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The Great Mass Debater

What is the biggest mistake Norwich City ever made?

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I put on another thread that there were lots of pivotal moments in the club's history that I lamented. Some were unavoidable, like Bryan Gunn breaking his leg - still convinced that we'd never have been relegated (just as the Prem money came in) if that hadnt happened, but some were completely avoidable, foreseeable and self-inflicted.

Martin O'Neill's autobiography is timely, as if he'd have been backed, we'd have had some of the adventures that Leicester went on Im sure.

For me though, and this isnt just the recency effect, sacking Farke, and throwing away everything that he brought is the biggest of my lifetime. 

What do you think?

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There's a few. Waiting until Jan to but Ashton

Not backing Martin O'Neil

My biggest  regret is the 1992 Cup semi. ,Robert Fleck ,I think broke ribs in the QF and was touch and go whether he would make the SF.

Lee Power had done OK in the  league, was excellent v Liverpool just before. Then we start an unfit Fleck, but don't even have Power in the bench.

Maybe he was injured but I dont think so. I just see him being the hero:( if he had played

 ( I may be wrong but could never look back at the details too painful)

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Not strengthening the team in 94/95 from January to the March deadline.

7th at Christmas...and eventually slid to a completely avoidable relegation which lead to 9 years outside of the Premier League.

Financially, the purchases of RVW ,Naismith were bad buys which lead to finiancial difficulty.

It remains to be seen what damage the buys of Rashica and Tzolis will do to the club

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Losing that home game against Liverpoolc, Naismith debut, 5-4. Keep the lead there and with wind in our sails and Naismith firing we may have stayed up and invested even more.

Instead we got gut punched by Lallana, season went Pete Tong, Naismith turned on his teammates and was a financial albatross round our necks. 

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Employing Glenn Roeder must be up there. Awful appointment. 

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But Gunny held the club together that summer which meant we kept Wes and then signed Grant Holt. Maybe not such a big mistake...

Now Peter Grant, what were his saving graces?

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4 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

But Gunny held the club together that summer which meant we kept Wes and then signed Grant Holt. Maybe not such a big mistake...

Now Peter Grant, what were his saving graces?

Absolutely none , but Gunn was still a s hit manager and hugely over rated player for us, but his lad looks good at the mo , Timmy's got a challenge on his hands to win his place back.

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5 minutes ago, Canary dwarf said:

Now Peter Grant, what were his saving graces?

His biggest was knowing when his time was up. Never a number one - you have to wonder how he gets the job in the first place.

Other errors - selling Ron Davies; not buying Dean Windass; Playing Jim Blair at Wembley in 1973. Obviously letting Buendia and Skipp leave at the same time. 

In all honesty though over 60 odd years of supporting them, we haven't done too badly.......

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Biggest mistakes... 

Chase buying land rather than reinvesting in players - particularly the land around riverside which would not net the club a profit for 15+ years and when prolonged stay in the premier league would no doubt have generated more money, of which some could have been used to buy said land should it really have been that great a deal... 

Chase again for not backing Martin O'Neil. 

Not backing Rioch more - after relegation and before Worthington, he was the best manager we'd had. We had constraints so, somewhat understandable.

Dean Ashton - should have bought him at the start of the season. One goal to turn a draw into a win and we would have been in the premier league for a 2nd season. Ashton all season and I wonder if we would have finished mid-table?

Grant - inexperienced as a manager and his signings proved it. His best moment as manager was bringing Chris Martin through.

Roeder - if the rumours are to be believed and actually, he wasn't the same man due to the brain tumour, I feel for him really. But whatever the reason, he represented the biggest resentment of the fans towards one of our managers I have ever seen. Referring to Martin and Spillane as "tweedle de and tweedle dum" before other sarcastic comments, not to mention his treatment of Huckerby who was still good enough to have been playing for us. His one highlight was bringing in Wes, even though he didn't exactly treat him particularly nicely either. 

The Alex Neil premier league experience and signings - almost any of it to be honest. I will still say that his signings were the most disastrous for this club. Selling Johnson and replacing him with Dorrans and Mulumbu. Bringing in Mbokani but only using him sparingly when he was clearly the best option we had. Throwing £35m+ at a team and only real player of note was Brady. No one else really lived up to their transfer fee and would be outshone by unknown freebies or youngsters.

Farke for changing it all up at the start of last season and getting it horribly wrong, rather than sticking to what we knew. I simply can't subscribe to sacking him being a mistake, it was that or accept we were going down and simply keeping him for the following championship season. As Webber suggested about that period, would have been expanded to the entire season and just accepting average, only in the hope that he could bounce back again the following season but this time without Buendia.

 

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15 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

His biggest was knowing when his time was up. Never a number one - you have to wonder how he gets the job in the first place.

Other errors - selling Ron Davies; not buying Dean Windass; Playing Jim Blair at Wembley in 1973. Obviously letting Buendia and Skipp leave at the same time. 

In all honesty though over 60 odd years of supporting them, we haven't done too badly.......

Gah! One was on loan and was inevitable... pedantic here really but it has to be "letting Buendia leave when we knew we'd lose Skipp". Because we did, it was the end of a loan. 

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Allowing ourselves to be relegated when the Prem money was just about to come in. This was a massive mistake and I'm unsure if we have ever recovered from that?

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We recovered. We recover from all these set backs.

The 94/95 PL included Blackburn, Forest, QPR, Wimbledon, Sheff Wed, Coventry and the binners. Most of them are still in the ER. ('cept Wimbledon in the morgue) Forest are only out on day release...

😂

Edited by nutty nigel
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2 hours ago, chicken said:

Biggest mistakes... 

Chase buying land rather than reinvesting in players - particularly the land around riverside which would not net the club a profit for 15+ years and when prolonged stay in the premier league would no doubt have generated more money, of which some could have been used to buy said land should it really have been that great a deal.

We have Chase to thank for everything you see at Colney today.

He bought 25 acres of greenbelt land, convinced the council to give him planning permission and then built the training ground.

Prior to that we leased a dilapidated, scruffy and very small training ground built in the 60s from the council. 

Bought in 1994, built in 1995, the year before Delia walked into the club. The fans used to sing "wheres the money gone". That's where the money went. 

McNally wouldn't have been able to achieve Cat 1 status, Webber wouldn't have been able to build what we see today, Bellamy would have accepted that Man Utd offer as a 15 year old, Maddison wouldn't gave come here over the numerous other clubs interested, and our new American investor said it was important to him that we owned the training ground. 

His legacy needs revisiting, no matter how sour and bitter things ended. Yes he was a bit shifty, I think think was a maintenence contract awarded by the club to a firm he owned or part-owned, but it was a relatively small sum from what I can remember, and I don't think Delia pays for her own charter jets to games, but he essentially sold players and bought and built Colney with the proceeds.

I find it difficult to distinguish between doing that and our £750k transfer spend after promotion under Webber to accept relegation on day 1 of the season and use Prem profits and parachute payments to invest in Colney.

It went a bit wrong, clearly, but it was progressive and long term thinking and we benefit from it immensely today. Yes the land purchases were probably designed to add asset value in advance of an IPO, which were common for football teams at the time, and yes he was trying to obtain shares on the cheap in advance of that likely IPO so he could flog some of them for a healthy profit..

...  but ultimately he walked away having gained little financially and we've gained a hell of a lot over the years from owning a large training ground. 

Edited by TeemuVanBasten
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In recent times it’s selling Buendia, the last 18 months is traced back to that decision for me.

Dont get me wrong, suspect we’d still be in the championship but things may have been different.

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I don't know what goes on behind the scenes but I imagine that there was a meeting at the end of the 2020/21 season between Webber and Farke, probably Neil Adams and maybe some of the other coaching staff and recruitment team, maybe just the two of them... Who knows... 

The decisions made at that time will have ongoing repercussions into the future and may well have triggered the ultimate decline of the club for the next decade or two. Not a single decision, but an overall direction which shaped the attempted change in style and the transfer business.

Sacking Farke, appointing Dean Smith and everything that's followed all ripple out from that one point.

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3 hours ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

We have Chase to thank for everything you see at Colney today.

He bought 25 acres of greenbelt land, convinced the council to give him planning permission and then built the training ground.

Prior to that we leased a dilapidated, scruffy and very small training ground built in the 60s from the council. 

Bought in 1994, built in 1995, the year before Delia walked into the club. The fans used to sing "wheres the money gone". That's where the money went. 

McNally wouldn't have been able to achieve Cat 1 status, Webber wouldn't have been able to build what we see today, Bellamy would have accepted that Man Utd offer as a 15 year old, Maddison wouldn't gave come here over the numerous other clubs interested, and our new American investor said it was important to him that we owned the training ground. 

His legacy needs revisiting, no matter how sour and bitter things ended. Yes he was a bit shifty, I think think was a maintenence contract awarded by the club to a firm he owned or part-owned, but it was a relatively small sum from what I can remember, and I don't think Delia pays for her own charter jets to games, but he essentially sold players and bought and built Colney with the proceeds.

I find it difficult to distinguish between doing that and our £750k transfer spend after promotion under Webber to accept relegation on day 1 of the season and use Prem profits and parachute payments to invest in Colney.

It went a bit wrong, clearly, but it was progressive and long term thinking and we benefit from it immensely today. Yes the land purchases were probably designed to add asset value in advance of an IPO, which were common for football teams at the time, and yes he was trying to obtain shares on the cheap in advance of that likely IPO so he could flog some of them for a healthy profit..

...  but ultimately he walked away having gained little financially and we've gained a hell of a lot over the years from owning a large training ground. 

"gained little financially" 

Really?  He paid £60k for his shares at a time when there was 60% EIR tax relief for that sort of investment. How much he received from Watling/Smith for those shares is unknown but it undoubtedly ran into millions. 

From memory, Norwich City owned rather than leased Trowse training ground and sold it to Norfolk Homes to fund the purchase of Colney. 

Perhaps the single biggest mistake made by Chase was paying £40k for a canary embossed carpet for the room that is now Delia's restaurant. That's £155k in today's money. 10 years later we couldn't even afford to loan a goalkeeper when Gunn broke his ankle. Down we went and we stayed down for several years, losing millions in TV revenue.  Things were so bad financially at that time that Barclays Bank forced us to sell Ashley Ward. It would have been good if Chase had told the manager at the time rather than leave the other players to tell him at training the next day. 

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The dismantling of Walker’s/Stringer’s side - Sutton, Fox etc.

The failure to buy Dean Ashton earlier in the season. 

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7 hours ago, Canary dwarf said:

"Gunn was still a s hit manager and hugely over rated player for us, but his lad looks good at the mo , "

Brian Gunn over rated..... The goal keeper who even in this thread is mentioned as we would have not been relegated if Gunn did not break his ankle... Gunn who kept the force of Munich at bay to bring us European football nights that will never be repeated... Over rated you say.... I'm lost for an insult to close this post.... 

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Accepting to sell emi and then sacking farke. Look what we have as a result. 

 

Different style. Fan different feeling. Different story guys. 

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Not signing a goalkeeper when Gunn got injured and relying on a very young Andy Marshall. Sacking Farke and undoing all of the great work that had gone before. Appointing Roeder (undoubtedly the worst appointment in the club's history and that is not in hindsight - everyone said it at the time). Leaving Ashton until January. Being close to signing umpteen great players and not stumping up the cash or going for a flop instead. Signing Naismith when he played in the same position as our best player and clearly just wanted a pay day.

But the absolute worst, worst, worst was about 5 or so years ago when a scout somewhere said that Aberdeen have this great midfielder who can't play at all but does some really good pointing and skipping/jogging and we should sign him... he's been a fixture in our team ever since.

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I have Wi-Fi! Biggest mistake for me, that monstrosity of a hotel in the corners instead of enclosing the ground.

The Chase debate will always rage on, he certainly wasn’t the pariah some make him out to be nor was he a Saint, certainly deserves to have some credit for his time at the top, but his last few seasons were all of his own doing.

I agree with others, not building on 3rd place in the first Premier season, we had the perfect opportunity to become one of the established teams, we had the players manager and potential to build on and royally screwed up.

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17 minutes ago, Indy said:

not building on 3rd place in the first Premier season, we had the perfect opportunity to become one of the established teams, we had the players manager and potential to build on and royally screwed up.

Spot on, the start of what could have been an extended time, really competing.

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3 hours ago, dylanisabaddog said:

Really?  He paid £60k for his shares at a time when there was 60% EIR tax relief for that sort of investment. How much he received from Watling/Smith for those shares is unknown but it undoubtedly ran into millions. 

Delia bought 42 percent of the club for what I was thought was commonly known to have been about a million quid from Watling, doubt he'd have been willing to make a heavy loss within a year. She didn't acquire the full majority shareholding that Watling took from Chase.

So if we're talking about £940k for 10 years hard work as an unsalaried Chairman, less than £100k a year, then sorry but what must you think of the salaries enjoyed by the likes of McNally, Moxey, Webber and Ward!

His house was on the market for £1.25m in 2010, owned that before buying Norwich, so his eventually financial gain from the club put in context wasn't huge.

He bought a club which didn't have a training ground and sold one which did + extended and developed Carrow Road. Delia was purchasing a share in some valuable assets, should she have got it all for free? Can I have a free stadium and training ground please?

They Delia and MWJ further built their stake through the issue of new shares and diluting some other shareholders who didn't want to participate. 

We terminated the lease for Trowse, it was sold for houses but not by the club. 

Edited by TeemuVanBasten

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A couple for me.

Chase's Short Term Loan policy with the banks.

The Hamilton manager period, the only time I have stopped going as I (and I suspect the players as well) didn't have clue what he was trying to do and his after match summaries were painful to listen to. 

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10 minutes ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Delia bought 42 percent of the club for what I was thought was commonly known to have been about a million quid from Watling, doubt he'd have been willing to make a heavy loss within a year. She didn't acquire the full majority shareholding that Watling took from Chase.

So if we're talking about £940k for 10 years hard work as an unsalaried Chairman, less than £100k a year, then sorry but what must you think of the salaries enjoyed by the likes of McNally, Moxey, Webber and Ward!

His house was on the market for £1.25m in 2010, owned that before buying Norwich, so his eventually financial gain from the club put in context wasn't huge.

He bought a club which didn't have a training ground and sold one which did + extended and developed Carrow Road. Delia was purchasing a share in some valuable assets, should she have got it all for free? Can I have a free stadium and training ground please?

They Delia and MWJ further built their stake through the issue of new shares and diluting some other shareholders who didn't want to participate. 

We terminated the lease for Trowse, it was sold for houses but not by the club. 

Commonly known to be £1m?  You're making it up as you go along 😂

But the truth of the Chase years is that towards the end of that period our bankers forced us to sell a player or they were going to foreclose. So "10 years hard work" effectively ended with us nearly losing our club. Although we had a very nice carpet. 

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43 minutes ago, Indy said:

I have Wi-Fi! Biggest mistake for me, that monstrosity of a hotel in the corners instead of enclosing the ground.

That was my first thought. At a time when we're looking to expand the stadium, but seemingly cannot do so without knocking down or partially closing one of the existing stands, that corner would've come in bloody handy.

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