David McNally.

[hogesar]

Its a hard point to argue with.

McNally gave us some great times, but he has to accept culpability for some of his less clever decisions.

Yes, but equally from David's point of view, he is being slated by a guy thats achieved nothing at Norwich yet; whilst David was an integral part of taking us from near administration to Premier League riches without much money to spend. And then taking us back up again after relegation. Webber has a long way to get even close to McNallys achievement in a similar role.

 

[GJP]

It was a combination of everything, the fans being behind it all, finding talismen like Grant Holt, Bowkett was instrumental in the success too. And McNally was part of that, and we should all be forever grateful.

But he also has to take responsibility for the likes of Van Wolfeswinkel, Lafferty, Jarvis and Naismith. Yes, he was single minded in trying to establish us in the Premiership, but that is the very reason that we are having to restructure right now. Imagine the shit we would be in, if we didn't have a Maddison to sell...

He got things badly wrong towards the end, which is why he had to go.

Like I said, he got some things wrong. They all do. Webber already has.

But overall he did well for the club.

Bowkett has been a loss it would seem.

 

[morty]

To be honest, we all know the story, McNally was fantastic for us, but had lost the plot in the end, for various reasons, and had to go. And Webber's point about not investing in infrastructure, when the times were good, is actually an entirely valid one.

McNally didn't really have to gob off about anything, he has just made himself look sour and bitter.

 

[GJP]

Likewise Webber could have just got on with the job he knowingly signed up for.

 

[hogesar]

Let's hope we get promoted this season then McNally will have no point to make and Webbers comments about the prior regime can carry a little more weight!

 

[Canaryboy]

From what I heard at the time what he did for the club was huge.

One of the first things him and Bowkett did was go and manage to persuade the banks to give us a one year payment holiday, during a financial crisis, when businesses up and down the land were having their credit facilities withdrawn completely.

Also, it was Webber who kept saying all summer that not getting promoted would be a failure.... and it was only after a shambolic with James Husband having a nightmare and Franke looking out of his depth and the Russell Martin contract looking like a huge mistake that Webber started talking so much about past mistakes to deflect.

Anyway, we're all going to be looking for a marked improvement next season and if we don't see one then Webber's excuse bank will have run dry I think. We need to look like we can score goals, be more consistent, get thrashed less and look like we've got at least an outside chance of making the play-offs. Oh and finish well above Ipswich please? There is a limit to how long you can keep talking about January 2016.

Its true that Webber walked into a difficult situation, partly caused by McNally's final terrible transfer window. Its also true that he was brought into fix that situation though. He's got away with writing off this season as the 'transition', next season he has to show us what this year was supposed to transition us to exactly.... or can a transition period last two years?

Its sink or swim time for Webber I think. If we stand still again after another summer of transfer business, or even go backwards, then he has failed.

 

[Canaryboy]

Imagine the shit we would be in, if we didn't have a Maddison to sell....

Fair to point out that Maddison, Jacob and Josh were all players that were at the club when McNally left though.

And that the terrible spending didn't stop when McNally left the club. That Brady deal looked fantastic until we spent £7m on Yanic Wildschut, and Michael McGovern has basically pulled off Brinks Mat.

 

[morty]

Fair to point out that Maddison, Jacob and Josh were all players that were at the club when McNally left though.

And that the terrible spending didn't stop when McNally left the club. That Brady deal looked fantastic until we spent £7m on Yanic Wildschut, and Michael McGovern has basically pulled off Brinks Mat.

Oh aye, I wasn't accrediting those players mentioned to anyone in particular. But we are extremely lucky that Jacob had the season he had, and same can be said for Maddison. We might not get that lucky again. McNally's approach was right for the time he was here, but I think Webber and Stones' is right for now, and for the future.

 

[OldRobert]

Oh aye, I wasn't accrediting those players mentioned to anyone in particular. But we are extremely lucky that Jacob had the season he had, and same can be said for Maddison. We might not get that lucky again. McNally's approach was right for the time he was here, but I think Webber and Stones' is right for now, and for the future.

Webber and Stones' approach might be right for now, but for me the 'transition' is over, I want results now, the regime has had long enough. Webber/Farke can't drag it out any longer, you've had your 'revolution', I want to see the results starting from the first match of the new season. No more excuses or fannying around.

 

[Fenway Frank]

Is fannying a German word ?

 

[OldRobert]

Is fannying a German word ?

Must be Frank, as they seem to indulge in it to a degree..............

 

[Dubai Mark]

I await being impressed by Webber, I really want to be, as our Club needs a break and soon.......BUT, I am not holding my breath based on last seasons overall showing and will, like OldRobert, be expecting to see us impressing very early next season. I'm usually pretty patient, but have almost lost it unfortunately/sadly.

 

[Fenway Frank]

I await being impressed by Webber, I really want to be, as our Club needs a break and soon.......BUT, I am not holding my breath based on last seasons overall showing and will, like OldRobert, be expecting to see us impressing very early next season. I'm usually pretty patient, but have almost lost it unfortunately/sadly.

We’d noticed , personally I really don’t know about all this anti Webber stuff, it just seems that one person started moaning about him and everyone else has latched on to it ( no offence meant ) . Someone on the pinkun even uses the fact that he doesn’t support NCFC as a stick to beat him with. All a bit ott in my opinion.

 

[Din]

Anyway, we're all going to be looking for a marked improvement next season and if we don't see one then Webber's excuse bank will have run dry I think. We need to look like we can score goals, be more consistent, get thrashed less and look like we've got at least an outside chance of making the play-offs. Oh and finish well above Ipswich please? There is a limit to how long you can keep talking about January 2016.

Would agree with this to be fair. I said in another thread as well a cementation of a style of football would be nice.

 

[Din]

On McNally, he played a huge part in our rise from League 1, and for that I'll always appreciate him. Its clear as well that he was frustrated with the lack of investment in the team after we went up under Alex Neil. And to be fair whilst Webber does have a right to be frustrated with what happened, particularly the recruitment, towards the end of McNally's tenure, I don't think there's any real need to bash it as much as he has. Especially when our 3 biggest sales since he came in will be the Murphy brothers and Maddison. A combined £45m for 2 youth players and a smart £3m investment in a young player from elsewhere.

That said, I don't agree with some of McNally has said. He said that he would've gone all out for promotion this season, which I think is a bit of a weird thing to say, considering that that is what Villa have just done and they are now paying a massive price for. Same with calling a 14th place finish in a transitional season 'embarrassing'. Assuming that we do make progress this season (which to be fair is by no means a given), last season will essentially be written off a bit.

 

[GJP]

Same with calling a 14th place finish in a transitional season 'embarrassing'.

Football clubs are always in transition.

Players going in and out. Same with managers and coaches. Execs. Owners. Changing finances/financial pressures. Tactics. Sports science. Youth development.

All of it.

Very few clubs are ever standing still.

 

[Canaryboy]

He said that he would've gone all out for promotion this season, which I think is a bit of a weird thing to say

He actually said that he would have achieved promotion last season, the Moxey season. Although whether he would or not who knows.

I think he has beef primarily with the owners rather than with Webber to be honest.

I actually think that McNally deserved to lose his job. Summer window was a disaster, managed to spend money in January but completely misappropriated much of it - and gave two players 1 year longer than parachute payments covered which was negligent.

Plus his little twitter resignation wasn't the first sign of erratic behaviour and there was a loss of discipline at the club around the same time. Didn't McNally get into a scrap down Prince of Wales Road? The the Pink'un deleted the threads about it?

In the same season John Ruddy uppercutted somebody and was fined by the club I believe?

He lost his job and deserved to, regardless of whether Jez Moxey was a complete disaster and despite Webber using McNally's bad season as a convenient fallback when things aren't going well.

Although I also understand why he feels the need to lash out a bit, and we can say that he hasn't acknowledged his own mistakes but if McNally puts his hands up and says "I got this wrong" then he's giving ammunition to Webber for him to use when he is trying to manage expectations and give us all a shot of reality. Can't blame McNally for not wishing to say "yeah Webber is right about that" when he probably feels a bit hard done by, having received no credit at all from Webber for anything positive that he had done (like sign Maddison and Godfrey).

I just want Webber to move us forward now and I've got no time for him talking about the past again this current season, its boring and we already know. Cost of wages owed to Jarvis and Naismith in this post-parachute season is probably about £3m.... its a burden that we'd prefer not to have, but hardly Aston Villa levels of reckless, and we're stuck with a third expensive but useless player for the same season (Russell Martin) because of a Webber decision and that's probably another £1m.... he's going to make his own bad decisions.

Every club gets stuck with some deadwood, that's just a fact. I'm sure Alex Ferguson would have preferred not to have had to pay Owen Hargreaves to do nothing for 4 years. And Naismith is definitely not what we've needed in his time here because he's completely immobile, but he's not a terrible player and I bet Sam Allardyce would appreciate having him in a Championship squad to play some sort of Kevin Nolan type role behind a Kevin Davies or Andy Carroll style player.

It just sucked that Alex Neil felt the need to play him every week to try and justify his fee even when it was clear he was out of form, and left Maddison and Pritchard out in the process. But it wasn't David McNally who sanctioned the Pritchard signing when we had an oversupply of number 10's, nor the Sergi Canos signing.

The lack of joined up thinking continued after McNally had left. I think it was right to part ways with McNally, but I really think the biggest mistake was sticking with a relegated manager and replacing DM with Jez Moxey who brought no new ideas at all to the table.

 

[morty]

If you believe the rumours then McNally did seriously go off the rails and deserved to go.

I think you may be over egging the Webber stuff, to be honest, Its not like he brought up the previous regime over and over again, but it was, perhaps, the reality check that a lot of fans needed. He could also have said "Look, the previous regime spent every single penny in trying to stay in the Premiership, and we literally don't have a bean left".

I can understand why we stuck with Alex Neil, he had got us promoted before, so why couldn't he do it again? The obvious difference was the weight of expectation, and the pressure of the players being his players, and it is only in hindsight that it didn't work out, but it showed us that although Alex was a good impact manager off the bench, he wasn't cut out for the long game.

We were a bit rudderless when McNally left, because he was such a micromanager that it could all have easily fallen apart without him to tell folk what to do. I can see why Moxey was brought in, he has a decent track record in what he does, and isn't afraid to make an unpopular decision, but either he really, really lied in his interview, or we underestimated just how ruthless he was, but he very quickly rubbed Delia up the wrong way with a few decisions( I have heard she was absolutely furious with one, can't remember which one lol, sorry), and I am glad that they came to the conclusion that he had to go, so quickly, rather than be afraid to make the decision.

Ed Balls said that they actually wanted the current set up about a year earlier than they did, but couldn't. Perhaps they pitched McNally on it, and he didn't like it?

 

[Canaryboy]

There were also rumours that McNally wanted to sack Alex Neil at some stage during the season but the board over ruled him, and that may be when things went downhill.

If it was late in the season then you can sort of understand the boards reluctance, because it didn't work with Hughton and we probably wish we'd stuck with him in hindsight.

But if it was during the normal late-November / early-December time, then that would add an interesting development wouldn't it.... McNally being expected to give financial backing to a manager that he wanted to sack. What would that say about the Naismith signing? If Alex Neil wanted him in his squad, and the fans expected money to be spent, but McNally didn't even want Alex Neil as manager?

That's why a McNally book would be so interesting. Never really know what goes on behind the scenes. Have heard it rumoured before that McNally had lost autonomy on footballing decisions / was being undermined, could be being over ruled on Alex Neil that led to that change?

A little known fact about David McNally by the way is that he played football to a very good standard during the mid to late 80's, one league below the Conference I believe. He was a prolific goalscorer for his hometown club Bromsgrove Rovers (since wound up),and a couple of years after he left they reached their pinnacle when they finished 2nd in the Conference (top team team got promoted to the Football League). So he knew a lot more about football than people often seem to make out, he wasn't just a bloke with an MBA who stumbled into the sport like Neil Doncaster.... he knows football and a lot of his former teammates made it into the league.

 

[morty]

I think the underlying factor here is that, and I will use a phrase that was thrown around a lot at the time, quite possibly said by a senior member of the board, Mr Mcnally had become too big for his boots.

His ego was out of control (that neatly fits in with some of the rumours about some of his leisure activities *taps nose*) and I think that he forgot that he was the CEO, and didn't actually own the whole club.