Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
essex canary

Fan Disconnect in the Directors Box

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, PurpleCanary said:

But will there be a next move, shef? The superficial similarity is with the open letter more than a decade ago from Bowkett and an ally whose name escapes me, but that was calling for big changes, such as the sacking of Doncaster from memory, on the basis the club was in overall terms badly run. The upshot was that Doncaster was sacked and Bowkett was persuaded to join the board and become chairman.

This is a whinge, albeit strongly worded, about one specific decision and a decision that had valid arguments for it at the time, and still does. And there has already been a very recent boardroom shake-up with the arrival of Attanasio. Is this chap planning to become launch a takeover bid?🤓

Thank you for pointing out the huge difference between these two events and that the letter raised in the OP is about a specific topic. 😀 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, A Load of Squit said:

He hasn't mentioned fan disconnect, if he was upset about fan disconnect why didn't he say that?

Why can't you accept that the content of the letter is about sacking Farke?

He refers to the 'stupidity' of the Directors.

In an earlier letter to the EDP he explained how he spent several thousand pounds each year buying Directors Box seats for his extended family. 

Maybe he does likewise at Portman Road. They were at home last Saturday too. He clearly went to Carrow Road in preference. Maybe next time a different decision?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Mengo said:

🤣🤣 yellow and blue 🤫🤔😷.

Bumper crowd expected as Town look to turn derby day Blue

2017.

The countdown to derby day is on with Club staff at Portman Road today to put out around 25,000 blue cards in seats ready for kick-off.

Town are looking to create a wall of blue as Luke Chambers leads the team out for the clash with Norwich.

“The fans have got a massive part to play in all this. This is a game for supporters and if we’re together, we’re stronger,” the skipper told the Club website.

“It should be a great atmosphere and the more blue we see on the day the better.”

BLUE CARDS - ready to be held up as the players walk out - will be under seats in all home areas except lower Sir Bobby’s, where the giant Town flag will be unveiled before kick-off.

Only supporters who have a purchase history at Portman Road will be able to buy match tickets for the game. 

Norwich have sold out their allocation. The game kicks-off at midday and is covered live on Sky TV. 

THE BLUE CARDS  are sponsored by Vertas and Mervyn Lambert Plant Hire and include a competiton to win a signed shirt and match tickets.

SO IS MERV NORWICH OR IPSWICH??

🤣🤭🤫🤔🤔🤔🤔🙈🙉🙊

To be fair Mervyn has a big company which includes some high ranking Binner fans so the company sponsoring ITFC isn’t so strange . Mervyn does however have a history of watching both Teams and has tickets at both grounds or at least did until a few years ago . He may have seen the light since they fell into Div 3 😂. My guess he still goes to Portaloo . 
 

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was in the pub recently listening to a Gooner who said he never goes to Arsenal anymore, prefers to watch Orient or Millwall. His reasons, maybe best not to go there. But I did mention to him that I thought in days of old it wasn’t uncommon for some football fans to watch Ipswich one week and Norwich the next, as usually home sat games were not on the same day. I’ve no evidence for this but word of mouth conversations. I assume we have become more tribal and factional, or maybe the rise of 70s terrace culture leading to members and season tickets eroded this minority pastime. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If the club have taken the hump over his letter i guess we will have another company operating the temporary traffic lights on Koblenz Avenue on a matchday.

Edited by TIL 1010
  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Before we meekly doff our caps to local businessmen and shuffle off to our place we should remember for every Alan Bowkett there's a Robert Chase.

 

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, TIL 1010 said:

If the club have taken the hump over his letter i guess we will have another company operating the temporary traffic lights on Koblenz Avenue on a matchday.

Largely ignored anyway. They’re not the boss of us. 😡

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
11 hours ago, essex canary said:

He refers to the 'stupidity' of the Directors.

In an earlier letter to the EDP he explained how he spent several thousand pounds each year buying Directors Box seats for his extended family. 

Maybe he does likewise at Portman Road. They were at home last Saturday too. He clearly went to Carrow Road in preference. Maybe next time a different decision?

He does not mention disconnect, it's something you've made up.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, shefcanary said:

🤷‍♂️ Thanks for sharing details of a precedent, Purps. I doubt that a takeover from Lambert is possible (Attanasio's recent acquisition of £10m of convertible preference shares effectively values the club at £100M - Lambert doesn't seem to have that much does he, but there again in concert with others??). However, as I've said and as you so rightly remember, such public hostility at actions of the Board can lead eventually to change.  My guess, an acceleration in Attanasio's plans ...... 🙂 

Shef, this was the open letter from Bowkett and Bertram (thanks, Nutty), with some annotations I made at the time to indicate that it was in effect an attack on Smith and Jones. You will see that it is a much-more wide-ranging and ferocious polemic than Lambert's, with at the end a warning of action to put matters right:

 

Open letter to Roger Munby, chairman of Norwich City Football Club, from Nigel Bertram and Alan Bowkett, chairman and deputy chairman of the NCFC Associate Directors Group

Dear Roger,

As you know we are respectively the chairman and deputy chairman of NCFC's Associate Directors Group which is a team of local businessmen and supporters who collectively own approximately 5pc of the equity in NCFC plus substantial sums in the preference shares. Please note the views in this letter are our own.

Over the past five years we have met with you and Neil Doncaster on a number of occasions to see how the skills of our group can be utilised for the greater good of the NCFC family. Sadly, our advice has been dismissed the majority of the time.

Perhaps our only success has been the introduction and financing of the Employee of the Year Awards for non-footballing colleagues at the club, an event you have now decided to abandon. You are aware that we have been dissatisfied with the executive management of the club for a number of years, culminating in our preparation of a financial analysis of the situation and strategic options open to us in December 2007.

Who oversees the executive management that Bowkett and Bertram are attacking? The directors, of course. Smith and Jones and Foulger. And who chooses the directors? Smith and Jones. So if the club is being badly run then it is Smith and Jones’s fault. That is an attack the way Smith and Jones run the club.

To the board's continuing shame you categorically refused to meet your own shareholders to discuss the proposals; proposals that were developed with the sole aim of improving the situation.

NOTE THAT; “To the board’s continuing shame.” Not just Munby and Doncaster. The whole board, including Smith and Jones and Foulger.

 
We now know that you believed we were in concert with Peter Cullum as you were then in negotiations with him in complete secrecy.

Ironically, no member of our group knows this man and it was only through logic and financial analysis that we concluded that some £25m needed to be invested, a similar sum to that calculated by Mr Cullum's advisors.

We are acutely conscious that all the directors love the club and have taken decisions that they felt were the correct ones at the time.
However, good intent is not the only skill required to manage an enterprise: skill, leadership, vision and empathy with all stakeholders are essential. The board does not have these attributes.

AGAIN: The whole board. Not one member of the board’s has these attributes.

The mistakes during your stewardship are legion and well documented in correspondence and internet postings throughout the county and beyond.

AGAIN: These mistakes that Bowkett and Bertram say were made by Munby and Doncaster were overseen and approved by Smith and Jones and Foulger, as fellow directors making up a boardroom majority.

Suffice to say we are now in the third tier of English football, our financial situation is dire, we do not have a team, the loyal supporters are distressed but we do have the best ground in the third division.

Under your chairmanship and Neil Doncaster's executive leadership the quality of our product has deteriorated every year since 2004, losses have continued to mount and debt piled up.

The only honourable course open to you both is to resign forthwith without compensation, the board to search for a new chief executive, appoint a new chairman from the local business community and work with the current majority shareholders to get us out of this mess.

So For the avoidance of doubt, neither of us seeks to join the board. Unfortunately, we do not expect you to listen to our arguments alone and therefore we will be consulting with various stakeholder groups to ensure that we create a sufficient groundswell of public opinion that will be resolute, indefatigable and irresistible. We must end this uncertainty now.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 hours ago, shefcanary said:

🤷‍♂️ Thanks for sharing details of a precedent, Purps. I doubt that a takeover from Lambert is possible (Attanasio's recent acquisition of £10m of convertible preference shares effectively values the club at £100M - Lambert doesn't seem to have that much does he, but there again in concert with others??). However, as I've said and as you so rightly remember, such public hostility at actions of the Board can lead eventually to change.  My guess, an acceleration in Attanasio's plans ...... 🙂 

Not really, the speed of Attansio's plans is probably already set and will only change if there are tangible changes in the fundamentals of the club, e.g. whether we win promotion this year or not. However much Mr Lambert is in any in-crowd at CR this is just hot air. I was in favour of Frake up until the very end, but many fans wanted him gone. Always be careful of getting what you wish for. Counterfactuals are always debatable but it is likely keeping Farke would have also ended in relegation and there is no guarantee that the league position under him would be any different. What is certain is that if it was the same the atmosphere would be more poisonous than it is now. The days of influential local supporters really influencing clubs like our are long gone. Three people will decide the future direction, and may ideed already have). They are Smith, Jones and Attansio. Money is king.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
18 hours ago, nutty nigel said:

I pretty much agree with that letter. Trouble is plenty on here advocated sacking Farke so must have felt connected at the time.

I think there was a logic to sacking Farke had the right replacement been found and then backed in January. I initially felt optimistic about smith but that fell away very quickly. What became more baffling to me was why would we appoint a new manager in November and not give him any money to spend in January to try and stay in the league. If we had already resigned ourselves to relegation the much safer option in the first instance was to keep Farke. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I keep seeing this idea that fan pressure caused Farke to go, which just doesn't ring true for me. Sure some were keen for him to move on but it was nowhere near the levels it was for Hughton or even Smith now.

The Farke sacking was, in my view, driven by Webber feeling he wasn't getting enough out of the players he'd given him. Now with hindsight it seems these players just weren't very good but if you're a Sporting Director who has just spent a sizable amount of cash on players to help keep the club in the Premier League then you're hardly going to say, 11 games into the season, that 5 points and bottom of the league is the best that can expected.

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
33 minutes ago, king canary said:

I keep seeing this idea that fan pressure caused Farke to go, which just doesn't ring true for me. Sure some were keen for him to move on but it was nowhere near the levels it was for Hughton or even Smith now.

This is spot on, and yet you have people on here saying, "Don't forget, the fans had turned on Farke" whilst at the same time claiming that people against Smith are just a noisy minority or only exist on social media.

Bizarre.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for your replies @PurpleCanary and @BigFish.

I would concur with your views this is a venting of frustration rather than an opening salvo. I also concur Attanasio has his own timetable, with the timing of Lambert's public venting just a heads up to him there are other views in Norfolk who counsel should at least be given a polite invitation even, if it's via a quick coffee chat over Zoom! 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
41 minutes ago, canarydan23 said:

This is spot on, and yet you have people on here saying, "Don't forget, the fans had turned on Farke" whilst at the same time claiming that people against Smith are just a noisy minority or only exist on social media.

Bizarre.

I don't think that's true.

There are people saying that some of the loudest critics of Smith were the loudest critics' of Farke. That's undoubtedly true.

However I think you'd do well to find more than a small minority who would be unhappy to see the back of Smith. Although many of them, like me, are not convinced the next guy would be the magic cure.

Is this squad as good as people seem to think? Should these players be tearing up this league as many say? For me the whole thing broke when Emi went and none of Webber, Farke or Smith have looked like fixing it. 

Anybody would be better than Worthy springs to mind.

 

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

Thanks for your replies @PurpleCanary and @BigFish.

I would concur with your views this is a venting of frustration rather than an opening salvo. I also concur Attanasio has his own timetable, with the timing of Lambert's public venting just a heads up to him there are other views in Norfolk who counsel should at least be given a polite invitation even, if it's via a quick coffee chat over Zoom! 

Trouble is the conversations we have on here are often 12 months behind where our club are. Our club has already moved on from that place. The fact that Attanasio is fully installed and up and running makes much of this talk redundant. This is the beginning of the future and not a drawn out end to the past.

  • Like 3

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
17 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

Trouble is the conversations we have on here are often 12 months behind where our club are. Our club has already moved on from that place. The fact that Attanasio is fully installed and up and running makes much of this talk redundant. This is the beginning of the future and not a drawn out end to the past.

My only comment to that Nutty, is Attanasio needs to keep his "potential" enemies close, if not within the "circle". I'm sure, as you say, he is already on top of this. 😉 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 minute ago, shefcanary said:

My only comment to that Nutty, is Attanasio needs to keep his "potential" enemies close, if not within the "circle". I'm sure, as you say, he is already on top of this. 😉 

Club's moving on. Some would say moved on. He will have 'potential enemies' but these 'potential enemies' won't be the ones he has to worry about.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, nutty nigel said:

Club's moving on. Some would say moved on. He will have 'potential enemies' but these 'potential enemies' won't be the ones he has to worry about.

Let us hope so. It would be good to leave behind the £17 million potential exit clause that S&J have been party to and that echo's Bowkett's implied criticism of them in 2009.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Mervyn will be laughing his head off . A whole thread based on a grumpy letter to the local paper . 
 

Mervyn is a successful guy , with strong opinion on many things. I suspect that even he would admit that his influence over Norwich City Football Club is limited to any other punter spending a few quid in the commercial areas . 
 

Mervyn and one or two other incumbents of the Directors box and adjoining lounges were apoplectic with rage a few years back when the dress code in said areas was relaxed . That didn’t lead to the manager getting sacked either . 
 

PS those traffic lights near Riverside swimming pool are there for the safety of all of us . I’ll thank you all to remember that 😂
 

 

  • Haha 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
33 minutes ago, essex canary said:

Let us hope so. It would be good to leave behind the £17 million potential exit clause that S&J have been party to and that echo's Bowkett's implied criticism of them in 2009.

Part of any exit clause will probably include the end of the road of any influence for you and seed.

Associate what?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We started off complaining about a decision that happened a year ago and now it's reviving criticism from 2009. 😀

At this point I think we should all acknowledge that if they'd have met anywhere but the Criterion Cafe in 1902 we would've had a much better football club.  

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
26 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

Part of any exit clause will probably include the end of the road of any influence for you and seed.

Associate what?

Indeed. Bring it on. The Club itself effectively came to that conclusion 4 and a half years ago.

Pity then that they didn't come forward with the appropriate exit strategy and instead expect young inheritors to take on 1,000 shares without reward or dump upon them the negotiation of sale of same.

Having their cake and eating it is the problem.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, essex canary said:

Let us hope so. It would be good to leave behind the £17 million potential exit clause that S&J have been party to and that echo's Bowkett's implied criticism of them in 2009.

I’m of the view that Attanasio is very much here for the long term play.

The redemption option is just necessity, in case things don’t go to plan. However, whilst it would prove to be a prohibitively expensive exit option for the Club, that can be countered by the assertion that it’s a relatively expensive conversion rate into ordinary shares for Attanasio.

He won’t be looking at that additional ten percent in isolation. He’s already got 16% in bag and it’s highly likely that he’ll be eyeing up the majority shareholding too, probably at a similar rate. The overall cost could be relatively modest in the scheme of things, but let’s wait and see.

Edited by GMF
Typo
  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
20 hours ago, GMF said:

I’m of the view that Attanasio is very much here for the long term play.

The redemption option is just necessity, in case things don’t go to plan. However, whilst it would prove to be a prohibitively expensive exist option for the Club, that can be countered by the assertion that it’s a relatively expensive conversion rate into ordinary shares for Attanasio.

He won’t be looking at that additional ten percent in isolation. He’s already got 16% in bag and it’s highly likely that he’ll be eyeing up the majority shareholding too, probably at a similar rate. The overall cost could be relatively modest in the scheme of things, but let’s wait and see.

Attanasio had been looking to invest in an English football club for ten years. Taking that much time and not rushing into the first possible deal suggests various things. That he understands English football, and perhaps better than some rich Americans who have got involved. That as a result he very much knew what to look for when assessing Norwich City. And that he didn't spend ten years looking for a deal unless he intended to be in it for the long haul.

Edited by PurpleCanary
  • Like 5

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
30 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

My only comment to that Nutty, is Attanasio needs to keep his "potential" enemies close, if not within the "circle". I'm sure, as you say, he is already on top of this. 😉 

My answer to this is that Smith & Jones needed, and need, to listen to voices that could lead to potential enemies because their position was weak. They just don't have the cash to ride out financial failure and are therefore beholden to the kindness of strangers. With Attansio, apparently, that dynamic changes, he can face down the voices, ignore them or even cut them out should he so wish. This shift in the power dynamics is something that the Delia outers will need to come to terms with.

  • Thanks 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 17/11/2022 at 15:01, Well b back said:

Mostly the same ones that want Smith out.

 

They probably want Delia out too. Everybody out!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 17/11/2022 at 15:04, Graham Paddons Beard said:

Dear old Mervyn. Does sit in the directors box. Also has tickets at Portman Road . 

So what you’re saying is he’s not 100% committed to Norwich? Boo!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, GMF said:

I’m of the view that Attanasio is very much here for the long term play.

The redemption option is just necessity, in case things don’t go to plan. However, whilst it would prove to be a prohibitively expensive exit option for the Club, that can be countered by the assertion that it’s a relatively expensive conversion rate into ordinary shares for Attanasio.

He won’t be looking at that additional ten percent in isolation. He’s already got 16% in bag and it’s highly likely that he’ll be eyeing up the majority shareholding too, probably at a similar rate. The overall cost could be relatively modest in the scheme of things, but let’s wait and see.

The essential point though is if we didn't have any Premier League or Parachute TV money, from where would we find £17 million to pay him in 7 years time?

Of course we hope it doesn't happen but why sign a deal like that when S&J presumably don't know where the cash would come from in that event?

As you state there is a sense in which the conversion is expensive for him too at £17 million foregone for his 10 per cent.

 

Edited by essex canary

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...