Discussion about us on the Norwich board

[Woodwardfan]

They say we aren't aware of European markets, probably true.

I say they may well not be fully aware of the UK market, probably true!

Each to their own. Maybe well have a French striker soon. Now that is something else, right out of left field for the Messiah!

 

[Harry's Game]

The numpty who thinks we are big and physical makes one good(ish) point about VAR.

VAR is going to cause everyone nightmares.

I will be very surprised if any side concedes less than five penalties next season, especially with the ludicrous new handball interpretation that refs are going to have foisted upon them.

 

[BushBlade]

Some of the usual shite as well though.

"They tend to be strong and aggressive." We'll be playing matches against Mos Eisley Space Port FC before we manage to lose this completely ill-informed tag that's been utter bollocks for about 15 years.

"They’ll also need to re-evaluate their playing style, having overlapping centre halfs against premier league quality is a dangerous way to play." Is it? How do you know? Not been done before has it? I do know conceding loads of goals is a dangerous way to play in the Prem you cretin. You worry about that.

"The quintessential decent Championship side." How can we be we were only in it two years?? We were told we weren't good enough for it. Look how that turned out.

"They generally end up having a great team spirit and cohesion but are a little bit 'limited' by Premier League standards. "

"Someone like Maupay or McBurnie could change the outlook, but it doesn't seem like they want to look much further afield should those players prove out of their reach." I'm afraid this comment has made Stephen Bettis's position untenable. Leaking our transfer business to some bloke in a pub in Norwich. I can only assume this is what happened as this guy seems to know what our transfer strategy would be should we not get Maupay/McBurnie. Fuckwit.

I don’t really want to get into an argument over this because I don’t really care about Norwich but comments like that don’t really bother me. I don’t expect the supporters of any of our rivals to be totally complementary about us. What they’ve said is mild negativity to me. There are Blades on here that have suggested we might have to change our style a bit, that we need more quality and that we need to scout Europe. And we are strong and physical, it’s just that we can play football as well. Even our ‘little ones’ like Sharp and Fleck are nails. We’re absolutely uncompromising.

 

[guancheblade]

In my opinion Cardiff would have quite easily stopped up but for the tragic loss of Sala and some dodgy decisions against them. They needed 10 more goals or so.

We share the good at the back tag with Cardiff, who were known for their defensive ability when they went up, but I think we have a far superior attack and are continuing to strengthen that area.

We play better football than Cardiff too. Wilder is not an old school British manager.

Bit weird for Norwich fans to question our defence though, they let a lot more in than us even while we were sending our outside centrebacks up to attack, doesn't bode well for them that little nugget surely?

The old aggressive and will give away fouls line, is there anything to back that up, we gave away one penalty at home didn't we? Can't have been many away, I don't remember it being a thing.

Norwich's success last season was down to very fine margins over a large portion of the season, and many refs dishing out the Fergie time until they'd scored their last gasp winners/equalisers. They also relied heavily on outscoring the opposition. That kind of the approach as a newcomer in the Prem is a recipe for disaster.

But I see they've managed to get 6 in and spent £1M in total. If they continue to recruit shrewdly they'll be unstoppable in the Champ next season if they're relegated, swimming in cash.

 

[Lmaobob]

Even if we did go straight back down next season - the finances obtained through a year of the prem will do us a world of good. We would be in a much better position to push again for another promotion the season after.

No one expected us to be here, but we are here - and i want us to just have a go. Get Hendo overlapping too - fuck it

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Even if we did go straight back down next season - the finances obtained through a year of the prem will do us a world of good. We would be in a much better position to push again for another promotion the season after.

No one expected us to be here, but we are here - and i want us to just have a go. Get Hendo overlapping too - fuck it

Do you think so? If when faced with a guaranteed season in the prem & the possibility of avoiding relegation we’re not splashing the cash, do you think post relegation and the loss of up to 5 players for various reasons, we’d go bat shit crazy and go full bore for promotion?

 

[BushBlade]

Do you think so? If when faced with a guaranteed season in the prem & the possibility of avoiding relegation we’re not splashing the cash, do you think post relegation and the loss of up to 5 players for various reasons, we’d go bat shit crazy and go full bore for promotion?

Do you think the ownership structure will be the same this time next year?

 

[Lmaobob]

Do you think so? If when faced with a guaranteed season in the prem & the possibility of avoiding relegation we’re not splashing the cash, do you think post relegation and the loss of up to 5 players for various reasons, we’d go bat shit crazy and go full bore for promotion?

I'd rather us not get relegated obviously - but it wouldn't be the worst thing in existence

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Do you think the ownership structure will be the same this time next year?

Probably not. But I wouldn’t bank on either of the two protagonists to have either the appetite or ability to throw money at us for a promotion push. If we speculate that whoever wins quickly flips us to a ambitious new owner, then how knows, we might not even get relegated in the first place.

If we went down, chances are we’d be looking at a massive squad rebuild and it would be all about stabilising the club, not pushing for an immediate promotion back to the prem.

The change of personnel would be similar to that of the 06/07 & 07/08 seasons. You’d need to spend more than what we’ve currently spent to assemble a squad capable of a sustained push for automatic. For all the hoo-ha about our excellent transfer business, off the top of my head, I suspect that Brentford have spent more this close season that we have with the intention of getting into the top 6.

 

[madeinsheffield]

Speaking with a Norwich mate Friday, he says they've only spent £750k and plan to play younger development kids, oh and they've got a nightmare start to the season, not that there are any easy games. It's a cautious approach, by the same token although we've smashed our record (and hopefully again this week as CW mentioned) we have strengthened but not done a 'Fulham' as Villa seem to have. 3 different ways, be interesting to see which is the best method

 

[BushBlade]

Probably not. But I wouldn’t bank on either of the two protagonists to have either the appetite or ability to throw money at us for a promotion push. If we speculate that whoever wins quickly flips us to a ambitious new owner, then how knows, we might not even get relegated in the first place.

If we went down, chances are we’d be looking at a massive squad rebuild and it would be all about stabilising the club, not pushing for an immediate promotion back to the prem.

The change of personnel would be similar to that of the 06/07 & 07/08 seasons. You’d need to spend more than what we’ve currently spent to assemble a squad capable of a sustained push for automatic. For all the hoo-ha about our excellent transfer business, off the top of my head, I suspect that Brentford have spent more this close season that we have with the intention of getting into the top 6.

That just comes across as negative speculation. If we go down, it’s unlikely that we’ll have wholesale changes as presumably most of our players won’t have done particularly well. We may lose a couple of the best performers and a couple through age. It won’t be a disaster unless we take our wage bill above £50m and don’t have any decent players to sell. I think that’s unlikely.
Of course we could put all our eggs in one basket and fill the team with overpaid mercenaries who barely know where Sheffield is and see how that pans out.
Or try to find a balance by recruiting players with something to prove, with their own personal motivation, on a wage structure that won’t cripple us if we do go down.

It’s not an easy balance to strike but we haven’t even finished yet.

So far your predictions of doom haven’t come to pass but such is the cyclical nature of football that if you keep saying it will go wrong, you’ll eventually be right.

 

[BushBlade]

Speaking with a Norwich mate Friday, he says they've only spent £750k and plan to play younger development kids, oh and they've got a nightmare start to the season, not that there are any easy games. It's a cautious approach, by the same token although we've smashed our record (and hopefully again this week as CW mentioned) we have strengthened but not done a 'Fulham' as Villa seem to have. 3 different ways, be interesting to see which is the best method

I wonder about their financial circumstances. I recall that they did a deal to defer debts when they got relegated the time before last. They didn’t have to repay the debts until they got promoted again. I’m wondering whether, because they didn’t stay up for long, if they didn’t pay all of that debt off and they’re due to do so this time.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Speaking with a Norwich mate Friday, he says they've only spent £750k and plan to play younger development kids, oh and they've got a nightmare start to the season, not that there are any easy games. It's a cautious approach, by the same token although we've smashed our record (and hopefully again this week as CW mentioned) we have strengthened but not done a 'Fulham' as Villa seem to have. 3 different ways, be interesting to see which is the best method

I quoted this on another thread in May, and deliberately didn't reference the source. It was from norwich's sporting director stuart webber, but i thought it could roughly apply to both us & them, and broadly defines the boundaries in which both clubs will operate this season.

"We should be favourites to go down because we'll have the lowest budget and we'll have the lowest transfer funds available."

"It'll be low, probably one of the lowest ever spent in the competition. I don't want to put a figure on it but it'll be low."

"What this promotion has enabled us to do is pay off the training ground which is being built, which is important to us, because it means we've got something to show from being in the Premier League."

"We're still paying for some of the mistakes of times gone by and some of the expensive signings. This allows us to clear all of that out and realign ourselves as a club."

"It's huge for a club like this, one that's self-funded. Fundamentally, you live by Premier League revenue or having to sell players."

"To get to the Premier League and not have to sell players is a nice place for us. Now we need to make some smart recruitment and retention decisions to try to overachieve again."

"We'll be looking to recruit smaller numbers, maybe three, four or five - it won't be seven, eight, nine, ten."

"British players are more expensive in terms of transfer fees and wages and we can't afford some of them."

"There's some players we'd love to take even from the Championship but the transfer fees mean we can't go anywhere near them. It means we have to look a bit further afield."

"We've got to strive to be the best we can be and we need to go and attack the Premier League, be a little bit naïve and know we'll get beaten along the way."

"I remember being at Manchester City and seeing Chelsea getting beaten 6-0 so, if it can happen to some of the best players in the world, it can happen to us."

"We've got to keep our nerve and stick to our principles. We've proven a lot of people wrong this year and that should be a motivation for us next year."

"Can we go and attack it? If we can't, we dust ourselves off and go again. We're a club that will be set up so that if we're relegated, it won't be a disaster."

"We have to think like that but at the same time, we have to be ambitious and have a good go at it."

 

[Akinbiyi]

Norwich only went up last season because Pukki had a season he might never replicate again. Right place, right time - nearly every time. They could outscore teams, personally was never that impressed by them. I thought us and Leeds were much better teams but they did win the League credit where it's due.

They won't be able to do that in the Prem and I suspect they'll go down. That said they have strengthened a little. Joseph Drmic, Patrick Roberts, Sam Byram and Ralf Fahrmann are all half decent signings, Drmic especially.

 

[Balham Blade]

I wonder about their financial circumstances. I recall that they did a deal to defer debts when they got relegated the time before last. They didn’t have to repay the debts until they got promoted again. I’m wondering whether, because they didn’t stay up for long, if they didn’t pay all of that debt off and they’re due to do so this time.

Norwich's wage bill in their last published accounts was £42m (ours, for comparison, was £19m). They don't have the leeway we do with the PL income: they'll need at least half of it just to pay their existing squad. They also owe their fans £5m as they kept the academy as a category 1 with a bond issue repayable on promotion back to the top flight.

Norwich only went up last season because Pukki had a season he might never replicate again. Right place, right time - nearly every time

Teemu Pukki has been a professional footballer since 2006; his goals per season record is 0-3-3-2-11-5-3-7-9-9-16-11-29. Spot the odd one out.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

That just comes across as negative speculation. If we go down, it’s unlikely that we’ll have wholesale changes as presumably most of our players won’t have done particularly well. We may lose a couple of the best performers and a couple through age. It won’t be a disaster unless we take our wage bill above £50m and don’t have any decent players to sell. I think that’s unlikely.
Of course we could put all our eggs in one basket and fill the team with overpaid mercenaries who barely know where Sheffield is and see how that pans out.
Or try to find a balance by recruiting players with something to prove, with their own personal motivation, on a wage structure that won’t cripple us if we do go down.

It’s not an easy balance to strike but we haven’t even finished yet.

So far your predictions of doom haven’t come to pass but such is the cyclical nature of football that if you keep saying it will go wrong, you’ll eventually be right.

I'll have to re-read my post and see where I suggested we fill the team with 'overpaid mercenaries'. But whilst we're on the topic, I don't think that when Lys Mousset was growing up had a picture of BDTBL on his bedroom wall and used to go to bed every night thinking 'one day Lys, one day'. He's left Bournemouth because he's had he's palms crossed with sufficient silver to ease his passage, and he's not going to be sticking about if we get relegated.

It's not negative speculation, it's just realistic speculation. I replied to a post that basically said that if we went down, we'd be financially well set to fund a promotion push, I'm saying that's unlikely; due to the number of players that we'd need to purchase, their desired quality and their price. We can't seem to afford to buy a 20 goal a season championship striker whilst we're the premier league, I don't see how we'll be able/willing to suddenly do so if we are in the championship. We're a premier league team and currently have squad in both number and depth that's barely up to the challenge. We don't even have a championship level goalkeeper on the books at the moment ffs, and even if things pan out in the best case scenario, the same will be true at the end of May 2020.

As mentioned previously, a fair few of my posts last season were tongue in check, but what i can't stand, and won't stand is the projection of better times into the future. We're currently doing things on a shoestring, and people are already fantasising about pushing for promotion in 20/21 with money to burn, boils my piss. Having got promoted against the odds last season, to allow ourselves to go back down would be criminal and not seen as the start of some new and improved phase.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Teemu Pukki has been a professional footballer since 2006; his goals per season record is 0-3-3-2-11-5-3-7-9-9-16-11-29. Spot the odd one out.

The '0'?

It's worth noting whilst we're sitting in our greenhouse happily throwing stones at norwich's arboretum, we've just spend £10m on a player that's scored 3 times in 58 outings in the premier league. Pukki came on a free.

 

[robbiez666]

They've done some cute business without spending a lot but I very much doubt it will be enough to keep them up. They do have a few players who I feel can make the step-up and will unlikely to be whipping boys.

 

[PC_1989]

Like or loathe Norwich, there's no denying the work that's gone in to getting them where they are. Their set-up (particularly astute bringing Webber in to that role), scouting and player development has really come to fruition. Perhaps the biggest complement I could give them is that we never looked like catching them last season - considering how few points we dropped that, in itself, is a testament to how they went from strength-to-strength. I don't disagree with their comments around how our scouting net doesn't appear to cast far but I think that's purely down to how quickly our management team yielded success. We found a formula that worked wonders within three seasons. Norwich reinvented themselves over a number of seasons. I don't think anyone's naive to think that we can sustain long-term success by only signing British players. That will mature over time. What I do find funny is how some (external) factions correlate having a largely British squad with being a negative thing that needs addressing. Only a few seasons ago Athletic Bilbao only signed players from the Basque region of Spain and they were lauded for the approach and how it gave them such identity. Good run of games in the PL and some of the nay-sayers will have flipped their opinions.

 

[Yoonited]

Our biggest problem will be ourselves and our 13 year hitch.

Since our 1968 relegation we have been relegated every 13th season.

Obviously, on occasions we have suffered relegations and celebrated promotions in between. However the cast iron certainty over the last half century is that we get relegated every 13 years. And the 13th year relegation is always excruciating. It is always an improbable relegation snatched from virtually complete safety.

I know of no other club that has 'achieved' this to such an exemplary degree.

Hopefully, the 13 year hitch will finally disappear this season!

Jeez man, pass me the gun now

 

[BushBlade]

I'll have to re-read my post and see where I suggested we fill the team with 'overpaid mercenaries'. But whilst we're on the topic, I don't think that when Lys Mousset was growing up had a picture of BDTBL on his bedroom wall and used to go to bed every night thinking 'one day Lys, one day'. He's left Bournemouth because he's had he's palms crossed with sufficient silver to ease his passage, and he's not going to be sticking about if we get relegated.

It's not negative speculation, it's just realistic speculation. I replied to a post that basically said that if we went down, we'd be financially well set to fund a promotion push, I'm saying that's unlikely; due to the number of players that we'd need to purchase, their desired quality and their price. We can't seem to afford to buy a 20 goal a season championship striker whilst we're the premier league, I don't see how we'll be able/willing to suddenly do so if we are in the championship. We're a premier league team and currently have squad in both number and depth that's barely up to the challenge. We don't even have a championship level goalkeeper on the books at the moment ffs, and even if things pan out in the best case scenario, the same will be true at the end of May 2020.

As mentioned previously, a fair few of my posts last season were tongue in check, but what i can't stand, and won't stand is the projection of better times into the future. We're currently doing things on a shoestring, and people are already fantasising about pushing for promotion in 20/21 with money to burn, boils my piss. Having got promoted against the odds last season, to allow ourselves to go back down would be criminal and not seen as the start of some new and improved phase.

The post you replied to said we’d be in a better financial position I assume that is relative to last season and it’s correct we will be, even if we’re stuck with one of our current owners.

Presumably you missed my point about signing players with something to prove, which I believe Mousset has. I’ve no idea whether he’ll turn out to be a decent signing or not. You seem to be implying we should spend every penny we get on a big gamble to stay up, when even if we did that, we’d still have one of the lowest wage bills and still be likely to go down.
If we stay up it will be because Wilder has been successful at doing what he’s been doing since he joined us. We just don’t have the money that Villa have, their owners having recently injected another large tranche of funding through equity.

 

[dc_blade]

As mentioned previously, a fair few of my posts last season were tongue in check, but what i can't stand, and won't stand is the projection of better times into the future. We're currently doing things on a shoestring, and people are already fantasising about pushing for promotion in 20/21 with money to burn, boils my piss. Having got promoted against the odds last season, to allow ourselves to go back down would be criminal and not seen as the start of some new and improved phase.

Were they tongue in cheek at the time or did they become so after they were proved wrong? Don’t get me wrong, the forum needs more people who take a thought-out, unpopular position and defend it ably, like you do. But there’s some rewriting of history going on now, isn’t there?

On topic: The chances are we’re going to be relegated this season. Due to the ownership situation—and probably regardless of who wins the court case, unless they immediately sell to someone richer—we’re like Norwich in that we only have the TV money to spend. If anyone can keep us up on a shoestring, it’s Wilder. But it’s a massive ask. For me, calling that likely scenario “criminal” at this stage in proceedings just sets us up for another season of negativity.

Maybe we won’t come straight back up. You’re right that the financial realities still aren’t as rosy as we would like. But surely you’d agree that we’d be in a stronger position on that front with parachute payments than we were when we arrived in the division from League One.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

The post you replied to said we’d be in a better financial position I assume that is relative to last season and it’s correct we will be, even if we’re stuck with one of our current owners.

Presumably you missed my point about signing players with something to prove, which I believe Mousset has. I’ve no idea whether he’ll turn out to be a decent signing or not. You seem to be implying we should spend every penny we get on a big gamble to stay up, when even if we did that, we’d still have one of the lowest wage bills and still be likely to go down.
If we stay up it will be because Wilder has been successful at doing what he’s been doing since he joined us. We just don’t have the money that Villa have, their owners having recently injected another large tranche of funding through equity.

If we are relegated, i'm not suggesting that we won't be in a better finical position per se, I was disagreeing with the comment about this forming the foundations for an improved push for promotion. I think that if we went down, stabilisation would be the priority. We appear to disagree about who & what we'd be left with in that situation, which is fair enough, and probably hangs on our differing outlooks.

As you know, there's a big difference in having something to prove and the skill to prove it. I suppose i can't fault CW's overall transfer strategy if that is the confines he has to work within. Whatever our transfer budget is, CW would love another £10m on top, it's only natural. As I've posted elsewhere, he's buying from the notional gap between the championship and the premiership, which is the domestic pond were are fishing in. Where he is being clever is that he is basing it on stats, as opposed to hype to maximise value.

I appreciate the differences in budgets between us and Villa, and suppose that I shouldn't pass full comment until the TW closes because I may be surprised, but I had hoped for better than than Jags, Ravel on frees, slavering over a loanee keeper and having Joel Lynch on trial. I think Freeman is an astute purchase, as is Robinson. I'm not 100% sure about Lys. But as everyone keeps saying in CWAK we trust.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Were they tongue in cheek at the time or did they become so after they were proved wrong? Don’t get me wrong, the forum needs more people who take a thought-out, unpopular position and defend it ably, like you do. But there’s some rewriting of history going on now, isn’t there?

On topic: The chances are we’re going to be relegated this season. Due to the ownership situation—and probably regardless of who wins the court case, unless they immediately sell to someone richer—we’re like Norwich in that we only have the TV money to spend. If anyone can keep us up on a shoestring, it’s Wilder. But it’s a massive ask. For me, calling that likely scenario “criminal” at this stage in proceedings just sets us up for another season of negativity.

Maybe we won’t come straight back up. You’re right that the financial realities still aren’t as rosy as we would like. But surely you’d agree that we’d be in a stronger position on that front with parachute payments than we were when we arrived in the division from League One.

I've learned to tone down some of my more negative views, but it was probably a 50/50 split last season. Although by the end of the season I was being superstitious about being overly negative. Believe of that if you will.

I don't mean 'criminal' as in illegal activities being commuted, more at a golden opportunity wasted. We've had them before under Bassett and Warnock, and we should be learning from our mistakes by now. Promotion from the championship is a hard earned thing and shouldn't be squandered.

'Criminal', also not a criticism of the club from CW down, i think he's doing everything he can . I think that this season will be very, very close at the bottom, a single point or a win against one of our competitors. In the bigger picture, if we were to go down like cardiff did this season, when the dust settles, for the sake of an extra £10m spent, it would be 'criminal'.