huggybear 0 Posted February 8, 2013 Well I am glad that there is more of a balanced view on this forum..... Ihave listened to Radio Norfolk for too long and become sick of thepro-establishment bias which oozes through the pores of all thepresenters/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 socan''t be seen to criticise. They have to be granted access to the manager forthe weekly interview after the game.... or should it be called Party PoliticalBroadcast! I have never heard a decent journalistic question asked to any Norwichmanager in 20 years! Just a serious of clichés, excuses and comments about howwe could do better. Never a truthful response, reality check or apology to thefans. I know this is the same with all football managers/players.... they aremedia trained to be the most boring people in the world so they don''t offendanyone or undermine their own position. I am sure that the bonus and wages of the Chief Exec are not general publicknowledge, I have only found one web page on it currently, and never spoke witha fan who heard of it. Never heard it on Radio Norfolk or the local TV news. Ithink fans wouldn''t appreciate it if they knew.... it''s a lot of money forsomeone 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 sexysubject granted, but then when it comes to commenting on anything to do withthe club it is essential to have the facts to hand. The media reports what happens on the pitch, more than off it…… but actuallythe finances shape the teams performances. I think the McNally bonus for lastseason is relevant when we have the hours of speculation over playerstrengthening in January. But the supporters of McNally can''t have it both ways... he can''t take thecredit for appointing Lambo (but then I blame him for losing him as well) butthen not have the responsibility if the team does bad on the pitch. He appointedHoughton...... and I and many fans don''t rate him. It is a team effort and he takes the praise when it goes well, but thenshould shoulder the blame when it doesn''t. I don''t see how his impact since coming to the club has been thatsignificant anyway.... I''m not sure that he has done much better thanDoncaster. That will upset you. He got lucky with appointing Lambert, and thenit was HIS ability that took the team so far. I don''t see that DM did anythingso 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 HISbonus????? There seemed an arrogance, or naivety, by everyone, including the fans, thatthe ball could keep on rolling without the main man. That the players weregenuinely established Premiership players. Of course we like to think the bestin life, and stay positive. It was just my interpretation in the summer that the team was in a fragilesituation... they overachieved last year, second season syndrome to come andLambert got the best out of the players. I don''t rate many of the team asindividuals... but collectively they did magnificently. The manager had theminus 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 goingto go, like anyone else. The points to game ratio isn''t as high for thestrugglers compared to other seasons, and we might be saved with 3 poor teamsbelow us. I just don''t like the style of play, one away win, playing fordraws…… 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 havetwo years of Premiership money and yet the signings, with a few exceptions,haven''t progressed in calibre. We are still signing players from theChampionship and I don''t see any excuses for that. Quality is quality andplayers are where they are for a reason. The gap, as we know, financially based, is so vast between the 2 leaguesthat I find it impossible that in the main, players signed from the likes ofLeeds can succeed in the Prem. We have got lucky with many... Snodgrass isbrilliant 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 lowlystatus.... 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 thatperfect. 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 tosurvive, but i don''t share that view. I feel they should refund the seasonticket holders some of their money because it''s not right to make us payPremiership prices for Championship signings. The squad hasn’t evolved. McNally argued when fans were moaning about the cost of the Spurs League Cuptie tickets that “ all proceeds will go to strengthening in January”. At theend of the window, we ended up with the same number of strikers as before andspent maybe a few hundred thousand on the difference between Bechio andMorison. Not that we know for sure the costs involved…. We are not respectedwith that information, every other club make most transfer fees available forpublic scrutiny, except us, on every transfer since Mc came in. It would benice 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 thebargain? He’s tried to sign players butfailed. Worth another bonus? Someone made the comment that we were in the loop to buy Hooper…. Wellthat’s not good enough. You either sign a player on the dotted line or youdon’t. He has control, it’s his job! Bids can be PR exercises anyway… fans assume they indicate ambition. Theyare 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 thefire….. the Premiership attracts the best players in the world from everycountry in the world.. except for us. We have 9 scouts… all in Europe. That isnot enough. Wigan have signed 5 players from Honduras… but without scouts weare 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 theUK market. It’s a bit like all the signings Lambert made from his Germancontacts! Even the few that we do know of like the Sporting Lisbon striker….. wedidn’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 heardHoughton mentioned. Remember, we were saying that a year ago… “if only we canstay up we can sign all these great players”. Change the record. What if we arein 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 aSwansea, and I don’t think that many of them would like to buy our currentplayers. 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 positionwe were in last summer. I don’t want to go back to the championship for maybe10 years like before. ‘Prudence with ambition’. McNally has created a culture in his time of bottom down dealings... wherethe club retains all information for itself, and the media doesn’t hold theclub to account. The establishment cooperate with each other to keep the fansout of the loop. But then we are just consumers according to many on thisboard..... we think no more of the club than we do a product in a shop. Wechoose 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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
crabbycanary 2 Posted February 8, 2013 Do people keep kissing a girl, when the girl has said ''no''? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bethnal Yellow and Green 1,560 Posted February 8, 2013 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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PurpleCanary 5,562 Posted February 8, 2013 [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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nutty nigel 7,539 Posted February 8, 2013 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... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Paulo_M 0 Posted February 8, 2013 "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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Webbo118 0 Posted February 8, 2013 I stopped reading when he started calling him Houghton. THAT IS NOT HIS NAME !! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
huggybear 0 Posted February 10, 2013 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! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
huggybear 0 Posted February 11, 2013 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........ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Reasonable Canary 0 Posted February 11, 2013 Saying Houghton instead of Hughton nulifies all points. I''m not kidding, it''s a pretty damn stupid thing to do. Why do so many people do it? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TIL 1010 4,751 Posted February 11, 2013 [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. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
drurys testamonials V 15 0 Posted February 12, 2013 Had it been Doncaster who''d got that bonus it would have caused a furore. McNally knows his football and has earned it IMO. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
drurys testamonials V 15 0 Posted February 12, 2013 [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 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mister Chops 7 Posted February 12, 2013 [quote user="huggybear"] Don''t be pedentic ..... you know who I mean.[/quote]Pedantic.You''re welcome. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
morty 0 Posted February 12, 2013 [quote user="Mister Chops"][quote user="huggybear"] Don''t be pedentic ..... you know who I mean.[/quote]Pedantic.You''re welcome.[/quote][:D] Share this post Link to post Share on other sites