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InLambertWeTrust!

LITTLE NORWICH

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Ricky Knight,  I can see where you,re coming from, but quite honestly, many are deluding themselves, when they think that to create from our present position the delusion that you seek for the following reasons:- as I stated before we are because of what we are.  I''m sorry to be brutal but that is fact.We really cannot alter other teams or players perception of NCFC.

Only when we go out to play, if they fear us as a team first, and secondly they are impressed with our location and the facilities in which we are placed.

As a unit when viewing Carrow Road and Colney, yes but I’m afraid these are only the first steps on the ladder. For you or I or any fan to make false proclamations about how we perceive ourselves to be while paying our players peanuts from a position of halfway down the league and a record of leaking the most goals against in the league. It’s shallow and It’s known as spin Ricky. It’s no good proclaiming to be the best garage mechanic in the motor industry if we can’t fix our own cars. We are unlikely yet to be as attractive a prospect to a footballer as Arsenal, Chelsea or Man- Utd and Liverpool, either geographically or in football terms and neither can we consistently attract the sort of fan base of support needed to produce enough money at the turnstiles. We need to house 40.000 regular fans to produce enough revenue for financial security, (despite the claims made by many on these boards), and the size of the catchment area. Yes Ricky! we have a huge area to draw from but the infrastructure is not encouraging people movement. Don’t get me wrong, here in Norfolk is my home and I would not want to be anywhere else, and to me my team is the best and I will continue my support whatever the rest of the country might say. Yes we did have our moment of success but we weren’t equipped financially to maintain and build on the short-lived success.  The management of the parachute payments and the players bought did not make the grade or in my opinion the effort.

We as the NCFC family have our off-spring in NCFC but it is rubbish to proclaim that it is of academic quality at our present level and foolishly pretend that we are candidates for an honours degree. OTBC!!!!

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  1. Chicken!! I see it as a as a little club because it has deep pockets and short arms. With an added problem of over£20 million debt, never mind that its manageable, as many say.  We are not financially viable therefore we are not able to pay the wages needed from our gate receipts.  That is why I regard us as a little club, ie we have no financial clout.  So we will always,( unless we have a multi millionaire benifactor who want''s to indulge in fantacy) be picking up the poorer performers or the ones who had potential and are looking to restart their career.  If we are lucky we may make it, and I for one live in hopes.

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What makes a BIG club?

A lot of people on here seem to suggest catchment area, in my oppinion it isn''t about that, it''s just about money.

Chelsea were a medium to big premiership side, now they have the russian millions they''re a HUGE club but hey they''re SW6 not NR1

West Ham, a team I think maybe comparable to Norwich in terms of size, how many millions are they spending on players.

Norwich will allways be a big championship club and a small premiership club (I hope).  We are stuck out at the end of no motorway 3 hours from London and a non Ryanair airport on a bad day, if you were a top African/Sth American/European player where would you want to play. 

We have allways been a small club and that''s why I love Norwich....  Getting promoted, getting relagated, having dutch players help Italian teams beat us, loads of years in the old first division drawing every week.  If we were Man Utd or Chelsea I''d probably go and watch Golf or my second team Charlton!! who we will see at CR next season. I don''t care who we beat, I just want to beat them and our year in the premiership was just so depressing, would be nice to see the yellow and green on MOTD but only if they win....ONBC

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[quote user="chicken"]

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.

[/quote]

The "terrier" mentality began in earnest when Ron Saunders arrived and pulled the club up by it''s boot straps. Prior to that we had accepted our "limitations" as a purely selling club...but happily much of that changed when the club found it''s teeth and such players as Paddon, Neighbour, Livermore, Anderson et al came to Norfolk.

Our emerging style was far from Bolton and along with West Ham we were admired for our style of play and the never say die attitude of the quality players we had out on the pitch. If you only go back to 1990 you will have missed much of the rise at the club...and experienced instead it''s gradual demise to what we have today....a nobody outfit little better than any other "also ran" in the lower leagues. It is sad and was totally avoidable...but our inept board saw fit to look the other way in the name of prudence....and fiddled while Rome burned.

Had they concentrated on the team rather than the kitchens...we might well have become one of the Premiership''s regulars today...but as it is we are mere "poodles" in the lap of a faded celebrity. Wonderful............

 

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It depends on who gives us the tag - if its the fans then it will hold us back, if its other clubs then it shouldn''t.

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[quote user="xymox"]

What makes a BIG club?

A lot of people on here seem to suggest catchment area, in my oppinion it isn''t about that, it''s just about money.

Chelsea were a medium to big premiership side, now they have the russian millions they''re a HUGE club but hey they''re SW6 not NR1

West Ham, a team I think maybe comparable to Norwich in terms of size, how many millions are they spending on players.

Norwich will allways be a big championship club and a small premiership club (I hope).  We are stuck out at the end of no motorway 3 hours from London and a non Ryanair airport on a bad day, if you were a top African/Sth American/European player where would you want to play. 

We have allways been a small club and that''s why I love Norwich....  Getting promoted, getting relagated, having dutch players help Italian teams beat us, loads of years in the old first division drawing every week.  If we were Man Utd or Chelsea I''d probably go and watch Golf or my second team Charlton!! who we will see at CR next season. I don''t care who we beat, I just want to beat them and our year in the premiership was just so depressing, would be nice to see the yellow and green on MOTD but only if they win....ONBC

[/quote]

I don''t think this is 100% true.

I think its a mixture. Football is about a sustainable buisiness model supporting a local team now. That means the team has to survive on the funds the buisiness behind the club can raise.

Now if a millionaire comes in and invests major money - this can only ever be a short lived thing in reletive terms. And even then it is no decided matter. Chelsea''s spent large last summer and have little to show for it.

Then you have Wigan which is falsley in its lofty position. To the point that now their owner has departed along with the reletively successful and shrewed manager I would put them down as one of the relegation favourites. It is possible with time and money to turn a club around quickly but the end result is only ever going to be good if when the funder leaves the club is in a position to continue without difficulty.

Man U and Arsenal are the best examples of that. They have had years of success and built buisiness around it. Firms want to sponser them, they have a world wide market for shirts and memorabilia and have household names in their teams.

Norwich are far from that at the moment but can achieve that  - any club can but its not something that can be achieved over night.

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[quote user="Cluck "][quote user="chicken"]

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.

[/quote]

The "terrier" mentality began in earnest when Ron Saunders arrived and pulled the club up by it''s boot straps. Prior to that we had accepted our "limitations" as a purely selling club...but happily much of that changed when the club found it''s teeth and such players as Paddon, Neighbour, Livermore, Anderson et al came to Norfolk.

Our emerging style was far from Bolton and along with West Ham we were admired for our style of play and the never say die attitude of the quality players we had out on the pitch. If you only go back to 1990 you will have missed much of the rise at the club...and experienced instead it''s gradual demise to what we have today....a nobody outfit little better than any other "also ran" in the lower leagues. It is sad and was totally avoidable...but our inept board saw fit to look the other way in the name of prudence....and fiddled while Rome burned.

Had they concentrated on the team rather than the kitchens...we might well have become one of the Premiership''s regulars today...but as it is we are mere "poodles" in the lap of a faded celebrity. Wonderful............

 

[/quote]

I think that you will find that Chase was the one who didn''t spend any time on the kitchens and look what happened there - £20million in 1993 was a hell of a lot more than now. We were in/getting over a recession!

After Chase left - and as you and others have been at pains to point out, others took the helm and tried to find outside funding and buisiness ideas that could bring the club more money from the outside with which to improve the club. Again I will stress that at this time people with lots of money were thin on the ground and more than cautious about investing money. Look at how the amount of people owning above a million has increased since then and you will understand.

Delia was not nessisarily the Knight in shining armour that came to rescue the holy grail but she did answer the cry of help/support from the other board members back then when money was needed to patch up holes.

The fact is when Delia and Michael arrived what can you name that the club had that brought money in from outside of football into our club? There was very little.

Those kitchens you talk of when taken literally earn the club millions a year - take that away and you are staring and Chase mk2 and relegation from this league rather than the prem.

As for the team on the pitch I can agree to a certain extent. We need a midfielder with bite who can consistantly "bully" in games and help protect the back four especially when Safri is out.

A leading centreback - we need to get the defence back to the time when we were one of the toughest/meanest teams to score against.

I don''t think we are a hundred miles off that but whether the funding is there to do it we shall have to wait and see.

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I think what this "little club" mentality boils down to is what realistic aspirations a club can have. A Crewe fan talking about one day becoming an established Prem club is obviously living in cloud cuckoo land, but the fact is Norwich City have the potential to be one of the best supported clubs in the country therefore such an aspiration is realistic. Beelsie, you have mentioned the 40,000 figure before but the truth is hardly any clubs in the country achieve regular crowds of that number so why apply that figure to us? Aston Villa would obviously be regarded as a bigger club yet we-a division lower with a poor team- have around the same number of season-ticket holders.

If you believe your club has the potential to compete in the top league you want to see those in charge showing the drive and ambition to achieve that-something which i think is totally lacking at NCFC at the moment and one of my main areas of criticism.

 

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Mr Carrow! yes I have mentioned 40.000 fans required many times before.  It''s because I have the aspiration for NCFC to be self supporting with the gate receipts paying the wages required by the more skilled player required to keep us in the Prem once we have reached it.  Football is often classified as a business therefore IMHO we want the earnings at the gates to fund the football.  I agree that many opposing clubs in our two top leagues do not have gates of 40000 and they struggle to survive in a business like way, unless of course they have a rich benefactor pulling the strings and playing the power game.  MC I want NCFC to be better than that, where there is no benefactor and footballers earn their money from the gate receipts, and they can be hired and fired in the same way that others in business can be.  The fans going through the gates know that the club will be solvent as long as they keep coming and they know that the club can set it''s budget and keep to it.  As it is this club does not generate enough to pay the wages of our meagre staff.  So yes! I would like to see a stadium that can hold 40000 and I and all the fans would like to see it filled.  With that potential capacity it would be a marketable size if indeed there was out there a potential buyer.  This situation would allow the fans to have a voice of strength when the possible sale came up and could use that strength to say no, and also know that their voices would be listened to.  It is by my methods that the club can attain Prem status and rise to the top paying its way and attracting new players from its proven financial strength, rather than the inherent financial weakness that pervades our shoe string existence.  My ideals are long term rather than short term 3-4 years to reach our goal, I''m proud of our club now whatever it does, but I''m certain that if we reach the staus that I have outlined, I''d be even more so.OTBC!!!

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Ok Beelsie, i see where you are coming from and i largely agree with you. I think some of the posts on this thread are trying to point out that in order to get to the point where we fulfill our potential in terms of support (i think 35-40,000 is realistic) we have to lose the "little Norwich" mentality which pervades the club. I honestly think that those people who are aware of the clubs potential are in a minority and this needs to change.

Unfortunately the only way i can see us being in a position to expand the stadium to the neccessary size is by investing in the team to the point where we can rake in the Premiership millions again- and we are a long way off that at the moment.

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Yes! Mr Carrow it is obvious that we have, along with others, common ground.  The injection of cash and the attraction of better players on wages and contracts that will keep them happy to come to NCFC. (Money is their motivation)  ( not NCFC) It needs IMHO 6 more players of investment value about £10.00000 + wages per annum, ITRO £15,000 to about £20,000 per week on all players I can''t be bothered to work that lot out.  Mind you, these are only journey-men players to get us into the Prem and perhaps keep us in a position to establish ourselves until we recover from the financial effort etc of becoming a club with ambitions for the big time.  I can convince myself of whats necessary, the biggest job however is to ask and convince those (the board) who have responsibility for our finances and investment; to be brave, or foolish enough to take the chance, and along with that guarantee our survival if things go pear shaped. ie. LEEDS, IPSWICH,and others who shall be nameless. This (players first idea) may succeed or lead to disastrous circumstances.  My way, as in my reply to your previous query which is the longer term solution will be a sure way to get premiership, again IMHO. OTBC!!!

Best wishes.

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[quote user="Canary_teen"]As long as you keep replyin the count is going up! So what do u think about little Norwich then smudgey?[/quote]

Take a trawl through some old posts CANARY_TEEN...  I think that you will find my stance on this issue pretty clear....  Many of the posts on this thread are from highlight issues that I have raised elsewhere about the huge catchment area.

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