I was, and am still, taking a break, but this thread has been in my pipeline for quite a while now, and this seems as good a time as any to give it an airing. It seems to me that wherever you look on here, and at every little hiccup along our footballing trail, so many people are looking to find someone to blame. I don´t understand the reason for this, and never have understood it, to be honest. Is it a ´football supporter´ thing, is it an ´English´ thing, or is it just human nature, particularly ´English human nature´, to need to react in this way, when things don´t quite go according to plan. Certainly I haven´t come across the same degree of intolerance here in Denmark, either in footballing circles or anywhere else. At various points during the season, Delia has been to blame, the board have been to blame, McNally has been to blame, Alex Neil has been to blame, the players have been to blame, even the poor referees have been to blame, for the situation we find ourselves in. Personally I can´t honestly see that anyone is to blame, it´s just circumstance. I´m sure they´ve all been doing their damnedest to try and ensure that our situation was quite another, altogether. Take last summer for example. I´m sure no one person, or persons, deliberately set out to wreck our recruitment campaign. It´s just a fact that we can only pay a certain amount for players. We can only paý a certain amount in wages to players. A certain percentage of players just wouldn´t come to Norwich anyway, whatever we paid them. None of that is anyone´s fault, it just happens to be so. Circumstance also dictates that: 1. we have the owners we have 2. at least three-quarters of the clubs at any one time, in the Premier League, are likely to be far, far wealthier than we will ever be As regards 1. I think we´re lucky to have them, and they certainly shouldn´t be blamed for still hanging around, and until they decide that they no longer wish to be our owners, people should learn to accept them. As far as I´m concerned, they can stay until they both reach one-hundred-and-twenty ( well, sort of, you know what I mean). As for 2. no-one at Norwich is to blame for that situation either, I hate that there is so much of a gulf in the Premier League and between that and the other leagues, but we´re stuck with it, and I doubt it´s going to change. I also just wonder, that if some people hadn´t been quite so quick to want to apportion blame, at every little disappointment, whether McNally might not have still been with us. I can´t for the life of me see that he did an awful lot wrong during his time with us, in fact I´d say he seemed to do an awful lot right, and naturally not having any insight as to why he resigned, it can only be speculation, but sad nonetheless, and I think we´ve lost a very good and capable man. Perhaps it´s only in football that fuses do seem to be very short, certainly according to Steve Bruce the other day, the average ´job lifespan´ of a manager these days is thirteen months. Sad indictment of the game and the times, if so. I´ll leave the rest to you lot. Have a good summer
Can I just change something in the bit I have highlighted in your post RBF? Instead of saying we can only pay certain wages, could that be taken as saying "We can't pay a certain amount?". If that amounts to the same thing, then the question is raised whether the club mean "We WON'T pay over a certain amount. If they do mean that they won't pay, then surely they must shoulder some responsibility and therefore be held to account for lack of ambition to a certain extent. I'm not saying pay someone 100k a week by any means, but if our maximum wage is 30,000, would it not be worth borrowing to stretch that maximum wage to say 40,000 a week? Could that improve our chances of getting a better quality player? Would that improve our chances of getting promoted? Would that increase our changes of surviving in the PL? The money we would get from being in the PL would surely cover the 'gamble' that we had taken, wouldn't it?
Your guess is as good as mine Resurgam, but I assume, and sincerely hope, that the Club have a wage structure in place which they cannot and will not exceed. I don´t think those who sit on the keys to the bank, should be blamed for having that approach. They after all, ought to be more experienced in that department, than any of us viewing from the outside.
I have to say I'm amazed at how many fans know exactly why we were relegated and know exactly what to do to reverse our fortunes, yet those self same people have never been head-hunted to put their knowledge into practice. One thing is absolutely certain, if their wishes were adopted, NCFC would be bankrupt and out of existence PDQ!
Hi skald bor, I hope you have broad shoulders and able to take the blame for our lack of success this season. There has been a complete breakdown in your poetic contributions and undoubtedly this lack of effort on your part has had a detrimental effect on our teams efforts. Hope this coming season you can find time to improve on this lack of effort and put us back in the PL ! Seriously though we finished second from bottom because that is what our results deserved and no attaching blame is going to change that position one iota. Regards to family and Muttley.
Yes, a worthwhile post RBF and the main issue for me is that the team on 3 or 4 occasions when it could really have counted just 'didn't turn up!!!' going by the player ratings in the good old 'Daily Fail' can anyone explain to me how one week we maybe have one person warranting a score of 6 or below and the very next week, only 1 or 2 players are awarded above 6!!!! I'm not into trying to apportion blame, but if I thought I was going to take a significant drop in salary if my performance wasn't up to the required standard, I'd work bloody hard to improve it and also do my darndest to get my co-workers to do the same!!!!
Yes - in an ideal world, all our players would play to a high standard week in week out, but we all know that just doesn´t happen, even for players on £200,000 a week. Very, very few players, if any at all, can do that, which is sort of the point I am making. Tolerance levels of supporters have to be tinged with a touch of realism, before pressing the ´who shall we blame this week´ button. Strange that those who are so quick to blame, can´t seem to see the effect it might have on those being blamed.
We were a poor side, took on a run by a motivational manager, snuck into the Premiership, were favorites for the drop, we nearly survived, but didn't. It's a shame, there was a chance. It didn't work out. Nothing we can do, but start again. No point whinging about it now.
All very interesting and all very true Mr. Lines, but not a lot to do with this thread. I wonder if you can tell me why quite so many people are so quick and keen to find someone to blame when things go wrong, or even what good it´s supposed to do.
I don't know what they think it will do about it, apart from bring everyone else down into their depression. I was very angry with key results in the biggest games. Nothing we can do about it now. It's in the past. I think players, manager, coaches, and board all have to take blame for that.
"Apportioning blame" is just the fans way of saying what went wrong. In our season a lot was wrong, so plenty of blame.
I think allot of it comes from a cultural shift, if something goes wrong at my work we will have a route cause analysis. The stated policy is that there is a no blame culture, so if it is an individual who has continuing problems we will look at why that individual keeps failing and try to take action to prevent further failure. Of course if said individual is failing because he cannot or will not follow procedures designed and set out to work favourably and safely then he'll be given the heave ho. I think City having been relegated represents a failure given that our one true objective this last season would have been to stay up. We are undertaking a route cause analysis. Was the failure to win sufficient points? 1] Players a] Are they good enough at this level b] was the team set up wrong for them c] underperformed down to poor coaching 2] Team a] Is it good enough at this level b] were the tactics wrong for them c] underperformed down to poor coaching d] were the players good enough in each position of the team e] were previous shortfalls in the team addressed 3] Management, a] sufficient experience etc etc So in ernest we want to identify the problems so that we can say these things must be learnt from and need to remedied so that they might not happen again. In a Football club you are not dealling with; tools, machines and raw materials, it is a very people centric business and so I guess when we look at what has gone wrong it is people generating the percieved errors or short falls. For example, most of us feel that the summer transfer window was a failure and that the failure to strengthen key areas was a very large factor in our relegation. SO what caused this? Poor scouting system - Playoff participation meant unknown division to recruit in till later - Unrealistic targets - undesirable club - undesirable wages - lack of managerial pull - lack of funds etc and then you can screw down into the causes of all these. Some will arrive at we need richer owners, others that we need more nouse in the dug out. But it all comes that we all want the best for the club and in failure it is human nature to try and understand why, ask questions and hope that the lessons will mean that repeats will be avoided! Bah!
Wow, CS just said what I did in about 5% of the words! I blame Rob, his example of war and peacesque posts has led me away from good concise posting! Bah!
I guess if you want a team, club, business etc to constantly improve one of the best ways to do this is to identify your weakness and try to lessen there effect by either eradicating them or improving performance. You can only identify and prioritise these weaknesses through honest assessment and analysis. Hence the need to apportion blame, identify mistakes or whatever you want to call it. So for a simple example, in a team 9 players are playing really well, but 2 are not very good. To improve the teams performance you need to identify the 2 that aren't very good (apportion blame). You then need to improve things i.e. replace the 2 players with new players (eradication) or give them extra coaching (improving performance). So say you sell 1 and bring in a better player and the second one improves through extra coaching. You then need to start again with the honest assessment and analysis (apportion blame). Eventually by constantly going through the cycle, players that you may have previously considered exceptional become your weakness and have to be dealt with if you are going to improve. What you can't do is blame the whole team for the weaknesses of a few this tends to just bring the whole team down. So the trouble for Norwich is not identifying a few weakness, but deciding which to prioritise. Personally I think at times a big weakness for us as a club is we are over sentimental, therefore we struggle at the honest assessment and analysis stage, therefore every thing that follows fails i.e. Martin has been a strength for us in the past, but he's not now, but we are letting his previous service to the club get in the way of an honest assessment.
That makes a lot of sense but you have to be careful who you eradicate, even Messi has the odd dip in form, and changing managers at the drop of a hat has not worked very well at Leeds!
I´d also agree with most of that, and I think you´re right, as a Club, we´re probably more sentimental than most, the appointments of Bryan Gunn and Neil Adams as manager proved that , but then again so did the appointment of Dave Stringer in my opinion, and he turned out to be a great success. Sentimentality isn´t necessarily a failing, it´s only a kind of loyalty after all, being loyal to those who have served you well over the years. If there was no room for sentimentality in football, I doubt very much whether Neil Adams and Darren Huckerby would be in a job at the Club now, and in the past, I doubt whether people like John Deehan, Peter Grant, Gary Megson, Doug Livermore or Mel Machin, would have been here, in their coaching capacities, either. And three of those, Deehan, Livermore and Machin, were part of some of the best times we´ve had. So don´t completely shut the door on sentimentality.
The General is correct, you have to find the reason for failure and correct or eradicate it. To accept failure is to fail in your goals and ambitions. Blame, responsibility or whatever you label you put on it has to be identified. In answer to the the original question "why do people blame" because they have expectations and feel let down as you well know I do! It doesn't generally help or resolve anything but to sit and watch the team week in week out they feel they need to get it off their chests.
