Would that be “scandal hit” Norwich United, with their
“ … ongoing acrimony between players and coaches and a series of disastrous results on the pitch.” allied to
“… allegations of death threats, secret filming in the dressing room and verbal abuse.“
Not forgetting the manager who “… claimed he had been punched twice in the head.“ I do love the specificity of that. The inference that once would have been alright.
In light of all that I’m going to maintain my line that @JohnF and his team are living through what he will come to see as a golden age
I’m looking forward to the Draculean/Reardonesque Stephen Cleeve of Kings Lynn infamy bidding for a share in Norwich. Almost as close a shave as the Stephanie Booth shambles when he bid for us. Literally one of only three credible bids in 16 years. Our fans were convinced there were people queueing up to “invest” but then all fans believe this and it’s largely not true. The “investors” are largely a low rent parade of fantasists and criminals.
Bizarrely one of his ideas was to break the pitch up into £100 squares and sell them to supporters to protect the club. Post Rob/Ryan takeover I was approached informally by a couple of Supporters Trust committee members to see if I’d be interested in… you guessed… “purchasing a square of pitch for £100 and what I thought the general reaction of fans would be”. Suffice to say the WST had gone from the thing which saved the club to being reduced to mimicking ideas of Cleeve.
According to our finance director there have been several creditable bids for Norwich that have been knocked back by the board. This news did not go down well with the fans.
Apart from one or two of the top clubs it’s difficult to make a business case for ownership other than as a billionaire’s hobby.
I wonder where it will all end because clubs can’t go on indefinitely accruing their current levels of debt.
In our case a couple of bad transfer windows and we are tens of millions down.
Interesting that Jurgen Klopp recently stated that too much was made of statistics and not enough attention to man management.
Unless the income was actually far less than believed (or our players are being paid ‘big 6’ salaries) I cannot see where all the money has gone in such a short period of time, especially as the majority of signings are ‘free’.
I have said here before that, for years, the club have always been far more secretive than most clubs are about their finances & I was shown proof in the 1980’s that the clubs financial position was much better than was publicised. Admittedly this was over 40 years ago & the figures presented were for the football operation only & not for the clubs entire activities, which extended beyond the football operation. Nothing illegal, just clever PR spin.
I can’t really imagine the same sort of thing goes on today but I suspect it is far easier to mislead supporters etc. re. finances when you are a smaller club that the media almost totally ignores, rather than a ‘big 6 type’ club under constant media scrutiny & who, presumably, find it much harder to be ‘economical with the truth’ concerning their own finances.
I have looked at My Football Writer but the only thing I have found so far is a ‘letter’ written by Kathy Blake on the current home page which is, in my opinion, a fairly poorly written letter ending with a plea for Delia to ‘Go now’. Your alter ego’s not Kathy Blake is it? The letter does nor really mention, or give an explanation for, our current financial plight beyond making a vague reference to it.
The other article I have read so far is a slightly better one by Bridgit James but, again, there is no financial detail in it.
Not sure about the content on this site (which I hadn’t heard of before) but it doesn’t appear up to date as far as most of the named contributors are concerned. When asked for their favourite current player, 13 of 14 name players who are no longer with us, & haven’t been for quite a while.
Many of the contributors are local journalists or people associated with local football at various levels.
The big concern is the lack of broad experience on the board which has alienated the fans. We can only hope that Mark Attanasio improves public relations. Delia’s interview after the AGM was described as condescending by The Times.
The letter writer was an ordinary fan who first rang into Canary call complaining about how the club is being run. Following reaction to her call Stuart Webber left earlier than planned and Ben Knapper arrived two weeks earlier than expected.
I feel obliged to step in if only cos you 2 have been talking amongst yourselves for 18 hours and Pete will complain if this becomes the Norwich finance thread again
Ooh, not quite 100% accurate @JohnF. An analogy was drawn.
My experience is very much that you get told the 1st because what you’re being sold is the myth of the 2nd. Where there’s no business case the only people who sniff around are those with either dodgy money or dodgy intent. Fans rarely see the bigger picture. Knocking back so-calledcreditable/credibie bids is more suggestive of people doing their jobs properly than anything else. If a bid is substantial enough and is transparent enough to have the interests of the club demonstrably to heart then you accept it. If 1 or neither are true then you don’t. It’s rarely any more complex than that. No-one turns down investment for poor reasons at board level.
Not sure the Klopp quote has relevance to this. He was talking about fixture pile ups, tactics and training rather than finance.
Not sure this is true. It’s very hard to get transparent, accurate data out of any privately owned football organisation. Ask a Wrexham fan how we’ve accrued £10m of debt and essentially we’re all guessing. Our accounts could politely be described as opaque. Identical to most EPL clubs who essentially release that which they’re compelled to release but no more.
Again a tad unfair and definitely inaccurate. He’s spoken at length elsewhere in great detail about the abuse and threats he and his family received which pre-dated the AGM etc. and how that ultimately was the deciding factor in leaving early.
Delia accused 20% of the supporters of being whingers which is obviously going to infuriate fans as you should never criticise your customers. Especially when you have produced a very poor product and run up a £90 million debt.
If you look at reports of the AGM the FD stated they received several bids over time and these were examined and the viable ones presented to the board.
Obviously this removed the dubious ones but left several sound bids. This is what annoyed the fans as they had been told there were no bids, nobody was interested.
I mentioned Klopp because I feel we have lost a fortune on players maybe because our man management may have been better.
Regarding Webber leaving he was originally staying until March to see the new man in his post. This was heavily criticised by a female fan on the local radio phone in. This resulted in fans from every possible source agreeing with her as Webbers dealings were perceived by them as the cause of our debt through poor transfers.
Webber had previously been rude and aggressive towards fans outside the ground. He also stated he was going to spend 90% of his time focused on the club as he wished to train in order to climb Everest which went down well.
Shortly after this broadcast it was announced by the board Webber would be leaving earlier than planned.
I think my business and football knowledge is reasonable and certainly a match for some of the condescending replies I’ve received.
I agree this area of debate should now cease.
Clearly beginning run into the playoff places. Once we have knocked Liverpool out of the cup we can get down to the serious business. Unless we have sold Rowe by then of course…
This being Norwich, I really have no idea what the next match will bring, such is the nature of this season so far.
More beautiful goals from LUFC yesterday - Bamford, who I thought broken beyond repair, showing the benefit of a proper number 9. Play off heartbreak continues to look the most likely outcome.
