Delia

[The Great Mass Debater 1,075]

Although the ''Sling your hook cook'' vitriol seems to have died down with the clubs recent success (funny that isnt it). For those who still want her out and dont appreciate her contribution to the club - If you could take one Premiership clubs set of owners to replace Delia, who would you take?  Man City''s owners are probably the richest, but its not all about the money is it?  Or is it?

[Warren Hill 0]

Why restrict it to Premiership owners?

We were linked to Tony Fernandes and I''ve even seen it suggested that some posters were jealous when the man with no face took over down the road.

I''d choose Villa''s owners because they Know a manager when they see one..😉

[Rolf Harris 31]

Hiring David Mcnally has saved her.

[Bill 1,788]

Delia is not actually the owner.Her and her husband jointly own a majority of the shares - around 56% or something, which does act as a kind of brake given that it is only just a majority.So would you have those from another club having that level of holding, or the holding they have within their present club ?

[Rolf Harris 31]

[quote user="City1st"]Delia is not actually the owner.Her and her husband jointly own a majority of the shares - around 56% or something, which does act as a kind of brake given that it is only just a majority.So would you have those from another club having that level of holding, or the holding they have within their present club ?

[/quote]Arsenal doesn''t have a complete owner.

[TIL 1010 4,717]

I am now going out but will give my opinion about 11pm tonight which should be about page 7 or 8 by then. [;)]

[TCCANARY 263]

I''m gonna go for Kim Jong Un, he''s got a nice smile, he''s a good dad and has a beatiful family. He could also bring in Dennis Rodman in some capacity and Canaries Player would be much better if it had less propaganda and more info.

 

 

[Bws Cat 0]

I have always found it funny how these Delia haters (who coincidentally also seem to hate everything about our club) make the assumption that she is the head honcho in the club, whilst the manager and the rest of the board members obey her commands without question.

Hughton- "B-b-bring on subs on 80mins? But m''am, the fans will hate that!"

Delia- "Enough! I have decreed to be! Obey me!''

Hughton- "Y-yes m''am"

[Bill 1,788]

I can''t imagine that would be on 80 mins BWshe''s normally at the ''you''re my mate you are'' stage by thenbut there is a positiveshe''s been take by Waitrose who originally replaced her with Pippa Middleincome who was possible the most dimmest person they could have foundso hopefully the old girl will be raking in the wonga and raising the profile of the splendid Canaries

[Crafty Canary 495]

Times and circumstances change and I''d question now whether we really need the kind of wealthy backer that Delia cannot be.

When we went down in 2009 we didn''t have the professional CEO and Chairman we have now. I, like many fans, believed Delia and the other directors were making all the key decisions, especially choice of manager, and were not making a competent job of it. Finances were awful and a season''s worth of Premiership money had been wasted.

However, Delia and the board then appointed a chairman with a track record of turning around failing businesses and a CEO with a track record in football business management unlike the solicitor background of Doomcaster. We can argue whether the board alone made these appointments or the banks had a say but the reality is Delia and the board allowed Messrs Bowkett and Ncnally get on with it and the rest is history.  The club''s finances are as strong as they have ever been and if Premiership qualification is maintained we will continue to be a financially viable club able to invest in player acquisition at the mid to top end. Expansion of the ground at some time in the future would help reinforce this position.

Consequently do we really need a mega-rich investor/owner rather than stay with Delia and MWJ as majority owners? I no longer feel we do and so long as the lessons of the past remain learned in terms of the quality of chairman and CEO our club can continue its upwards development under Delia and MWJ.    

When the time comes that Delia is no longer with us we could raise a statue to her with the motto '' She cooked the pies''.

[Dubai Mark 0]

DCC sums it up nicely, times have changed massively havnt they. This all said, "if" a serious mega rich investor came along, with the right intentions that could potentially move us to seriously challenging the top 6, then it maybe difficult for the club to turn them down. 

[HampsteadCanary 0]

I know this is an hypothetical situation, but I for one love seeing us doing it the right way, without ridiculous investors, silly wages etc. Its fun to see the club competing because its well run, has a good manager and a good team, rather than one individual being responsible for a teams success just through money. Yes the big clubs with investors do well but money is the only motivation for everyone involved, from the board down to the players. We have majority shareholders who LOVE our football club with a passion. Yes they have made mistakes, but they''ve done an amazing job over the last 4 years and I think they would deserve to stay in charge even if a big investor did come in.

Also, people expect instant success with big money investors...look at QPR for an example. The way our club is run, it can improve year on year, some get left behind, some make the grade, and new additions are added in all areas, but we can''t grow too quickly for our own good. We are very lucky to be in the situation we''re in, with no debt and all proceeds going towards the squad pretty much

[PurpleCanary 5,553]

[quote user="Dr Crafty Canary"]

Times and circumstances change and I''d question now whether we really need the kind of wealthy backer that Delia cannot be.

When we went down in 2009 we didn''t have the professional CEO and Chairman we have now. I, like many fans, believed Delia and the other directors were making all the key decisions, especially choice of manager, and were not making a competent job of it. Finances were awful and a season''s worth of Premiership money had been wasted.

However, Delia and the board then appointed a chairman with a track record of turning around failing businesses and a CEO with a track record in football business management unlike the solicitor background of Doomcaster. We can argue whether the board alone made these appointments or the banks had a say but the reality is Delia and the board allowed Messrs Bowkett and Ncnally get on with it and the rest is history.  The club''s finances are as strong as they have ever been and if Premiership qualification is maintained we will continue to be a financially viable club able to invest in player acquisition at the mid to top end. Expansion of the ground at some time in the future would help reinforce this position.

Consequently do we really need a mega-rich investor/owner rather than stay with Delia and MWJ as majority owners? I no longer feel we do and so long as the lessons of the past remain learned in terms of the quality of chairman and CEO our club can continue its upwards development under Delia and MWJ.    

When the time comes that Delia is no longer with us we could raise a statue to her with the motto '' She cooked the pies''.

[/quote]That is an interesting thesis (Delia and Doncaster incompetents who got lucky/Bowkett and McNally universal geniuses) and one I have never before seen put forward on this measage-board.

[nutty nigel 7,506]

I think sometimes things are really not as clear cut as they can be made to look with selective hindsight. The idea that our owners have somehow managed to get it right now, perhaps because the banks stuck their awe in, really doesn''t hold water. If there was a blueprint for football success then the owners and the bankers at other clubs would surely be able to do the same thing. So, if you''re looking in you owners and bankers of QPR, Forest, Leicester, Leeds, Derby, Middlesbrough, ipswich, Charlton, Birmingham, Sheffield Wednesday, Burnley, Blackpool, Watford, Wigan, Blackburn, Bolton, Wolves, Bradford, Oldham, Sheffield United, Coventry, Notts County, Oxford and Portsmouth... Just appoint a chairman with track record of turning around a failing business and a CEO with a track record of football business management and your former glories will return. Or not......

 

Now I remember the first Chairman / CEO that was appointed after Watling sold up to Delia. Bob Cooper, brought in from a background of marketing with Sainsbury''s. Bob The Grocer to us. He came in at the end of 1998 and walked out the door in 2002 having helped take the club from the bottom reaches of Nationwide division one to the play-off final and touching distance of the premier league. He didn''t have a track record for turning around failing businesses or a track record in football business management but he was a success if you measure where we were when he came to where we were when he left. And poignantly many of those clubs listed above could do with such a turnaround themselves.

 

Our owners then promoted Neil Doncaster with his solicitor background to CE along side chairman Roger Munby with a market research background.  This team steered us through the catastrophic ITV Digital collapse which many clubs failed to do and followed that by winning division one by 8 clear points with a goal difference of +40. Now I would suggest every club in the list above would settle for that.

 

After this team failed and we were relegated to League One our owners then searched out David McNally and persuaded Alan Bowkett to form a new team. This team has been the most successful of all and we are going on to bigger and better things. Once again all the clubs in that list would love to have this success.

 

So when you feel like being judgemental and "I know best" about the past just remember those other clubs who haven''t been lucky enough to have our owners.

 

I guess the point I am making is that there''s no blueprint for a successful football club. I would say our owners love of the club and determination to get it right in their own altruistic way is probably as close as I can get to finding one. 

 

If anyone should learn from their mistakes I think it should be the lowlife who used to make up things to discredit our owners. The ones who called for stickers and posters to hound them out of our club and tried to prove they''d lied about their investments. The ones that called them gangrenous limbs attached to our club. The ones that wanted to line Carrow Road with burning effigies of Delia and MWJ and the ones who tried to discredit them with that Barclays Bank fairy-tale. I hope they have learned from their mistakes but narrow minded people like that rarely do.

 

 

[Mister Chops 7]

[quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="Dr Crafty Canary"]

Times and circumstances change and I''d question now whether we really need the kind of wealthy backer that Delia cannot be.

When we went down in 2009 we didn''t have the professional CEO and Chairman we have now. I, like many fans, believed Delia and the other directors were making all the key decisions, especially choice of manager, and were not making a competent job of it. Finances were awful and a season''s worth of Premiership money had been wasted.

However, Delia and the board then appointed a chairman with a track record of turning around failing businesses and a CEO with a track record in football business management unlike the solicitor background of Doomcaster. We can argue whether the board alone made these appointments or the banks had a say but the reality is Delia and the board allowed Messrs Bowkett and Ncnally get on with it and the rest is history.  The club''s finances are as strong as they have ever been and if Premiership qualification is maintained we will continue to be a financially viable club able to invest in player acquisition at the mid to top end. Expansion of the ground at some time in the future would help reinforce this position.

Consequently do we really need a mega-rich investor/owner rather than stay with Delia and MWJ as majority owners? I no longer feel we do and so long as the lessons of the past remain learned in terms of the quality of chairman and CEO our club can continue its upwards development under Delia and MWJ.    

When the time comes that Delia is no longer with us we could raise a statue to her with the motto '' She cooked the pies''.

[/quote]That is an interesting thesis (Delia and Doncaster incompetents who got lucky/Bowkett and McNally universal geniuses) and one I have never before seen put forward on this measage-board.[/quote]Well said. I also think the subtext - that the only beneficial thing Delia Smith ever did for Norwich City was to appoint a Chairman and CEO and grant them autonomy - deserves some further discussion.

[PortlandCanary 0]

Is that Flavio Briatore guy available? He seems like he could be fun.

[Crafty Canary 495]

It''s such a shame that the ''we are right and you are wrong'' bigots (who nonetheless voted no confidence in Delia and the rest of the board) are unable to change their outlook as circumstances change. I guess it takes a willingness to see another point of view to do so. As recent threads have shown the usual culprits will never change and argument with them is a pointless exercise.

Was Delia, the board and Doomcaster always wrong in their decision making? Of course not however, their track record in management appointments were not an overwhelming success. Equally Messrs Bowkett and McNally are not universally faultless however to suggest that this combination are not an improvement on Munby and Doncaster seems to fly in the face of reality. 

[nutty nigel 7,506]

Are but Crafty, I think the shame is that I addressed the points on your post where as you obviously aren''t equipped to give me the same respect.

 

 

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

I think Delia/Doomcaster got too close to the manager in the case of Nigel Worthington. When it came to the crunch, the close relationship clouded their judgement and made it very difficult for them to sack a genuine friend. Without the protests, he would not have even been sacked when he was.

They learned their lesson with Glenn Roeder, although his previous record at other clubs of being a one season wonder probably helped his sacking along.

In hiring Peter Grant and Bryan Gunn, they were probably yet again guilty of letting the heart rule the head.

I don''t see McNally as the type of CEO who will let his relationship with the manager be anything other than business.

[nutty nigel 7,506]

Good points Foggy. So all in all (considering clubs who have shown more so-called ambition with their so-called rich investors many of which are listed in my earlier post) how would you say our owners have coped in such difficult times?

 

 

[Houston Canary 0]

Do we even need a mega rich owner now? £60 million says no. And people have been throwing £ 100 million around as the expected tv money for Prem clubs next season although I''m not sure what that number is based on. But another £60 mil managed effectlvely should be plenty if the £100 mil is inaccurate.

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

--- nutty nigel: Good points Foggy. So all in all (considering clubs who have shown more so-called ambition with their so-called rich investors many of which are listed in my earlier post) how would you say our owners have coped in such difficult times?

I don''t have any dislike of Delia, Doomy or anyone else. In the end there is no guarantee any manager is going to be right the right fit for the club. Money is not everything either, just look down the road for a good example of a club being ''loaded'' and still failing.

The whole prudence with ambition thing was a bit of a disaster, both in terms of PR and actual performance. I think the worst example of it was the Huckerby situation, we had the golden goose, and we were willing to let it fly away. It showed the club was unwilling to go that extra yard. In the end perhaps this was understandable given the financial strife a few years before.

McNally''s job was made easier by being a Premiership club with a mid table finish when Lambert left us. As a lower mid table Championship side, finding a manager to bring success is a lot more difficult. I have to say, McNally has done exceptionally well with the purse strings, releasing money at the right time, and the signing policy of the club is sure to net us some lucrative deals in the future.

[Bill 1,788]

I think the key point here young master nutty is not so much that we are in a really strong position now, but that any previous failings were not down to illegal dealings or other dodgy stuff.

The constant raking over of this story seems to many to be not so much an analysis of the club at that time, but a squabble between two factions as to who occupied and still occupies the moral high ground.

I don''t doubt this was the intend of the OP who has appeared under yet another name.

However I would suggest nutty that you actually take the moral high ground, by not responding.

Let it go mate.

[iron_stan 0]

i wanted the crazy old witch gone when we went down to league 1

mcnally/lambert combo saved this club, whoever actually made the call on that one deserves the plaudits, if it was her then she deserves everything she gets from the success

long may she reignunless theres a rich arab out there with a few hundred billion he wants to spend re locating the club to the new 60000 seater stadium at the showground, buying messi, ronaldo, bale and falcao and getting in jose as the new gaffer ;)

[Bill 1,788]

would you really want that stan ?move from our cosy home where memories still ring round like a rendition of ''On the ball City '' of oldthe foggy night when the game was abandoned against Chelsea, the packed night when we saw off Palace to stay up, Bruce in front of the Barclay nodding in the winner against the binners, European nights .... even when the sun is out and Jackson puts home a last minute effort against Derby, the relief against West Brom neverCarrow Road is our home and no plastic ground will ever be that

[iron_stan 0]

no i guess not, but i suspect the opportunity to build upwards and take carrow road to something like 40 to 60 thousand mark would never be given planning permission unless we give graham ''tax evasion via charitable donation'' dacre a place on the board, changed the jarrold stand name to the ''jesus saves'' and then royally greased the councils pockets.....i actually think the demand would probably be met with top ten status but thats a whole other kettle

ill still settle for an arab buying us messi, ronaldo, bale and falcao though

[Crafty Canary 495]

[quote user="Houston Canary"]Do we even need a mega rich owner now? £60 million says no. And people have been throwing £ 100 million around as the expected tv money for Prem clubs next season although I''m not sure what that number is based on. But another £60 mil managed effectlvely should be plenty if the £100 mil is inaccurate.[/quote]

Exactly the point I was making, Houston. Unfortunately there are those who will want to rake up previous arguments because their view is the only valid one (in their opinion.).

[Rock The Boat 1,322]

[quote user="iron_stan"]i wanted the crazy old witch gone when we went down to league 1

mcnally/lambert combo saved this club, whoever actually made the call on that one deserves the plaudits, if it was her then she deserves everything she gets from the success

long may she reignunless theres a rich arab out there with a few hundred billion he wants to spend re locating the club to the new 60000 seater stadium at the showground, buying messi, ronaldo, bale and falcao and getting in jose as the new gaffer ;)[/quote]

Stan, I would put McNally/Lambert/Grant Holt at the core of what saved our club. But how can you leave out Michael Foulger who made a new injection of funds at a critical point in our financial situation? Or Bowkett for persuading the banks that NCFC was a viable concern? And we haven''t mentioned the Delia/MWJ combination who steered us through all the difficult times and into the current successful period we have now?

And then we must remember that we are not trying to achieve success in some kind of vacuum but there we are competing in one form or another against ninety-odd other league clubs who all want to achieve the same success.

If there is a blueprint for success then I doubt it can be expressed in simplistic terms because, as Nutty says, why aren''t all these other clubs following the same plan? If there is a blueprint for success it probably is when all the different factors - board/management/finance/coaches/players/transfers/tactics/attitude/fans all come together in a perfect storm and create a scenario for success. It''s not a single person or event but a team all trying to do the right thing.

[lake district canary 4,530]

Choosing managers is a lottery.   You pick one and hope.   If you look at managers under Delia, you would see that.  Mike Walker -  on the face of it a safe re-signing - but he had lost his edgeBruce Rioch - not a choice I liked but you could understand the reasoning for getting himBryan Hamilton - just no, a strange apptNigel Worthington  - a great choice and successful to the highest level Peter Grant - a gamble, but had credentials  Glenn Roeder - seemed a good idea at the time..........Bryan Gunn -  maybe chosen because choosing outsiders hadn''t worked that well - a romantic choice that led to League 1 and Grant Holt....Paul Lambert - destiny!  The fixture list throwing up Colchester and McNally arriving - a remarkable turning point.Chris Hughton - the best candidate available and so far successful

Now Delia may or may not have been directly responsible for choosing these people, but the decisions made were made and since 1996 we have had nine years of relative positivity - 2000-2003, 2009-2013    and nine years of struggle to achieve  1996-1999, 2004-2008.  

I don''t know what that proves, except maybe that football clubs are difficult animals to control,  success difficult to guarantee, whoever you get.   But going down to League 1 actually was the best thing that could have happened - so even when things appear to be on a downward path, things can happen that turn it round.  Its a roller coaster alright.   Delia''s been there throughout - and that commitment and continuity has been a major reason for being where we are now.  

[The Great Mass Debater 1,075]

[quote user="City1st"]I think the key point here young master nutty is not so much that we are in a really strong position now, but that any previous failings were not down to illegal dealings or other dodgy stuff.

The constant raking over of this story seems to many to be not so much an analysis of the club at that time, but a squabble between two factions as to who occupied and still occupies the moral high ground.

I don''t doubt this was the intend of the OP who has appeared under yet another name.

However I would suggest nutty that you actually take the moral high ground, by not responding.

Let it go mate.[/quote]

 

Is this directed at me? Just for the record I am pro-Delia and have always found the anti-Delia stuff distasteful. I started this thread simply because I was bored and the board was pretty quiet. i am enjoying reading the responses. As for any accusation that I am a re-spawned previous member of this board you could not be further from the mark. if you find my original post I quite clearly stated that I had been a lurker for 10 years before I signed up. I hadnt signed up before simply because this board was pretty aggressive and nasty previously. Its calmed down a bit so felt safe enough to join up!