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LITTLE NORWICH

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When people label us as a little club IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY.

 We compared to some clubs have some good history like bayern munich but still we are called  a little team.

 Why? How can a team that has already sold twenty thousand season tickets be called a little team? WE SHOULD BE A PREMIERSHIP SIDE and that is something Grant clearly wants to make happen. PG also wants to get rid of the little Norwich tag but this wont happen with the current board incharge.

 This is not a look at me thread or a Delia bashing thread I just want whats best for the club i love, which is why something has to be done. Ok i will be made to eat a very large helping of humble pie (prehaps if Delia gave me some) if succcess happens this season but i suspect this wont happen. We are going after players that tbh we have no chance of getting (except maybe sharp) however its not strikers we need. We need two central midfielders (safris replacement then a back up for him) a goalkeeper and a centre back.

This season is so crucial for norwich. It doesnt really matter if we go up then come straight back down again (we''ll have parachute money although ask leeds fans that money dont buy success). If we dont go up then im afraid then we will be stuck in the lower leagues for a long time to come because of money. Ncfc is  Delialalas plaything and no-one else is allowed to play with it, so if a takeover bid was received (and there is nothing to suggest that one hasnt been made already) then we wont be relinquished out of HER control. The manchester city game made us a laughing stock, and even though we were thrusted into the media limelight IT WAS FOR THE WRONG REASONS.

Rant over

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Why people have this idea that clubs like wolves are sleeping giants because of there fan base yet we are little Norwich really annoys me aswell.

Sunderland were getting lower gates than us last year till the glory hunters tagged along and bumped gates up to 30,000.

Didnt we have the 2nd best support in the league last year?

Leeds, Forest, Sheff wed have history but then so do Blackpool, Preston, Huddersfield and do we call them big clubs or sleeping giants?

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Who had the best support? I bet we have better support than about 8 premiership sides.

Sunderland,Derby Chelsea (in terms of loyalty) Birmingham, Fulham,Wigan, Manchester City and Aston Villa . In terms of filling out the ground week in week out i bet we are better than most teams, although for Chelsea we had better support before the Roman years.

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NCFC will always be seen as ''little old Norwich'' because of its geography. Being thrown out to the rural edge of the country with a single road linking it to ''the big outside'' has spawned this viewpoint. If Norwich was in the gritty North, within the Big Smoke or sitting on a motorway the reputation would soon be challenged.

We are also ''little Norwich'' because we have a reputation of being a soft club. A family first club. A smiley, fair play winners, handshakes before kick off and pass the ball nicely team. Grant has said it himself - from the outside our pretty yellow and green football team applauded by a largely local and sedate crowd has this identity.

If we broke some legs, stacked up the red cards, threw coins at opposition supporters and had fans screaming intolerable abuse at everything that moves rather than wearing tutus and brightly coloured wigs things would change ... but at that cost.

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2001 Census gives Norwich population as 121553 and Wolverhampton 236573, however if you take Norfolk as a whole the number is 796733 and there is no major rival team within the catchment area, unlike Wolves who have  4 teams within 16 miles.

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Norwich is a fair bit bigger than 121553 most of the northern suburbs Sprowston etc. are actually in Broadland but are definitely part of the city so the population of Norwich as in the city not the council is just over 200,000 so similar to Wolverhampton.

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[quote user="Canary_teen"]

When people label us as a little club IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY.

 We compared to some clubs have some good history like bayern munich but still we are called  a little team.

 Why? How can a team that has already sold twenty thousand season tickets be called a little team? WE SHOULD BE A PREMIERSHIP SIDE and that is something Grant clearly wants to make happen. PG also wants to get rid of the little Norwich tag but this wont happen with the current board incharge.

 This is not a look at me thread or a Delia bashing thread I just want whats best for the club i love, which is why something has to be done. Ok i will be made to eat a very large helping of humble pie (prehaps if Delia gave me some) if succcess happens this season but i suspect this wont happen. We are going after players that tbh we have no chance of getting (except maybe sharp) however its not strikers we need. We need two central midfielders (safris replacement then a back up for him) a goalkeeper and a centre back.

This season is so crucial for norwich. It doesnt really matter if we go up then come straight back down again (we''ll have parachute money although ask leeds fans that money dont buy success). If we dont go up then im afraid then we will be stuck in the lower leagues for a long time to come because of money. Ncfc is  Delialalas plaything and no-one else is allowed to play with it, so if a takeover bid was received (and there is nothing to suggest that one hasnt been made already) then we wont be relinquished out of HER control. The manchester city game made us a laughing stock, and even though we were thrusted into the media limelight IT WAS FOR THE WRONG REASONS.

Rant over

[/quote]

I couldnt agree with you more. I recently read that Aston Villa had sold 16000 season tickets so far and are expected to sell 23000, which would be a record!!! I mean bloody hell its the biggest club in Britains second city and ive no doubt we could do that even in the championship. We must shrug off this LITTLE CLUB tag and with the board in charge its not going to happen {unless they read this board and see that there are people who are fed up with us plodding along}. Im actually starting o think they might of got the message what with the current transfer speculation but im hoping its not to late because we''ve had this reputation since Delia and co took charge and its going to take alot to shrug off.

PS...From your previous posts i got impression you wanted to get behind the team to the full? Be prepared for some sarcastic and silly replies because god forbid if anyone who supports city and wants the best for them but just cant see it happening under this board really should be careful about what they say on here.

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Arthur, i am fully behind the team like u and everybody on here. Its just me and you want to do something about it (and a select few others). If next season goes well then ok but if it goes down the pan then i suggest something HAS to be done.

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Also why is it that most Norwich fans seem to be happy and content with the current situation? WE CANT EVEN SIGN A PLAYER THAT WANTS TO COME TO NORWICH [:@]. How pathetic are we exactly? I bet if any decent ipswich players that are still playing stated they wanted to return (cant for the life of me imagine why!) then jim magilton would swoop in asap. Cureton still has a lot to offer us so we should be knocking on colly whos door. WAKE UP NORWICH

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Personaly I hate the "rumour" that people refer to the club as "little".

I have not seen anyone on here state that our club is little - nor have I seen anyone from the club suggest that it is so in any sort of press/media release.

I do remember a sarcastical comment by Delia suggesting that the country outside of our fan base thinks that we are a little club because most people you will meet could not tell you where Norwich is. Believe me I spent 6 years in the south east and very very few people down there could point to it on a map or even name which part of the country it was in. They could all point to Coventry, Birmingham, Newcastle etc.

So I think this comment has been totaly blown out of proportion. It is a "myth" in its own right that riles up people who search for "slurs" against their own club.

I don''t believe the club is small, nor do I believe it is massive - as I have stated in numerous previous posts it is a medium to big club. It is not massive because it does not have the large buisiness assets that the likes of Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea have. Remember even Chelsea was surviving in the premiership prior to Abramovic because of the buisiness side being built by old Ken.

Man U is the model everyone aims for. Why do you think it is that rumours have it that Real Madrid made back the Beckham transfer money in less than a month on shirt sales alone? Its called marketing. You have to be a successful club to get good sky coverage. You get that and you increase your support at home and abroad. Not playing in european competitions does not help.

Thats the real problem here. In the global world of football Norwich is still a reletively "local" club in the sence of knowledge of its exhistance outside of Britain. The premiership shot us back into the light for a short time but relegation ment that any progress on that front would be lost.

 

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[quote user="Canary_teen"]Also why is it that most Norwich fans seem to be happy and content with the current situation? WE CANT EVEN SIGN A PLAYER THAT WANTS TO COME TO NORWICH [:@]. How pathetic are we exactly? I bet if any decent ipswich players that are still playing stated they wanted to return (cant for the life of me imagine why!) then jim magilton would swoop in asap. Cureton still has a lot to offer us so we should be knocking on colly whos door. WAKE UP NORWICH[/quote]

Make your mind up. You warn us we could be the next scarborough on another thread.

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With all due respect we are classed as little because we have no financial bargaining power irrespective of the ticket sales etc.  Even our gates and our crowd capacity will not allow us to  pay the wages that are demanded by top class players.  The present board do not have the collateral or the will to inject large sums of their own personal wealth, into a club that has an underground of discontent and continuous wrangling among it''s supporters, and who can blame them?  We are at best £20+ million in debt and if I had a £100 million even as a supporter, I would be loathe to put  it into the club as it exists even though I am a passionate fan.  The best thing for us is to grow slowly and surely and become great by virtue of the NCFC establishment and it''s ability to allow it''s roots to grow and support it, while enjoying the efforts made by the various teams, as they will emerge at some time successfully into the Prem. Along with modern infrastructure and a vibrant  thoughtfully developed facillities that will make it more desirable for the young players that we will have to attract. OTBC!!!

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The last figure i saw for Norfolks population was 830,000 and if you include the Waveney part of Suffolk which is largely yellow and green (a quote from an Ipswich fan i know-"we don`t class Lowestoft as part of Suffolk"!) you are talking 1 million people with no competition from other clubs or major sports. To be honest its amazing how many City fans are unaware of this fact.

I`m not trying to argue with you by the way, just trying to bring the info up to date.

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[quote user="Konstantin Pobedonostsev"]

If we broke some legs, stacked up the red cards, threw coins at opposition supporters and had fans screaming intolerable abuse at everything that moves rather than wearing tutus and brightly coloured wigs things would change ... but at that cost.

[/quote]Is that what you want KP?

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What I think is if we are in the Premiership, we will be the little club compare with Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool or MU. I don''t that''s any problem if they call us "little club" but we have the ability to beat the BIG TEAM...

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[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

The last figure i saw for Norfolks population was 830,000 and if you include the Waveney part of Suffolk which is largely yellow and green (a quote from an Ipswich fan i know-"we don`t class Lowestoft as part of Suffolk"!) you are talking 1 million people with no competition from other clubs or major sports. To be honest its amazing how many City fans are unaware of this fact.

I`m not trying to argue with you by the way, just trying to bring the info up to date.

[/quote]

Mr Carrow, I read a lot of posts on here about our catchment area and I wonder if they''re maybe a little misleading in our current situation. It''s all very well having 1 million people in your catchment area but you can''t assume that all of those people want to come and watch your club. My calculations are more than a little unscientific but I have got work to do!

First you''ve got to take away the people who have no interest whatsoever in football, let alone NCFC. Let''s say that leaves us with 500,000. Then you need to take away the fans of other clubs, some of them will have moved to Norfolk from other parts of the country and some of them are the glory hunters who although born in our fine county choose to "support" a team they have no ties to. A quick scan round my office (pretty unscientific again I know but it''s the best I can do at the moment) shows that about 40% of the football fans there support NCFC. That leaves us with 200,000 ''fans'' of NCFC.

Out of those 200,000 fans a decent proportion of them won''t go to games. Perhaps they prefer to listen to the games on the radio, or they''re very young and can''t persuade Mum or Dad to take them or they''re very old and can no longer make it. A significant proportion of those fans simply won''t be able to afford tickets on anything like a regular basis. Football gets more and more expensive by the year and not everybody can keep up, I think it was Delia herself who commented on the average age of football fans these days. Many young people struggling to get on the property ladder with a young family can''t afford to go to games anymore, I know several people who are in just that position.

I reckon that leaves us with between 100,000 and 125,000 fans. I don''t know how many people have a customer no. at NCFC (I''m sure somebody can find out though) but I wouldn''t be surprised if it''s somewhere around that figure. It''s a large amount of people of that there can be no doubt, but it''s nowhere near as impressive as 1million.

For me, the problem we have is that the catchment area can only really be made to work for us if we''re in The Premiership because that''s when you''ll attract bigger crowds. If we built a larger stadium right now on the basis of us having a large catchment area, what happens if we don''t go up this season? If we were an established Premiership club we could fill a 35,000 stadium regularly IMO, but until that happens what''s the point?

We messed up our last chance to become established in The Premiership and the board have to take a large proportion of the blame for that. However, there are signs that they may have learned their lesson as far as I can see and if we can get promotion once more that will be the time to talk catchment and the size of our club.

P.S. In answer to the original posters question, I don''t think we are a small club. We''re probably best described as a medium sized club, based on trophies won, number of years in the top division, crowd size etc.

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"Little Norwich" is a state of mind and greatly reflects much of the thinking on here. I''m becoming sadly aware of why we have become what we are....and nothing will change in the short term. We need the flock mentality to move on to another trendy pastime (I suggest dressmaking) and allow the real football people without middle class incomes back in. You know the type...pensioners, schoolkids, working family men/women etc.etc.

I also suggest we drop down a league or two so that we can become a "big fish in a small pond"....and so on subsequent promotion may lose that embarrassing inferiority complex about how insignificant we are comapred to the likes of Chelsea. Who else remembers "Delia''s big day out" at Stamford Bridge last season? Cringeworthy in the extreme and the day my patience died. But hang on.......didn''t many of you enjoy the spectacle and hadn''t realised Chelsea weren''t trying?

"Little Norwich" pleases little minds and it spreads from milady upstairs down to many on this forum.

 

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I have to say I live in the South-East and I don''t agree with that, we are quite a well respected club by others are fan base is beginning to be recognised and most half intelligent people know Norwich is in East Anglia its on the national weather map!. You have to also realise that the East of England is now the fastest growing part of the country and becoming one of the wealthiest that has only occurred over the last 15 years or so it, causing our potential to grow. It takes a while for perception to catch up with reality.

Of course we are a small club compared with the top four and several others with national fan bases or based in big cities(Villa, Spurs, Newcastle, Leeds) but aside from those we are certainly one of the larger clubs around. If we got established in the Premiership we could move on another level there is Cambridgeshire without a league club and given the correct marketing and a successful side we could win over a share of that area (much like Charlton have attempted to do in Kent).

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I remember watching one of those season-by-season football history series on the BBC a few years back (Match of the 70''s, Match of the 80''s, Match of the 90''s), and tuned in with interest to the 92/93 and 93/94 seasons. They interviewed Jeremy Goss and he couldn''t stop referring to "little old Norwich" (I''m pretty sure those were his exact words!)... but then again, I suppose we were competing with the likes of Bayern Munich and Inter back then... and I don''t think anyone could argue that we''re anything other than minnows on the European stage... And before anyone slates me for that, I don''t think anyone other than an ardent fan would refer to Wolves et al as being anything different at that level.

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I am getting fed up with all this are we a big club or not nonsence.  What the hell does it matter whether people regard themselves as members of a big or small organisation/club.

What really matters is are we a solvent club who repeatedly play good football and win games pretty or ugly, and have players who are prepared to fight tooth and nail for NCFC and are prepared to keep doing it on a regular basis.  If this is not the case; big or little matters not one jot, but being able to pay our way and attract the best available is what matters.  We are where we are because of what we are, what ever we may aspire to,and it''s time we got real and take our heads out of cloud cuckoo land.  We must allow the team/club  etc to get us where we should be as quick and as best we can.  We may all have our ideas as to who does what wrongly or efficiently, but none of us has the knowledge of the actual facts within our organisation to work out what is really possible in real terms. 

So why don''t we all stop this stupid speculation and wishfull gazing ino some mythical crystal ball.  OTBC!!!

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Hear hear Beelsie

I don''t know what started this obsession with "little Norwich" but it''s becoming tiring.  Yes we are no Man U, but neither are we non-league.  You hit the nail on the head, let''s just get back to wanting great football, with players with the right attitude and a board who have the best interests of the whole club at heart (and do the best in their power on behalf of the supporters). 

I am alarmed at Cluck''s perception of how the football world in general see us.  Those outside East Anglia that I know hold us in high regard and do indeed refer to Munich, our colours, friendly place to visit, yes, Delia (sorry Cluck) - and the fact we are renowned for playing fair football. What''s so bad about any of that? 

 

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of course it matters if we are seen as a little or big club, it definately matters in signing quality players, we seem to be missing out all to regularly.

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I would like to see some examples of what you see as people seeing Norwich being a "little club".

The main ones I can think of only implicate those that like to blame others for implying it. This includes all of the following comments or similar:

"Why would a player like Sharp want to come to this club when there are better clubs in this league?"

"This club is only going one way and thats down!"

"This clubs fans are just "yes" people who believe everything the board says."

"This club is not going to be in the premiership for years."

"Under the management and board we have this club will never be big."

You see by signing up to things like the board are useless and unless there are changes we won''t progress and remain a "struggling" club you are suggesting that we are unable to compete at this level which implies we are currently a small club in the pecking order of this division.

People like Cluck, Smudge and Arthur are constantly making these contradictions. It is not people like myself who refuse to suggest that we are a "big" club currently that are suggesting that we are small - its those that are suggesting that everything about the club is rubbish!

I have said this time and time again, in this league we have more than the potential to be a major force, if we were to get promoted I believe that with backing we could be at least a regular mid table prem team. And the reality is that is not an achievement that far beyond where we are now.

As for my statement about the south east, it obviously was a statement about my experience and in some ways only knowing where Norwich is because of weather reports kind of sums it up. Knowledge has indeed increased since our premiership exposure but you would expect it to.

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Agreed.

But imagine they did their research - who do you think would they read as thinking the club is currently smaller than it is? Those that are "supposedly" implying that we are not a big club by saying we are no Man U (which hopefully the player and player''s agent will spot) or those saying that the club is badly run and deserves to be in League 1 and are "lucky" to win any games?

If there is any damage being done to this club the most obviouse cause are the negative, un-supportive slanderous statements bandied about by so called fans not only on here but out there in the wider world.

 

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[quote user="chicken"]

Agreed.

But imagine they did their research - who do you think would they read as thinking the club is currently smaller than it is? Those that are "supposedly" implying that we are not a big club by saying we are no Man U (which hopefully the player and player''s agent will spot) or those saying that the club is badly run and deserves to be in League 1 and are "lucky" to win any games?

If there is any damage being done to this club the most obviouse cause are the negative, un-supportive slanderous statements bandied about by so called fans not only on here but out there in the wider world.

 

[/quote]

You really must move in "little" circles if you have no knowledge of how others (including ambitious signings) see us 2007 style.  Gone is the "terrier" image we once had to be replaced by that of a manicured poodle...The club is little more than Delia''s lap dog these and the fawning apologist "spectators" are just perpetuating the farce by petting it.

You deserve each other.......

 

 

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You seem to miss the point!

As for Norwich being "terrier" like - would like to know where it came from. This club has always been a football first club so far as I can remember which goes back to around 1990. Sure that may well mean prior to that we may have played more Bolton style football but all I am saying is that for around 17 years the last thing we have been known for is being "terrier" like.

I would have agreed with you should you have suggested that our footballing reputation has suffered a blow but then I think that the uneasyness at the club is probably more of a put off to a player than that.

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whilst we have the "little" tag we will nevr achieve anything, it just holds us back...

to reach the top we have to aspire to be the best.... the 1st step is to tell ourselves we are.

jas :)

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