Ashton should of gone Sooner - Doomcaster

[Syteanric 1]

From pinkuns home page.

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Canaries chief executive Neil Doncaster yesterday admitted that mistakes may have been made over the sale of star striker Dean Ashton - for the sake of ambition.

City turned down big-money bids for Ashton last summer but, instead of cashing in and reinvesting, they decided instead to go the other way and persuaded their record signing to stay on.

However, six months down the line Ashton wanted out of Carrow Road in order to pursue his Premiership ambitions and joined West Ham in January for a club record £7.25m.

Doncaster says in his weekly column for the EDP that, in hindsight, not selling the club''s prize asset might have been a mistake, but insists it was done for the best of reasons - the ambition to do better.

“With the benefit of hindsight, would we have done some of the things we did this season? When we turned down bids in the region of £6million for Dean Ashton from Manchester City and Wigan Athletic last summer, was this the right thing to do?” he writes.

“Persuading Dean to stay and signing him up on a longer, improved contract was done absolutely for the right reasons, and if we had sold him then we would no doubt have been accused of a lack of ambition.

“But, with the benefit of hindsight, it would perhaps have been better to cash-in and reinvest last summer, rather than in January, when Dean was making it very clear that he no longer saw his future with us.”

Ashton had signed a three-and-a-half-year contract in January last year after signing for £3m from Crewe, and his early exploits suggested that manager Nigel Worthington had pulled off a major coup.

With rumours rife that a move was imminent, Ashton put pen to paper on a one-year extension to his deal in August at a time when a sale would have been greeted with dismay by fans hoping to get back into the Premiership at the first attempt.

“Those are the sorts of decisions that the management and board of this club have to make,” Doncaster added. “And we won''t always be right. But we will always do what we genuinely believe to be in the club''s long-term best interests at the time.”

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in 12 months we will be reading "worthington should of gone sooner".

theres 1 paragraph which has me wetting myself with Laughter which is the one about a lack of ambition... Good god man!!!!? its been apparent for a lot longer than last summer! this club lacked ambition the moment Worthington dismantled the Premiership squad and released more players then he signed! thus maing the squad too small!

not addressing the weak areas of the team also helped this lack of ambition.

jas :)

 

[chipster 0]

do we really have to put up with this constant barrage of bull#hit? why does Doncaster feel the need to tell us how we are so ambitious we didn''t sell our star player ,and that it probably cost us this season,what a load of twaddle,we had signed one of the best young talents in the country ,we had taken the gamble when a lot of clubs where overly cautious ,and instead of reaping the rewards we sold our hot property as soon as we could because he realised that to further his ambitions he would have to go elsewhere,now does this sound familiar? looking through my history of the club over the last 20 years every year we have had to get more money in through sales than we have had to spend so nothing really has changed here, we all know the reality of football in this climate,money talks and we are not one of the clubs with bucket fulls of it,but to have us being told all the time how ambitious we are always makes me feel like I am being rooked

 

can I just ask our club to forget about pr as they seem very poor at getting what ever message they want over to us,that is unless they want us to see them as a selling club with a team full of players and staff that are really going through the motions, as fans what we want to see is a winning team,and if not a winning team a team that shows signs of future big things,and at the very least a team with great work ethic,can the club say we have any of these at present? cut the crap and get on with getting things right on the pitch.......and then the pr might well look after its self?

[chicken 0]

In hindsight I would have to agree with him.I don''t think we could have got Earnshaw then but at least we would have had a striker with his heart in it from the word go and perhaps more money to expand the squad get better players in.For example Etuhu who may have hit form around christmas rather than the last game of the season or so.I think Ashton became a bit of a rotten apple and the bug started to catch. Its not something  you can forsee but in hindsight yes I would go with Doncaster. It says a lot though that they resisted that and ended up getting £1.5 million more in Jan.

[ZLF 274]

With hindsight yes we could have sold dean earlier but I agree with chicken that we would not have got earnie at that stage and may have ended up with anyone just to fill the gap - which is a far worse scenario all round than the one we experienced.

Given the time again without the knowledge of what was to come surely no one would have sold him in the summer??  The club were optimisic of a good season challenging for promotion and spearheading that challege is one of the best young strikers in the land.   To sell him pre season would have undermined the confidence of club and fans as the replacement was unlikely to have the same appeal...

To me it was foreseeable that he would want to move on if we showed no signs of being able to match the players ambitions of playing in the prem - and thats what happened in Jan; knowing that the player was sorely tempted by the summer approaches surely means his desire to move in Jan was understandable and predictable?

The more I read this article the less relevance it seem to have other than trying to re-emphasise that our season would have been so much better without Dean Ashton;  does anyone really beleive that was the case with let alone without hindsight?   

[Anderz 0]

it appears to me that the season may ended being somewhat of a catch-22 situation:
      if City had sold Ashton, we''d probably have had a stinker of a season with a journey-man striker being brought in to replace Ashton (remember, we were linked with Sunderland''s Andy Gray as a possible Ashton replacement in and around Jan), 
      if we kept him till Jan (which we did) we have 1/2 a season with a want-away striker and possible divisive dressing room with a second 1/2 of a season with a striker finding decent form in a team he''s slowly getting to know, and finally,
      if we''d kept Ashton until the end of this season, we have a striker who''s desperate to go and almost certainly is making noises to indicate this desire, ensuring his transfer value diminishes...

Of the three scenario''s, which are all based on supposition and ''what if''s?'' I know which I prefer and would have wanted... and we got it...

[macdougalls perm 0]

I think we may have had a different sort of season if we had had Earnshaw here from the start of the season, and actually wanting to be here. I am saying this obviously with hindsight, as I can remember everybody pre-empting his move with predictions of disaster and the fact that ''the poor bloke will get no service and therefore no opportunities to score''/ ''he''ll spend the whole match chasing shadows'' type comments. And this simply didn''t happen, he got his head down - didn''t wander about looking sorry for himself, got stuck in and came away with a very respectable goals to games ratio.

Lets hope he can keep it up next season.

[Saint Canary 0]

I don''t undertsand where all this Ashton was a disruptive influence comes from?  I can''t remember any players saying anything about it yet the board and manager are making out like Ashton is the reason we did not get promoted.  

Worthy has said that Ashton was told about the offers from Wigan and Man City, if he really wanted out surely he could have done a "Francis" and forced the club into selling him in the summer?  For it only became apparent he wanted to leave in December when it was clear that we would struggle to make the play-offs. 

[Steve Mortlock 0]

But, with the benefit of hindsight, it would perhaps have been better to cash-in and reinvest last summer, rather than in January, when Dean was making it very clear that he no longer saw his future with us.”

 

Without the benefit of Ashtons goals scored up until his departure we would have been struggling for relegation.  In hindsignt Doncaster, would that be the better option.  NO!  Earsnhaw would not have been available at that time and we would have ended up with some cart horse who can''t get a game elsewhere.  In hindsight Neil I can see how you sold the Norwich fans down the river and will no doubt continue to do so. 

On the worthington note, I will continue to support him while he is here and hope he has another Huckerby/Crouch type deal up his sleeve.  Failure to bring in household names will no doubt contribute to his downfall.  I would like to see a bit of ambition from the BOARD.  We are 6 or seven players away from being top six and they must be quality.  Deadwood must be trimmed. 

[Jim Smith 2,322]

Is not the key question here why Ashton was quite happy to stay in the summer but by January was making it quite clear he no longer wished to play for us. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he, like us, had become disillusioned by the fact that our manager had messed up the season by signing a load of players who weren''t up to it and by coaching the team to lump long balls up at him all season and he had realised we were not going to get promoted.

I have no doubt whatsoever that had we been up there challenging and the team had been playing to Ashton''s strengths he would not have been actively looking to move away in January in the way that he had. At the end of the day I don''t like the way he went about it but Deano realised he had to move for the sake of his career. 

 

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

Its easy to blame a player not at the club anymore isnt it Neil..... 

I see your favorite example club West Ham still managed to make the play-offs despite the loss of Jermaine Jenas and David James in January of their first season down.....

[no1canary 0]

looking back at the situation, i think the right thing was done by selling in january. fans would have been outraged by selling, especially if he didn''t mind staying to see how the season progressed. and eventually we''ve recieved a higher fee, and we now have an even more natural goalscorer than we did before.

[Canaries for Ever 0]

[quote user="Jim Smith"]

Is not the key question here why Ashton was quite happy to stay in the summer but by January was making it quite clear he no longer wished to play for us. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he, like us, had become disillusioned by the fact that our manager had messed up the season by signing a load of players who weren''t up to it and by coaching the team to lump long balls up at him all season and he had realised we were not going to get promoted.

I have no doubt whatsoever that had we been up there challenging and the team had been playing to Ashton''s strengths he would not have been actively looking to move away in January in the way that he had. At the end of the day I don''t like the way he went about it but Deano realised he had to move for the sake of his career. 

[/quote]

The ''key'' question has already been answered. Ashton DID want away earlier - the Club persuaded him to stay (with an ''improved'' contract). My personal opinion is that, if looking at the season rather than the money we got for him, he should have gone earlier. There were several games in the first half of the season when I was wondering if he was injured as he didn''t seem to want to ''play''. His form certainly picked up as the transfer window neared. The increased salary he was being paid could have been offset against the extra we got for him in January. I agree that would have been unlikely to acquire the services of Earnshaw at that stage but the sight of Ashton warming up by himself and not appearing to be part of the team wasn''t good.

With regard to the ''playing to Ashton''s strengths'' - In an ideal world, I''m sure that would have been the case (look at the dire midfield situation then), however, when a player wants to try to score, it is possible to attain Earnshaw''s strike rate - and he doesn''t exactly score points over Ashton in the height department. Sometimes the will to succeed (and score) takes you a long way.

 

[no1canary 0]

[quote user="Citizen Journalist Foghorn"]

Its easy to blame a player not at the club anymore isnt it Neil..... 

I see your favorite example club West Ham still managed to make the play-offs despite the loss of Jermaine Jenas and David James in January of their first season down.....

[/quote]

jenas? you mean carrick?

[Northern Canary 0]

Ashton should never have gone in the summer, the club should have built the team around him and had the chance to sign some quality but didnt

[DisorientatedCanary 0]

[quote user="no1canary"][quote user="Citizen Journalist Foghorn"]

Its easy to blame a player not at the club anymore isnt it Neil..... 

I see your favorite example club West Ham still managed to make the play-offs despite the loss of Jermaine Jenas and David James in January of their first season down.....

[/quote] jenas? you mean carrick?[/quote]

 

 

try Defoe :-P.

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

[quote user="Citizen Journalist Foghorn"]

Its easy to blame a player not at the club anymore isnt it Neil..... 

I see your favorite example club West Ham still managed to make the play-offs despite the loss of Jermaine Jenas and David James in January of their first season down.....

[/quote]

oops Jermaine Defoe not Jenas duh.......

[We need a Manager 0]

No good trying to blame Ashton for Worthingtons shortcomings.

[Mike Abram 0]

What little respect I had for you disappeared in the moment you didn''t know who played for who...