Loadsa money to line the boards' pockets. Imagine what could be done with all that cash if you had a board with more ambition than surviving in that division...
Psssh. That's bollocks and you know it. When we were in league 1, our board made our plan to have back-to-back PL seasons within 7 years. We've exceeded that. We've cleared all our external debts, and Chris Hughton will have the biggest transfer budget any Norwich manager ever has this summer. We're making plans to expand the stadium to around 35,000. And despite all this our club is run well enough that a relegation this season, or next season, would not have left us up the swanny. What more ambition could they show without risking the future of our club?
Just imagine all the money you owe as debt Now imagine instead of owing that money, you could spend it on the squad. that's us Goodnight.
What else are we going to do with it? Okay, so some might be held back for January, or stadium improvements, but that's besides the point. Every penny our club makes is now going into improving the club and the playing squad. We've not got debts to service, we've not got an owner trying to asset-strip our club like the Venky's. Our paid executives take their salaries and do the best job they can for our club. I'll accept McNally's salary (rumoured at £1.5m a year) could be deemed excessive, but he's been the best thing to happen to our club in years and been a significant part in getting us where we are. Unless you've got some kind of evidence to suggest McNally, Bowkett or Delia are taking money out of the club beyond what they should be, you haven't got a pot to piss in.
Fair play DH, but I do have a couple of questions from your post Is this a good thing? We all know money doesn't buy success and ultimately an idiot with a lot of money is a potentially fatal concoction (See. Mark Hughes & Roy Keane as examples) Again, this is the route we took after we made it to Europe and nearly crippled us. couple that with my previous point and it could be a slippery slope for the club to take. Although you will obviously see things through yellow tinted specs, surely the club doesn't need to fork out for a (possible?) White Elephant that would 'upset the applecart' so to speak
also george Burley, who did wonders without money, yet give him a couple of quid and we know all to well the nightmare!
As others on here have been saying when you have no money you have to be very careful how you spend it, have a plan and stick to it which is what you budgies have been successfully doing. It will be interesting to see how you behave when you have some serious money to spend, will you use it wisely or will you start chasing glory and end up like Wolves
Both fair points: I'm not sure if it's our board who used the phrase, but the key is "ambition with prudence". Whilst we're cash rich now, the important thing is not to saddle the club with a wage bill that we couldn't support in the championship. Take the Van Wolfswinkel signing. Whilst in reality if we'd gone down he'd have been sold before ever playing for us, the signing was made knowing that if we went down, we'd still be able to support his wages, and afford the transfer fee. I think that whilst we might be splashing out higher transfer fees this summer, the wages offered will only be a slight increase on our current wage cap - but with relegation clauses in place so that over a single summer we can reduce our wages to those that can be supported on a championship income. I think several clubs in the Premier League have learnt that you can have moderate success without risking the future of the club (Swansea, Stoke, West Brom spring to mind) and without a rich backer. That's our aim too, to slowly build the club into a firmly mid-table PL outfit, with perhaps the odd cup-run or chance of getting into the Europa league. That's where I think we want to be in 5 years anyway. We're not going to do a QPR and say "European football is coming to Loftus Road next year" or whatever ridiculous statements Fernandes came out with. I think Mark Hughes was helped by having a board who were facilitators. To him it seemed an endless pot of cash. Hughton knows we don't have that, and McNally won't let him treat it that way. All signings will have to be made for the right reasons, and at the right price. I think our negotiations with Celtic in January showed that, we weren't going to be held to ransom for Hooper. I think there's two things to consider here, firstly the need. We could pack out Carrow Road in league 1, never mind the PL. Even when we had several seasons of crap in the championship, we still packed in 22-25,000 fans. I believe the plans are to add 4000 seats initially, and then given more time to knock down the main stand and rebuilt it with another 8000 seats, to give a capacity of 39,000. Whether 39,000 is excessive or not I don't know, but I think we can easily support another 4000 whether in the championship or the Prem. Secondly, the cost. When we built our most recent stand, it cost us £9.2m for an 8000 capacity stand. It's this stand that we'd be sticking another 4000 seats on (for which the foundations are already in place) so that might cost us £5m. The main stand rebuild is quoted at £15m, but that's a much more long term objective. I suspect when you did your building work the prices were similar, but now the TV money is much, much higher. £5m is probably 1 signing, whilst I'm guessing at market prices in the early 2000's that was probably 2 or 3, and a much greater chunk of your transfer budget? Estimates for our transfer budget for this summer range from £20-50m depending on who you ask on our forum. I think the higher end of that is probably unrealistic, but we probably had £12m last summer, we held back £12m to pay off debts, and we've got another £12m+ in extra TV money this year. That's £36m, so if we made that £31m and built the 4000 capacity stand, we've still got a hefty transfer budget and won't go into debt to fund it. If it was built over the summer, back of a *** packet maths suggest we'd make £1.5m in ticket money in a season. I'd say it's a fairly safe bet that whatever league we're in, that stand would be paid off in 4 years, so we may as well do it whilst we've got the capital to avoid going into debt, which would cost more in the long run. At the end of the day, Premier League status can come and go, but the majority of the fans won't. Evidence of the last few years suggests that we can support a higher capacity, so we should look to maximise the cash we can make from that resource whilst we've got the capital to do it. I don't think it'd be a White Elephant.
A very detailed and well though out response DH I will be very interested to see what happens as I think this is a hugely important junction for NCFC and one that could be looked back on as opportunities missed/mistakes made or wonderful strategic planning... Good luck to you I say
Cheers! I agree it's a very important point. Survival has given us a share of the big TV pot and now it's up to the club to use it as effectively as possible. I don't think we will, but squandering it all on excessive wages and transfer fees would not be the way to go in my opinion, and I'd like to think the club will invest in the infrastructure too.
Investing in the infrastructure is a good move whilst you have the means to do so. We expanded our ground and it nearly ruined us but in the long run should we ever get back to the prem then things will be in place to help profit from it so I am overall not unhappy about the decision. Hopefully we see a bit more success under MM and we can start to attract more fans back to Portman Road. It has been hard for many to justify paying the high prices to watch a team full of players who weren't really giving it their all for the cause but that can not be said of Norwich whose fans have bought into the five year plan that was set out.
I wouldn't think you'd even need to get out of the championship to start reaping the rewards of a bigger stadium. If you can start well, play decent football and be within touching distant of the play-offs, then if the ticket prices are right the fans will come back. That's one thing our board have generally got correct. There was a watershed cup game at home to Spurs where the ticket prices were sky high and nobody came, but the board realised the mistake and attendances for subsequent cup games were all significantly better as a result. It seems ludicrous to keep prices high when nobody's coming. Selling 10,000 tickets at £20 a pop vs 20,000 at £10 should be a no brainer. I think like we bought into our plan, your fans are beginning to buy into MM too. I get the feeling that the aim seems to be to leave behind the loan player and concentrate on youth and lower league gems, which worked very well for us. I think whilst this summer is perhaps a very defining turning point for us, it's almost as important for you guys.
Agreed. After Keane and Jewell, things hit rock bottom. The only way is forwards for us now............I hope. High ticket pricing for a poor product has been our worst enemy at the moment.
