

…in answer to your question @Morph I refer the honorable gentlemen to the apocryphal Irish  joke of the lost Englishman asking for directions to somewhere or other from a local ….

’’….eeeee….iiiii……well now……..I wouldn’t start from here……’

Parma 

[Monty13 2,235]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldyI don’t know why he turned on the fans that booed, I get it from a purely personal point of view. It must be frustrating and exhausting to have no room for error and no trust from a section of the base because you don’t get everything right.

Professionally though I see no positives from it. The complete inability from all levels of the club to be the bigger person astounds me. You don’t ignore the noise or confront it head on. You politely and openly acknowledge it and make your case, fill in the blanks that must be missing in the understanding between parties. I said on another thread but surely everyone knows you cannot tell people how they feel is wrong, it never ever works to resolve anything.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

2 hours ago, Monty13 said:

@Parma Ham's gone mouldyI don’t know why he turned on the fans that booed, I get it from a purely personal point of view. It must be frustrating and exhausting to have no room for error and no trust from a section of the base because you don’t get everything right.

Professionally though I see no positives from it. The complete inability from all levels of the club to be the bigger person astounds me. You don’t ignore the noise or confront it head on. You politely and openly acknowledge it and make your case, fill in the blanks that must be missing in the understanding between parties. I said on another thread but surely everyone knows you cannot tell people how they feel is wrong, it never ever works to resolve anything.

Yes agreed. It’s a mistake on multiple levels. 

The bigger question - as with the sacking of Farke or the selling of Buendia - is why it was made. By whom. By what collective reasoning (or not). What are the personal motivations, the economic drivers, the benefits and drawbacks?

You can - and must - draw a ledger from all of these points and calculate your plusvalenza. Your ‘net, net, net’.

Your deep-seated psychological tendencies have a habit of finding you out under moments of high stress. You can hide, camouflage, obscure or deny them most of the time. Stress can be good or bad. Highs or lows in effect. 

I wonder if Wagner’s form of contrary schoolteacheryness ‘my way or the highway’ lends itself to streaks? Whether you actually get found out a bit quicker in your mother tongue (‘it’s hard to be a prophet in your own land’ might be a good phrase)?

He has played such a ‘siege mentality card’ here that it smacks of a quite short term ploy. I suppose he has only to the end of the season whatever, so he is using things to create tighter and tighter harmony via ‘us against the world’ internal strategies with the players?

Parma 

 

 

Edited February 14 by Parma Ham's gone mouldy

[Morph 19]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy 

Quote

He has played such a ‘siege mentality card’ here that it smacks of a quite short term ploy. I suppose he has only to the end of the season whatever, so he is using things to create tighter and tighter harmony via ‘us against the world’ internal strategies with the players?

Should we worry that he might last beyond the end of the season?

What if he gets us promoted? What then?

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,220]

5 hours ago, Morph said:

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy 

Should we worry that he might last beyond the end of the season?

What if he gets us promoted? What then?

I suspect the answer to that is a surprising - perhaps rather non-Norwich - one.

I think in that scenario a swift acceleration of all corporate planning would occur, with Attanasio openly taking the reins, some SSG glitterati taking further minority (though notable) share investments, plus a raft of new players from a secret dossier in a locked drawer in Knapper’s office. 

Oh and Wagner wouldn’t be there regardless. Knapper would dust off the premium list of phone numbers and some American dollars would see some decent names start answering the calls. 

The problems of success are always to be welcomed. 

Parma 

[Barham Blitz 654]

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

He has played such a ‘siege mentality card’ here that it smacks of a quite short term ploy. I suppose he has only to the end of the season whatever, so he is using things to create tighter and tighter harmony via ‘us against the world’ internal strategies with the players?

It also lends itself to a Smithesque 'Who could satisfy these entitled Norwich fans" narrative if he does move on (or get moved on) at the end of the season.  Which probably won't do any harm to his future employment prospects (if a potential employer squints at a final borderline playoff position without looking too closely ...)

Plus if you know that you are just marking time until the next guy you may as well go out on your own terms doing it your way.

 

[lake district canary 4,539]

@Parma Ham's gone mouldy said -

"Your deep-seated psychological tendencies have a habit of finding you out under moments of high stress. You can hide, camouflage, obscure or deny them most of the time. Stress can be good or bad. Highs or lows in effect."

This is so true. Awareness is the key factor, knowing how you react as a person and managing the difficult times.

Wagner is a sensitive guy, passionate about football of course and a people person. You can see the tension in his face - and the emotion.

Imo people are building up what he said too much. The booing at the substitutions needed to be called out imo - and his point was about the need to stick together was right. 

Let's hope people start to wake up to the idea that they might be over reacting with this booing nonsense and actually start to support rather than behave like spoiled brats.