Sooper Jonny.

[splutcho]

I don't get why people think we should be loaded? We have a squad full of massive earners that has eaten up all the parachute payments and we're about to be making even less if we don't go up this year. We gambled all our money the January before we went down and lost. That's the reality.

 

[morty]

I don't get why people think we should be loaded? We have a squad full of massive earners that has eaten up all the parachute payments and we're about to be making even less if we don't go up this year. We gambled all our money the January before we went down and lost. That's the reality.

I don't think anyone thinks we should be loaded, but by the same respect we shouldn't be flat broke either. We're a well run club with virtually no debt and a massively loyal and reliable fan base.

 

[Canaryboy]

I don't get why people think we should be loaded? We have a squad full of massive earners that has eaten up all the parachute payments and we're about to be making even less if we don't go up this year. We gambled all our money the January before we went down and lost. That's the reality.

This is exactly like politics at the moment, ha. 

You've got people who really buy into the need for austerity so we don't end up like Greece, they vote Conservative or UKIP.

Then you've got people who are either deficit deniers or point out that austerity doesn't work who think we should take a punt on borrowing for infrastructure, those vote Labour, Greens, or SNP. 

And the truth is probably somewhere in the centre, which has been completely abandoned politically.

But I'm leaning towards your position Splutcho. Later this year when we get the accounts for the season past, it wouldn't surprise me if people are a bit shocked and we've run at a substantial loss because we were banking on an instant return. 

And we've also got to contend with a £20m+ drop in revenue if we fail to go up this season, our turnover will fall by something like 40%. The club won't be taking it for granted that there will be takers for players next summer. They receive an offer for Dorrans, and they're accepting it because they are afraid that there won't be any offers in 2018. 

I'm a bit worried about this project, would probably lean towards cost cutting being necessary but concerned that Webber won't quite be able to pull it off, A lot of people were calling for Lambert to be our new manager, should think he'd have walked out already for having no control over transfers  :lol:

 

[Canaryboy]

We're a well run club with virtually no debt.

That's the thing though, we don't know the current status of that... accounts for the season just finished remain a secret. I'm wondering whether we've not cut costs enough last summer and are now paying the price, because the idea was to keep the squad together and bank on them walking the league? 

Would be quite easy to envisage a situation whereas we've run at a £5m or £10m loss this season and are now having to try and claw that back. 

Or you may be right and we aren't skint, perhaps we'll surprise everybody by shipping out Howson, Dorrans and Jerome..... but then turn around and spend on Tom Cairney and Britt Assomblonga or something, perhaps we need to raise funds to buy some real quality? 

 

[Canaryboy]

I wrote the above before reading this: http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/reality-bites-the-figures-that-show-why-norwich-city-are-having-to-do-things-differently-this-summer-1-5055886

Which suggests a £5m loss last season. Could be argued that we've fixed that for this season by releasing several likely high earners, but doesn't explain where we'll get transfer fees for 15 new players, so that's what is happening now.... Webber is shipping out people he can get a fee for, to rebuild. 

Red or black, odds or evens. This is either going to be great or a complete f*cking disaster. That's football though isn't it. 

 

[morty]

I wrote the above before reading this: http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/reality-bites-the-figures-that-show-why-norwich-city-are-having-to-do-things-differently-this-summer-1-5055886

Which suggests a £5m loss last season. Could be argued that we've fixed that for this season by releasing several likely high earners, but doesn't explain where we'll get transfer fees for 15 new players, so that's what is happening now.... Webber is shipping out people he can get a fee for, to rebuild. 

Red or black, odds or evens. This is either going to be great or a complete f*cking disaster. That's football though isn't it. 

Yeah it was publicised a while ago that we would operate at a small loss this season. But it goes back to the obsession with remaining (virtually) debt free that we seem to have. Yeah its great, but not at the expense of promotion, or at least remaining extremely competitive. We are at a tipping point this season, if we don't get promoted then I reckon you could easily wave goodbye to all the good young players that we have worked so hard to develop and collect.

I seriously hope Webber has brought a long list of unearthed, lower league, cheap gems.

 

[Canaryboy]

Its just a massive gamble isn't it. Lets hope Webber is on a winning streak. He's going to be going from here to a huge club or he's going to be unemployable, makes me feel a bit better that his career is on the line to be honest. 

Sean Raggett could be the next Chris Smalling or he could be the next Victor Segura. 

That Bosnian could be the next Tony Andreu or he could be a revelation. 

Angus Gunn could be the next Joe Hart, or he could be the next Joe Lewis (people forget that he got an actual England call up, haha). 

 

[KIO]

The harsh reality is that the Board for once fully backed the previous incumbent and have got their fingers burnt big time.

They sanctioned the transfers of Naismith (£8.5M !) Wildsh1t (£7.0M) etc.etc. in a failed bid to retain our PL status or in the very least an immediate return after one season so we now have to cut our cloth accordingly.

It appears to me that we now have a more savvy guy (SW) in charge of transfer policy and long term I think it will be beneficial.

I fully expect three or four more players to arrive from Budesliga 2 where the average weekly wage is circa £5k PW

P.S. With regard to Naismith in particular, for a club of our size to spend so much on a player past his best who will be 31 this year with no sell on value and pay him high wages was sheer fecking stupidity.

 

[morty]

The harsh reality is that the Board for once fully backed the previous incumbent and have got their fingers burnt big time.

They sanctioned the transfers of Naismith (£8.5M !) Wildsh1t (£7.0M) etc.etc. in a failed bid to retain our PL status or in the very least an immediate return after one season so we now have to cut our cloth accordingly.

It appears to me that we now have a more savvy guy (SW) in charge of transfer policy and long term I think it will be beneficial.

I fully expect three or four more players to arrive from Budesliga 2 where the average weekly wage is circa £5k PW

P.S. With regard to Naismith in particular, for a club of our size to spend so much on a player past his best who will be 31 this year with no sell on value and pay him high wages was sheer fecking stupidity.

The board can never win in situations like this, but I am glad they backed Alex and at least tried to stay up, as I feel they let Hughton down in his last transfer window.

Whilst with hindsight its easy to say that about Naismith I can see exactly why they made the signing, and I also remember pretty much everyone being pleased with it at the time.

It seems if we spend big we're wasting it, and if we don't we're "little old Norwich" 

 

[KIO]

The board can never win in situations like this, but I am glad they backed Alex and at least tried to stay up, as I feel they let Hughton down in his last transfer window.

Whilst with hindsight its easy to say that about Naismith I can see exactly why they made the signing, and I also remember pretty much everyone being pleased with it at the time.

It seems if we spend big we're wasting it, and if we don't we're "little old Norwich" 

Your circle of friends differs greatly from mine then mate as I don't know anyone who thought bringing in Naismith was a good idea regardless of the fee. I don't want to rake over old coals but the Board backing a manager who it was clear to see should have been sacked before Christmas was folly. At least we now have a Football Man looking after recruitment so hopefully expensive previous mistakes made in the past won't be repeated. <_<

 

[Canaryboy]

The problem isn't that we paid too much for Naismith (although we probably did), its more that we spent £16m on two players who play in the same position and had to compete with a living legend who wasn't ever going to roll over and just give up his place in the side, with no apparent plan to get them all working in the same XI, whilst some other areas of the pitch suffered from under investment.

Its about the allocation of resources, it was all lop sided. The Naismith-Pritchard thing takes the biscuit though, I'm so glad that we have Pritchard and if one had to leave I'd want it to be Naismith, but how on earth did Alex Neil get that Pritchard transfer sanctioned when he'd spent £8m on another player in that position six months earlier? No joined up thinking at all.

I'm not ready to say that things have improved though, feeling quite pessimistic at the minute. I see we've been linked to Tom Adeyemi, a Norwich reject who is most recently a Cardiff reject, allegedly competing with Ipswich for his transfer. It doesn't feel to me like we're putting together a side that on paper should be competing for the top 6, more like we're going to have a side which will need to punch well above its weight to get out of this league, 

Is Adeyemi any better as a midfielder than Rudd is as a goalkeeper? I'd consider them a similar standard, mid-table Championship. 

I'd feel a bit better about this situation if we could somehow manage to get McGovern, Jarvis, Wildschut off the payroll. It feels like we're converting our half decent saleable assets into cash, because we can't get rid of quite a bit of deadwood. Dorrans out.... Jarvis stays on the treatment table. Half a million for Rudd, because we're stuck paying McGovern until 2019.

I know we probably need to cut costs and Webber has his work cut out, and is hindered by some of the mistakes of the regime which preceded him, but I'm just not feeling optimistic at the minute. We've got Derby paying £4.5m for Andre Wisdom, and we're linked to Tom f*cking Adeyemi. 

 

[splutcho]

To be fair, if Derby want to throw £4.5 million away that can only be good news for us. I do see your point, but from everything that's been said so far, we're going for players that play or can adapt to play exactly the way we want. It doesn't necessarily have to be a team of stars.