Looks like there are big problems at Charlton

[The Butler 0]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[YankeeCanary 0]

[quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

That''s not fair Butler. Many of us have long ago admitted that Mr. Carrow has A POINT. I just wish he would not make a career of it. If one is looking openly there are many other areas open for discussion.  

[mr carra 0]

Mr Carrow,

I think we can all accept that the club almost certainly spent too much time and effort on non-football matters and they became a distraction from getting things right on the field (as suggested in our new Chairman''s comments).

I don''t accept your basic proposition that this affected us financially though.  Your statement that Preston in 2008 could afford to spend more of their ordinary revenue on their team than we could  is not born out by the two clubs accounts - you keep stating it as though it is an incontestable fact but it doesn''t actually appear to be true.  They couldn''t.

[Ian 1,136]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"][quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

That''s not fair Butler. Many of us have long ago admitted that Mr. Carrow has A POINT. I just wish he would not make a career of it. If one is looking openly there are many other areas open for discussion.  

[/quote]I think when all is said and done, our previous board invested in "off-the-field" activities hoping they would turn a significant profit and help sustain the club, but thanks to some poor decisions and/or the economic downturn they simply ended up preventing us investing in our squad as we should have. This, in turn, led to the board''s focus being on turning around these poor decisions, rather than on the football (as it should have been). I also think the horrendous amount of money being pumped into clubs by rich owners, not only at Premiership level, but also at Championship level has put pay to the idea of trying to run a self-sustainable football club, which definitely did not help Delia et al.Yes, the board gambled and messed it up somewhat, but I don''t doubt for a second that they did it for the right reasons (i.e. to help the club in the long term). What other possible reasoning could there be?!

[macdougalls perm 0]

[quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

I accepted that he had a point the first 68,000 times he made it [:D]

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="mr carra"]

Mr Carrow,

I think we can all accept that the club almost certainly spent too much time and effort on non-football matters and they became a distraction from getting things right on the field (as suggested in our new Chairman''s comments).

I don''t accept your basic proposition that this affected us financially though.  Your statement that Preston in 2008 could afford to spend more of their ordinary revenue on their team than we could  is not born out by the two clubs accounts - you keep stating it as though it is an incontestable fact but it doesn''t actually appear to be true.  They couldn''t.

[/quote]

The difference in non-player wage costs at both clubs was huge and that left Preston with more to spend on their team.  Why were our non-player wage costs the same in `08 as when we were in the Prem?  Why were they nearly double what they were in `02 when we could spend £5.5m on our team and still turn a profit (again, not taking into account investment and transfer profits)?

Put simply, our non-player costs have risen far more than increase in revenue and that is why cash for the team has been squeezed tighter and tighter.  An affordable playing budget of £1.9m out of £19m is appalling and self-explanatory- again, find some other clubs with equally appalling figures and i`ll hold my hands up.

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"][quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

That''s not fair Butler. Many of us have long ago admitted that Mr. Carrow has A POINT. I just wish he would not make a career of it. If one is looking openly there are many other areas open for discussion.  

[/quote]

So it`s true that Mrs Yankee ties her husband to the computer desk and forces him to read every one of that nasty Mr Carrows posts....? [:O] [;)]

[The Butler 0]

[quote user="macdougalls perm"][quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

I accepted that he had a point the first 68,000 times he made it [:D]

[/quote]

As the actress said to the Bishop![:D]

[nutty nigel 7,606]

In this new found comradeship amongst posters who are basking in the fact they believe Mr Carrow has a point you won''t be surprised to find that I am not going to join in. Unless Mr Bowkett is a liar he states that we had a player budget of 8.5m and got relegated while Wolves had a player budget of 9.5m and got promoted. So while Mr Carrow can point to percentages of turnover to make his points I still point to the way we allocated our budget as the cause of our demise. It''s football decisions in the appointments of managers and those managers decisions on how the budgets are spent which is the main problem. Mr Carrow''s view that we could have diverted more money into the team to waste trying to be clever than the rest would have made little difference in my opinion.

 

 

[lappinitup 629]

[quote user="nutty nigel"]

In this new found comradeship amongst posters who are basking in the fact they believe Mr Carrow has a point you won''t be surprised to find that I am not going to join in. Unless Mr Bowkett is a liar he states that we had a player budget of 8.5m and got relegated while Wolves had a player budget of 9.5m and got promoted. So while Mr Carrow can point to percentages of turnover to make his points I still point to the way we allocated our budget as the cause of our demise. It''s football decisions in the appointments of managers and those managers decisions on how the budgets are spent which is the main problem. Mr Carrow''s view that we could have diverted more money into the team to waste trying to be clever than the rest would have made little difference in my opinion.[/quote]Mr Carrow is quoting "affordable budget" Nutty. You are quoting an "actual budget" so you are not really playing the game.

[blahblahblah 2]

[quote]Put simply, our non-player costs have risen far more than increase in revenue[/quote]If that''s the case, then how come the off-pitch stuff makes a profit ?

[YankeeCanary 0]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"][quote user="YankeeCanary"][quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

That''s not fair Butler. Many of us have long ago admitted that Mr. Carrow has A POINT. I just wish he would not make a career of it. If one is looking openly there are many other areas open for discussion.  

[/quote]

So it`s true that Mrs Yankee ties her husband to the computer desk and forces him to read every one of that nasty Mr Carrows posts....? [:O] [;)]

[/quote]

The difficulty, as you well know, is that the interesting threads on this forum are, by far, in the minority. As you tend to populate ( over-populate ) the more interesting ones with your single-minded focus then it''s difficult to avoid you Mr. Carrow. Particularly disappointing because you surely you are capable of so much more diverse thought.  

[macdougalls perm 0]

[quote user="nutty nigel"]

In this new found comradeship amongst posters who are basking in the fact they believe Mr Carrow has a point you won''t be surprised to find that I am not going to join in. Unless Mr Bowkett is a liar he states that we had a player budget of 8.5m and got relegated while Wolves had a player budget of 9.5m and got promoted. So while Mr Carrow can point to percentages of turnover to make his points I still point to the way we allocated our budget as the cause of our demise. It''s football decisions in the appointments of managers and those managers decisions on how the budgets are spent which is the main problem. Mr Carrow''s view that we could have diverted more money into the team to waste trying to be clever than the rest would have made little difference in my opinion.

 

 

[/quote]

Tbh, I was just wondering if conceding that would be a way to stop him repeating the same thing over and over and over again ... [:)]

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="blahblahblah"][quote]Put simply, our non-player costs have risen far more than increase in revenue[/quote]

If that''s the case, then how come the off-pitch stuff makes a profit ?
[/quote]

Things like merchandising, sponsorship, matchday catering, corporate hospitality etc. have always made a profit for football clubs.  Are you saying that as long as the whole gamut of non-football activities make a one pound profit overall every year everything is hunky dory?  That is basically T`s argument.  It is obvious by comparing the amount available to invest in the team in `08 with previous years or clubs such as Preston that non-football costs are squeezing the football budget- not the other way around.  You either want to see it or you don`t.  Luckily i think our new Chairman has...

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="nutty nigel"]

In this new found comradeship amongst posters who are basking in the fact they believe Mr Carrow has a point you won''t be surprised to find that I am not going to join in. Unless Mr Bowkett is a liar he states that we had a player budget of 8.5m and got relegated while Wolves had a player budget of 9.5m and got promoted. So while Mr Carrow can point to percentages of turnover to make his points I still point to the way we allocated our budget as the cause of our demise. It''s football decisions in the appointments of managers and those managers decisions on how the budgets are spent which is the main problem. Mr Carrow''s view that we could have diverted more money into the team to waste trying to be clever than the rest would have made little difference in my opinion.

 

 

[/quote]

The difference is nutty that Wolves don`t generally fund their player budget by flogging off their best players for millions and spending peanuts on replacements as we routinely have.  Even Preston spent most of the Nugent money directly into transfer fees- which is how they poached our star striker C.Brown [;)]

[nutty nigel 7,606]

Mr Carrow, step outside your safe house for a couple of minutes and tell me in all honesty what you believe was the biggest factor was that led to our slide down the Championship and relegation. Was it lack of funds to the football manager or waste of funds by the football manager?

 

[Mr.Carrow 378]

Nutty, i believe we got caught in a negative downward spiral from the moment the board neither backed nor sacked Worthy and yes i did warn so at the time.  Even whilst we received parachute payments we still relied on multi-million transfer profits to fund a large part of the football budget.  If you continually sell big and buy small you will only go one way- particularly when the income/crowds the club was getting were far higher than most of our competitors.  When three senior players publically question the ambition of a club you know there is a problem.

I think the board did try to stem the decline with a moderate increase in the football budget last season- but it was too late, the rot had already well and truly set in and Roeder apparently losing the plot was the final nail in our coffin.

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="macdougalls perm"][quote user="The Butler"]

I am probably on the wrong thread but nicely put Mr. C.

Just don''t expect anyone to admit you have a point.[;)]

[/quote]

I accepted that he had a point the first 68,000 times he made it [:D]

[/quote]

Yet you all keep reading and commenting on my posts [^o)]  A bit of advice-  if you regard someone as a boring egotist, the best course of action is to ignore him.

[nutty nigel 7,606]

To be fair Mr Carrow Norwich City Football Club has always sold big and bought small for the whole time I have supported them. From the sales of Ron Davies and Hugh Curran and throughout our glorious days in the late 80''s and early 90''s. But we got away with it because at the time we could buy players from the lower divisions or other clubs reserve teams that would be good enough to step up. We also could bring through youngsters we found from all over the country.I started a thread (which is rare for me) on this very subject a couple of months ago. We can''t sell big and buy small anymore because the players we can afford are at the very best mid-table Champs standard. We also can''t buy big because whichever way you look at it we can''t afford the players who are better than mid Champs standard. So we are now at a level where we can afford many top players. But don''t kid yourself these players could get us much further than the bottom half of the Champs because if they could they wouldn''t be here.

So there we have it I''m afraid. The game moved on at great pace while we wasted our money with Grant, Roeder and Gunny. I firmly believe we would have done better keeping Worthy than we did with them. Maybe if we''d have made the changes in the boardroom earlier and kept Worthy it would have been better but we can all be wise after the event. I don''t remember many suggesting it at the time.

It''s all very well making out that we would have had millions more to spend if it wasn''t for the money spent off the pitch. I personally don''t believe it. On another thread my mate Tangie, in between calling Blah a dalek and Lapp K9, seems to be saying that the land deal debt is costing 300 grand a year to service. So if that had never happened what do you imagine Roeder would have spent the 300 grand on and do you think it would have made any difference?

Our decline has been through poor football decisions and wasting the budget that was provided. Having more money could quite easily have made things even worse[:O] We are paying for those poor decisions and that wasted money now. We are paying far more for those mistakes than we are for the off the field mistakes.

 

[yellow hammer 0]

You make some good points, Nutty, that cr@p managers will waste whatever money you put their way. But do you think the City Board were saying to themselves, we must invest our revenues in property speculation because the manager is cr@p? I really don''t see that as being the case. Who ever the manager was at the time, Worthy being a good case in point, they still came to the conclusion that it was better to divert funds to off-field funds that to back the incumbent manager.

Worthy was hung out to dry without the funds to purchase his transfer targets and that led us to Fulham on the last day of the season.

Since then it has been a vicious downward spiral - cr@p manager to insufficient on-field investment - to another cr@p manager.

Finally, it seems the cycle has been broken with an excellent and ambitious young manager in place. That''s part of the jigsaw in place. Now the Board has to back the ambitions of this young man with sufficient funds to propel us upwards and onwards. If it doesn''t then we will lose the manger and the downward drift will start once more.

[BlyBlyBabes 0]

[quote user="nutty nigel"]

To be fair Mr Carrow Norwich City Football Club has always sold big and bought small for the whole time I have supported them. From the sales of Ron Davies and Hugh Curran and throughout our glorious days in the late 80''s and early 90''s. But we got away with it because at the time we could buy players from the lower divisions or other clubs reserve teams that would be good enough to step up. We also could bring through youngsters we found from all over the country.I started a thread (which is rare for me) on this very subject a couple of months ago. We can''t sell big and buy small anymore because the players we can afford are at the very best mid-table Champs standard. We also can''t buy big because whichever way you look at it we can''t afford the players who are better than mid Champs standard. So we are now at a level where we can afford many top players. But don''t kid yourself these players could get us much further than the bottom half of the Champs because if they could they wouldn''t be here.

So there we have it I''m afraid. The game moved on at great pace while we wasted our money with Grant, Roeder and Gunny. I firmly believe we would have done better keeping Worthy than we did with them. Maybe if we''d have made the changes in the boardroom earlier and kept Worthy it would have been better but we can all be wise after the event. I don''t remember many suggesting it at the time.

It''s all very well making out that we would have had millions more to spend if it wasn''t for the money spent off the pitch. I personally don''t believe it. On another thread my mate Tangie, in between calling Blah a dalek and Lapp K9, seems to be saying that the land deal debt is costing 300 grand a year to service. So if that had never happened what do you imagine Roeder would have spent the 300 grand on and do you think it would have made any difference?

Our decline has been through poor football decisions and wasting the budget that was provided. Having more money could quite easily have made things even worse[:O] We are paying for those poor decisions and that wasted money now. We are paying far more for those mistakes than we are for the off the field mistakes.

[/quote]

I think that in general you have a quite persuasive point of view here - apart from your (knee-jerk) preference for the retention of Worthy who had plainly lost it long before his eventual departure. Neither he, Grant nor Roeder were the right choices at those moments in time.

But could you clarify for us specifically how you think Team Gunn wasted the transfer budget allocated to them?

OTBC

 

[ron obvious 1,514]

Gunny did OK with his budget, he just couldn''t manage.Slightly OT, but do we think the crowds keep coming because the overall standard of football has improved so much? I''ll get slaughtered for this, but I reckon the standard of play in this division isn''t far off the old first. I remember watching Arsenal in the 60''s on MOTD &, even as a kid, thinking how poor a lot of it was. Sodden leather balls & pitches like ploughed fields wouldn''t have helped mind.

[Mr.Carrow 378]

Nutty, the level of player sales since we were relegated was unprecedented in the clubs history.  Don`t forget that in the first three seasons back down the club posted consecutive overall profits totalling £12m- a fat lot of good that did us.  We were in a spiral of decline (look at the league positions) which resulted in our dangerous flirt with relegation 2 seasons ago.  We then lost our three best players (Hucks,Dublin and Evans) and at one point i seem to remember we were down to 14 professionals including several kids like Eagle.  £8.5m simply wasn`t enough to rebuild a shattered squad and i remember at the time posting that it wasn`t a case of not being able to afford a massive rebuild, but the club not being able to afford not to.  If you continually asset-strip your team you don`t end up with much.  Yet all we got from Doncaster and the usuals on here was how risky it was to spend money on players and when questioned on the inherent risk in NOT spending on adequate players, no response- denial.

We have been through the off-pitch stuff enough times but if you want to ignore all the capex i have listed dozens of times and the capital repayments on the loans and just focus on the £300k interest payments for the land then i am (as usual) posting to a brick wall.  Believe what you want to believe- it`s what you do best.

[7rew 0]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

So, to stick to the point-  Preston could afford in `08 to spend far more of their ordinary revenue (NOT including investment and transfer profits) on their team than we could, despite our revenue being more than twice theirs.

[/quote]Congratulations, you have found 1 statistic that backs your case [if you ignore every other statistic, all the context and every argument against it!]Well Done.You Win.That''s how statistics works right?However I will ask you.  In 2009 Preston spent (approximately) 100% of their ordinary revenue not on the team.  Why are we so much better run and how can we have so much emphasis on the team?

[Mr.Carrow 378]

7rew, the usual response to my posts are baseless platitudes such as "all clubs are financially dire", "all clubs spend millions off the pitch", "no club can afford their player wage bill", "we are a well-run club" etc.,etc.  Then a comparison with Preston in `08 shows that they spent far less than us off the pitch and could afford a much higher figure from much lower revenue on their team- which basically blows the aforementioned platitudes out of the water.  Of course the reaction to this isn`t a grown-up, intelligent "I wonder what the reasons are" or "maybe this could partly explain our decline", but a "let`s all try to shoot the messenger".  It is moronic.

I haven`t looked at Prestons `09 report because it is irrelevant to the point i`m making about `08, so if you want me to give an opinion you`ll have to be more specific and give some figures in comparison to ours (which are not even out yet...).

[7rew 0]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

7rew, the usual response to my posts are baseless platitudes such as "all clubs are financially dire", "all clubs spend millions off the pitch", "no club can afford their player wage bill", "we are a well-run club" etc.,etc.  Then a comparison with Preston in `08 shows that they spent far less than us off the pitch and could afford a much higher figure from much lower revenue on their team- which basically blows the aforementioned platitudes out of the water.  Of course the reaction to this isn`t a grown-up, intelligent "I wonder what the reasons are" or "maybe this could partly explain our decline", but a "let`s all try to shoot the messenger".  It is moronic.

I haven`t looked at Prestons `09 report because it is irrelevant to the point i`m making about `08, so if you want me to give an opinion you`ll have to be more specific and give some figures in comparison to ours (which are not even out yet...).

[/quote]Hmm. Lets compare two of your sentences there:"I haven`t looked at Prestons `09 report because it is irrelevant to the point i`m making about `08" and "It is moronic."That they work well in conjunction.  That''s part of the point I''m making.  Maybe, in light of their huge losses this year, their good figures in 2008 could be due to some of 2009''s losses actually being to do with 2008? Maybe not?  Who knows?

So the rest of point I am making is this:  There are 91 other professional football clubs.  A comparison of this sort could easily be made for say any of the last 3 years.That makes 273 possible comparisons of accounts between clubs.  If there wasn''t one that compared to the other clubs favour (or indeed in our favour), I would be totally shocked and calling for the board to be either shot or honoured.Do you see now what I am saying; 1 figure from the accounts of  1 club for 1 year gives exactly how much weight to your argument?

[7rew 0]

[quote user="7rew"]That makes 273 possible comparisons of accounts between clubs.  If there wasn''t one that compared to the other clubs favour (or indeed in our favour), I would be totally shocked and calling for the board to be either shot or honoured.[/quote]An addendum to this sentence:  I would expect this to be true for every single club, not just us.

[Mr.Carrow 378]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

[quote user="BigFish"][:O]Mr C - you are at it again.[:)]

You start a argument from a point that makes perfect sense (in this case that City''s current balance sheet is dominated by investment in infrastructure) but when attacked try to stretch this point to something that makes no sense (the Preston comparison).

Some points you may wish to consider:

1) Preston''s massive £9m loss - even on their low expenditure
2) The fact that without a £10m handout they would be looking at administration
3) Bigger turnovers require bigger costs - I don''t think Man U look at Preston and say we should run the club on that cost base.
4) If we had appointed Lambert last year there might not be much between the league positions of the club
5) When the Jarrold was built the club was criticised because it wasn''t two tier
[/quote]

BF, the only stretching being done is by people trying to deflect from my simple point about us and Preston re. `08 accounts and trying to assume from that that i am holding them up as some kind of faultless paragons of financial virtue.

So, to stick to the point-  Preston could afford in `08 to spend far more of their ordinary revenue (NOT including investment and transfer profits) on their team than we could, despite our revenue being more than twice theirs.  Now, some questions open to anyone:

Is it ok as City fans to ask why this is, and why our non-football costs were so much higher than theirs?  (And if not, why not?)

Do you think that the answer to that question may give us the reason why we have consistantly had to sell our star players since relegation leading to a devalued, demoralised team getting relegated?

Our new Chairman has stated that "We are here to win football matches, not build a property portfolio" and "We do not believe the club have been sufficiently focussed on the football side" (from memory- Bowkett and Bertrams letter last year).  Is he wrong?  Should we be campaigning against him and demanding more non-football expenditure?  Or can we just relax our egos a little bit and accept that the club got it wrong but have now invited the critics on board to sort out the mess?

[/quote]

7rew, i refer you to the post above.  How about answering the questions instead of building straw-man arguments?

[PurpleCanary 5,580]

[quote user="Mr.Carrow"]

I haven`t looked at Prestons `09 report because it is irrelevant to the point i`m making about `08, so if you want me to give an opinion you`ll have to be more specific and give some figures in comparison to ours (which are not even out yet...).

[/quote]The point about that Preston financial report is simply this. Forget

the detail of one year or another and look at the big picture. Preston

has been held up for months as an example of a club of similar size to

Norwich that has been much better run. Perhaps it has been, perhaps it

hasn''t been.

But what the chairman makes crystal clear is that - better run or not -

the club would have gone under if it hadn''t been bankrolled by a sugar

daddy. Money poured in not once but time and again.

Chairman Derek Shaw admitted the club had been kept afloat by loans

from major shareholders, including multi-millionaire Trevor Hemmings,

for the last year.

"We have once again been heavily reliant on the assistance of our major

shareholder, Guild Ventures, for continuing financial support." Note that "once again".

And the lesson for NCFC fans? That any business plan put forward by a

potential new owner that does not include the safeguard of a

willingness to provide long-term finance is way too risky. In other

words, Smith and Jones are absolutely right to demand such a safeguard.

[ref89 0]

Yawn.