We´re Better Off Out Of It

Firstly I´m assuming that Sunderland will win one of their last two games, while we won´t win both of ours. If that is the case, and we do end up being relegated, then I´d say we´re better off out of it, altogether. I never thought I would be saying that, and a few years ago, when it was still possible to be vaguely competitive, I wouldn´t have, but these days, for a club like ourselves, it just isn´t possible. The huge amounts of money pumped into the Premier League has not only made the gulf between it and the Championship, vast, but also between the top and bottom halves of the Premier League, the gap is ever widening.

I sincerely hope and pray that we never go down the ´wealthy foreign investor´ route, just to try to keep up with the ´Joneses´. Wealth they might have, but it´s a bit like hoping to win the lottery to guarantee a lifetime of health and happiness, where health and happiness, correlates to success, in football terms - by no means guaranteed, in fact in many cases quite the opposite happens. The most recent example being A. Villa where Lerner suddenly loses interest, stops the cash flow, and looks to pull out. Our club has always been a family club, a club for the community, go back as far as you like, and it´s always been the same. Scrapping our principles and selling our soul to an outside investor, who probably doesn´t give a toss about the club´s history or values anyway, would be to destroy decades of the NCFC built up by folk such as Watling and Chase, Watling would turn in his grave, if he knew the amounts of money being pumped into football these days - it´s obscene. Hopefully Delia and Michael W-J will resist that temptation, and the fact that nephew Thomas has been invited on board suggests that they might be planning for the future, and a way to keep it in the family. Those fans who want a ´seriously´ wealthy club to support, may just have to change their allegiance, because I just don´t see it happening at Norwich.

That´s one of the things that has always confused me about so many supporters on here, and other message boards. We all know we haven´t got the same levels of wealth as so many other PL clubs, and yet week after week, recriminations and laying the blame, fly through the air after each poor, ( and sometimes even the fairly good) performance. Just exactly how had you all expected this season to pan out? It was obvious for most of us, that it would be a season of struggle from start to finish, where the only target would be to stay away from the relegation places. Alright, some of the results have been less than predictable, we´ve surprised in a few games where we weren´t expected to, and disappointed in others we shouldn´t have, but the fact that, wth one week left, we are where we are, was entirely foreseeable, and should surprise no-one.

If, as it looks now, we are relegated, and if, at some time in the future, we should get promoted again, I can only see the same scenario happening all over again, only with even more financial disparity than there is at the moment.

Fat chance I dare say, but unless the ´powers that be´ again turn our game into one that is played on a relatively level playing field, we´d be far better off ploughing our furrow in the Championship.

 

We swapped Altidor for Defoe and have not looked back, Kirchoff and Kahzri class players, and for the first time this season bullied a team at home, and fought like hell for every ball in the 2nd half, different to the way you played against Man u before us, and Man u were the last team we beat at home before Chelsea.

 

With all respect I can muster, what a load of old bollox!
Answer me this, what happens when/if we get promoted again? Should we meekly surrender and accept that we shouldn't be at the top table? We had to do better and stay up this season. Yes next year would be a struggle and all subsequent ones but staying up with the money that entails was the only way. We end this season with 3-4 PL quality players, we started with 2. That's not enough. But stay up and we could go from 3-4 to 5-7 it's called building. Stoke didn't start buying Rondons over night they added and added season after season till they were stable and full of PL quality. That is what we had to do!
Could/should we have recruited better in the summer? If you answer no to this I simply cannot comprehend where you are coming from! It was an incompetent window. No centre backs! Last minute despiration to reinforce the attack! It did not require breaking the bank, or foreign investment, our finances were such that we had to do better. We should have done better but we crippled our chances before a ball was kicked!
If we can keep Howson, Brady, Klose by some miracle then relegation may not be the disaster to our building, but I can't see it. We also won't attract a striker who can cut it in the PL. If we stayed up we had s chance.
Do I want an outrageously rich new owner, maybe it could be one hell of a ride. But I'm happy as is, I like having owners who care. I just don't think it's our/their lack of resources that's the main problem, it's incompetence, lack of ambition, something! but money didn't get spent, quite obvious deficiencies weren't addressed, it's not too much to ask for them to have learnt from a number of past mistakes!
The simple truth to me is we have been so close to staying up this season. A halfway competent transfer policy would have meant we would have survived. I can't say that for certain but I don't wish us to either languish in the championship or yo yo indefinitely. A competent board and a bit of luck and we could have given ourselves our best chance since chase sold the family jewels to really gain a foothold in the division.
Maybe I'm naive to believe that's possible for us, but we were in my opinion an august defender away from surviving and building!

Bah!

 

Leicester??

 

Whilst you can only admire what they have achieved by spending around 10 % on assembling their team compared to Chelski, ManUre and Citeh have spent, they do have, as I said in another thread - a wealthy benefactor in Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. What they have done is to get a team of relative unknowns who have been recruited by an excellent scouting network (the scout who spotted Mahrez is now at #arsenal!!!), whereas our scouting network is pretty useless to say the least.

Going back to the RBF and the General. You both make valid arguments and until we make some serious changes in our players, we are mostly going to ship lots of goals - if you look back at the season when PL was in charge, we had very few clean sheets, but the football was mostly entertaining - something that cannot be said about the dross we are paying quite a lot of money to go and see every week this season. Yes RBF - I hope Delia and co don't sell out to some overseas millionaire who is just using us to 'launder' their ill gotten gains.
IMO, I think we need at least one season in the Championship and use that to rebuild the team using youth players where possible, though this may have to wait until we unearth the odd gem in the way that Saints have done over the years. I'd LOVE to see a fairly settled starting 11 barring injuries/suspensions, so that players get to understand each other's style of play as well as their strengths and weaknesses.

 

Total bollocks, typical 'Little Norwich ' post ...

shame on you

 

General bor, I think what RBF is saying is that we should accept relegation into the Championship and then not bother to compete to regain PL membership and be like our country cousins. Why not demolish Carrow Road and build houses there, that would save us the bother of even competing in any football match.

Sorry skald bor, that is defeatist talk and as a Norfolk should not even be considered. Have you never heard "England expects every man to do his duty." That was issued by a Norfolk man who would not give into adversity even though equipped with only one eye and one arm. Whatever the odds we expect our club to show spirit and continue to compete no matter how hard the fight.

Looking at our recent performances can anyone say they believe we can stay up. The last four games have been scoreless, how can we hope to survive if we do not score goals, it is goals that win matches.

Our manager says the team have belief in staying up, it is not belief they need but the ability to put the ball in the net.

 

Thanks for putting words into my mouth NORKIE, unfortunately they weren´t entirely accurate. I´m not suggesting that we don´t try to get out of the Championship (if we do indeed end up there) in fact I seriously doubt anything I say, could stop us from trying, but it certainly would´t bother me one iota, if we never came out of there again. The Premier League is nothing more than a rich man´s plaything. How about giving a few of those millions to the starving kids in Africa, or the thousands of refugees fleeing from Syria, somewhere where they might actually do some good, instead of lining their own pockets, and the pockets of players, most of whom aren´t worth a tenth of what they get.

Certainly no more shameful than the likes of you KIO, who call for pretty much the whole club to be sacked, every other week, and who seem to have this ridiculous notion that money will solve all our problems. To hell with those who have helped to build up the club for the last many years, and without whom we would have been in a far worse state than even you could contemplate, they can just sod off, we´ll go out and find someone better.

No - shame on ÝOU!

 

Good thread, with valid and opposite ends of the spectrum comments from RBF and the General.
Oh, and a brief comment too from KIO
It seems an appropriate place to put Gary Gowers latest column from MFW.
http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter...e-unhappy-times-at-carrow-road/#comment-76333

So, tell me RBF, what satisfaction is there (or should I say will there be!) in being a solvent club, but in the championship with a disparate boardroom, absolutely ****ing clueless scouting set-up and no genuine ambition or desire to try and get back into the top flight. May as well do exactly what Norkie says and realise the asset value of Carrow Road, (cor, Fat man Chase would get a stiffy at the thought! ) sell it to Asda and the fans can go and watch Norwich United at Plantation park to get their fix.
And don't forget, just a few short years ago, how Lambert led us to a perfectly respectable 12th place in the top flight - and if I'm correct, this was before we were free of external debt and during DMs seven year plan.
So, with the 'learning curve' of that experience and extra revenue in the game this season, why have the board not learned anything from our last recent relegation, it's almost as if they've meekly rolled over and accepted the 'little Norwich' tag.
And if that's the case, roll on Asda opening

 

It's like saying why aim high at school to do well ? as University is just for rich clever people ,or why try to pull a 9/10 girl in a bar ? when there are plenty of 5s that would almost certainly go home with you .

We had the resources to bolster our defence and buy a decent striker but decided to go with what we had .

If we did this and still went down , fine at least we tried.
I'm talking about relegation not the 5/10 girl in the bar by the way.

 

This is the most painful aspect of the whole pathetic saga. Proudly announcing to the financial world that we are a solvent club and then putting bulging wallet back in pocket without spending out on even the basics to a decent degree to try and ensure survival.
A top flight campaign with Bennett, Martin and Bassong (oh, and I believe Wisdom played there once - when he was about 16!) as our only options at centre back, trying (and failing - dismally ) to repel all multi-million pound boarders, like Vardy, Aguero, Kane etc is tantamount to lunacy. And that top scorer has amassed a princely sum of five (5) goals after 36 matches suggests that CB issues weren't the only thing to have been sorted with a sticking plaster when serious surgery was long overdue.
It makes me sick to my stomach - apologies for so many long-winded posts this morning.

 

I think Aldi is a more likely outcome than Asda. There are many aspects to which we can attribute blame, but the major one has to be player recruitment. Why did we not push through with our Afobe bids? Rannochia turned us down but how hard did we work to recruit him, and just what did we offer him? In January it was Heller and another who I forget that deemed us unworthy employers for themselves. I am a supporter of DM, but it is starting ti seem that his negotiating leaves a lot to be desired. Not forgetting the striker, Lav something, who turned up for his medical only to be told that we were no longer interested. I just hope that Tony Spearing has the ability, and the balls, to change our transfer shambles into a coherent and successful policy.

 

We offered £10M for Afobe, exactly the same as he was sold to Bournemouth for, so you can change THAT record!

 

The ´no ambitiion´ and ´no desire´ to get back are NORKIE´S words, not mine, as explained above. As for the rest of your question, and speaking for myself only - total and ample satisfaction. Give me a league where the rewards are earned and not bought, any time, at least then any success is real success.

 

I'd suggest fans of comparable sized clubs like Swansea, Stoke and West Brom would beg to differ.
They have grown, steadily into established (or as well as anyone outside the 'top six' can) Premier League sides, not by spending zillions and being all gung-ho, but by adding a little extra quality to their squads at each available window. Stability is the keyword and our board could do far worse than to look at any of those three clubs and learn in spades from how they've been run.
I expect they were 'little Stoke' and 'little Swansea' a few years ago, but they've done something to address it, rather than meekly surrender (again ) with a very soft underbelly there for all to see

 

So assumidly if we'd offered 10.1m then we would of out bid them. Trouble is it's not just how much you offer it's other factors ie. personal terms the feel you get for the club, how you think you get on with the manager / other players and how much competition there is from other established players who play a similar role to you etc, etc, etc,

 

imho Ofobe has an awful long way to go to prove he's worth £10M, let alone any more!

 

Not if you offset that against the money we made from Johnson and Grabban.

 

So, a young (23) striker with 4 goals already and bags of potential for £10 m, or an aging war-horse (29) who couldn't get a game for Everton...for £8.5 m?
I know which I would perceive as better business, for the longer term, especially
Good job I'm not NCFCs accountant

 

£10.1m