Why Stuart Webber should stay... for now.

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

Morning, all. Firstly, having read this (rather epic!) post back to myself, I can see plenty of statements in it that those who aren't fans of Webber will be able to pick holes in, but I'd urge you to try to read the thing in its entirety if you have the time. I've genuinely tried to be as balanced as I can, and I've done plenty of research in compiling it.

I read Mick Dennis's piece on MFW this morning with great interest, and while his staunch defence of the club was predictable and heavily rose-tinted, I wanted to do my due diligence and try to see where he was coming from without automatically dismissing it as propaganda and rhetoric.

In terms of Mick's defence of Dean Smith, while I have some sympathy with the notion that whoever we appointed would suffer with 'not being Daniel Farke', the lack of progress over the past year-and-a-bit, coupled with his divisive attitude towards to the fans, makes his position untenable. Short of three convincing and stylish victories in a row, I just don't see how that relationship can possibly be repaired.

So let's leave that argument there, and focus on the bigger picture. As part of my due diligence, I decided to do as Mick suggested and listen to the Michael Calvin podcast with Stuart Webber from the start of September (if you're interested in doing the same, the Webber bit is from 20 minutes to around 52 minutes).

Whatever you think of Stuart Webber, the one word that I think describes him best is 'driven'. On the podcast he mentions having been raised in a single-parent family, and having to walk a mile up a hill every morning to get a bus to school from the age of six.

A minor detail, maybe, but that drive has taken him from helping the ground staff at Wrexham one day a week when he was 18, to being our Director of Football, via running Wrexham's academy, working with Kenny Dalglish and Joey Jones at Liverpool, taking Huddersfield to the Premier League, as well as spells at QPR and Wolves. He's been here five and a half years now, and he's still only 38 years old.

(Here's another interesting article I'd not seen before about his career, which fills in a lot of that detail: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/little-known-welshman-linked-man-16412202)

People quickly cottoned on to the '90%' comment, and took this to mean he wasn't fully committed to the club. I genuinely don't think that could be further from the truth. He tells an anecdote on the podcast about phone calls with Dan Ashworth to sign Isaac Hayden when he was at 4,000m above sea level – acclimatising to altitude is a big part of mountaineering, so he was actually spending several hours a day sitting in a hotel working once he'd done his climbing.

He's mentioned before that he gets up at 5am every day, and does his training before he starts work. He's obviously a hugely motivated 'high achiever', and perhaps some of the discontent around the club may well be due to the exacting standards Webber sets himself, which then becomes expected of the people around him.

He speaks at one point of finding the prospect of failure 'exciting'; this is another very common trait among high achievers, who are willing to experiment and court failure in pursuit of new and improved ways of working. And, of course, with being a massively motivated high achiever comes an unshakeable sense of self-belief which can easily be perceived as arrogance. It comes with the territory.

And yes, it's true that he enjoyed talking a good game – from the infamous 'money pissed up the wall' statement when he first joined, to the more frequent media appearances when we were riding the Farke wave – but now seems to have disappeared into the background, not wanting to engage with fans or non-internal media sources.

However, let's not forget that when he kicked off at those fans during the 'bedsheetgate' incident last season, there was one guy (who later apologised publicly, if I remember correctly?) who could be heard saying “Where's that c**t Webber?” before he came out to speak to them, and then when Webber challenged them as to whether they wanted a serious conversation, one of them said “no” and others continued to throw abuse at him. In that context, I was totally fine with his reaction to the situation.

I can quite understand him now wanting to 'ignore the noise' and focusing on doing his job – and, similarly, I can quite understand the majority of the criticism coming his way for going silent now things aren't going his way.

I can totally understand the questions that have been asked of our recruitment, especially in selling our biggest weapon in Buendia and trying to strengthen the squad with lesser players who so ignominiously failed to keep us up last season.

And I can absolutely understand the criticism coming his way for appointing Dean Smith in the first place, and the seemingly 'shotgun wedding' nature of his appointment, and for his apparent perseverance with Deano when it's clear a point of no return has been reached.

Another interesting topic of conversation comes later in the podcast, when they discuss his Everest plans in more detail. Calvin talks about his experiences of sailing around the world, and how once he'd completed his challenge it took him a year to “take sport seriously again”. Webber then recounts a meeting with another Everest climber, who said that the first question he asked Stuart was “have you thought about what you're going to do when you get back down again?”.

Webber admits that he hadn't given it much thought before that conversation, but mentions that upon reflection he is quite prepared to “come back to nothing”, or to “restart in a different direction” with a new focus. He says that he appreciates everything he's had here (at Norwich), and would never want to let people down. This, to me, exemplifies why the '90%' myth is just that.

So, in summary, I think it's unlikely that Stuart will still be here in a year's time, but in the meantime I believe he will be utterly bloody-minded in his desire to leave this club in the best position he possibly can. After all, it was him who found and engaged the Attanasios on behalf of Michael Foulger – and, in turn, this has deflected a lot of insecurity and criticism around the majority shareholders as to their succession plan.

Even if (as looks likely) Webber ultimately fails to achieve his stated aim of establishing Norwich as a Premier League club, I think he has laid a lot of excellent groundwork – and his willingness to embrace failure and taking risks has been a big part of getting us there. If we continue to hold on to Dean Smith and/or the Attanasios walk away, we'll be pretty much back where we started when Webber joined in 2017, just with a Soccerbot and some slick academy facilities to show for it. A man of his self-belief and bloody-mindedness will be desperate to leave this club looking better than that.

If he can cement his legacy in 2023 by appointing us a forward-thinking head coach and overseeing the Attanasios' further involvement to the point where a full takeover looks inevitable, I think we'll look back in a few years' time and realise that, for all his foibles, transfer failures and perceived arrogance, Stuart Webber will have left an impressive legacy for this football club.

 

[Canary Jedi 590]

Great post, thank you!

My reply is much less researched but ultimately the same conclusion - Webber should stay. Most successful businesses get where they are through quite a lot of failure - but they learn from it and move on. We can’t expect a magic formula from Webber and everything goes right first time. The general direction though is better than what was before, I would not want to return to the old ways, would you?

[shefcanary 2,448]

That's a challenging read FTW. I find it difficult to agree with however, because life is short and I feel dragging out the current reign of the Webber's will damage the club further.

Whilst you were drafting this I have posted on other threads that I actually believe the current malaise pre-dates Dean Smith, Webber set the current state of apathy in motion long before his appointment of Smith. My current thought is that nothing will break the current cycle downward of apathy until Attanasio completes his takeover, his son is in charge and the Webber's have left the Carra (I'm basing the need for both to leave based on @Kathy 's excellent piece on MFW). Until the "disconnect" is repaired, which I truly believe cannot happen under the "leadership" of the Webber's, anyone incoming to replace Dean Smith will still have to surmount a wall of resistance which they cannot hurdle with just a string of good results. The issue is much deeper than that, with off field issues to be addressed as fast as on-field issues. Getting the family back together as one, sitting at the same table properly looked after and tucking in to a feast of good football is going to be a long journey.

We desperately need to start this journey sooner than later. Ego's need to be shifted out the door now, and a good dose of humility swallowed by the Board and what will remain of the Executive. It's an old tale I've told, but until truly appropriate corporate governance is in place, NCFC is not going anywhere fast other than down.

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

7 minutes ago, Canary Jedi said:

Great post, thank you!

My reply is much less researched but ultimately the same conclusion - Webber should stay. Most successful businesses get where they are through quite a lot of failure - but they learn from it and move on. We can’t expect a magic formula from Webber and everything goes right first time. The general direction though is better than what was before, I would not want to return to the old ways, would you?

As to the 'old ways'... David McNally was a similarly hard-headed executive, but his no-nonsense approach brought us back-to-back promotions and fantastic memories with Paul Lambert in charge, hall-of-fame players to love, and all that.

While Neil Doncaster was much more of a 'soft skills' CEO who was extremely open and patient with the fans, the club never really seemed to have any great vision or forward thinking under his tenure.

I think when we had Webber/Farke managing the on-field stuff and Ben Kensell heading up off-field interactions, that was about as good as it gets. There's definitely plenty of room for improvement both on and off the field, though.

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

12 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

That's a challenging read FTW. I find it difficult to agree with however, because life is short and I feel dragging out the current reign of the Webber's will damage the club further.

Whilst you were drafting this I have posted on other threads that I actually believe the current malaise pre-dates Dean Smith, Webber set the current state of apathy in motion long before his appointment of Smith. My current thought is that nothing will break the current cycle downward of apathy until Attanasio completes his takeover, his son is in charge and the Webber's have left the Carra (I'm basing the need for both to leave based on @Kathy 's excellent piece on MFW). Until the "disconnect" is repaired, which I truly believe cannot happen under the "leadership" of the Webber's, anyone incoming to replace Dean Smith will still have to surmount a wall of resistance which they cannot hurdle with just a string of good results. The issue is much deeper than that, with off field issues to be addressed as fast as on-field issues. Getting the family back together as one, sitting at the same table properly looked after and tucking in to a feast of good football is going to be a long journey.

We desperately need to start this journey sooner than later. Ego's need to be shifted out the door now, and a good dose of humility swallowed by the Board and what will remain of the Executive. It's an old tale I've told, but until truly appropriate corporate governance is in place, NCFC is not going anywhere fast other than down.

I read Kathy's piece with interest and found a lot to agree with; I share a lot of her concerns, although obviously I don't want to be too granular in my detail due to my position with the OSP. In broad terms, though, I feel that the most pressing need right now is to get a new head coach with new ideas, and personally I trust Stuart Webber to do that. Results on the pitch are a lightning rod for affairs off the pitch, and some positive momentum on the pitch will help to ameliorate the disconnect off it.

Besides, the only way the Webbers leave the club is by their own volition or by being unilaterally fired by the majority shareholders, and as I've said before, I can't for the life of me see Delia and Michael wanting to open up a power vacuum at the club by dismissing its two most senior executives. They are Delia and Michael's lightning rod, after all.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Feedthewolf

[lake district canary 4,545]

Totally agree with the op, Smith has to go soon, unless there is a huge and quick improvement, but as he says, Webber is much more important as he is the one who sees us on to the next head coach, hopefully more Farke-like than Smith-like. Would be a huge gap to fill if we had to replace the manager and the sporting director at the same time.

So yes, we need him for at least another year or 18 months with him at the helm, should see time for progress on and off the field. 

[Leedscanary 346]

Binner 😉

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

Just now, Leedscanary said:

Binner 😉

And a merry Binmas to you too 😉

[Danke bitte 967]

Cheers for the post @Feedthewolf and the time it took to put it together. I appreciate the genuinely balanced perspective and the guts to post it on here. People have short memories - I recall a few seasons ago people were posting statements about wanting Webber to stay and what a great job he’d done.

I think now the damage has been done though, for Stuart there’s no going back. Whilst you and I can wax lyrical about the foundations for success Webber has laid it won’t wash with the majority of the fan base that judge him solely on what they see on pitch. Which is fair enough, for many it’s a great source of an outlet on a Saturday. A shame because it’ll tarnish how great some of the last 5 seasons have been. 

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

2 minutes ago, Danke bitte said:

Cheers for the post @Feedthewolf and the time it took to put it together. I appreciate the genuinely balanced perspective and the guts to post it on here. People have short memories - I recall a few seasons ago people were posting statements about wanting Webber to stay and what a great job he’d done.

I think now the damage has been done though, for Stuart there’s no going back. Whilst you and I can wax lyrical about the foundations for success Webber has laid it won’t wash with the majority of the fan base that judge him solely on what they see on pitch. Which is fair enough, for many it’s a great source of an outlet on a Saturday. A shame because it’ll tarnish how great some of the last 5 seasons have been. 

Quick question: if Webber was sacked tomorrow, who would be responsible for the head coach's performance? Would you trust Delia/Michael and/or Neil Adams to replace Dean Smith? Or even to fire him in the first place?

[hogesar 9,736]

52 minutes ago, Feedthewolf said:

 

In terms of Mick's defence of Dean Smith, while I have some sympathy with the notion that whoever we appointed would suffer with 'not being Daniel Farke', the lack of progress over the past year-and-a-bit, coupled with his divisive attitude towards to the fans, makes his position untenable. Short of three convincing and stylish victories in a row, I just don't see how that relationship can possibly be repaired.

 

Good post FTW, but this bit in particular I think is irrelevant. Even when we do play well there's a large % of fans who don't want to see it. If we go on a good run it's despite the manager etc etc. It is irrecoverable which is why I think he has to go. 3 stylish victories will mean nothing if we lose the 4th - thats the mentality of fans right now.

As to the broad nature of your post I agree.

From a purely business perspective, Webber has generated our club much more money than he's cost. He's also strengthened the off-field assets beyond anything any of our recent CEO's have managed to do with the work to the academy and training facilities.

He's certainly earned the right to choose the next manager, should he want to do so. He's only made two appointments, one was a pretty unprecedented success, whilst the other is a "failure" who has us in the top 6 in December. There are a lot of seasons in the past where CEO's and fans alike would have ripped your arm off for the position we currently find ourselves in.

That we are now deemed to be failing whilst top 6 in the Championship is actually a marker on how far we've come under Webbers time here.

[Petriix 2,853]

38 minutes ago, Feedthewolf said:

He speaks at one point of finding the prospect of failure 'exciting'; this is another very common trait among high achievers, who are willing to experiment and court failure in pursuit of new and improved ways of working. And, of course, with being a massively motivated high achiever comes an unshakeable sense of self-belief which can easily be perceived as arrogance. It comes with the territory.

Excellent writing - if you don't write for a living already then maybe you should!

I think this paragraph highlights my overriding gripe with Webber and probably explains the situation we're in now. I know I'm in the minority, but I think we shouldn't have changed anything in the summer of 2021. We should have been looking for a few signings to incrementally improve the squad and taken another 'free hit'. 

Webber gambled. He's still chasing his losses, and the club is suffering as a result. That compulsion to tinker when we would almost certainly have been better retaining continuity.

The question remains whether Webber is capable of taking a step back and realising that his gamble has failed, or if he's so committed to the current direction that he simply won't back down.

The Mick Dennis article betrays a dangerous mindset within the club and its apologists: that the current decline is perfectly normal and acceptable.

Maybe if we'd had a slow start to the season before hitting (and maintaining) form then it wouldn't be so bad. But our recent form is awful, particularly at home, and we're not seeing any improvement to the underlying issues. Sargent is starting out wide again. Cantwell is frozen out.

No one is asking for a miracle. We just want to see improvement. We're not, and that is a problem. 

[nutty nigel 7,608]

Great stuff Wolfy👍

[Petriix 2,853]

16 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Good post FTW, but this bit in particular I think is irrelevant. Even when we do play well there's a large % of fans who don't want to see it. If we go on a good run it's despite the manager etc etc. It is irrecoverable which is why I think he has to go. 3 stylish victories will mean nothing if we lose the 4th - thats the mentality of fans right now.

As to the broad nature of your post I agree.

From a purely business perspective, Webber has generated our club much more money than he's cost. He's also strengthened the off-field assets beyond anything any of our recent CEO's have managed to do with the work to the academy and training facilities.

He's certainly earned the right to choose the next manager, should he want to do so. He's only made two appointments, one was a pretty unprecedented success, whilst the other is a "failure" who has us in the top 6 in December. There are a lot of seasons in the past where CEO's and fans alike would have ripped your arm off for the position we currently find ourselves in.

That we are now deemed to be failing whilst top 6 in the Championship is actually a marker on how far we've come under Webbers time here.

A couple of points:

1) Personally I was happy when there were obvious attempts to stop making the same mistakes. I was, for example, really pleased after the QPR game despite drawing 0-0. Cantwell and Ramsey gave us that creativity. Gibbs and Hayden formed a solid double pivot and it all looked coherent.

Before we can string together stylish wins we need to address the fundamental issues. The reason (intelligent) people want Smith out is that we've given him lots of opportunities to get it righ but he keeps making the same mistakes. If he was capable of making the required changes then he would have done so already. The best we could hope for is a couple of unconvincing wins before reverting to type...again.

2) We're in the top 6 thanks to an incredible run much earlier in the season which took us from bottom after 3 games to 2nd after 11. In the 12 games since then we've only won 3, scraping just 12 points and putting us 20th if the table just included though games. It's not so much about our current position as our current trend. We're going backwards fast and that simply isn't acceptable. 

[hogesar 9,736]

9 minutes ago, Petriix said:

A couple of points:

1) Personally I was happy when there were obvious attempts to stop making the same mistakes. I was, for example, really pleased after the QPR game despite drawing 0-0. Cantwell and Ramsey gave us that creativity. Gibbs and Hayden formed a solid double pivot and it all looked coherent.

Yes, I agree. Unfortunately Petriix, you're not representative of the general fanbase, most of which don't even notice when we change formation 3 times in the same match. 🙂 That's not me deriding those fans, but they're not going to be happy with the same stuff you might have perceived. I think you, for example, could be turned if Smith had us looking like that QPR game for a 15 game run. I don't think the same can be said of a large % of the fanbase though. Rightly or wrongly.

11 minutes ago, Petriix said:

2) We're in the top 6 thanks to an incredible run much earlier in the season which took us from bottom after 3 games to 2nd after 11. In the 12 games since then we've only won 3, scraping just 12 points and putting us 20th if the table just included though games. It's not so much about our current position as our current trend. We're going backwards fast and that simply isn't acceptable. 

I agree and even ignoring "recent form" our overall home form isn't good enough - 7th in the league, joint most defeats with 10th in the league. The home games is where you get your fans on-board - it's where most of them are and we've not really done that consistently this season at any point.

[By Hook or Ian crook 917]

I’m at work and busy can you summarise it in to about 150 characters so I don’t have to read the whole thing? 😂😂

[Norfolk Mustard 94]

Beautifully written post FTW! I think SW will indeed want to leave a positive legacy - and right now, he's unlikely to be sitting on his hands wondering what to do about team performance & a seriously disengaged fanbase. Exploratory talks with potential new head coaches are almost certainly under way...

[Capt. Pants 4,276]

Great OP. I'm happy we move forward with Webber. He might be marmite to some, and his recruitment has been shown to be questionable at times, but a lot of that is down to the pool we swim in.

I firmly believe his legacy here is being eroded by Smith, at an alarming rate of knots unfortunately.

[TIL 1010 4,790]

1 hour ago, Feedthewolf said:

I read Kathy's piece with interest and found a lot to agree with; I share a lot of her concerns, although obviously I don't want to be too granular in my detail due to my position with the OSP.

I am with you on a lot you have posted here wolfie but please remember that you were elected by the fans to represent the fans on the OSP and if you ruffle a few feathers within the management inside Carrow Road with your views on what is wrong so be it.

[shefcanary 2,448]

49 minutes ago, Petriix said:

Before we can string together stylish wins we need to address the fundamental issues. The reason (intelligent) people want Smith out is that we've given him lots of opportunities to get it righ but he keeps making the same mistakes. If he was capable of making the required changes then he would have done so already. The best we could hope for is a couple of unconvincing wins before reverting to type...again.

And why does he keep making the same mistakes? It's because of Webber's insistence that 4-3-3 is the way to play, and I believe his control of what Smith is trying to do on the pitch. I may be in the minority, but without Webber sitting on top, I am sure Smith would try something far more radical. Both Dean Smith and Webber have to go, but I have a sneaking feeling that without Webber at the club, Smith could, given more freedom, yet produce a cohesive and attractive style on the pitch. It's Webber's dogma that is holding us back now. Just maybe, as you hypothesised earlier above, Webber "gambled" but is too stubborn to accept his mistake and is "imposing" his philosophy on Smith to implement for him, but its just not working. 

[PurpleCanary 5,580]

Good OP, FtW. In short I believe Smith should be sacked and Webber should stay.

[Petriix 2,853]

17 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

It's because of Webber's insistence that 4-3-3 is the way to play, and I believe his control of what Smith is trying to do on the pitch.

Well that's the fear: that we're still living through the consequences of Webbers gamble and the ongoing chasing of his losses; like a gambling addict who doesn't know when to stop. 

My hope is that a new head coach would have the freedom to pick the team and formation, but maybe you're right.

[hogesar 9,736]

41 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

And why does he keep making the same mistakes? It's because of Webber's insistence that 4-3-3 is the way to play, and I believe his control of what Smith is trying to do on the pitch. I may be in the minority, but without Webber sitting on top, I am sure Smith would try something far more radical. Both Dean Smith and Webber have to go, but I have a sneaking feeling that without Webber at the club, Smith could, given more freedom, yet produce a cohesive and attractive style on the pitch. It's Webber's dogma that is holding us back now. Just maybe, as you hypothesised earlier above, Webber "gambled" but is too stubborn to accept his mistake and is "imposing" his philosophy on Smith to implement for him, but its just not working. 

Do we have any actual evidence of this though? Have I missed it?

Because we've deviated away from 4-3-3 on multiple occasions this season.

[TeemuVanBasten 3,327]

4 hours ago, Feedthewolf said:

Morning, all. Firstly, having read this (rather epic!) post back to myself, I can see plenty of statements in it that those who aren't fans of Webber will be able to pick holes in, but I'd urge you to try to read the thing in its entirety if you have the time. I've genuinely tried to be as balanced as I can, and I've done plenty of research in compiling it.

I read Mick Dennis's piece on MFW this morning with great interest, and while his staunch defence of the club was predictable and heavily rose-tinted, I wanted to do my due diligence and try to see where he was coming from without automatically dismissing it as propaganda and rhetoric.

In terms of Mick's defence of Dean Smith, while I have some sympathy with the notion that whoever we appointed would suffer with 'not being Daniel Farke', the lack of progress over the past year-and-a-bit, coupled with his divisive attitude towards to the fans, makes his position untenable. Short of three convincing and stylish victories in a row, I just don't see how that relationship can possibly be repaired.

So let's leave that argument there, and focus on the bigger picture. As part of my due diligence, I decided to do as Mick suggested and listen to the Michael Calvin podcast with Stuart Webber from the start of September (if you're interested in doing the same, the Webber bit is from 20 minutes to around 52 minutes).

Whatever you think of Stuart Webber, the one word that I think describes him best is 'driven'. On the podcast he mentions having been raised in a single-parent family, and having to walk a mile up a hill every morning to get a bus to school from the age of six.

A minor detail, maybe, but that drive has taken him from helping the ground staff at Wrexham one day a week when he was 18, to being our Director of Football, via running Wrexham's academy, working with Kenny Dalglish and Joey Jones at Liverpool, taking Huddersfield to the Premier League, as well as spells at QPR and Wolves. He's been here five and a half years now, and he's still only 38 years old.

(Here's another interesting article I'd not seen before about his career, which fills in a lot of that detail: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/little-known-welshman-linked-man-16412202)

People quickly cottoned on to the '90%' comment, and took this to mean he wasn't fully committed to the club. I genuinely don't think that could be further from the truth. He tells an anecdote on the podcast about phone calls with Dan Ashworth to sign Isaac Hayden when he was at 4,000m above sea level – acclimatising to altitude is a big part of mountaineering, so he was actually spending several hours a day sitting in a hotel working once he'd done his climbing.

He's mentioned before that he gets up at 5am every day, and does his training before he starts work. He's obviously a hugely motivated 'high achiever', and perhaps some of the discontent around the club may well be due to the exacting standards Webber sets himself, which then becomes expected of the people around him.

nshakeable sense of self-belief which can easily be perceived as arrogance. It comes with the territory.He speaks at one point of finding the prospect of failure 'exciting'; this is another very common trait among high achievers, who are willing to experiment and court failure in pursuit of new and improved ways of working. And, of course, with being a massively motivated high achiever comes an u

And yes, it's true that he enjoyed talking a good game – from the infamous 'money pissed up the wall' statement when he first joined, to the more frequent media appearances when we were riding the Farke wave – but now seems to have disappeared into the background, not wanting to engage with fans or non-internal media sources.

However, let's not forget that when he kicked off at those fans during the 'bedsheetgate' incident last season, there was one guy (who later apologised publicly, if I remember correctly?) who could be heard saying “Where's that c**t Webber?” before he came out to speak to them, and then when Webber challenged them as to whether they wanted a serious conversation, one of them said “no” and others continued to throw abuse at him. In that context, I was totally fine with his reaction to the situation.

I can quite understand him now wanting to 'ignore the noise' and focusing on doing his job – and, similarly, I can quite understand the majority of the criticism coming his way for going silent now things aren't going his way.

I can totally understand the questions that have been asked of our recruitment, especially in selling our biggest weapon in Buendia and trying to strengthen the squad with lesser players who so ignominiously failed to keep us up last season.

And I can absolutely understand the criticism coming his way for appointing Dean Smith in the first place, and the seemingly 'shotgun wedding' nature of his appointment, and for his apparent perseverance with Deano when it's clear a point of no return has been reached.

Another interesting topic of conversation comes later in the podcast, when they discuss his Everest plans in more detail. Calvin talks about his experiences of sailing around the world, and how once he'd completed his challenge it took him a year to “take sport seriously again”. Webber then recounts a meeting with another Everest climber, who said that the first question he asked Stuart was “have you thought about what you're going to do when you get back down again?”.

Webber admits that he hadn't given it much thought before that conversation, but mentions that upon reflection he is quite prepared to “come back to nothing”, or to “restart in a different direction” with a new focus. He says that he appreciates everything he's had here (at Norwich), and would never want to let people down. This, to me, exemplifies why the '90%' myth is just that.

So, in summary, I think it's unlikely that Stuart will still be here in a year's time, but in the meantime I believe he will be utterly bloody-minded in his desire to leave this club in the best position he possibly can. After all, it was him who found and engaged the Attanasios on behalf of Michael Foulger – and, in turn, this has deflected a lot of insecurity and criticism around the majority shareholders as to their succession plan.

Even if (as looks likely) Webber ultimately fails to achieve his stated aim of establishing Norwich as a Premier League club, I think he has laid a lot of excellent groundwork – and his willingness to embrace failure and taking risks has been a big part of getting us there. If we continue to hold on to Dean Smith and/or the Attanasios walk away, we'll be pretty much back where we started when Webber joined in 2017, just with a Soccerbot and some slick academy facilities to show for it. A man of his self-belief and bloody-mindedness will be desperate to leave this club looking better than that.

If he can cement his legacy in 2023 by appointing us a forward-thinking head coach and overseeing the Attanasios' further involvement to the point where a full takeover looks inevitable, I think we'll look back in a few years' time and realise that, for all his foibles, transfer failures and perceived arrogance, Stuart Webber will have left an impressive legacy for this football club.

You think its unlikely that Stuart will be here in a years time.

Which means you actually think he'll be bailing before somebody else has to pick up the pieces of his terrible transfer business by embarking on drastic post-parachute payment cloth cutting and having to pick us back up off the floor.

If he's not prepared to stay here long term to clean up his mess then he should leave tomorrow. 

If you think its unlikely he'll be here in a years time, then why should he be the person who gives the next head coach a 3 year deal. His successor is then bound by that. 

As for the bit in bold, "which then becomes expected of the people around him"

Whenever I've experienced people like this in the real world this translates roughly into them expecting people on the lowest pay grade to work as many hours as them, on their six figure salary. At my current employer three people who all do a specific role (which was actually the only three) just quit because they earn £27k-£30k a year and started getting work related phone calls at 10pm from a senior manager.

That senior manager has just been let go as a result. Workaholic, high achiever, never switched off from job, absolutely all of those things. Expecting the same from people on 35 hour a week contracts and not respecting their contracted hours and family life = worthy of constructive dismissal claims, which will inevitably be being prepared at the minute.

Edited December 21, 2022 by TeemuVanBasten

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,243]

2 hours ago, Petriix said:

Webber gambled. He's still chasing his losses, and the club is suffering as a result. That compulsion to tinker when we would almost certainly have been better retaining continuity.

Indeed.

Why did he @Petriix ?

Parma 

[essex canary 505]

3 hours ago, Feedthewolf said:

As to the 'old ways'... David McNally was a similarly hard-headed executive, but his no-nonsense approach brought us back-to-back promotions and fantastic memories with Paul Lambert in charge, hall-of-fame players to love, and all that.

While Neil Doncaster was much more of a 'soft skills' CEO who was extremely open and patient with the fans, the club never really seemed to have any great vision or forward thinking under his tenure.

I think when we had Webber/Farke managing the on-field stuff and Ben Kensell heading up off-field interactions, that was about as good as it gets. There's definitely plenty of room for improvement both on and off the field, though.

For me McNally was far more arrogant than Webber who as you state has tried to explain himself in reasonable ways including at the AGM.

One of the issues is that Zoe always appears in close proximity to Stu rather than doing the soft stuff associated with Neil Doncaster and Ben Kensell. That isn't helpful in any sense and probably costs far more money in terms of the bloated Management and Media teams.

In parallel though Stu has also driven the Club's salary bill up a mountain which creates more disruption in terms of landing. He may well be a driven personality as you state which can be a good personality trait providing there are checks and balances to restrain those excesses. The problem is the Club hasn't got those which is why I guess Shef feels the way that he does. That is why the Club needs root and branch change. 

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

9 minutes ago, essex canary said:

For me McNally was far more arrogant than Webber who as you state has tried to explain himself in reasonable ways including at the AGM.

One of the issues is that Zoe always appears in close proximity to Stu rather than doing the soft stuff associated with Neil Doncaster and Ben Kensell. That isn't helpful in any sense and probably costs far more money in terms of the bloated Management and Media teams.

In parallel though Stu has also driven the Club's salary bill up a mountain which creates more disruption in terms of landing. He may well be a driven personality as you state which can be a good personality trait providing there are checks and balances to restrain those excesses. The problem is the Club hasn't got those which is why I guess Shef feels the way that he does. That is why the Club needs root and branch change. 

Surely moving from an executive committee of two (i.e. the two Webbers and nobody else) to an executive committee of six helps to provide those checks and balances? From my dealings with the club, it certainly seems to have spread the load quite a lot.

And whether or not you agreed with Anthony Richens' comments about the fans, the stated aim is that all six people on the executive committee should have a working knowledge of all areas of the club, and thus be able to answer questions about them when opportunities present themselves. I think those 'The Insight' videos have been really well-executed and were rightly greeted with a lot of positive feedback, although I can understand why Anthony's comments were met with negativity from some quarters.

[Feedthewolf 4,871]

3 hours ago, hogesar said:

Good post FTW, but this bit in particular I think is irrelevant. Even when we do play well there's a large % of fans who don't want to see it. If we go on a good run it's despite the manager etc etc. It is irrecoverable which is why I think he has to go. 3 stylish victories will mean nothing if we lose the 4th - thats the mentality of fans right now.

As to the broad nature of your post I agree.

From a purely business perspective, Webber has generated our club much more money than he's cost. He's also strengthened the off-field assets beyond anything any of our recent CEO's have managed to do with the work to the academy and training facilities.

He's certainly earned the right to choose the next manager, should he want to do so. He's only made two appointments, one was a pretty unprecedented success, whilst the other is a "failure" who has us in the top 6 in December. There are a lot of seasons in the past where CEO's and fans alike would have ripped your arm off for the position we currently find ourselves in.

That we are now deemed to be failing whilst top 6 in the Championship is actually a marker on how far we've come under Webbers time here.

Agree with all of the above, Hoggy... although if we did win the next three and there was a noticeable improvement in performance and outlook, I do think the vocal criticism would dissipate somewhat. I could see us winning the next three games (it's possible, if not probable), but I just can't see how the performances would suddenly transform to the level where the football was exciting, positive and proactive.

[Danke bitte 967]

3 hours ago, Feedthewolf said:

Quick question: if Webber was sacked tomorrow, who would be responsible for the head coach's performance? Would you trust Delia/Michael and/or Neil Adams to replace Dean Smith? Or even to fire him in the first place?

To me, that responsibility to replace Smith would fall to Adams given his shadowing DoF role. I have no idea how that would go. The only comparison I have to make is Adams made some decent signings in his brief managerial tenure back in 14/15. And seemed to be well regarded with his academy work. Overall I’d feel underwhelmed if he was given the DoF role full time but as caretaker I wouldn’t be too concerned so long as it was a short term gig. 

[shefcanary 2,448]

1 hour ago, hogesar said:

Do we have any actual evidence of this though? Have I missed it?

Because we've deviated away from 4-3-3 on multiple occasions this season.

The most obvious evidence was when Farke attempted 4-3-3 for the first 10 games of the 2nd EPL season, then switched to 4-2-3-1 for the Brentford game, we won and lo Webber then sacked him. 

However the query is about Webber exerting control over formation which he had only just started with Farke.  Under Smith the point made above is that he continues to make the same mistakes, the mistake being starting again with a 4-3-3! Agreed he has tried 4-2-3-1 and also a diamond, invariably I believe we have gotten results from those games (the latter at Rotherham for instance). Yes, more than once he has moved away from 4-3-3, does your "multiple" imply tens (?) of matches, I would argue he has only started anything other than 4-3-3 on a handful of occasions, when we have moved away from it usually it has been late in a game which is already lost.

My argument is Webber has exerted his authority to play a 4-3-3 on Smith despite his failure to recruit the squad to achieve this. Smith, as a "journeyman" head coach has accepted this, but has failed to provide a team to deliver. Whenever he has moved away from 4-3-3, we seem to play marginally better, but as highlighted, not consistently enough to maintain progress because one assumes Webber has had a word.