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huggybear

Why does something like this not get any attention?

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Well I am glad that there is more of a balanced view on this forum..... I

have listened to Radio Norfolk for too long and become sick of the

pro-establishment bias which oozes through the pores of all the

presenters/pundits. It is a BBC thing admittedly….. ‘Auntie beeb’. Nanny knows best.

 

I suppose they have to maintain a relationship with the staff of NCFC so

can''t be seen to criticise. They have to be granted access to the manager for

the weekly interview after the game.... or should it be called Party Political

Broadcast!

 

I have never heard a decent journalistic question asked to any Norwich

manager in 20 years! Just a serious of clichés, excuses and comments about how

we could do better. Never a truthful response, reality check or apology to the

fans. I know this is the same with all football managers/players.... they are

media trained to be the most boring people in the world so they don''t offend

anyone or undermine their own position.

 

I am sure that the bonus and wages of the Chief Exec are not general public

knowledge, I have only found one web page on it currently, and never spoke with

a fan who heard of it. Never heard it on Radio Norfolk or the local TV news. I

think fans wouldn''t appreciate it if they knew.... it''s a lot of money for

someone who doesn''t kick a ball or coach.

 

Currently, he gets paid a Premiership wage for signing Championship players!

 

The AGM generally doesn’t get much media coverage.. it is not a very sexy

subject granted, but then when it comes to commenting on anything to do with

the club it is essential to have the facts to hand.

 

The media reports what happens on the pitch, more than off it…… but actually

the finances shape the teams performances. I think the McNally bonus for last

season is relevant when we have the hours of speculation over player

strengthening in January.

 

But the supporters of McNally can''t have it both ways... he can''t take the

credit for appointing Lambo (but then I blame him for losing him as well) but

then not have the responsibility if the team does bad on the pitch. He appointed

Houghton...... and I and many fans don''t rate him.

 

It is a team effort and he takes the praise when it goes well, but then

should shoulder the blame when it doesn''t.

 

I don''t see how his impact since coming to the club has been that

significant anyway.... I''m not sure that he has done much better than

Doncaster. That will upset you. He got lucky with appointing Lambert, and then

it was HIS ability that took the team so far. I don''t see that DM did anything

so spectacular.... nothing that any reasonable Chief exec doesn''t do?

 

I am not totally satisfied that Lambert couldn''t have been retained......

certainly more could have been done to keep him. How about paying him HIS

bonus?????

 

There seemed an arrogance, or naivety, by everyone, including the fans, that

the ball could keep on rolling without the main man. That the players were

genuinely established Premiership players. Of course we like to think the best

in life, and stay positive.

 

It was just my interpretation in the summer that the team was in a fragile

situation... they overachieved last year, second season syndrome to come and

Lambert got the best out of the players. I don''t rate many of the team as

individuals... but collectively they did magnificently. The manager had the

minus touch... but take that away and it was always going to be a struggle.

 

The teams position is on a knife edge.... I don''t know which way it is going

to go, like anyone else. The points to game ratio isn''t as high for the

strugglers compared to other seasons, and we might be saved with 3 poor teams

below us. I just don''t like the style of play, one away win, playing for

draws…… but my main contention is the dealings in the transfer market.

 

I feel short changed with the signings made in the last two windows, we have

two years of Premiership money and yet the signings, with a few exceptions,

haven''t progressed in calibre. We are still signing players from the

Championship and I don''t see any excuses for that. Quality is quality and

players are where they are for a reason.

 

The gap, as we know, financially based, is so vast between the 2 leagues

that I find it impossible that in the main, players signed from the likes of

Leeds can succeed in the Prem. We have got lucky with many... Snodgrass is

brilliant for instance, but that can''t go on forever. Pedigree is pedigree.

 

Many of the fans seem to assume that when Norwich buy a player from a lowly

status.... suddenly he is transformed and good enough for the Premier League.

Do the fans have that much faith in Houghton? Why? That''s naive. He’s not that

perfect.

 

Chase eventually run out of luck with his policy of doing a similar thing,

buying players from below and making them good.

 

Norwich as a club have gambled that the current squad is good enough to

survive, but i don''t share that view. I feel they should refund the season

ticket holders some of their money because it''s not right to make us pay

Premiership prices for Championship signings. The squad hasn’t evolved.

 

McNally argued when fans were moaning about the cost of the Spurs League Cup

tie tickets that “ all proceeds will go to strengthening in January”. At the

end of the window, we ended up with the same number of strikers as before and

spent maybe a few hundred thousand on the difference between Bechio and

Morison. Not that we know for sure the costs involved…. We are not respected

with that information, every other club make most transfer fees available for

public scrutiny, except us, on every transfer since Mc came in. It would be

nice to know if Bassong is our all time record signing for the history books…

but we can only speculate.

 

Surely if he states that he will use the fans money for transfer targets,

then if he doesn’t get anyone in, then he hasn’t fulfilled his end of the

bargain?  He’s tried to sign players but

failed. Worth another bonus?

 

Someone made the comment that we were in the loop to buy Hooper…. Well

that’s not good enough. You either sign a player on the dotted line or you

don’t. He has control, it’s his job!

 

Bids can be PR exercises anyway… fans assume they indicate ambition. They

are means to an end that’s all, the first step.

 

If McNally is such a skilled operator why didn’t he have more irons in the

fire….. the Premiership attracts the best players in the world from every

country in the world.. except for us. We have 9 scouts… all in Europe. That is

not enough. Wigan have signed 5 players from Honduras… but without scouts we

are not going to find them. We don’t seem to have the contacts of our rivals,

signing the Michu’s of this world. We don’t seem aware of players outside the

UK market. It’s a bit like all the signings Lambert made from his German

contacts!

 

Even the few that we do know of like the Sporting Lisbon striker….. we

didn’t sign him anyway so what good did it do us?

 

Oh… the summer I hear you say, do it then, buy players then….. which I heard

Houghton mentioned. Remember, we were saying that a year ago… “if only we can

stay up we can sign all these great players”. Change the record. What if we are

in the Championship again? At least Bechio can score some goals at that level!

 

I don’t believe that any of our rivals would sign the players we do, like a

Swansea, and I don’t think that many of them would like to buy our current

players. We, the fans, and the board, still seem to have a championship mentality,

‘Little Norwich’ …. We have to move beyond that…. Slowly but surely.

 

Of course I am moaning, but then this is the outlet for it. I care.

 

I just think it’s a shame that we could have blown this excellent position

we were in last summer. I don’t want to go back to the championship for maybe

10 years like before. ‘Prudence with ambition’.

 

McNally has created a culture in his time of bottom down dealings... where

the club retains all information for itself, and the media doesn’t hold the

club to account. The establishment cooperate with each other to keep the fans

out of the loop. But then we are just consumers according to many on this

board..... we think no more of the club than we do a product in a shop. We

choose our club like coke or pepsi, we change every week and it means nothing.

There is no passion in football fandom apparently. No loyalty. I don''t know why I''ve had a season ticket for 20 years.

 

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Wow, what a long and most unfactual rant.

 

Impossible to deal with every point you make as there are so many but I''ll give my thoughts on some - firstly I see no difference in the questioning that Norwich managers recieve compared to any others in the country, especially since Norwich have joined the PL and the press conferences are attended by many of the larger news outlets as well as the Press Association etc. All managers give pretty bland answers to questions, the king of this being Lambert and just because reporters aren''t as reactionary as many fans isn''t a bad thing. You have to maintain a working relationship with the staff at Norwich City so there is no point going around being an arse.

 

The AGM is always well covered in the EDP and Pink''Un with several pieces before and after - generally they are pretty boring affairs though and only ultra-fans are particulary interested. Details of McNally''s wage or club finances aren''t hidden away, again the EDP and Pink''Un do an assesment of them in the papers but again most people are only interested in the headlines.

 

No one here knows what happened between the club and Lambert in the summer - the fact he jumped at the first offer says to me it wasn''t about money. As a manager he has never spent too long at any one club I have a feeling he felt it was the best time to move on - there was obviously a falling out, but I think that happened as Norwich tried to keep hold of him a little too hard.

 

Since promotion to the Premier League Norwich have had the millstone of the debt to repay - this is why the club has been unable to do what Southampton did and pay large transfer fees straight off the bat. However, it isn''t like the club have been tight with the purse strings, a considerable number of players have been added each season at a fairly significant transfer spend - this had to be spread out across several players though due to a need for strenghtening all over. In the first season Norwich purchased Pilkington, Vaughan, Elliott Bennett, Johnson, Howson, Ryan Bennett and last summer bringing in 8 players, as well as established Premier League players such as Bassong and Turner, was certainly a considerable transfer spend (on wages as well as fees). Your point about other clubs revealing what they have spent is wrong, most clubs never officially announce a fee, this is done by the media (mainly off guesswork) or by the selling club shouting about it.

 

''Pedigree is Pedigree'' - is a nice line but that kind of thinking gets you Jose Bosingwa, Bobby Zamora (and his naff hip) and Andrew Johnson. I prefer the phrase ''talent is talent'' doesn''t matter where a player comes from if they are good enough, then who cares.

 

It''s a shame that Norwich haven''t managed to bring in a top class striker, but this is certainly the hardest position on the pitch to fill. Would you really have been happy with Norwich paying £7m or £8m for Gary Hooper? I don''t ever think it is a wise idea for a club to start going down to their option B, C, D or E on their shopping list - what is the point of bringing someone in who isn''t better than the existing squad. Becchio and Holt will be fine until the end of the season (most of Norwich''s goals are coming from midfield anyway due to the system).

 

Has McNally been perfect? Nope, but he shouldn''t just be judged on the team performance and transfers - he job is much bigger than that. Since arriving Norwich finally seems like a professional football club again, under Doncaster it was losing its way a little into realms of property developers etc. McNally came in and refocused the clubs attention to what really matters, football.

 

 

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[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"]

The AGM is always well covered in the EDP and Pink''Un with several pieces before and after - generally they are pretty boring affairs though and only ultra-fans are particulary interested. Details of McNally''s wage or club finances aren''t hidden away, again the EDP and Pink''Un do an assesment of them in the papers but again most people are only interested in the headlines.

 

 

[/quote]

 

Bethnal, the EDP/Pink ''Un coverage of the AGMs may be OK but not of the accounts, and that is the much more important bit. The supposedly "in-depth analysis" of the 2011 accounts failed to spot the single most crucial fact in the whole document, that promotion to the Premier League meant our debt repayment deadline had shot forward by several years. It took some nerd[8-|] of a poster here to point that out. And the coverage of the 2012 accounts was also totally superficial; there was nothing beyond the headline figures and  as far as I can see nothing, for example, on McNally''s massive bonus, which was what set the OP off.

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Wasn''t there a poster on here invited to look at McNally''s contract and inspect the bonus clause?

 

That''s pretty transparent if true...

 

 

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"I don''t see how his impact since coming to the club has been that significant anyway.... I''m not sure that he has done much better than Doncaster"Doncaster took us to league one. McNally has taken us to Premier League. We were close to adminstration and now making millions. Surely the guy deserves some credit for that."I am not totally satisfied that Lambert couldn''t have been retained"Who knows, but I firmly believe that there was more to this story than the public knows. There were rumours for months that Lambert wanted out. I wouldn''t be surprised if McNally/the board wanted rid of him too. I''ll be controversional here and suggest Lambert might not be to god of management that we think/thought he was. Lambert kickstarted us and then relied on momentum... but that momentum was slowing - Our record under him at the end of his last season was pretty poor... and now look at Villa who are awful under him. He may just be the next Warnock - great at getting teams promoted, but crap at managing top players in the Prem. Not surprising really as Prem players with their egos need a manager they respect, not someone that they clash with."The teams position is on a knife edge.."Is it? 7 points of relegation, lots of winnable games at home. Win at the weekend and we could be 4 wins above teams that have won only 4 or 5 games all season. Even if we continued our winless streak for the next 5 games, its unlikely we''d be in the bottom 3."I just don''t like the style of play, one away win, playing for draws"We aren''t title contenders. If we were winning away we''d be top 6. What do you expect?? "Currently, he gets paid a Premiership wage for signing Championship players... I feel short changed with the signings made in the last two windows"Bassong, Turner, Garrido and Whittaker were all playing for top flight clubs and signed this season. Snodgrass is premier league class. So is Tettey. I''m not going to write off Becchio and Kei without seeing them in a yellow shirt. None of them cost the earth, though maybe we''d have been happier if Bassong cost as much as Samba? Maybe they aren''t "sexy" names, but I''d much prefer them then the "big name players" the likes of QPR have."Do the fans have that much faith in Houghton?"First off, it''s Hughton. Second, yes - I''d say all fans that aren''t morons would have faith. The best result last season was beating Spurs... this year we''ve beat Man U, Arsenal and Spurs.. we''ve gone on a 10 game run without a lose... Hughton recognised that Lambert didn''t know what to do with the defence and fixed it - look how many clean sheets we''ve kept and who he signed. Yes we''ve been whooped a few times, but we did under Lambert too. I also personally think we''ve been a tad unlucky since December - we deserved have picked up more points than we did."in the loop to buy Hooper…. Well that’s not good enough. You either sign a player on the dotted line or you don’t"Yes, because having only 1 month to sort out a mutli million pound deal is that simple... I think the club didn''t want to be ripped off and as such did the sensible thing... what if we spent £15m on Hooper and he was rubbish Or got injured? and then what if we got relegated? Think about it.It really does make me sad that we have supporters that act like this. The fact that we are where we are is amazing and wish they could just enjoy it.

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 I stopped reading when he started calling him Houghton. THAT IS NOT HIS NAME !!

 

Don''t be pedentic ..... you know who I mean. Have you seen the spelling on here.... the text speak. That I can''t understand!

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And the coverage of the 2012 accounts was also totally superficial; there was nothing beyond the headline figures and as far as I can see nothing, for example, on McNally''s massive bonus, which was what set the OP off.

 

Quite true........

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[quote user="huggybear"]

And the coverage of the 2012 accounts was also totally superficial; there was nothing beyond the headline figures and as far as I can see nothing, for example, on McNally''s massive bonus, which was what set the OP off.

 

Quite true........

[/quote]

There was a poster who started a thread some time back about how he as a shareholder had a meeting at the club and viewed McNally''s contract but then proceeded to say he was not at liberty to inform us of its content.If he could this thread would have been done and dusted.

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[quote user="huggybear"]

I am not totally satisfied that Lambert couldn''t have been retained...... certainly more could have been done to keep him. How about paying him HIS bonus?? 

[/quote]

 

Errm I think it had something to do with Lambert wanting to go to what he preceived as a bigger club

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[quote user="Mister Chops"][quote user="huggybear"]

Don''t be pedentic ..... you know who I mean.

[/quote]Pedantic.You''re welcome.[/quote][:D]

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