Surely it's time to follow the 'Reading model' as far as new signings are concerned?

[Canary Poirot 1]

For too long now we''ve heard how the big Norwich strategy was to match the success Charlton has achieved over the last decade. However, after our failings over the last 2 seasons, such a strategy has evidently gone out of the window, and discussion has begun that it might be time for Norwich to begin looking to following the ''Burnley model'' or Colchester model'', modest success on a small budget - a statement which upset many fans. However, having read today how much the first eleven at Reading has been put together for, and the success they''ve had over the last 18 months (storming to the Championship title and upper mid table in the Premiership), I think a complete overhaul of the way we conduct transfers and scouting is an absolute necessity. Here''s some food for thought - the Reading 11 - which recently thumped West Ham 6-0 cost a total £1,125,000 - absolutely amazing!:

GK: Hahnemann - free (age: 34)

Gunnarsson - free from Watford (age: 31)

Ingamarssan - £100,000 from Brighton (age 29)

Sonko - free from Brentford

Shorey - £25,000 from Leyton Orient

Little - free from Burnley (age 31)

Sidwell - free from Arsenal

Harper - free from Arsenal

Hunt - free from Brentford (age 25)

Doyle - £10,000 from Cork City - scored 28 goals in 63 games (age 23)

Lita - £1M from Bristol City

The comparison between the sucess of signing hungry players for next to nothing from predominately lower league teams (excluding the highly impressive Leroy Lita for £1M) and our approach of signing average journey man players from the Championship and putting all of our money in one basket (Rob Earnshaw) is very telling. It''s time for us to hire a Director of Scouting with Grant''s approval, sack Alan Wood our current Chief Scout who clearly is not up to his job, and begin a completely new strategy of watching as many League 1, 2, Conference games and reserve games as possible rather than the present approach which seems to be either waiting for a player''s agent to phone up saying that so and so is looking for a move (and which no doubt a dozen other teams have been alerted to) or phoning around clubs asking who might be available. The board should also move to hire someone on the board (David Stringer?) who''s role it is to sanction signings, rather than the board having total faith and belief in the manager''s judgement on footballing matters. Until we take such measures, I can''t see any drastic improvements occuring on the pitch in the long run.

[Saint Canary 0]

 I do like idea of having Stringer or similar sactioning transfers though.  Maybe they could so no to the Peter Thornes but persuade the board to pay the money for a Steve Howard.

I don''t know if the scouting needs changing because I don''t know how much their opinion counts for anything.  What I do know is that the club needs a radical overhaul of it''s transfer policy.  What I feel we need and it''s something Grant has alluded to is to stop buying/loaning stop gap players for the short term and I think the worst thing we could do in January is to spend money only for this season in a desperate bid for the playoff''s.  In my opinion this season is all but over and Grant needs to be looking to start building his own team of his own players that can grow together over a few seasons.

The main problem we have had in recent times is that the "window" seems to have taken this club completely by suprise and in short, this club has become reactive whereas we should have been proactive. 

[hogesar 9,879]

Westham have had some pretty decent signings however, and im sure Grant would have been part of that. So i''d hope he knows what he''s doing in the transfer market.