Hi all Unfortunately I wasn't able to get to the game yesterday due to unforeseen circumstances so can't comment on the match, but I will wish Leicester well in their continued run in the competition. What I will say is that I am sure there are many, many fans who are extremely disappointed with our poor performance on the day and of course the final result. I must admit I was annoyed when I heard the final scoreline but I was not overly surprised nor concerned. Think about it. We currently sit 8th in the Premier League. We get £1m for each position higher up the league we finish. If we claim 8th in May, City would get approximately £53m as opposed to £43m if we finish 17th. So that's a £10m difference. I agree with Paul Lambert that we are not yet safe. However, I do not believe we will go down and I don't believe that he believes we will go down now either. It would take a monumental collapse for it to happen. I think he instead is looking at the bigger picture and has one eye on future campaigns. With our excellent season we have given ourselves a chance, a real chance of potentially, a vastly bigger wage and transfer fund IF we can maintain our current position in the league, or at least stay around the top half. A chance to make the club bigger and stronger much faster than we thought likely 12 months prior. The league HAS to take priority for this reason. Think about it. That extra £10m could mean we are in a position to strengthen great swathes of our squad in the summer - maybe even start to get things into swing with regards the ground expansion, even if work isn't begun until the following summer - and put us in an even better position to compete next season and in many seasons to come. Its not all about this season - the aims of the club is to build something which will last. I am no doubt not alone in wishing that we had maintained our cup run a bit longer because we are fans and the excitement for a cup run still lives among us. But financially there is little in it for the club. That is disappointing in many ways but we have to be realistic. We all want success but the manager and board are trying to get the club in a position where many better days are to come and we can achieve long term success. Yes, we might have had a nice day out at Wembley - assuming we'd have reached the semi final that is - and the possible chance of glory should we have made the final, but we are in our first season in the Premier League. We do not have the squad to compete to a high level in both competitions at the moment - it seems yesterday proved as much. That is why that extra £10m is such an important reason to not worry too much about the cup. When we have a bigger, better squad we will be able to push on. Think about it. That's all I'm saying. OTBC ILWT WFLGH
Great article Supers if you were giving a lecture to a firm of accountants or economics students! Football is all about passion, pride and ultimate glory! If I had paid to watch that performance yesterday and then discovered that I had been short changed by the manager and the team I would have felt annoyed and ultimately cheated. And yes as a Town fan I have felt like that many times this season! You had a goldern opportunity to progress in the cup and even go on and win the thing this year. You are only 3 or 4 points away from being completely safe and you could have gone for it in the cup. I can't believe that Lambert is motivated by securing extra prize money in the League and I don't believe that he would put that above cup glory! This debacle could well come back to haunt you especially if you struggle next season.
I think disappointment has taken over some peoples views which includes myself. We had such a good chance to get to the latter stages of the biggest cup competition in the world, and while of course players have off days, and nobody can expect us to win every game we SHOULD win, when you see players seemingly showing a lack of interest, it is galling. Great post by the way.
except my football club nearly went bust two and a half years ago warky. our board and our manager work in unison and aren't stupid. we need to make money quickly to make the team better as quick as possible, improve the ground and set us up long term. glory is all very well but we need a solid base first or there is the potential for disaster. i never said i'm happy about it... it's the way of football at the moment and lambert knows that the league is a bigger priority at the moment - i'm relaying what is best for the club, not what is best for the fans at this moment in time.
I understand that Supers but you can't use this as an excuse for not trying to win the FA CUP! This year's competiton is the most open its been for years and there may well not be another similar opportunity for you to win major silverware. This is not a dig! You say that the club needs to make money quickly! Well what would be better then playing at Wembley in front of a global audience of Millions with all that free advertising and putting Norwich on the global footballing map. That would have been absolutely priceless and could have ensured your financial future for many years to come!
I find my self agreeing with every word the Binner speaks For all that has been written since yesterday i cant help but see yesterday as a missed golden oppertunity.
It is good that PL loses a few games every now and again to make the bigger clubs think twice about making an approach for him. On a similar note it is good for Jewell to win a few games every now and again to keep himself and Mr.Turnstile in job. This will stop more talented football people being employed by Ipswich who could progress their club. It is the natural order of things for Ipswich to remain in the Championship and accumulate debt year after year.
Prospect Theory: "The basic finding is that losses hurt more than gains gratify. The pleasure people get from unexpectedly finding $10 is less than the pain they suffer from losing $10. Most people are disinclined to accept symmetric bets involving a fifty-fifty chance of winning or losing a given amount. As Jimmy Connors exclaimed, “I hate to lose more than I like to win."
ok warky, i can now see that you have totally misunderstood the point of my article! oh, and your last paragraph is total nonsense too - the fa cup is not the draw it used to be. man city received £3.2m in total for winning it last year. the premier league puts the club on the map every single week of the footballing year - thats why the fa cup is less important. that is just a sad fact of the times and not one i'm pleased about but it is the case. i am not making excuses for lambert. i am not trying to suggest that he wanted us knocked out. i fully believe that he and indeed any manager always picks a team they think capable of winning any match - it just happens that the team didn't play well enough to win. what my article is saying is that the cup is in no way as important as the league this season - we could be about to make a whole stack of unexpected cash which could drive the club forward more quickly. i'd love to win a cup - i'd love to go to wembley - but most of all i want my club to have a long and sustained stay in the top flight and the best way to do that is by having a better squad and a bigger ground. how do we pay for those things? money. how do we get money? i think you can see where this is going! when i read some of the articles on here yesterday afternoon i was flabbergasted by the total over-reaction to the loss. i wasn't at the game so can't view the defeat in context - as i understand it, it was a pretty horrific performance - but the very fact that we got all excited about a 'cup run' of two games says it all. people here are starved of a decent cup run and saw leicester at home as a chance to correct it. i did too. but, and it is a big but, we were still two games from wembley and still two games from winning it. it wasn't really a cup run of any sort its just that it was for norwich if the last 20 years is anything to go by. i'm a patient person - i'd like to think i can take a step back from a situation and assess it from all angles and for me, the whole furore surrounding the result against leicester is laughable. we are having a brilliant season - as good as any i can remember. i think people need to take a step back from the leicester game and think about it. it isn't the end of the world and the better our team becomes, the more opportunities to compete for and hopefully win trophies there will be.
All I will say is, who's position would you rather be in... Ours or leicesters!? Yes, dissapointed but that'd the fa cup for you. I had a funny feeling we were going to lose but that's not be all end all for our season. Go back to the beginning of the season, a top half position would be worth a lot more to the fans than an fa cup appearance at Wembley and scrapping at the foot of the table, fighting for our premiership lives! Everyone knows the objectives of our club and that's to stay and consolidate our position in this league, so why should a rare dissapointing performance and the fact we might have got to Wembley change everyones feelings on this season cos of this?? All I will say is were going in the right direction for the club and the fans and thats all that matters at this moment in time!
i think had it been a cup semi final i could understand the wave of depression but it was the 5th round for goodness sake! we weren't even halfway to the final
i bet you are! i think we had a half decent shout had we got past leicester of reaching the semi's but i doubt we'd have won the cup, but even the the quarters was too much to ask. we can hardly complain though - we are having a wonderful season and thats why i find some of the posts on our board after the match so stupid. some people need to take a step back and look at where the club has managed to drag itself to, from what was almost the abyss two and a half years ago. the cup comes around every year. you never know when your name's on it. clearly ours wasn't on it this year... but why the panic?!?!
I presume you the fans were given prior warning before Lambchop put out his weakened side in view of the match against Man ure? or some kind of discounted tickets were available?
