Myth about investment

[nutty nigel 7,509]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

Have a look at your previous reply if you want to see who brought the level of debate down. God knows why you seemed to take offence at being called "moderate" anyway-i would say me and Mystic are moderate compared to Cluck and Smudger.

The thing is Nutty i think that in a year, two years, or five years time if we are still spiralling downwards under the current incumbants you will still be clinging to whatever the positive spin of the time is in order to deflect attention from where the buck ultimately has to stop. You seem to put alot more weight on words and personalities, i try to concentrate on facts, action and consequences. What exactly is the Turner`s great plan for success? Do you know? If not, how can you be impressed by it?

As far as the business aspect goes, as i have said before, the club have been very successful-£12million profit in three years. But a football club isn`t a normal business is it? Well i think that those at the top think that it is. Of course they are now starting to get a bit shaky as they realise that their de-investment of the football team will ultimately lead to declining income in most of the off-pitch stuff they have been so happy to pump money into-catering, merchandise, ticket sales etc. Just a shame that they didn`t realise all this when all that money went to their heads three years ago. And a shame that so many people couldn`t think for themselves and blindly backed whatever they did.

They took a massive gamble and with large short-term debts still to be paid off it could end in disaster. And the really sad thing is it wasn`t even a gamble taken where it might have made a real difference-on the pitch.

[/quote]

No I''m not impressed by any great plan for success because I don''t know of one. And I never suggested I did. I was just pointing out that the board was different now, and I asked you if you would have invested in the club and become a supportive part of the present board. So I''ll ask it again.. would you? and if not why not? Now the reason I asked is because I seriously don’t understand why the Turners got involved if they are just going to support the present policies. I keep hearing about what clever people they are and they seem to be held in quite high regard by some of the boards critics.

I do put a lot of weight on words and personalities and I also try to be fair and objective. You see the thing about posting on message boards is that as events move on posters move with them and adopt positions that suit them at the time. Real life isn’t like that and decisions have to be made in advance of events. It goes something like this: “We want Worthy out because he wastes money on useless journeymen like Etuhu instead of playing the youngsters like Rossi Jarvis. Our wage bill is 9m and it’s a disgrace. How do the board sanction those fees and wages on other clubs rejects.” Then fast forward to today and you get something like “Our board don’t give the managers enough money to be competitive in the transfer market, we lose players like Etuhu for less than they are worth because of stupid clauses Doomcaster allows in their contracts and then we have to play youngsters like Rossi Jarvis who is not good enough”

I felt the board should have backed Worthington in the summer of 2004 and made a real effort to get Crouch or Ashton here. But worse still was in the summer of 2006 when all we got was Lee Croft. Worthy went public against the board about Hulse and Howard and a few of us at the time were posting about it on here but were getting shouted down because the only agenda seemed to be getting Worthington sacked. Of course 10 games into that season he was sacked as performances and results proved he should be, but I still wonder what if he had been given the target man he wanted. Even now the consensus of opinion is that they hung on to a failing manager for too long rather than they didn’t back him with enough funds to invest in the team.

So you see I have been critical of the board for as long as you have Mr. Carrow. We both know the board have made mistakes and they are surely in the last chance saloon with the new manager appointment. It will be this board making that appointment but we already know the Turners are having a big say this time. So already it’s different. However strongly anybody feels it will still be the current board who appoint the next manager. Nothing can be done about that unless we don’t appoint the manager until the board are hounded out which will be a long time as even at 2-0 last night fans were singing “Delias barmy army”! They need to get the right man and then back him to get us out of this mess. If they get the wrong man or fail to support the right man then the way things are going this season relegation is a real possibility. Nobody should ever assume we would bounce straight back. We only have to finish above three teams to avoid relegation but we have to finish above 22 to get promoted.

I am just interested to know if you and others see the Turners involvement as part of the problem or part of the solution.

 

[gazzathegreat 0]

Nutty, I am unsure as to my position on the fence, moderate, extreme or whatever, probably in my case depends on time of month lol.

The Turners - from all I know about them they don''t suffer fools gladly, were invited onto the board and invested a small sum (depending on how you look at it) to achieve that aim.

So far they have started looking at the day to day running of the club and are monitoring the progress of the CE. I would say that is part of a solution, although if they continue to sit behind the policies of the past (you know the mantra) then they will be labelled part of the problem.

It''s very difficult for us to seperate the club into neat segments, the board, the management, players and fans. They should all be one, quite clearly they are not and the most important thing at present is to appoint someone in who will help us become a united club again. The board have made some shocking mistakes and oversights, the ones you mention re Crouch (agreed). I am not sure if Worthy had been given the funds he would have had more success, but he was the manager and should have been given the chance. Still, he''s gone now and we can''t turn the clock back, we just have to learn from all this and appoint a credible manager (who has experience) who can mend the fences and get the players playing again. They really can''t be as bad as they are showing to be right now, can they?

Hindsight is of course a wonderful thing and if only we had known that Etuhu was holding the midfield together, yes we miss him now, but he wasn''t the answer, had the technique but not strength of character. Wrong player with wrong manager. Rossi Jarvis and the other academy youngsters are not going to shine in the current atmosphere. I feel for them all, their chances are probably gone - the board gave up on the academy years ago when the lure of land became too great....but that''s another post entirely.

[Mr.Carrow 376]

The only way i would consider joining the board Nutty would be if i believed my influence could radically change the priorities and ethos which have brought about the downward spiral we are currently cought up in, or as a front to examine the detail of the club`s position for the benefit of someone wanting to launch a takeover. I don`t think there is a shred of evidence that the Turners represent either of these approaches (indeed, at the AGM they stated that they were "brought in to do a specific job") therefore i would say it`s simply more of the same.

To put it simply the board see spending money on the pitch as a risk not worth taking, but making big profits on the clubs best players and pumping the money into fixed assets as sound business practise. From a business perspective (where the Turners are coming from) this makes perfect sense, but from a football perspective it is suicidal. We saw what happened with this philosophy under Chase and that the board have been as stupid as to follow the same blueprint of failure beggars belief. Until this wrong-headed approach is changed then nothing will fundamentally change- and the only way it will change is if the supporters en-masse demand it.

Momentum is such a massive force in football and the board started a negative momentum the moment they decided against signing Crouch or Ashton at the start of the Prem season and quickened it`s pace substantially with our pitiful "efforts" at strengthening when we came back down. These negatives then breed and feed other negatives until you see fan unrest, dressing room ructions; Charlton "I thought i was joining an ambitious club", Drury "To be honest, our squad is ridiculously small", Huckerby "You have to question the ambition of the club", "this is the worst squad since i came here". Safri and Etuhu were slated for apparent lack of effort but then can you seriously be suprised that quality players look less than 100% up for it, when they are representing a club clearly content to drift downwards whilst declaring huge profits? The people questioning the board have been labelled "negatives", but who planted the real seeds of negativaty at the club?

The great irony is that the only way the board can now gain a positive momentum is by forgetting all that budgeting, penny-pinching and putting the latest infrastructure project first and blowing a serious amount (which it is unlikely they have) on a proven manager and backing him with millions in the transfer market. In other words: the net result of their miserliness is actually HAVING to spend loads of money on the pitch to prevent disaster. All in all it adds up to a fine lesson in false economy. The board are the ones who have got it wrong Nutty, end of story. I have never written a "sack the board" type statement in one of my posts but i would say "CHANGE or GO" sums up my approach. Can any passionate Norwich City fan still disagree with that??

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Gazza - I think 2m is a lot of money. We all get carried away with the big money in football these days. Delia and MWJ only invested 1m in 1996 when they were first invited onto the board. You have to believe that succesful business people would do a lot of research before risking 2m. Anyway, they are there now and the board is different from before. I asked the question if they were now part of the problem or part of the solution because I don''t know myself. I totally agree with you that they will become part of the problem if they hide sit behind (not sure about continue to?) the policies of the past. The very fact that they are being active in monitoring the running of the club and the performance of the CE suggests to me that change could be in the air but unfortunately, as with most things in life that we don''t have any control over, we have to wait and see.

It''s been a while since the club has had that togetherness, hasn''t it? I remember posting about it last year and getting loads of stick on here. Of course we can''t turn the clock back to find out if Worthy would have been suceesfull if he had been properly backed by the board anymore than we can turn the clock back to change the board or their decisions. I agree that the players really aren''t as bad as they are showing right now but the team is. Lets hope the next manager can make a better team out of the players.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the point I was trying to make was as fans on a messageboard we can move on to whatever the current situation is. Another one I have noticed just lately is how another centreback is never mentioned anymore and everyone posts like they have been asking for midfielders all this time. I bet I do it too and I have changed my mind through listening to other posters in the past. But thats what fans can do where as the people who make the decisions for real only get one go each time.

You are right about the academy being for another post. But I would just say that I can''t believe we ruined youngsters by not giving them enough chances. If they were good enough they would be playing just like if we had been wrong to let them go they would be coming back to haunt us from a higher level.

 

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Mr Carrow, add to your player quotes these from Worthy :-
“We have to be proactive rather than reactive. We signed Dean Ashton in January instead of pre-season and I think the lesson should have been learned from that."
"Hulse, who has moved from Leeds to Sheffield United for £2.1m, was Plan A - Howard, who has left Leeds for Derby for £1m, was Plan B. There is not a lot of plan C, D, E, F, G, H from the point of view of the quality that we need to come into this football club and take us forward. I can go and sign five six-foot three strikers tomorrow for £100,000 apiece - they won''t do the job that we want because they are not good enough, simple as that, and if you want to move forward then you need good players within the club."

It''s easy for me to find these quotes because I was posting them on the messageboard last year but I didn''t get a lot of support at that time because all the so called passionate fans were busy on a campaign to remove the manager. I guess Chris Brown was one of those 6''3" strikers Worthy was talking about. Maybe you should add the reported 600,000 payoff to Worthington to the list off money wasted that could have been spent on the team.

As you can see I have been posting that the board have got it wrong for as long as you have.

I''m hoping that the Turners involvement in the running of the club will result in the changes you want to see. Being passionate is not a quality exclusive to protesters or boycotters though. Believe it or not there are still passionate fans going to games too.

 

 

[BBFF 0]

[quote user="nutty nigel"][quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

Have a look at your previous reply if you want to see who brought the level of debate down. God knows why you seemed to take offence at being called "moderate" anyway-i would say me and Mystic are moderate compared to Cluck and Smudger.

The thing is Nutty i think that in a year, two years, or five years time if we are still spiralling downwards under the current incumbants you will still be clinging to whatever the positive spin of the time is in order to deflect attention from where the buck ultimately has to stop. You seem to put alot more weight on words and personalities, i try to concentrate on facts, action and consequences. What exactly is the Turner`s great plan for success? Do you know? If not, how can you be impressed by it?

As far as the business aspect goes, as i have said before, the club have been very successful-£12million profit in three years. But a football club isn`t a normal business is it? Well i think that those at the top think that it is. Of course they are now starting to get a bit shaky as they realise that their de-investment of the football team will ultimately lead to declining income in most of the off-pitch stuff they have been so happy to pump money into-catering, merchandise, ticket sales etc. Just a shame that they didn`t realise all this when all that money went to their heads three years ago. And a shame that so many people couldn`t think for themselves and blindly backed whatever they did.

They took a massive gamble and with large short-term debts still to be paid off it could end in disaster. And the really sad thing is it wasn`t even a gamble taken where it might have made a real difference-on the pitch.

[/quote]

No I''m not impressed by any great plan for success because I don''t know of one. And I never suggested I did. I was just pointing out that the board was different now, and I asked you if you would have invested in the club and become a supportive part of the present board. So I''ll ask it again.. would you? and if not why not? Now the reason I asked is because I seriously don’t understand why the Turners got involved if they are just going to support the present policies. I keep hearing about what clever people they are and they seem to be held in quite high regard by some of the boards critics.

I do put a lot of weight on words and personalities and I also try to be fair and objective. You see the thing about posting on message boards is that as events move on posters move with them and adopt positions that suit them at the time. Real life isn’t like that and decisions have to be made in advance of events. It goes something like this: “We want Worthy out because he wastes money on useless journeymen like Etuhu instead of playing the youngsters like Rossi Jarvis. Our wage bill is 9m and it’s a disgrace. How do the board sanction those fees and wages on other clubs rejects.” Then fast forward to today and you get something like “Our board don’t give the managers enough money to be competitive in the transfer market, we lose players like Etuhu for less than they are worth because of stupid clauses Doomcaster allows in their contracts and then we have to play youngsters like Rossi Jarvis who is not good enough”

I felt the board should have backed Worthington in the summer of 2004 and made a real effort to get Crouch or Ashton here. But worse still was in the summer of 2006 when all we got was Lee Croft. Worthy went public against the board about Hulse and Howard and a few of us at the time were posting about it on here but were getting shouted down because the only agenda seemed to be getting Worthington sacked. Of course 10 games into that season he was sacked as performances and results proved he should be, but I still wonder what if he had been given the target man he wanted. Even now the consensus of opinion is that they hung on to a failing manager for too long rather than they didn’t back him with enough funds to invest in the team.

So you see I have been critical of the board for as long as you have Mr. Carrow. We both know the board have made mistakes and they are surely in the last chance saloon with the new manager appointment. It will be this board making that appointment but we already know the Turners are having a big say this time. So already it’s different. However strongly anybody feels it will still be the current board who appoint the next manager. Nothing can be done about that unless we don’t appoint the manager until the board are hounded out which will be a long time as even at 2-0 last night fans were singing “Delias barmy army”! They need to get the right man and then back him to get us out of this mess. If they get the wrong man or fail to support the right man then the way things are going this season relegation is a real possibility. Nobody should ever assume we would bounce straight back. We only have to finish above three teams to avoid relegation but we have to finish above 22 to get promoted.

I am just interested to know if you and others see the Turners involvement as part of the problem or part of the solution.

 

[/quote]

Nutty the Turner''s have become part of the problem by being part of the board that still holds with the Ambition with Prudence policy.

Jack Heyward sold Wolvers for £10 after investing £50mil for the good of the club. Do you think the Smith''s would do the same for the good of the club they say they love?

 

FOOTBALL MUST COME FIRST