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yellow hammer

Blame where blame's due.

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Supporting Norwich City at the moment is a bit like watching an airplane spiraling out of control in slow motion as it falls to the earth with nothing but the hot air of the CR spin machine to keep it airborne.

 

Or maybe it’s more like being a passenger on aforesaid plane, staring out of the little window at the rapidly approach ground. The closer you get, the more you can see the detail, and the less relevant the detail becomes as the bigger picture grabs your attention.

 

It doesn’t really matter who is in the cockpit or who is serving up the cocktails at the back, when the inevitable happens. But shifting through the inevitable wreckage the question has to be asked, “Just how did they get themselves into this mess in the first place?”

 

One of the strangest excuses for this mess is that the “we told you so’s” are actually coming, not from the remnants of the WO army (remember them?), but from the City Board themselves. In among the reasons for our current failure summed up by the Executive are statements such as “if you look at the facts, you’ll see that most teams who get promoted to the Premiership, are relegated after just one season.” And this is followed up with “statistics show that when clubs are relegated, they rarely bounce straight back up again.”

 

The trouble I have with these kinds of statement is two-fold. Firstly, it lets everybody off the hook, since it is like admitting that our destiny is out of our hands, and if other so-called bigger and richer clubs can go down then ‘little old Norwich’ should stop complaining and accept the inevitable. It’s a shrug-of-the-shoulders approach to our woes.In other words it’s not the Board’s fault that we struggled in the Premiership and have fallen apart in the two seasons since then. By the same token, it’s not the managers, coaches, or playing staff’s fault that we are spiraling out of control. ‘Look’, they say, ‘It’s just the way it is, just as it happened to Crystal Palace, West Brom, Sunderland, Leeds, and a hatful of other clubs that you care to mention’. And then they start pointing the finger at the fans. “We have unrealistic expectations. We don’t get behind the players. We lack the infinite patience to see us through the bad times.”

 

It’s a bit like claiming if you didn’t use our airline then you wouldn’t be falling out of the sky right now.

 

The second problem I have with the statements coming from the board is that if they knew from the outset that the statistical probability was that we were going to be relegated and then struggle in the Championship,  because that is what the facts shows  happening in most cases, then why did the Board base its planning at the start of the Premiership year that we would finish in 17th position in the league?

 

For the Board who likes to be known for its ‘prudence with ambition’ epithet, then this has to be one of the most reckless, foolish, ill-thought out, idiotic acts to have surface from bunker Carrow Road in living memory.

 

Far from prudence with ambition, the club, along with many other clubs who have been promoted, actually have behaved with a recklessness that would rival the shenanigans of some of those shady American corporations of late.

 

It smacks not of careful stewardship, but of wishful thinking, hope over reality, a multi-million one-time bet at the biggest football casino in the world. And like most gambling dens, one where the punter eventually is going to lose his shirt.

 

Now before you think I’m saying it was hardly worth  our turning up to the best game in town; or I’m suggesting we just rolled over and let everybody stamp all over us, I’m not. I am drawing a distinction between what happens on the football field, where as a lifetime fan I expect every player who pulls on a Norwich shirt to do so with pride and give maximum effort in every match, I expect nothing less than the manager to get the best players with the funds available, to motivate them, to develop match-winning tactics and put out the best possible team each Saturday afternoon.

 

On the terraces we can dream, we can aspire to greater things, we can have irrational passion and fashion heroes out of mortals. We can go to Chelsea and drown out Stamford Bridge with our singing. But in the Board room we need thoughtful and knowledgeable stewardship; vision and leadership based on careful analysis of the facts. What has happened at Norwich City is that the executive has fallen into the same trap as most ever other club that reaches the Premiership for the first time. And the huge, stumbling pratfall has caused havoc at every level of the club. Consider the following.

 

By planning for ending up the first year in the Premiership in 17th place, and holding onto our top flight status, every decision taking as a result of this assumption is flawed.

 

To begin with, Delia and Co. draws up plans for ground extensions, hotels, restaurants; all worthy projects in the right circumstances. But when the facts tell us that we are likely to spend one year with the big guys, then it is completely reckless to put us into long-term debt to finance long-term investments that are out of place in a struggling Championship outfit. Even upgrading the pitch and putting in underground heating at the start of our Premiership campaign was a huge error. It just invites the quality players, of which the established top flight teams can boast several examples, to come to Carrow Road and play us off the pitch. I wonder how many extra points we could have gained by subjecting the opposition playing on the equivalent of a Norfolk turnip field instead of a Wimbledon Tennis Court. And yes, I do want to see great football at Carrow Road, but let’s do it on our terms and not the opposition’s. There’s a right time for everything and there is definitely a wrong time for everything.

 

Perhaps it is a question of prestige; with all those expensively suited executives from top flight clubs coming down to Carrow Road, Delia and Co. did not want to appear as poor country cousins. Poor psychology – how much better to lull the opposition into a fall sense of security, and then take them by surprise on the pitch? That’s what we did in the late eighties, early nineties. What great fun it was to go to Anfield on the last day of the old Kop before it was torn down, as the sacrificial lamb in front of the World media, and then wallop one of the great Liverpool sides. Remember it?

 

But back to our current situation; yes, long-term investment will bring long-term revenue streams, but an executive that is heavily focused on non-football issues, has less time to consider what is happening on the park. Delia may have scoured the country for the best ingredients for Carrow Road kitchens, she may have consulted the finest restauranteurs in the world on how to manage her dining facilities and looking at the balance sheet she may well feel pretty pleased at the revenue stream being created by these non-core businesses. But in doing all of this, Delia and friends have less time to spend on football and getting the basics right. Hasn’t this even beem admitted recently by some members of the Board?

 

I think it is a telling fact that Smith and Jones admit to being little more than staunch fans of Norwich City. Indeed, they hold it up as a matter of pride that they are fans first. But the flip-side of this admission is to acknowledge that they know little about running a football club.

 

Now, it is somewhat mean to be so critical of a couple of decent folk who have put millions of their hard-earned money into our club when they had no such obligation to do so. They stepped up to the plate when City was on the verge of bankruptcy, and there must be countless times when they’ve asked themselves in private if they shouldn’t have taken their millions and gone off to a fabulous Caribbean island retreat rather than plod up to Sheringham for a cold and wet November’s Fans’ Forum. I know which option I would choose; and the West Indies would win over West Runton everytime. But football is merciless and unforgiving; Darwin’s survival of the fittest replayed every Saturday afternoon. So being well-intentioned, as they are, is unfortunately not enough. And gentle comments to the Guardian are not very likely to persuade Chairmen and Executives of other clubs who realise it is a dog-eat-dog business.

 

What is even of greater concern in planning for Premiership survival when the facts say you won’t, are the effects this has on the playing side of the club.

 

If statistics say you’ll probably be back in the Championship in a year’s time, perhaps as a manager you might want to hang on to a player such as Malkay Mackay. Indeed, prudence with ambition says you plan not for the Premiership season ahead but for the one after it.

 

Consider what happens every season when three Champioship teams make into the big time. Firstly, they all rush out and start picking over the bones of the three teams who are passing them on the way down. In other words, they’re all in the market for the kind of player who likes to jump ship when the going gets tough; the kind of player who count success in pounds sterling rather than sterling-silver trophies, egged-on by an agent who stands to earn a nice fat commission from unsettling his weak-minded client. Does anyone from Wigan and Watford spring to mind?

 

Then there are the old-time rejects. The run-of-the-mill thirty-year old Premiership player, still on a big salary, but not as big as the Premiership superstars. These journeymen are looking to squeeze a couple of more years at the top level to boost their retirement funds. Where else can they go but to the newly-promoted clubs, or those with a couple of parachute payments to look forward to.

 

When you plan to finish in 17th place despite all the evidence to the contrary, your manager goes shopping for players with Premiership resumes. As a manager he know it takes six months for a player to bed in, and maybe longer if the guy’s from overseas, but the manager takes a gamble, keep those fingers crossed and hopes Lady Lucky comes up with the winning numbers before the season runs out.

 

By planning that you’re in the Premiership long-time, you need instant quality. So development of youth becomes a lower priority. With twenty-million TV money, whatever is left after the Board has taken for off-field spending goes on mediocre players with not a wit of ambition left about them.

 

So much is made of the fact that Dion Dublin still has this zest and hunger for the game. It’s really great to see it. But we should expect every player at the club to be like that. It has to be the norm and not the exception. They are paid huge sums for doing a wonderful job.

 

Finally, let’s turn our attention to what the facts have been saying all along and that two or three of the newly promoted teams end up dumped right back in the Championship; Norwich City among them.

 

Firstly, the rats head for the exit. This type of player has been here before; he even has a get-out clause inserted into his contract that he will jump ship in the event of relegation. Replacements know there’s a couple of years parachute money to finance the new Porsche. Established players have cleverly locked themselves into Premiership-level contracts. What we have left at Norwich City is a team without desire or motivation; players with nothing to prove in their careers and a slimmed-down squad that guarantees them a place in the starting lineup if they’re not injured.

 

Why is Ernie scoring goals for fun? He was rejected by Bryan Robson and out of the West Brom first team. His record this season is a way of saying ‘I told you I am good enough for Premiership’. When Hucks arrived he was motivated in the same way. Dublin is a different kettle of fish – he is a guy who realises just how lucky he is to be playing football for a living, and intends to enjoy it for as long as he can.

 

So what is the outcome of our one Premiership season? Running expenses are locked into Premiership level while income is more than halved; and the club is hocked into further long-term debt. Instead of the Premiership becoming the Holy Grail of football, for Norwich City and like-minded clubs it is more of  a poisoned chalice.

 

It is the reckless mismanagement of the club that has put City into this state. Don’t be fooled by this prudence with ambition mantra – examine the facts. Nigel Worthington is merely the scapegoat; as is Gary Megson, Ian Dowie and George Burley. Harry Redknapp did not become a bad manager at Southampton; and Addie Boothroyd will not become a bad manager next season. Instead all these relegation managers woke up to the Championship new morning and found the cupboard was bare, both financially and in the board room.

 

At Norwich Dean Ashton was financed with the parachute payments as collateral. In other words, four months into our Premiership season and all the extra Premiership money was already allocated to pet projects. We were hocked into the future. Earnie was financed by the sale of Ashton, and the spin doctors have warned us that our assets (ie. Earnie) may be sold as we prepare to downside in the face of our long-term debt. This is not prudence, this is the result of past recklessness.

 

So what would a truly prudent but ambitious board have done in May 2004? Had they planned for immediate relegation, they should not have committed to immediate long-term debt build-up – even if it promised future income. Right action, yes, but wrong timing.

 

Secondly, more focus would have been put on football issues. Instead of following the much-quoted Charlton Athletic model, which now seems less of a strategy and more of a uniquely talented manager, a Norwich City model would have focused on what needed to be done to survive the Premiership. Did we need more or better coaches, a director of football, sports psychologists? Instead of a hotel and catering empire would a better investment have been a new Potters Bar youth academy to draw in all the budding southern talent? Remember – a ten-year old David Beckham had a weeks trial at Carrow Road; unfortunately he had already committed to Man U. But would such a scenario happen today?

 

A truly prudent but ambitious football club would not have spent its money on football journeymen, carpetbaggers and freeloaders. Instead it would have invested in something-to-prove twenty- to twenty-two year old promising talent, and built them into a team that would stay together for the next five years. The time to attract the Freddie Eastwood’s is when you have just been promoted and you have all the bargaining leverage, not when you are in a Championship nose-dive and waving a banker’s IOU in their face.

 

A promotion-winning team is signed onto contracts that reflect league position and performance. If the youngster turns out to be another Dean Ashton , who sees Norwich as a showcase for the richer clubs, then let him go and you can smile all the way to the bank. Make Dario Grady your best friend ever so that Crewe are a feeder club to Norwich, sme goes for Southend, Colchester, and  Cambridge.

 

A truly prudent but ambitious club will exit the Premiership with no debt, a team of players mentally prepared for the next season and a squad big enough to cover for inevitable injuries. Such a club will be even stronger when challenging for promotion and returning to the first rank. And when that serendipidous day in May comes along and we really have hung on to 17th position, then you might want to consider planning for more of the same.

 

This is not negative thinking. This is turning negatives into positives and breaking out of the same old cycle of cause and effect that drags down clubs just as they seem to have made it to the summit.

 

As I said at the beginning, we are still unraveling. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better simply because the Board got it’s planning wrong two and a half years ago. The damage is greater than can be repaired with a couple of new purchases. We should just hope that PG has enough stamina to pull us out of the current nose-dive and prevent us from crashing out of this division.  If not, expect the Ipswich model - YTS kids and clodhoppers. Believe me, Andy Hughes will seem like Pele in comparison.

 

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This is an nexcellent post Yellow Hammer. Some very interesting and thought provoking views. I strongly urge you to seek publication of this in the EDP et al. It should be geared to invite serious and constructive debate and the quality of your article deserves to be shared with a much wider audience than those of us on the Pink ''Un forum.

Top management in any business arena that genuinely strive for excellence in all that they do, will behave with integrity at all times. This includes being entirely prepared to admit mistakes, learn from them and then re-double their efforts with a renewed recovery strategy. There is little evidence of these qualities or actions at present from our current Board. 

I continue to fully back the current incumbents however, I do believe one or two new faces with fresh ideas would not go amiss at present. All involved must shake themselves now though and realise business as usual is NOT currently applicable or advisable. A significant and demonstrable step change is now urgently required.

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This is the most impressively extraordinary post I have seen on this Board (there have been some stupidly extraordinary ones!!).  I am not sure I agree with every point but you argue persuasively and literately so you have my respect.

No doubt you will be regarded as Smudger''s new best friend but the picture you paint of decent, well meaning people trying their best and making flawed decisions with huge consequences of almost Shakesperian tragedy is galaxies away from his rabid they''re all incompetent crooks ramblings.   I do see the cogency of your story and the traps that are there for every club gaining promotion.  perhaps the one significant omission is the ongoing role of the promotion winning loyal players.   Do they get a chance to prove themselves or are they replaced by better prospects?  It might be argued that you will need those loyal Championship players when you are relegated.  But what if they are so out of their depth in the Prem that the weekly humiliations destroy their confidence. and damage them?  We saw that with Flem and Holty amongst others.  Ironically, Malky was probably one best able to cope with that pressureand he was really missed last season.

I want to think some more about what you have said but already it feels right.  In any case, it is a pleasure to read and very thought provoking.  Thank you.

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Excellent post.

However I do not see off-field activities and running (or you would say ruining) the footy -side  as mutually exclusive as you imply. I think with the correct expertise they should be complimentary-so I pose the question about the make-up of the board too.

Anybody looking at the accounts will know that we will sell Earnie to balance the books. So expect more plodders like Chris Brown (oh how Sunderland have sufferd without him) and gates will fall -approaching  but not quite as low as the 11,601 we saw at Preston in fact.

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I think this is a very good post and it clearly took you a long time to analyse everything that is wrong and has been wrong with Norwich City Football Club over the last few years.

I seem to remember when Norwich went into the Premiership there was a lot of talk about how they were going to think about the long term future of the football club, phrases like " we won''t chase the dream". On reflection I think Norwich over extended themselves and as you say "it will get much worse before it gets better". I think decisions like the Dean Ashton signing came to late in the piece, I would argue that if Ashton had come at the start of the season things would have probably been different (No side can go into a Premiership season without a recognised goalscorer) relating to whether we would have survived or not.

Norwich claimed to have learnt from several other teams who had been relegated and had financial problems from "Chasing the Dream" but after all that, we are now an example that teams will want to avoid repeating.

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This is a good, articulate post and I fully appreciate the thoughts it provokes. Good work!

I would like to make some points too.

I question where it is said that the board singularly budgeted for Premiership survival. In fact, is it not a regular criticism on here that we actually budgeted for relegation - so that is what we got? Surely some fans would have questioned an admission at the time of there being no contingency plan should we get relegated, especially judging the current vocality of Norwich fans. Is it also right that the Board now have a plan should we get relegated this season?

The off-field activities are not a new phenomenon. Delia''s restaurant and various other guises have been around since they took ownership of the club. We were promoted with many of them already in place. Although they take time to consider, I do not believe if this extra time was put by the Board into football matters it would improve the football-side of the club. There are enough hours in the day for both and it would require physical avoidance to ignore the football issues at Carrow Road.

I am not sure how Nigel Worthington can be ''merely a scapegoat'' on one hand, yet the buying of the wrong type of players and other poor playing squad decisions have also attributed to our current state of affairs. I think any reasoned analysis of our performance over the past few seasons must include some serious question marks over both footballing and coaching decisions, as well as at boardroom level.

Finally, we had to build a new stand. Not by choice but by necessity - and we had to do this without the guarantee of promotion. This plays a part in our current financial situation, but I do not believe it was borne from the Board''s recklessness.

I feel we are better run than a lot of the clubs who were relegated and mismanaged. We are not the worst by a long shot. However, this should never be an excuse. The truth is a football club''s cycle has a lag to it - we will not know when we''ve hit rock bottom until we have already started to pick ourselves up. I don''t feel our destiny for this season is decided by a long way, but equally I have no certainty in how or where we''ll end up. That is the scary part.

These are just my points. It shows how good the original post was that such debate can be stimulated... [Y]

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This is a truely excellent post Yellow Hammer and thankyou for taking the trouble to post it.

I nearly missed it so... Bump!

 

 

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One of the best posts I''ve read on any message board - balanced and thought-provoking.  Thanks a lot Yellow Hammer!  I''m going to print it off and read it with my other half this evening.

Mind you, it''s all the better for having been read in someone else''s time, and it has diverted me away from the truly depressing view of a grey wet Norwich through the office window this afternoon.

Although you are right to point out that money was literally ploughed into the Carrow Road turf, I can''t remember that it was that awful before.  We got promoted playing some good passing football on a reasonable surface.  Having watched Marshall getting injured on a terrible pitch at Stamford Bridge, I think a decent playing surface is a good investment.  What we had was pretty OK - not really a turnip field!

Thanks again - the post deserves a wider audience.

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A brilliant post. I agree with MBNCFC though that I think the board have stated that they budgeted for relegation, not 17th place. The strength of your post Yellow Hammer though is that is not built solely on that premise and therefore it doesn''t fall apart if I disagree with that statement alone.

Those who speak of the failings of the board should definitely adopt you as their poster-boy, but I have a feeling that you might not fulfill the entry requirement as you haven''t made up silly names or made insinuations that the board are on the take. What you''ve done is used reason and logic to break down the perceived errors and the effects, which is by far the most persuasive argument I''ve seen on this theme.

The Jarrold did need rebuilding, but the pitch? I trusted to those who knew better like the groundsman. Perhaps we got a bit promotion-happy and gave him too much leeway to pick his favourite bit of vegetation rather than asking for 2 tonnes of cheap green stuff and a bag of miracle-gro. The quality of football played on it has rarely warrented the outlay we made certainly.

I disagree with your assertion that a modest improvement in the playing squad will not be enough to improve our fortunes on the pitch and that we are still in a downward spiral. I believe we have actually turned the corner. Peter Grant''s modest additions and early attempts to restructure the squad mean that we now have eleven better players out more often than we did under Worthington, and we have options when the first eleven are injured (again, not many, but it''s still better than it was). Ultimately that''s what wins matches. Grant still has a long way to go with this rebuilding, but I believe the seeds have been sown there. However I can''t argue that your reasoning on the subject is well-considered and even though I have different thoughts, your basis is solid. Bring on the debate, and thankyou for raising the tone of genuine discussion.

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A good post, you have higlighted our boards'' short-comings well.

However, I do not agree that NW is ''just a scape-goat''. NW spent around 1.5-2 million pounds last summer, in last years championship terms, a hell of a lot of money (this includes loans and wages); Colin, Hughes, Thorne, Marney, and then 50k on Robinson and 300k on Etuhu.

This money could have been spent on much better players- these players were not and still aren''t now, (although I am starting to like Hughes a little bit) good enough for NCFC.

NW spent the money he was given poorly- and this summer just gone, bought just 1 player, and spent 2 weeks on his hols.

I am not a big fan of Delia, but NW is the main reason why we are in this mess- his inabilites to use resources effecitvely. Delia, and the board are guilty of cocking this one right up as well, but the buck on the pitch stops with the manager.

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Thanks all who took the time to reply to my original post. I don''t post here that often, even though I read every day, because I think some measured reflection is better than the knee-jerk reaction. And murphy''s law says that if I claim everything is total cr*p then City is bound to go on a wunning streak just to make me look daft. (Mind you I would gadly accept that moniker, if they did win the rest of the season''s games.

My main point of arguement is that:

1. The board got carried away by the euphoria of promotion and didn''t have a plan B when needed.

2. Too much resource (money/time) went into non-core activity at the wrong time.

3. Our Board, and owners in particularly, are not ''street-smart'' enough. They are lacking someone with a good footballing brain to advise them (I don''t mean tactics, but the big picture)

What would interest me is to hear what the Board would have done differently if they could have rolled the clock back three years or so. But were they reckless or prudent? I actually think the former but am prepared to listen to what other have to say.

OTBC

Yellow Hammer

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[quote user="yellow hammer"]

What would interest me is to hear what the Board would have done differently if they could have rolled the clock back three years or so. But were they reckless or prudent? I actually think the former but am prepared to listen to what other have to say.

OTBC

Yellow Hammer

[/quote]

This is still an excellent thread Yellow Hammer! It''s good to have a discussion without being pigeon holed into imaginary gangs!

I would be interested to hear what the Board would have done differently too, but it''s also not important that we do. What is important is that they recognise the mistakes that have been made and learn from them. I have no doubt that they are good honest people with the interests of the club and its fans at heart. Mistakes have been made which people are quick to point to, at the same time many good things have been achieved that are largely ignored.

You used the word blame twice in the posts title and I think that is a shame that we are always quick to blame when things go wrong. Mistakes will always be made especially when actions are scrutinised with the benefit of hindsight and sometimes decisions that were right at the time they were made can look wrong with hindsight. Some people use hindsight to say Worthington shouldn''t have been appointed as manager in the first place and yet I can only see his appointment as a complete success for the Board.

It should be remembered that we were relegated on the final day of the season and that there was a very thin line between success and failure for us that season. Most people would have accepted us going into the final game at Fulham with our future in our own hands, but it wasn''t that defeat that cost us, it was more the dropped points in other games. Although it''s true to say your final league position is where you deserve to be it''s also true in this case that a little bit of luck along the way would have kept us up. How we could have done with a lucky three points like we got at Reading the previous season when we didn''t really need them!

Since then it''s been a difficult time for the club. The Board kept a failing manager for too long. They gave their reasons but those reasons don''t really excuse not changing the manager in the last close season. Whether they have learned from that mistake we will only find out the next time a manager becomes "past his sell by date".

I think the Board will ultimately be judged on their appointment of Peter Grant. Like Wothington before him he is not what the fans wanted. He may be exactly what this club wants though. Only time will tell.

 

 

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[quote user="yellow hammer"]

Supporting Norwich City at the moment is a bit like watching an airplane spiraling out of control in slow motion as it falls to the earth with nothing but the hot air of the CR spin machine to keep it airborne.

 

Or maybe it’s more like being a passenger on aforesaid plane, staring out of the little window at the rapidly approach ground. The closer you get, the more you can see the detail, and the less relevant the detail becomes as the bigger picture grabs your attention.

 

It doesn’t really matter who is in the cockpit or who is serving up the cocktails at the back, when the inevitable happens. But shifting through the inevitable wreckage the question has to be asked, “Just how did they get themselves into this mess in the first place?”

 

One of the strangest excuses for this mess is that the “we told you so’s” are actually coming, not from the remnants of the WO army (remember them?), but from the City Board themselves. In among the reasons for our current failure summed up by the Executive are statements such as “if you look at the facts, you’ll see that most teams who get promoted to the Premiership, are relegated after just one season.” And this is followed up with “statistics show that when clubs are relegated, they rarely bounce straight back up again.”

 

The trouble I have with these kinds of statement is two-fold. Firstly, it lets everybody off the hook, since it is like admitting that our destiny is out of our hands, and if other so-called bigger and richer clubs can go down then ‘little old Norwich’ should stop complaining and accept the inevitable. It’s a shrug-of-the-shoulders approach to our woes.In other words it’s not the Board’s fault that we struggled in the Premiership and have fallen apart in the two seasons since then. By the same token, it’s not the managers, coaches, or playing staff’s fault that we are spiraling out of control. ‘Look’, they say, ‘It’s just the way it is, just as it happened to Crystal Palace, West Brom, Sunderland, Leeds, and a hatful of other clubs that you care to mention’. And then they start pointing the finger at the fans. “We have unrealistic expectations. We don’t get behind the players. We lack the infinite patience to see us through the bad times.”

 

It’s a bit like claiming if you didn’t use our airline then you wouldn’t be falling out of the sky right now.

 

The second problem I have with the statements coming from the board is that if they knew from the outset that the statistical probability was that we were going to be relegated and then struggle in the Championship,  because that is what the facts shows  happening in most cases, then why did the Board base its planning at the start of the Premiership year that we would finish in 17th position in the league?

 

For the Board who likes to be known for its ‘prudence with ambition’ epithet, then this has to be one of the most reckless, foolish, ill-thought out, idiotic acts to have surface from bunker Carrow Road in living memory.

 

Far from prudence with ambition, the club, along with many other clubs who have been promoted, actually have behaved with a recklessness that would rival the shenanigans of some of those shady American corporations of late.

 

It smacks not of careful stewardship, but of wishful thinking, hope over reality, a multi-million one-time bet at the biggest football casino in the world. And like most gambling dens, one where the punter eventually is going to lose his shirt.

 

Now before you think I’m saying it was hardly worth  our turning up to the best game in town; or I’m suggesting we just rolled over and let everybody stamp all over us, I’m not. I am drawing a distinction between what happens on the football field, where as a lifetime fan I expect every player who pulls on a Norwich shirt to do so with pride and give maximum effort in every match, I expect nothing less than the manager to get the best players with the funds available, to motivate them, to develop match-winning tactics and put out the best possible team each Saturday afternoon.

 

On the terraces we can dream, we can aspire to greater things, we can have irrational passion and fashion heroes out of mortals. We can go to Chelsea and drown out Stamford Bridge with our singing. But in the Board room we need thoughtful and knowledgeable stewardship; vision and leadership based on careful analysis of the facts. What has happened at Norwich City is that the executive has fallen into the same trap as most ever other club that reaches the Premiership for the first time. And the huge, stumbling pratfall has caused havoc at every level of the club. Consider the following.

 

By planning for ending up the first year in the Premiership in 17th place, and holding onto our top flight status, every decision taking as a result of this assumption is flawed.

 

To begin with, Delia and Co. draws up plans for ground extensions, hotels, restaurants; all worthy projects in the right circumstances. But when the facts tell us that we are likely to spend one year with the big guys, then it is completely reckless to put us into long-term debt to finance long-term investments that are out of place in a struggling Championship outfit. Even upgrading the pitch and putting in underground heating at the start of our Premiership campaign was a huge error. It just invites the quality players, of which the established top flight teams can boast several examples, to come to Carrow Road and play us off the pitch. I wonder how many extra points we could have gained by subjecting the opposition playing on the equivalent of a Norfolk turnip field instead of a Wimbledon Tennis Court. And yes, I do want to see great football at Carrow Road, but let’s do it on our terms and not the opposition’s. There’s a right time for everything and there is definitely a wrong time for everything.

 

Perhaps it is a question of prestige; with all those expensively suited executives from top flight clubs coming down to Carrow Road, Delia and Co. did not want to appear as poor country cousins. Poor psychology – how much better to lull the opposition into a fall sense of security, and then take them by surprise on the pitch? That’s what we did in the late eighties, early nineties. What great fun it was to go to Anfield on the last day of the old Kop before it was torn down, as the sacrificial lamb in front of the World media, and then wallop one of the great Liverpool sides. Remember it?

 

But back to our current situation; yes, long-term investment will bring long-term revenue streams, but an executive that is heavily focused on non-football issues, has less time to consider what is happening on the park. Delia may have scoured the country for the best ingredients for Carrow Road kitchens, she may have consulted the finest restauranteurs in the world on how to manage her dining facilities and looking at the balance sheet she may well feel pretty pleased at the revenue stream being created by these non-core businesses. But in doing all of this, Delia and friends have less time to spend on football and getting the basics right. Hasn’t this even beem admitted recently by some members of the Board?

 

I think it is a telling fact that Smith and Jones admit to being little more than staunch fans of Norwich City. Indeed, they hold it up as a matter of pride that they are fans first. But the flip-side of this admission is to acknowledge that they know little about running a football club.

 

Now, it is somewhat mean to be so critical of a couple of decent folk who have put millions of their hard-earned money into our club when they had no such obligation to do so. They stepped up to the plate when City was on the verge of bankruptcy, and there must be countless times when they’ve asked themselves in private if they shouldn’t have taken their millions and gone off to a fabulous Caribbean island retreat rather than plod up to Sheringham for a cold and wet November’s Fans’ Forum. I know which option I would choose; and the West Indies would win over West Runton everytime. But football is merciless and unforgiving; Darwin’s survival of the fittest replayed every Saturday afternoon. So being well-intentioned, as they are, is unfortunately not enough. And gentle comments to the Guardian are not very likely to persuade Chairmen and Executives of other clubs who realise it is a dog-eat-dog business.

 

What is even of greater concern in planning for Premiership survival when the facts say you won’t, are the effects this has on the playing side of the club.

 

If statistics say you’ll probably be back in the Championship in a year’s time, perhaps as a manager you might want to hang on to a player such as Malkay Mackay. Indeed, prudence with ambition says you plan not for the Premiership season ahead but for the one after it.

 

Consider what happens every season when three Champioship teams make into the big time. Firstly, they all rush out and start picking over the bones of the three teams who are passing them on the way down. In other words, they’re all in the market for the kind of player who likes to jump ship when the going gets tough; the kind of player who count success in pounds sterling rather than sterling-silver trophies, egged-on by an agent who stands to earn a nice fat commission from unsettling his weak-minded client. Does anyone from Wigan and Watford spring to mind?

 

Then there are the old-time rejects. The run-of-the-mill thirty-year old Premiership player, still on a big salary, but not as big as the Premiership superstars. These journeymen are looking to squeeze a couple of more years at the top level to boost their retirement funds. Where else can they go but to the newly-promoted clubs, or those with a couple of parachute payments to look forward to.

 

When you plan to finish in 17th place despite all the evidence to the contrary, your manager goes shopping for players with Premiership resumes. As a manager he know it takes six months for a player to bed in, and maybe longer if the guy’s from overseas, but the manager takes a gamble, keep those fingers crossed and hopes Lady Lucky comes up with the winning numbers before the season runs out.

 

By planning that you’re in the Premiership long-time, you need instant quality. So development of youth becomes a lower priority. With twenty-million TV money, whatever is left after the Board has taken for off-field spending goes on mediocre players with not a wit of ambition left about them.

 

So much is made of the fact that Dion Dublin still has this zest and hunger for the game. It’s really great to see it. But we should expect every player at the club to be like that. It has to be the norm and not the exception. They are paid huge sums for doing a wonderful job.

 

Finally, let’s turn our attention to what the facts have been saying all along and that two or three of the newly promoted teams end up dumped right back in the Championship; Norwich City among them.

 

Firstly, the rats head for the exit. This type of player has been here before; he even has a get-out clause inserted into his contract that he will jump ship in the event of relegation. Replacements know there’s a couple of years parachute money to finance the new Porsche. Established players have cleverly locked themselves into Premiership-level contracts. What we have left at Norwich City is a team without desire or motivation; players with nothing to prove in their careers and a slimmed-down squad that guarantees them a place in the starting lineup if they’re not injured.

 

Why is Ernie scoring goals for fun? He was rejected by Bryan Robson and out of the West Brom first team. His record this season is a way of saying ‘I told you I am good enough for Premiership’. When Hucks arrived he was motivated in the same way. Dublin is a different kettle of fish – he is a guy who realises just how lucky he is to be playing football for a living, and intends to enjoy it for as long as he can.

 

So what is the outcome of our one Premiership season? Running expenses are locked into Premiership level while income is more than halved; and the club is hocked into further long-term debt. Instead of the Premiership becoming the Holy Grail of football, for Norwich City and like-minded clubs it is more of  a poisoned chalice.

 

It is the reckless mismanagement of the club that has put City into this state. Don’t be fooled by this prudence with ambition mantra – examine the facts. Nigel Worthington is merely the scapegoat; as is Gary Megson, Ian Dowie and George Burley. Harry Redknapp did not become a bad manager at Southampton; and Addie Boothroyd will not become a bad manager next season. Instead all these relegation managers woke up to the Championship new morning and found the cupboard was bare, both financially and in the board room.

 

At Norwich Dean Ashton was financed with the parachute payments as collateral. In other words, four months into our Premiership season and all the extra Premiership money was already allocated to pet projects. We were hocked into the future. Earnie was financed by the sale of Ashton, and the spin doctors have warned us that our assets (ie. Earnie) may be sold as we prepare to downside in the face of our long-term debt. This is not prudence, this is the result of past recklessness.

 

So what would a truly prudent but ambitious board have done in May 2004? Had they planned for immediate relegation, they should not have committed to immediate long-term debt build-up – even if it promised future income. Right action, yes, but wrong timing.

 

Secondly, more focus would have been put on football issues. Instead of following the much-quoted Charlton Athletic model, which now seems less of a strategy and more of a uniquely talented manager, a Norwich City model would have focused on what needed to be done to survive the Premiership. Did we need more or better coaches, a director of football, sports psychologists? Instead of a hotel and catering empire would a better investment have been a new Potters Bar youth academy to draw in all the budding southern talent? Remember – a ten-year old David Beckham had a weeks trial at Carrow Road; unfortunately he had already committed to Man U. But would such a scenario happen today?

 

A truly prudent but ambitious football club would not have spent its money on football journeymen, carpetbaggers and freeloaders. Instead it would have invested in something-to-prove twenty- to twenty-two year old promising talent, and built them into a team that would stay together for the next five years. The time to attract the Freddie Eastwood’s is when you have just been promoted and you have all the bargaining leverage, not when you are in a Championship nose-dive and waving a banker’s IOU in their face.

 

A promotion-winning team is signed onto contracts that reflect league position and performance. If the youngster turns out to be another Dean Ashton , who sees Norwich as a showcase for the richer clubs, then let him go and you can smile all the way to the bank. Make Dario Grady your best friend ever so that Crewe are a feeder club to Norwich, sme goes for Southend, Colchester, and  Cambridge.

 

A truly prudent but ambitious club will exit the Premiership with no debt, a team of players mentally prepared for the next season and a squad big enough to cover for inevitable injuries. Such a club will be even stronger when challenging for promotion and returning to the first rank. And when that serendipidous day in May comes along and we really have hung on to 17th position, then you might want to consider planning for more of the same.

 

This is not negative thinking. This is turning negatives into positives and breaking out of the same old cycle of cause and effect that drags down clubs just as they seem to have made it to the summit.

 

As I said at the beginning, we are still unraveling. It’s going to get much worse before it gets better simply because the Board got it’s planning wrong two and a half years ago. The damage is greater than can be repaired with a couple of new purchases. We should just hope that PG has enough stamina to pull us out of the current nose-dive and prevent us from crashing out of this division.  If not, expect the Ipswich model - YTS kids and clodhoppers. Believe me, Andy Hughes will seem like Pele in comparison.

 

[/quote]

a great Post! brilliant stuff.

i agree with pretty much every word.. the board have a lot of answering to do...

jas :)

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A very very good post, I don''t agree with all of it, but it makes a refreshing change for someone to make a reasoned well thought out argument, for their views, rather than sometimes verging on the slanderous ramblings that we are often subjected to.

Incidentally, my memory of the time was that the pitch and undersoil heating were replaced because the old undersoil heating pipes were breaking, so that the pitch was collapsing in areas.

 

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Dug this post up from a couple of years ago what Yellowhammer wrote.

The line near the bottom "its going to get much worse before it gets better" rings true now.

I believe our premiership strategy has a lot to do with the mess we now find ourselves in.

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Very good, to much focus off field spending where the revenue returns where never likely to amount to much

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What a fantastic original post. Yellowhammer, if only the Board had understood and learned from what you were saying we might not have ended up where we are today!Actually, much of your post is still relevant and ought to be studied by our new CEO as part of his induction and lesson in not making the same mistakes again!

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[quote user="I am a Banana"]

great post i started reading it at 7.30 and just funished [:D]

[/quote]

Does funished mean came in my pants?

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[quote user="johnjohnjohnnyjohn"]Brilliant post Yellow Hammer, you make a lot of good points.[/quote]Moreover, it shows how the board has failed to make any substantive change to the way they operate. As this poster wrote this in 2007, and most of the points are still very relevant, it makes you wonder if they''ll ever learn.

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I was reasonably impressed until you got to the bit where Delia Smith has apparently "saved" the club and poured in millions.......

Then it all seemed pretty pointless. Alot of work and credit to you for that...but I think it''s high time that "saviour" myth was dead and buried.

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[quote user="Cluck is God"]

I was reasonably impressed until you got to the bit where Delia Smith has apparently "saved" the club and poured in millions.......

Then it all seemed pretty pointless. Alot of work and credit to you for that...but I think it''s high time that "saviour" myth was dead and buried.

[/quote]I think it''s a hard one.I wouldn''t ever say she''s done nothing, and put in no money whatsoever, but it would be naive to suggest that the club would have collapsed without her...it''s not like we can go back and see what would happen had she not taken over, so no one can ever say for definate.

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Well, it''s a drawn out post that pretty much expresses many posters previous stated concerns (all be them presented slightly more succinctly) [;)] but credit where credits due - you clearly put a lot of time and effort into it.

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[quote user="hogesar"][quote user="Cluck is God"]

I was reasonably impressed until you got to the bit where Delia Smith has apparently "saved" the club and poured in millions.......

Then it all seemed pretty pointless. Alot of work and credit to you for that...but I think it''s high time that "saviour" myth was dead and buried.

[/quote]

I think it''s a hard one.

I wouldn''t ever say she''s done nothing, and put in no money whatsoever, but it would be naive to suggest that the club would have collapsed without her...it''s not like we can go back and see what would happen had she not taken over, so no one can ever say for definate.
[/quote]

Maths dictates the answer to that one. We were never in any danger of collapse then ...but we are now.

It''s pure propaganda and a media story cynically perpetuated by the cook herself.

Don''t buy it!

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Christ that was a gigantic epic of a post!

 

But I totally disagree on one big point made in the encyclopedic post!

 

I''ve always said and still maintain that the board didn''t give it the best shot when we were in the Premiership. - Basically they didn''t speculate enough!

 

To go into the Premiership without a recognised striker was crazy. Asking new CB signing the Doc to do a temporary job was crazy, he would n''t be able to do that in the Championship. Yes he was old but keeping Iwan Roberts would of proved better!

 

If we''d of signed Peter Crouch for £2M (we had the chance but the board only offered £1.25M I''m led to believe!) and he''d of had a simlar season to what he had that year at Southampton then we''d of stayed up and we''d of gotton a lot of money from selling him. Totally changes what did happen into something that would of been far better for the club - One extra season in the Premiership at least and a lot more money to play with that would of made things easier for the club when we did get relegated back into the Championship!

 

Stoke (quite comfortably in the end!) and Hull, last season are prime examples of where having a good old go, EG, spending some money while in the Premiership can prove the right move.

 

The Norwich board tryed to ''do'' the Premiership on the cheap and it very nearly did work but ultimately signing Dean Ashton half a season to late or not spending £2M on Peter Crouch at the start of the seaon proved to be the downfall!

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yellow hammer the post was certainly longer than i first imagined it to be !!!

you have worded this very well and thought about this for a while .

i really enjoyed reading it very good post and very well said .

take full credit for this one .

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