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The Great Mass Debater

What is the biggest mistake Norwich City ever made?

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25 minutes ago, Mr Angry said:

Yet he started 35 matches the following season for Watford-and got promoted again!

Yes, but look at that Watford side. He was used as an experienced head to help ground a very young squad by a manager that already knew him.

As I said, he may have gained us a point, but that season we drew too many games, not lost them. Losing 4 in 12 in the premier league isn't bad. Not winning any of the 8 you didn't lose... Ashton from the start of the season would have seen us stay up, possibly quite comfortably.

Mackay, as good as he had been for us, never in a million years.

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16 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. 

We should have moved the ground to Colney when it was muted Chase was thinking about it. 
 

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1 minute ago, percy varco said:

We should have moved the ground to Colney when it was muted Chase was thinking about it. 
 

You are Tom Cavendish and I claim my £5.

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11 hours ago, Worthy Nigelton said:

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.

Which just goes to prove how unworthy you are of using the name of one of our most successful managers as the tag. Managers want to win games and keep picking Kenny . Do you really think.you know  better. Duh!

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Not buying a couple of players at Christmas when we were 7(?) points clear in the first ever Premier League.

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24 minutes ago, duke63 said:

Not buying a couple of players at Christmas when we were 7(?) points clear in the first ever Premier League.

Must admit I'd never heard that viewpoint before of that season..as we were going along very nicely as you say...and we did strengthen the squad in the March transfer window by signing Ekoku.

The season where we should have bought was in the 88/89 season where we genuinely had a chance to win the league and fa cup double in March and signed a dud in Dean Coney

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39 minutes ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Must admit I'd never heard that viewpoint before of that season..as we were going along very nicely as you say...and we did strengthen the squad in the March transfer window by signing Ekoku.

The season where we should have bought was in the 88/89 season where we genuinely had a chance to win the league and fa cup double in March and signed a dud in Dean Coney

The sales around that time hurt - Gordon, Phelan, Linighan. 

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Naismith .

just that name brings me out in a cold sweat . Honestly thats the biggest mistake this club has ever done , above everything.

 

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Not signing suitable cover when Gunny broke his leg. The signing of players like RvW, Naismith, Hooper.

WRT to Roeder, I think the brain tumour altered his personality, others have spoken well of him.

Not signing Ashton at the start of the season.

WRT to Chase, at the time I was very anti-Chase, however now I have mellowed and if it wasn't for him looking at the long-term future we wouldn't have what we have now. You have to remember we made a European run under him too.

On the fence about sacking Farke, I am 100% sure we would have been relegated under him but wow playing Champs under him was exciting.

Building the hotel, I know we can't have a fully enclosed ground because of access but the hotel isn't right.

Blue shorts, we had a season where we had blue shorts for one of the strips and then a few matches in there was a vote of going back to green which was almost unanimous. 

Not telling Webber to make it up with the pinkun. Doens't matter if you like him or not we've had alternative seasons of good and not being good enough under Webber - certainly better than the seasons before.

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2 hours ago, taipei_canary said:

Not signing suitable cover when Gunny broke his leg. The signing of players like RvW, Naismith, Hooper.

WRT to Roeder, I think the brain tumour altered his personality, others have spoken well of him.

Not signing Ashton at the start of the season.

WRT to Chase, at the time I was very anti-Chase, however now I have mellowed and if it wasn't for him looking at the long-term future we wouldn't have what we have now. You have to remember we made a European run under him too.

On the fence about sacking Farke, I am 100% sure we would have been relegated under him but wow playing Champs under him was exciting.

Building the hotel, I know we can't have a fully enclosed ground because of access but the hotel isn't right.

Blue shorts, we had a season where we had blue shorts for one of the strips and then a few matches in there was a vote of going back to green which was almost unanimous. 

Not telling Webber to make it up with the pinkun. Doens't matter if you like him or not we've had alternative seasons of good and not being good enough under Webber - certainly better than the seasons before.

It was yellow shorts.

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On 05/11/2022 at 02:21, Monty13 said:

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.

How could City avoid selling him without staying in the PL I'm not sure..

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7 minutes ago, mrD66M said:

How could City avoid selling him without staying in the PL I'm not sure..

Selling him on promotion was the mistake. Selling him on another relegation would have been entirely understandable, potentially even necessary.

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49 minutes ago, Monty13 said:

Selling him on promotion was the mistake. Selling him on another relegation would have been entirely understandable, potentially even necessary.

Hold on a minute. When did the PL 20/21 season end?

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6 minutes ago, mrD66M said:

Hold on a minute. When did the PL 20/21 season end?

Do you mean the Championship 20/21 season or the PL 21/22? could you explain your point?

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13 minutes ago, Monty13 said:

Do you mean the Championship 20/21 season or the PL 21/22? could you explain your point?

Emi's transfer to Villa was confirmed in June'21. If that season was over by then, with City relegated, then it was the right time for him to be sold.

Edit- <facepalm>

Edited by mrD66M

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11 minutes ago, Monty13 said:

Do you mean the Championship 20/21 season or the PL 21/22? could you explain your point?

My bad, I got confused. 2021 we were in the Championship.😖 🖐

Edited by mrD66M

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Tight budgets every season we go to the big league. It’s about time those in charge actually start spending with a vision to stay in that league once we actually get there, not set records for the most relegations from it.

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19 minutes ago, KernowCanary said:

Tight budgets every season we go to the big league. It’s about time those in charge actually start spending with a vision to stay in that league once we actually get there, not set records for the most relegations from it.

So last year's loss was not big enough for you? How much would you have wanted us to borrow?

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1 hour ago, Monty13 said:

Selling him on promotion was the mistake. Selling him on another relegation would have been entirely understandable, potentially even necessary.

He would have been a nightmare who would have destroyed squad morale if hadn't got his way, not to mention that emerging talents would be put off coming to us for fear that we'd hold them back if they started attracting interest from bigger concerns. 

Edited by littleyellowbirdie
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2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

He would have been a nightmare who would have destroyed squad morale if hadn't got his way.

I suspect that you are correct.

Even if you are not, I very much doubt that he would have single-handedly kept us up. Emi was an exceptional championship player and undoubtedly one of our best players but there still relatively little evidence that he is above average as a premier league player - his record in terms of goals/ assists etc in his premier league seasons is pretty mediocre - I know this is tantamount to sacrilege but selling him for £38 million seems a pretty good deal to me. More of an issue is how we spent the money raised.

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5 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

He would have been a nightmare who would have destroyed squad morale if hadn't got his way, not to mention that emerging talents would be put off coming to us for fear that we'd hold them back if they started attracting interest from bigger concerns. 

Possibly. Possibly morale was destroyed by his sale. 

We were just about to embark on a PL season, not sure the argument he was being held back professionally holds water when he left to sit on a marginally bigger clubs bench.

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23 hours ago, By Hook or Ian crook said:

In modern terms it was hiring Chris Hughton after Paul Lambert. Anyone with half a degree of common sense would know hiring a defensive manager to take over a young exciting attacking squad would end badly. We had stayed up and established ourselves as a premiership side and the time we went down would of been the most important season in recent years to stay up with the new tv deal money coming in the season after we went down meaning we could of had a boat load more cash to further establish ourselves as a top tier side. What could of been. 

Yep ... you've saved me the job of typing this.

The starkest missed opportunity in recent times.

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15 hours ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Must admit I'd never heard that viewpoint before of that season..as we were going along very nicely as you say...and we did strengthen the squad in the March transfer window by signing Ekoku.

The season where we should have bought was in the 88/89 season where we genuinely had a chance to win the league and fa cup double in March and signed a dud in Dean Coney

I was listening to some QPR fans on the train home saying that they bought Coney and Paul Parker with the latter being a bit of a makeweight…Coney certainly turned out the poorer of the two and they managed to offload him to us.  Not sure what happened to Parker (a joke btw - Man U and England followed)

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here's one many have probably forgotten.. Simon Haworth.. we left getting a desperately needed striker in that transfer window (summer 1997 i think) to the last minute... and the deal fell through at the last minute (i believe he failed the medical)..

Only 500k... he went onto to score 75 goals in 196 games for Wigan and Tranmere..

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Giving Gunn the manager's job just because he'd had every other job at the club was one of the biggest mistakes the club has ever made. It was bad enough him getting the caretaker job, but then in that May 2009 after relegation actually giving him the full time job, don't think I've ever felt as equally underwhelmed, p*ssed off and furious as a Norwich fan. "the guy has zero managerial experience at all and has just got us relegated to the 3rd division, but the job is yours"

The Neil "we scoured Europe looking for potential managers" Adams appointment runs it close.

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On 05/11/2022 at 08:55, Indy said:

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.

Indeed. Selling Efan Ekoku.

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