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PurpleCanary

JOE KOSICH

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The Fulham takeover (the thread has been moved to other football) brings to six the number of Premier League clubs owned by Americans. The others being Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Aston Villa and Sunderland.So, a reminder of the Joe Kosich saga from February 2010.  Briefly, this American banker/fixer wrote a blog, aimed very much at an American audience, suggesting Norwich City as a good investment opportunity. On the back of that, he said, there had been some expressions of interest from people with lots of dollars. And this got written up in the EDP. Cue all hell breaking loose, because most people who commented failed to grasp what Kosich was saying and doing, and that included McNally, who seemed to think Kosich wanted to buy the club himself.I didn''t think the story was that hard to understand, but then I had the benefit of an email exchange and a very long phone conversation with Kosich.In essence he was acting as a stock market analyst. These people assess companies and the prospects for their shares and recommend either SELL - this a dog and should not be touched with a bargepole - or HOLD - you won''t win big or lose big with this one - or BUY - this baby is going places.Now there were some details of Kosich''s financial analysis that were wrong, but generally he got it right, and what he was strongly recommending was BUY. And this, remember, was when we were down in the third tier. At the time Kosich got a good kicking (in part because he made the mistake of getting into arguments with posters) but his judgment has been validated.

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PC wrote - "The Fulham takeover (the thread has been moved to other football)..."

So why did you not start this piece of non-NCFC related boring crap in that Forum as well?

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Interesting to get another layer of perspective regarding our dramatic turn in fortunes from the business domain. I''m not aware of the catalyst that provided him with the forsight of such an upward curve before any city fan dared dream of such lofty heights that would attract investment, but intriguing nonetheless.

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[quote user="John"]Interesting to get another layer of perspective regarding our dramatic turn in fortunes from the business domain. I''m not aware of the catalyst that provided him with the forsight of such an upward curve before any city fan dared dream of such lofty heights that would attract investment, but intriguing nonetheless.[/quote]
I wonder whether the same catalyst provided him with the foresight to foresee Tranmere''s meteoric rise through the football pyramid.... oh. 
We were also well on the way to promotion in February 2010, not like he has an amazing gift. "Oh look, a big club playing at their lowest level since the 60''s who will probably get promoted in three months time and are still getting 23000 people a week. I predict that they will be in a better position a year from now".

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[quote user="TheNewBoy"][quote user="John"]Interesting to get another layer of perspective regarding our dramatic turn in fortunes from the business domain. I''m not aware of the catalyst that provided him with the forsight of such an upward curve before any city fan dared dream of such lofty heights that would attract investment, but intriguing nonetheless.[/quote]
I wonder whether the same catalyst provided him with the foresight to foresee Tranmere''s meteoric rise through the football pyramid.... oh. 
We were also well on the way to promotion in February 2010, not like he has an amazing gift. "Oh look, a big club playing at their lowest level since the 60''s who will probably get promoted in three months time and are still getting 23000 people a week. I predict that they will be in a better position a year from now".

[/quote]

 

You miss the point of what Kosich was trying to do and what his target audience was. He was not talking to Norwich City fans, or would-be UK investors, who might be able to work out that the third tier was a blip and that we would at least get back to the Championship.His target audience consisted of mega-rich Americans who might want to buy into soccer, but who would never have dreamed of looking below the Premier League. As evidenced by John Henry, who admitted he knew very little about Liverpool when considering a takeover. If he was so uneducated about one of the most famous clubs in the world then the extent of knowledge of the average US billionaire sports fan of third-tier Norwich City can be easily guessed at. Kosich was trying to point people our way. Of course he had his own reasons. He fancied being part of any deal. And, given bits of his track record (Tranmere and all), it was easy to deride him. But he wasn''t wrong.

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Maybe if Kosich could have arranged a meeting with Bowkett things might have panned out differently. Anybody know how to do this ? [:P]

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Interesting, but I''m curious how these Americans expect to make money from owning Prem clubs ?  Do they just assume that because US sports are organized as cartels with wage caps that ensure the owners make massive profits, it will be the same here ?

 

I can see that buying City in Feb 2010 would have been attractive on the basis of getting the club into the Prem and flogging it at a profit.  Although getting promoted from the Champ is never easy and with hindsight IMO that was Lambert''s greatest achievement.

But take the guys who has just bought Fulham - do you think he knows that Fulham under al-Fayed has done as well as it probably ever has in its history, so how''s he going to make money from owning it ?

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[quote user="Its Character Forming"]

Interesting, but I''m curious how these Americans expect to make money from owning Prem clubs ?  Do they just assume that because US sports are organized as cartels with wage caps that ensure the owners make massive profits, it will be the same here ?

 

I can see that buying City in Feb 2010 would have been attractive on the basis of getting the club into the Prem and flogging it at a profit.  Although getting promoted from the Champ is never easy and with hindsight IMO that was Lambert''s greatest achievement.

But take the guys who has just bought Fulham - do you think he knows that Fulham under al-Fayed has done as well as it probably ever has in its history, so how''s he going to make money from owning it ?

[/quote]

 

That is a very good question. One can imagine with a club that really is a global brand, such as Man Utd, that it''s possible. But Fulham? According to the new owner there is "a huge amount of synergy" with his Jacksonville Jaguars NFL franchise. We shall see but synergy is one of those management buzzwords that gets thrown around without much hard underpining.

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