Norwich's 'Rightful Place'

[Canary & Linnet 0]

With West Ham''s victory yesterday, they are allegedly ''back in their rightful place'', the Premiership.

So many other clubs seem to have the same attitude, or the media state they are big clubs which should be in the highest division.

Teams like Sheff Weds, Wolves, Forest to name a few.

Norwich always seem to get the ''country cousin'' label, plucky team playing nice football.

So where is our rightful place?

Are we to be bracketed with the Sunderlands, WBAs & dare I say Ipswichs of this world?

We had our European adventure & high league position in the early days of the Premiership, so how do we change the perception of the club, or will we ever?

[Ken Aries 0]

I would categorise City as a "medium" size club for want of a better term. In my opinion, typical medium size clubs would be: Norwich, Wolves, Notts Forest, Ipswich, Southampton, Derby and maybe a few more. Small clubs form the majority of the football league and typical clubs are:Southend, Walsall, Peterbro, Blackpool and many more. To my mind the big clubs are: Sunderland, Manure, Man C, Villa, Chelsea, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Spurs, Sheff Weds, Everton and maybe a couple or so ive forgotten. The borders between each category become somewhat blurred, but I class a big club as having a potential crowd of anything from 35,000 to 80,000( GIVEN THE STADIUM,OF COURSE).A medium club 20,000 to 35,000 and a small club 0 to 20,000 crowds.

[Saint Canary 0]

The West Ham "rightful place" quote annoyed me greatly.  No team has a divine right to be in the Premier League, Champions League or any league unless the table says so at the end of the season.  West Ham have were in the Championship for two years because a) they were not good enough to avoid relegation and b) they were not good enough for promotion.  Whether you are a fan of the play-offs or not, West Ham won and thus deserve to be Premier League but it is not West Ham''s "rightful place" if this time next year they are 20th in the league.

The same applies to us, the only place we belong is where we are.  The league does not lie.

[chicken 0]

Whilst I would agree that we are a medium sized club I wouldnt agree with the braketing that you give to define us as one.

I would suggest it depends on commited fan base and not stadium size, after all Wigan have had a 20k plus stadium for a while now and have only recently started filling it with more than 8K fans!

To be honest I would be embaressed to support them.

We will allways be a middle-size club because of geographical location. London clubs are big because London is big and offer millions, not thousands, of fans worldwide.

The Northern clubs dont seem to attract so many foreign fans but they do have large cities behind them. Look at Newcastle and Sunderland for example.

So basically untill Norwich grows to be a larger more recognised city it will lack the emediate fanbase that a lage local city can provide. City do have a large fan-base but it is well spread out. Its not like having 500,000 people no more than three tube stops away is it?

I''m happy though. As long as we are challenging for promotion and getting it and a chance to survive in the premiership I will allways be happy. The club that we are most like in the football leagues is probably Plymouth Argyle. I say that because they have a similar location.

We will never be considered "big" untill we win things regularily or have the ability to attract world-class players that drop jaws. We almost had one of those in Helveg!

[Tumbleweed 106]

stephen- you missed out Arsenal from your list.

I wonder where you would put Middlesbrough and Bolton- they like to think of themselves as big but I think they are a mid sized club like us yet Middlesbro are now in Europe for the second time in a row.

Whether a club is "big" or not depends in my mind on:

1. History

2. Fan base

3. Average crowds over a long term period

4. Trophies won or close to winning

5. Ability to attract top talent

6. Last few league positions

West Ham are a mid sized club edging towards big, I think they nudge Spurs close but have had a poor few years. Not so long ago were they not the leading London club in the league for a while? Clubs like Forest are now middle tier because of their recent history, while others like Burnley may have qualified as big before but are now firmly at the top end of small, nudging middle.

 

[Ken Aries 0]

My classification of clubs was very much an approximation. But I thought Id list a few clubs to form some idea of the present standing of Norwich City Football Club. I think given a bigger stadium we would draw in similar sized crowds to the West Hams of this world, although our overall fanbase is possibly smaller. The main point I was trying to make, is that NCFC is not a small club as some people still insist on calling us, on the other hand it certainly isnt a big club either. I suppose our fanbase is somewhere around the 50,000 mark, whereas Chelski''s is something like 20 million and Man U''S 100 million. To sum up, West Ham are no more "back where they belong", than we will be if we manage to win our place back in the Premiership at the end of next season.

[FilletTheFishWife . 0]

So chicken, you would be embarassed to support Wigan. Why?

I think Wigan supporters should be very proud of themselves and their club.

After all, they have chosen to support Wigan instead of the easy option of geographically proximate and more successful teams in the Premiership (at least 6 in the region).

Wigan are a new team and in case you hadn''t noticed are one division above us.

Such patronising opinion is precisely why many of us - myself included - despise West Ham.

Let''s not stoop to their level.

Let''s wish Wigan and Sunderland the best against the odds and hope West Ham return to the championship soon for another dose of humility!