Delia

[nutty nigel 7,509]

[quote user="Rock The Boat"]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.[/quote]

 

It could be described as the X-Factor. Who knows how it comes together? If it could be bottled then all the clubs I listed would buy it and we could make a fortune. Anyway, thanks for reading my post and taking on board the points I made Rocky. The events leading up to 2009 certainly were a horror show but our owners nerve and commitment saw us through.

 

Dr Crafty, you have twice now responded to my post  by insulting me. Calling me a bigot in the first try. You are obviously incapable of grasping the points I made and debating them civilly. With deference to City1st I wonder if the last paragraph of my original post was necessary. But because I was responding to you I believe it was. I have been fortunate to have met many awesome and amazing people in my life, most of them you will not have heard of, but right up there with the best of them is Delia Smith. It''s one thing to be critical and have little confidence in the owners during difficult times. It''s quite another to write the sort of spiteful and vindictive posts that I referred to in that last paragraph.

 

 

[Crafty Canary 495]

[quote user="nutty nigel"] 

Dr Crafty, you have twice now responded to my post  by insulting me. Calling me a bigot in the first try. You are obviously incapable of grasping the points I made and debating them civilly. With deference to City1st I wonder if the last paragraph of my original post was necessary. But because I was responding to you I believe it was. I have been fortunate to have met many awesome and amazing people in my life, most of them you will not have heard of, but right up there with the best of them is Delia Smith. It''s one thing to be critical and have little confidence in the owners during difficult times. It''s quite another to write the sort of spiteful and vindictive posts that I referred to in that last paragraph.

 

[/quote]

Now who was it that referred to those who disagree with his opinion as low life? Could it be the civil, I meet awesome and amazing people, Nutty Nigel?

I couldn''t care less whether you like my posts or not, whether you agree or not. You are a bigot who has carried out, with others, a campaign against me , my brother, Smudger, Cluck, the Butler and others for daring to defy your view of NCFC. Your opinion has no value to me whatsoever. 

[nutty nigel 7,509]

[quote user="Dr Crafty Canary"]

Now who was it that referred to those who disagree with his opinion as low life? Could it be the civil, I meet awesome and amazing people, Nutty Nigel?

I couldn''t care less whether you like my posts or not, whether you agree or not. You are a bigot who has carried out, with others, a campaign against me , my brother, Smudger, Cluck, the Butler and others for daring to defy your view of NCFC. Your opinion has no value to me whatsoever. 

[/quote]

 

OK Doctor Crafty.. Here''s my post in full...

 

[quote user="nutty nigel"]

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.

 

 

[/quote]

 

Where does it say anything about those who disagree with my opinion? I have made it bold and in red so that you can read it better. Unless you think those things are opinions. If you do then I''ll go along with it and reiterate that those opinions would be those of lowlife and probably add the word scum.

 

 

 

[Syteanric 1]

what annoyed me about Delia is the better the club did, she was never off our screens... the worse we did and it was like she never existed... I remember asking Doomcaster the day after relegation to league 1 (Before he got the elbow) where delia was at a supporters forum and was told she was "working".... had we continued in the same vein we''d be league 2 or worse i reckon... Even the most die hard of fans could see that Delia, despite her good intentions, along with MWJ didn''t know what they were doing... worryingly the people they employed also didnt!thankfully she hired mcnally and let him run the club whilst staying as the figurehead she deserves to be.... We are no longer "Delia''s Norwich"...we are a sucessful business and premiership football club... for that she takes the credit, equally for much of went before she takes the blame.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

Jas.. What I''ve learned in my time on here is that Delia didn''t know what she was doing. Doncaster didn''t know what he was doing. And Worthington didn''t know what he was doing. I think you yourself have often posted such. But the problem I have with that is 2002/5. The club''s I listed in my post should perhaps employ a few people who don''t know what they''re doing and maybe they''ll get back to the promised land....

 

 

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

There are two ways of looking at it. One is to say all the bad things are down to Smith and Jones and all the good to anyone but Smith and Jones. Then there is the grown-up way a stock market analyst would regard it. Which is roughly as follows:That since Smith and Jones took control of the club in November 1997 it has in general outperformed rather than underperformed. That is based on the fact that a club whose natural postwar position in English football is in the lower half of the top 40 has recorded only one season in the third tier, 12 in the second tier and (currently) four in the first.That at a time when medium-sized clubs have found it all to easy to get into unmanageable financial difficulties, leading to administration and even windings-up, for a club lacking anything remotely resembling a rich benfactor to avoid such trouble is admirable.That the one constant in all this has been the shareholder and boardroom control of Smith and Jones, who have used it over the past 16 years to appoint and dismiss directors and chief executives. That the one rocky patch through which the club has gone was caused by an all too common business mistake - the failure to realise quickly enough that a managerial shake-up was needed.Based on the reasonable assumption that Smith and Jones (who eventually acted decisively) will not make that mistake again, any analyst would mark NCFC plc down as a highly recommended "buy".

[YankeeCanary 0]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[Felixfan 53]

Love her or hate her it is worth remembering that without Delia there would be no club as we know it. I will always be grateful for her selfless commitment and long may it continue.

[Crafty Canary 495]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

So you are not in favour of a statue to Delia and would be disappointed if any Norwich fan thought there should be? The motto I suggested is a play on that on the Bill Shankly statue outside Anfield, ''He made the people happy'' and is a nod to her fame as a TV cook. Of course, you know what I intended better than I do as you are rather pompous in many of your posts.

[TCCANARY 263]

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

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

So you are not in favour of a statue to Delia and would be disappointed if any Norwich fan thought there should be? The motto I suggested is a play on that on the Bill Shankly statue outside Anfield, ''He made the people happy'' and is a nod to her fame as a TV cook. Of course, you know what I intended better than I do as you are rather pompous in many of your posts.

[/quote]

I think you would be very lucky to get someone who made the link between the Shankly statue and your proposal for the motto for the Delia one, in future it may be better to be a bit more obvious that way you would avoid this silliness and as an added bonus you would''nt have to call people pompous.

 

[Crafty Canary 495]

[quote user="TCCANARY"][quote user="Dr Crafty Canary"][quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

So you are not in favour of a statue to Delia and would be disappointed if any Norwich fan thought there should be? The motto I suggested is a play on that on the Bill Shankly statue outside Anfield, ''He made the people happy'' and is a nod to her fame as a TV cook. Of course, you know what I intended better than I do as you are rather pompous in many of your posts.

[/quote]

I think you would be very lucky to get someone who made the link between the Shankly statue and your proposal for the motto for the Delia one, in future it may be better to be a bit more obvious that way you would avoid this silliness and as an added bonus you would''nt have to call people pompous.

 

[/quote]

The 100 th anniversary of Bill Shankly''s birth was recently celebrated in Liverpool and was featured on national news as was his statue with its motto. If the majority of posters are unaware of the statue and its motto that''s their issue not mine. I know what I meant and noone else so to tell me I meant something different is a mark of a poster who is routinely pompous in his correcting others on their syntax amongst other things.  

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

 

Yankee, as I am sure you realise, the conundrum that would baffle our professional analyst is as follows:Smith and Jones have controlled the club for 16 years. In the nine years from 1997 to 2006 the club performed or outperformed the market on the field, and made some extremely sensible off-field decisions (plus arguably one bad one). In other words it was well-run. There were three bad years from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2009, with one poor decison (hanging on to Worthington) producing a knock-on effect that worsened the financial position. Since then, four years in which we have significantly outperformed the market.Now accordng to amateur analysts those last four glory years only happened because three total incompetents (Smith and Jones and Doncaster) who were in charge have been replaced by people who know what they''re doing. Leaving unanswered (and unanswerable) the simple question: if Smith and Jones (and Doncaster) were such idiots how comes we had nine years of success under their day to day control?

[YankeeCanary 0]

[quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

 

Yankee, as I am sure you realise, the conundrum that would baffle our professional analyst is as follows:

Smith and Jones have controlled the club for 16 years. In the nine years from 1997 to 2006 the club performed or outperformed the market on the field, and made some extremely sensible off-field decisions (plus arguably one bad one). In other words it was well-run.

There were three bad years from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2009, with one poor decison (hanging on to Worthington) producing a knock-on effect that worsened the financial position. Since then, four years in which we have significantly outperformed the market.

Now accordng to amateur analysts those last four glory years only happened because three total incompetents (Smith and Jones and Doncaster) who were in charge have been replaced by people who know what they''re doing. Leaving unanswered (and unanswerable) the simple question: if Smith and Jones (and Doncaster) were such idiots how comes we had nine years of success under their day to day control?

[/quote]

 

Precisely Purple. However, I won''t lose any sleep waiting for such amateur analysts to address the point. What I will say, continuing your stock market analogy, is that Norwich City under the stewardship of Smith and Jones, is exactly the kind of stock that Warren Buffet feasted on in building his fortune, a reasonably good stock that went wrong when mismanaged, was taken up by people who knew how to live within their means and begin the clean-up process even if investors ( supporters ) were impatient. Buffet tried to invest in/acquire companies early in the cycle rather than where we are now. Which kind of brings to mind the efforts of one of our "old favourite" episodes, namely the effort of one Mr. Peter Cullum. 

[YankeeCanary 0]

 

Purple, I should have finished my comment by saying Cullum knew a "good buy" when he saw one, although in our case he was offering very little, and hoping to get away with it.

[TIL 1010 4,722]

I must just ask if these amateur analysts are one and  the same as fag packet accountants ? [*-)]

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

[quote user="YankeeCanary"][quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="YankeeCanary"]

 

A good analogy Purple and well stated.

I would only add that the input by Crafty earlier ( which, quite frankly, I was very disappointed to see from anyone who would claim to be a Norwich supporter ), namely, "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''", can more readily be interpreted to equate to "dump this stock now."

[/quote]

 

Yankee, as I am sure you realise, the conundrum that would baffle our professional analyst is as follows:Smith and Jones have controlled the club for 16 years. In the nine years from 1997 to 2006 the club performed or outperformed the market on the field, and made some extremely sensible off-field decisions (plus arguably one bad one). In other words it was well-run.There were three bad years from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2009, with one poor decison (hanging on to Worthington) producing a knock-on effect that worsened the financial position. Since then, four years in which we have significantly outperformed the market.Now accordng to amateur analysts those last four glory years only happened because three total incompetents (Smith and Jones and Doncaster) who were in charge have been replaced by people who know what they''re doing. Leaving unanswered (and unanswerable) the simple question: if Smith and Jones (and Doncaster) were such idiots how comes we had nine years of success under their day to day control?

[/quote]

 

Precisely Purple. However, I won''t lose any sleep waiting for such amateur analysts to address the point. What I will say, continuing your stock market analogy, is that Norwich City under the stewardship of Smith and Jones, is exactly the kind of stock that Warren Buffet feasted on in building his fortune, a reasonably good stock that went wrong when mismanaged, was taken up by people who knew how to live within their means and begin the clean-up process even if investors ( supporters ) were impatient. Buffet tried to invest in/acquire companies early in the cycle rather than where we are now. Which kind of brings to mind the efforts of one of our "old favourite" episodes, namely the effort of one Mr. Peter Cullum. 

[/quote]

 

Ah, the Sage of Omaha himself! I seriously have wondered if he''s ever contemplated buying a football club. On the face of it he would be perfect. Unless he moved the club to Omaha...[:O]