Just interested to find out who you folks think is more important to the long term future of the club.
McNally. Even though I rate Alex Neil as the best young manager in the country, the change from where we were before McNally to where we are now is utterly staggering. I can see Alex moving on in 2 or 3 season and we'll continue but I don't even want to think about what might happen if/when McNally goes.
This. Exactly. Neil's great, but then so was Lambert. These guys do massive things for the football, but it's McNally that's moved mountains for our club.
I've said before about Lambert and the same applies here, without Neil we wouldn't play playing in the Premier League. However without McNally there's a chance we would be playing full stop. As a business Norwich City is unrecognisable from where we were in 2008/9. Just things like the content produced on YouTube by Max Bell and the interactions with the fans puts the club as one of the best off the field in my book. I know it gets a lot of criticism but the footballing board system works for me. It's means we don't lose all of our knowledge about running the club when one person leaves. I'm delighted by what Alex has done and an really excited about the future he could build here. However to be a fully success he needs McNally.
Bath and Colk have got it bang on for me. Without McNally we wouldn't have a club, never mind Premier League status. And it's McNally who picked out Neil, and I've faith in him to pick the next successful Norwich manager.
Looking back, based of what we knew at the time and what we were like as a team, good going forwards but shipping goals, Hughton did seem to be a good appointment, one I was happy. I think it's hard to say it was a bad appointment he just lasted too long when it started going down hill. Adams was driven too much by sentiment.
I get a feeling Adams was more Delia choice and I know you and others will hate me for saying this and although we got relegated I still don't think Hughton was a disaster a lot make out to be.
Hughton had a good season and a bad one. We became a lot more organised and better drilled but I think less fit and ultimately without the ability to rebuild confidence when it was lost. To stay up that season we needed to pull a Sunderland move, which is what we tried just too late. For maintaining our position that would have been fine but intern of club development this season could well be better for us. Watching Sunderland stagnate, getting closer and closer to relegation shows that they struggle to build from their position. I feel Hughton played an important part in our development as a club, his time was very much over but I don't regret most of it.
Spot on Bath - because it was fairly disastrous on the pitch, particularly in his second season, people completely forget that Hughton transformed our club in terms of scouting, facilities, youth development etc. Getting relegated was always going to be bad news, but it may be that we can view it as the step back to take two steps forward. We are so much better placed now, and I think if people aren't prepared to thank Hughton for his part in that, they need to learn to see the wood from the trees. McNally/the board made a mistake in clinging on to Hughton for so long, but I can understand what they were trying to do. It was the Adams appointment that, on reflection, was the one which didn't add up. As alluded to above, though, appointing Adams didn't really have a McNally air about it, so I wonder how much say he actually had.
