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visitingblueboy

The difference between Ipswich and Norwich ... (long)

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OK, I''ll hold my hands up. I''m an Ipswich fan. And I''m not one of those who doesn''t want Norwich to do badly.Some Ipswich fans wanted you to stay up so we''d still have the derby games to look forward to. Not me.Its nothing really personal - and I''m sure the feelings would be (mostly) recipricated should the situationbe reversed. So to continue to extract maximum enjoyment from your current situtation I registered here,not to gloat and post nonsense - its not my style - but to allow me to post where I felt able to contributewith a semi-serious voice.Today though, I''m beginning to feel slightly unnerved.We''ve always been two clubs similar in many ways. Similarly isolated geographically. Similar recenthistory, alternating between the top two divisions with brief excursions into Europe the glorious highlights.Similar falls, although different failings.Whatever happened though there was always the certainty that there wasn''t much to choose between us really,and whoever happened to be a division higher at the moment didn''t matter in the grand scheme of things. We''dmeet again someday, and then the clubs would remain about the same. Rangers and Celtic. Arsenal and Spurs.Ipswich and Norwich.Today though I watched your press conference to announce your new manager. Obviously I was initially pleasedto see Bryan Gunn appointed for next season, a man who may prove to be a good manager for you in themedium term, but equally it seems entirely possible he will be out of his depth. I was of course struck by the difference with our recent change of leadership. On a Monday we appointed a Chief Exec who used to run the British Olympic Team and a man who seemingly impressed everyonewho met him. On Wednesday we sacked Magilton and on Thursday we appointed Roy Keane - a manno sane Ipswich fan had mentioned as a possible replacement for Magilton because nobody thoughtwe''d have any chance of him joining us.Yesterday you lost your CEO and your Chairman, both apparently having stepped down. Them leaving seemsto be the right move. Nothing has gone right for you recently with a string of managerial appointments turningsour, so something must be going wrong. To have any chance of uniting the fans, and to breath fresh lifeinto the club it seemed sensible for there to be change at the top.So I settled back and waited for local businessmen, or possibly a football administrator to be broughtinto the club. The suggestion that our former CEO Derek Bowden might join you seemed sensible. The nextstep for the club would be to recruit a leadership team, THEN think about the manager. The CEO and themanager need to get on. They need to respect each other and one of the CEO''s main jobs is in thehiring of the manager.Today though was the weird press conference. Delia sitting silently. Looking stressed, shattered and furious.Gunn looking petrified, and Jones looking like a small time businessman addressing a room with a handfulof local hacks in.Why appoint Gunn now? And why have Smith and Jones having apparently been in charge of a seriesof bad appointments decided to refresh the board, but not decided to listen to whatever advice the new appointees will bring? They have fewer voices to listen to, fewer wise words to hear, but they seemin a huge hurry to make the most important decision. They hadn''t even agreed a contract with Gunn.Its clearly not agreed how long his contract will be for, let alone the basic salary. With all this in mindwhy the hurry? I don''t understand it.Smith and Jones own the club, but they aren''t expert football administrators. Clearly. The strategy forthem should NOT be to remove the people that ran the club previously and try to do the job themselves.It may look easy, but it isn''t. The strategy should be to appoint a management team and let THEMrun the club. The board set the targets and the financial parameters. The executive team are in chargeof meeting them.For the first time I''m looking at Ipswich and Norwich and not looking at two medium sized clubs, one of whomhappens to be doing well, and one of whom happens to be doing badly. I now see one club who has had the greatgood fortune to be bankrolled by a very rich man who have clearly got excellent people at the top, and one whoappear to be being run by well-meaning amateurs. And to my surprise it doesn''t give me great pleasure to say this.You have some things in your favour. The extraordinary reliance on loan players has given the manager a clean sheetto work from, and your home support is holding up astonishingly. The thought lingers that next season will be crucialfor you. If you start badly then things could get very bad from a financial point of view as your fans drift away. A seasonof relegation struggle gives the club a goal and a purpose. A season of mid-table mediocity is something elseand is astonishingly boring (I should know) - and a season of mid-table mediocrity in the third tier is almostunimaginable. With what I consider such a huge season ahead of you, I''m astonished at the decisions the boardare making, and I wonder how long the effect of the apparent current mismanagement will last.A long post. Sorry. I''m not trying to gloat. I think I can sum it up though by the thought that Ipswich appear tobe a club thinking big, and Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.Maybe Delia et al will appoint a bunch of clever people. Maybe Gunn will prove an inspired choice. I''m not sure though.

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[quote user="visitingblueboy"]Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.

What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.
[/quote]

 

All you Norwich fans happy at todays appointment need to take this into consideration. Here is an Ipswich fan, and he sound far more concerned than half of you are about the state of our club. This is the reason our club is in such a mess - to many people don''t give a damn and are happy to support clearly ridiculous decisions!

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[quote user="NCFC_Shaun"]

[quote user="visitingblueboy"]Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.[/quote]

 

All you Norwich fans happy at todays appointment need to take this into consideration. Here is an Ipswich fan, and he sound far more concerned than half of you are about the state of our club. This is the reason our club is in such a mess - to many people don''t give a damn and are happy to support clearly ridiculous decisions!

[/quote]Quite unfortunately he also talks more sense than those that just call Gunn and the board silly names rather than put together articulated arguments or discussion points.And by the way he did not say it was ''clearly rediculous'' he just said it could be inspired or it could be flawed and that the reason for it being worrying is that the new board members have not been consulted prior to this supposed appointment - they may well have gone for Gunn as well so it is not the appointment itself that is the issue but how decisions at the club are being made.And quite rightly how this may pan out into the future if they continue to make decisions in this way.

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Admire you for taking the time to write such a well thought out post.  You make some excellent points.  I assume most supporters of your club are delighted with this appointment and with the state of our club and who can blame them?  Sadly, I think it will be some time before we are back on a par with you.

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[quote user="chicken"][quote user="NCFC_Shaun"]

[quote user="visitingblueboy"]Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.

What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.
[/quote]

 

All you Norwich fans happy at todays appointment need to take this into consideration. Here is an Ipswich fan, and he sound far more concerned than half of you are about the state of our club. This is the reason our club is in such a mess - to many people don''t give a damn and are happy to support clearly ridiculous decisions!

[/quote]

Quite unfortunately he also talks more sense than those that just call Gunn and the board silly names rather than put together articulated arguments or discussion points.

And by the way he did not say it was ''clearly rediculous'' he just said it could be inspired or it could be flawed and that the reason for it being worrying is that the new board members have not been consulted prior to this supposed appointment - they may well have gone for Gunn as well so it is not the appointment itself that is the issue but how decisions at the club are being made.

And quite rightly how this may pan out into the future if they continue to make decisions in this way.
[/quote]

If that comment was referring to me. Where on earth have I called Gunn and the board silly names rather than discussion points?

And also where did I say that the Ipsiwch fan said it was ''clearly ridiculous''? I said that I think their decisions are, I never said the Ipswich fan did.

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Football is just a game! The real difference between Ipswich and Norwich is......

Norwich is a beautiful city and a wonderful place to live and to grow up while Ipswich is a run down town not worth visiting let alone living in!

Teams come and go along with relegation, promotion, boards and even trophies occasionaly.  What can not be changed is the Ipswich Town Centre, the surrounding areas and the cheap shops.

I would rather have a bunch of amatuers running the club which in time will change than hail from somewhere as frankly as depressing as Ipswich.

I understand Blueboy your post and agree with some of it but likewiswe I hope you can mine

 

Norwich....a Fine City  

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Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club.

Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.

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[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

Nail firmly hit on head...administration = no debt = cheaper to buy - hence why Southampton will be getting a buyer and we won''t....if we were to go into adminstation which I don''t want we would become immediately more attractive to every dodgy arms dealer or money launderer which 10 million knocking around

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We may have an amateur management team and a hopeless board but I wouldn’t be so smug about the future.

Your new CEO may be a respected Olympic manager, but since when was football a major Olympic event? We have seen enough of players running around in circles here this season, I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot more of that in the future.

There is a big difference between the psyche of Olympic athletes and footballers and your man is going to struggle to come to terms with the lethargic antics of your average championship plodder compared to the dedication and loyalty of an athlete.

Roy Keane is an arrogant tw*t who will spend all of your money on useless players  and b*gger off by Christmas when the team fail to perform. He has a Keeganesque record of folding under pressure both as a player (ROI) and manager.

Whilst NCFC are deep in the brown stuff at the moment there is a recognition of the failure and, as you say, with the clear out of the loanees an opportunity to build something for the future.

Ipswich have serious delusions of grandeur and I suspect that come this time next year we will be in a happier place than you and I don’t just mean geographically.

 

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[quote user="RetroBlue"]...and the NCFC Board "shafted" 25,000 norwich city fans . And are still doing so![/quote]

Nail. Head. Hit!

 

I hate it when you scummers are correct [:P]

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[quote user="Sir Fotheringham Waddock-hunt"]

We may have an amateur management team and a hopeless board but I wouldn’t be so smug about the future.

Your new CEO may be a respected Olympic manager, but since when was football a major Olympic event? We have seen enough of players running around in circles here this season, I suspect you’ll be seeing a lot more of that in the future.

There is a big difference between the psyche of Olympic athletes and footballers and your man is going to struggle to come to terms with the lethargic antics of your average championship plodder compared to the dedication and loyalty of an athlete.

Roy Keane is an arrogant tw*t who will spend all of your money on useless players  and b*gger off by Christmas when the team fail to perform. He has a Keeganesque record of folding under pressure both as a player (ROI) and manager.

Whilst NCFC are deep in the brown stuff at the moment there is a recognition of the failure and, as you say, with the clear out of the loanees an opportunity to build something for the future.

Ipswich have serious delusions of grandeur and I suspect that come this time next year we will be in a happier place than you and I don’t just mean geographically.

 

[/quote]A good attempt but in reality they are light years ahead of us. Amateur management team and hopeless Board were spot on though.

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[quote user="St.John Cooper"]

Football is just a game! The real difference between Ipswich and Norwich is......

Norwich is a beautiful city and a wonderful place to live and to grow up while Ipswich is a run down town not worth visiting let alone living in!

Teams come and go along with relegation, promotion, boards and even trophies occasionaly.  What can not be changed is the Ipswich Town Centre, the surrounding areas and the cheap shops.

I would rather have a bunch of amatuers running the club which in time will change than hail from somewhere as frankly as depressing as Ipswich.

I understand Blueboy your post and agree with some of it but likewiswe I hope you can mine

 

Norwich....a Fine City  

[/quote]

 

This is all very lovely but has absolutely nothing to do with football.

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[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

You obviously don''t know your own club''s history.

"City went into voluntary liquidation on 10 December 1917.[5] The club was officially reformed on 15 February 1919. In May 1920, The Football League formed a third Division and Norwich joined the Third Division for the following season."

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[quote user="still holding out for new heroes"]

[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

Nail firmly hit on head...administration = no debt = cheaper to buy - hence why Southampton will be getting a buyer and we won''t....if we were to go into adminstation which I don''t want we would become immediately more attractive to every dodgy arms dealer or money launderer which 10 million knocking around

[/quote]

Why is everyone with money a "dodgy arms dealer or money launderer"? Jealous?

At the end of the day you''d sell your own grandma to have a Marcus Evans taking over your club. 

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what comes round , goes round im sure we will have the chance to take the p** out of you lot , especially when kean blows your transfer budget like he did at sunderland .

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[quote user="NCFC_Shaun"]

[quote user="visitingblueboy"]Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.

What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.
[/quote]

 

All you Norwich fans happy at todays appointment need to take this into consideration. Here is an Ipswich fan, and he sound far more concerned than half of you are about the state of our club. This is the reason our club is in such a mess - to many people don''t give a damn and are happy to support clearly ridiculous decisions!

[/quote]

[Y][Y][Y]

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[quote user="visitingblueboy"]OK, I''ll hold my hands up. I''m an Ipswich fan. And I''m not one of those who doesn''t want Norwich to do badly.
Some Ipswich fans wanted you to stay up so we''d still have the derby games to look forward to. Not me.

Its nothing really personal - and I''m sure the feelings would be (mostly) recipricated should the situation
be reversed. So to continue to extract maximum enjoyment from your current situtation I registered here,
not to gloat and post nonsense - its not my style - but to allow me to post where I felt able to contribute
with a semi-serious voice.

Today though, I''m beginning to feel slightly unnerved.

We''ve always been two clubs similar in many ways. Similarly isolated geographically. Similar recent
history, alternating between the top two divisions with brief excursions into Europe the glorious highlights.
Similar falls, although different failings.

Whatever happened though there was always the certainty that there wasn''t much to choose between us really,
and whoever happened to be a division higher at the moment didn''t matter in the grand scheme of things. We''d
meet again someday, and then the clubs would remain about the same. Rangers and Celtic. Arsenal and Spurs.
Ipswich and Norwich.

Today though I watched your press conference to announce your new manager. Obviously I was initially pleased
to see Bryan Gunn appointed for next season, a man who may prove to be a good manager for you in the
medium term, but equally it seems entirely possible he will be out of his depth.

I was of course struck by the difference with our recent change of leadership. On a Monday we appointed a
Chief Exec who used to run the British Olympic Team and a man who seemingly impressed everyone
who met him. On Wednesday we sacked Magilton and on Thursday we appointed Roy Keane - a man
no sane Ipswich fan had mentioned as a possible replacement for Magilton because nobody thought
we''d have any chance of him joining us.

Yesterday you lost your CEO and your Chairman, both apparently having stepped down. Them leaving seems
to be the right move. Nothing has gone right for you recently with a string of managerial appointments turning
sour, so something must be going wrong. To have any chance of uniting the fans, and to breath fresh life
into the club it seemed sensible for there to be change at the top.

So I settled back and waited for local businessmen, or possibly a football administrator to be brought
into the club. The suggestion that our former CEO Derek Bowden might join you seemed sensible. The next
step for the club would be to recruit a leadership team, THEN think about the manager. The CEO and the
manager need to get on. They need to respect each other and one of the CEO''s main jobs is in the
hiring of the manager.

Today though was the weird press conference. Delia sitting silently. Looking stressed, shattered and furious.
Gunn looking petrified, and Jones looking like a small time businessman addressing a room with a handful
of local hacks in.

Why appoint Gunn now? And why have Smith and Jones having apparently been in charge of a series
of bad appointments decided to refresh the board, but not decided to listen to whatever advice the new
appointees will bring? They have fewer voices to listen to, fewer wise words to hear, but they seem
in a huge hurry to make the most important decision. They hadn''t even agreed a contract with Gunn.
Its clearly not agreed how long his contract will be for, let alone the basic salary. With all this in mind
why the hurry? I don''t understand it.

Smith and Jones own the club, but they aren''t expert football administrators. Clearly. The strategy for
them should NOT be to remove the people that ran the club previously and try to do the job themselves.
It may look easy, but it isn''t. The strategy should be to appoint a management team and let THEM
run the club. The board set the targets and the financial parameters. The executive team are in charge
of meeting them.

For the first time I''m looking at Ipswich and Norwich and not looking at two medium sized clubs, one of whom
happens to be doing well, and one of whom happens to be doing badly. I now see one club who has had the great
good fortune to be bankrolled by a very rich man who have clearly got excellent people at the top, and one who
appear to be being run by well-meaning amateurs. And to my surprise it doesn''t give me great pleasure to say this.

You have some things in your favour. The extraordinary reliance on loan players has given the manager a clean sheet
to work from, and your home support is holding up astonishingly. The thought lingers that next season will be crucial
for you. If you start badly then things could get very bad from a financial point of view as your fans drift away. A season
of relegation struggle gives the club a goal and a purpose. A season of mid-table mediocity is something else
and is astonishingly boring (I should know) - and a season of mid-table mediocrity in the third tier is almost
unimaginable. With what I consider such a huge season ahead of you, I''m astonished at the decisions the board
are making, and I wonder how long the effect of the apparent current mismanagement will last.

A long post. Sorry. I''m not trying to gloat. I think I can sum it up though by the thought that Ipswich appear to
be a club thinking big, and Norwich appear to be a club thinking small.

What is really scary is I can see a possible future for you even worse than I would like to see - and that is bad.
Maybe Delia et al will appoint a bunch of clever people. Maybe Gunn will prove an inspired choice. I''m not sure though.[/quote]

 

Well, I''m a Norwich fan who has never wanted Ipswich to do badly. I want to see all East Anglian clubs do well. Boring, I know, but that''s good for our much derided region. Coming to the title of your thread, the difference between our two clubs is that, for the timebeing, you have an owner who is extremely rich and we have an owner who is moderately wealthy and who has already lost millions propping up Norwich City. Our owner has been in charge for long enough for us to conclude that, however well intended, she has in recent years made bad decisions in her choices of Directors and Managers. It is too early to tell whether or not your owner has made bad choices in recent weeks but I suspect that not only has he made bad decisions but Roy Keane in particular will turn out to be disastrous and how long your benefactor will keep pumping money into your club remains to be seen but he doesn''t have access to unlimited funds like an Abramovitch. I remember the appointment by Soutampton FC of Sir Clive Woodward at £120,000. What a wise and clever appointment that was mumbled "notable and worthy observers" at the time ! So, good for you and all your money but remember this : those who laugh longest are those who laugh last.

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[quote user="crazy"]

[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

You obviously don''t know your own club''s history.

"City went into voluntary liquidation on 10 December 1917.[5] The club was officially reformed on 15 February 1919. In May 1920, The Football League formed a third Division and Norwich joined the Third Division for the following season."

[/quote]Your comparing a period in which half of the Norwich players and fanbase were being shot to s**t in the trenches of France to a period where your greedy owners tried to live the dream and failed spectaculary...? As much as I agree with the original post at the start of this thread this comment just goes to show why you''ll always be a bunch of low grade tasteless common scum.

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[quote user="singing canary"]what comes round , goes round im sure we will have the chance to take the p** out of you lot , especially when kean blows your transfer budget like he did at sunderland .[/quote]

 

Keane spent £6m in his first season at Sunderland, and got them promoted. Doesn''t sound like blowing your transfer budget to me!

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[quote user="crazy"]

[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

You obviously don''t know your own club''s history.

"City went into voluntary liquidation on 10 December 1917.[5] The club was officially reformed on 15 February 1919. In May 1920, The Football League formed a third Division and Norwich joined the Third Division for the following season."

[/quote]

...if we''re going in to ancient history can we talk about your Uefa cup campaign and FA Cup win?

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[quote user="GB1902"][quote user="crazy"]

[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

You obviously don''t know your own club''s history.

"City went into voluntary liquidation on 10 December 1917.[5] The club was officially reformed on 15 February 1919. In May 1920, The Football League formed a third Division and Norwich joined the Third Division for the following season."

[/quote]

Your comparing a period in which half of the Norwich players and fanbase were being shot to s**t in the trenches of France to a period where your greedy owners tried to live the dream and failed spectaculary...? As much as I agree with the original post at the start of this thread this comment just goes to show why you''ll always be a bunch of low grade tasteless common scum.
[/quote]

You wound up your club and started a new one to avoid paying your debts. These are the facts. As for "greedy owners trying to live the dream", that''s exactly why you''re in the shit now. You went for broke to try and make the prem ...that''s why you''ve had a team full of loanees since...and are now in League 1.

And as for low grade tasteless common scum...bit rich from a bunch of supporters who think it''s ok to make fun of young women being murdered.

Norwich fans need to look a bit closer to home before slinging accusations at anyone else.

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[quote user="Ween_Nasty"][quote user="crazy"]

[quote user="SNAP"]Want to know the big dfference? Ipswich shafted a whole bunch of local businesses by wiping out their debt and going into adminsitration. It cost hem nothing as the 10-point rule wasn''t in place. Thye wiped out years of similar mismanagemnt to Norwich at the expense of the community and then allowed a faceless profiteer to buy their debt from Norwich Union for a pittance and roll it back into the club. Would I want to follow a club like that - not really.[/quote]

You obviously don''t know your own club''s history.

"City went into voluntary liquidation on 10 December 1917.[5] The club was officially reformed on 15 February 1919. In May 1920, The Football League formed a third Division and Norwich joined the Third Division for the following season."

[/quote]

...if we''re going in to ancient history can we talk about your Uefa cup campaign and FA Cup win?

[/quote]

LOL, funny how Norwich fans like to sweep history under the carpet. Wonder why.

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