Opinions: everybody’s got them. So let’s deal with facts – to get some clarity of thought and allow some depth of analysis at this critical time for the club we all care about.
Let’s start with where Norwich City are in the money league. That summer transfer spend of £23 million or so raised all our hopes and expectations, mine included. But where are we really placed, financially, in comparison with our Premier League rivals?
Not in the same ball park as the mega-wealthy super elite, obviously. But let’s put some numbers on that inequality.
The most recent survey of club finances by Deloitte covered the 2011-12 season. It said Manchester United were the third richest club in the entire world (behind only Real Madrid and Barcelona).
United raked in £320m. How’s that for a number? It was down a tad on the previous campaign, because of an early Champions League exit. But the poor lambs still had enough to get by.
Seven English clubs were in the world’s top 20 and four more in the next 10.
That season, Norwich City’s total turnover was a very healthy £75m – the 12th best in the country – but clearly a pittance to United and co.
And the flaw in Deloitte’s annual football rich list is that it does not factor in the generosity of oligarchs, sheiks and other unimaginably wealthy owners. It only deals with receipts from ticket sales, hospitality, commercial activities and – most importantly of all – TV companies.
If Deloitte included the largesse of Sheikh Mansour, Roman Abramovich and the rest, they’d say that clubs like Norwich are not only in a different ball park, they are in a different realm entirely and playing a very different game.
But what do we mean by “clubs like Norwich”? Where do our beloved City fit among the Premier League also-rans?
Again, let’s deal with quantifiable facts.
One measure of relative wealth is transfer spend. But you cannot look at just one transfer window. Well, you shouldn’t – but a lot of Chris Hughton’s critics point with glee to a published table of the net spending of Premier League clubs during the summer. It has Norwich in eighth place.
But it has Spurs in 19th place. Tottenham’s NET spend was relatively modest – because they flogged Gareth Bale for a world record £85m and then reinvested that sum, plus a bit more, in new players.
So only those so fed up with Hughton that they can’t think straight imagine that the Norwich squad should be on a par with Tottenham’s because our net spend was bigger last summer.
That’s like saying my house must be nicer than my neighbours’ because I’ve just spent a good few quid on having it painted. It takes no account of what our houses were like before I opened my wallet.
One more valid method of ranking clubs is to look at the total cost of assembling each squad. That is what a Swiss organisation did. It calculated that our 2012-13 squad cost £21.4m to put together.
On that basis, we got the best “value per point” in the entire Premier League last season under Hughton. Finishing 11th cost just over £500,000 per point. Compare that with Chelsea, who blew £5m a point!
And while we’re talking about finishing 11th, Hughton’s detractors dismiss that achievement, choosing instead to look at the results during the calendar year 2013. Well, on the same basis, we’re unbeaten in 2014.
But let’s return to sensible appraisal and some more numbers.
I have always believed the best measure of how competitive a squad “should” be is wages – because, time and time again, there is a co-relation between how much clubs pay players and where they finish in the table.
Again, the most recent figures for the Premier League are for 2011-12.
The clubs with the eight highest wage bills filled seven of the top eight places, with Manchester City spending the most and winning the title. The interlopers were Everton (10th biggest wages, finished seventh).
The failures were Villa (eighth highest wages, finished 16th). No wonder they wanted Paul Lambert, because, that season, Norwich had the 19th highest wage bill in the division. Yet, as we all remember, Lambert’s swash-bucklers finished 12th.
Despite the ill-blood which flowed because of his departure, I will always be grateful for that extraordinary feat in the Premier League – and for the peerless achievement of lifting Norwich City 54 places during three unforgettable seasons.
In the eyes of many people, Hughton’s biggest crime is that he is not Lambert. But we can’t know what would have happened to our team if Lambert had stayed.
So, once more, let’s return to facts. We know the wage bill went up last season (Hughton’s first). According to the club accounts, the players’ salaries were 39 per cent of turnover (up from 34 per cent).
Elsewhere, the accounts reveal that “wages and salaries” went up from £29.5m to £45.8m. But that includes all the coaches, academy staff, David McNally’s wedge and so on.
If we take the percentage of turnover declaration at face value, the amount allocated just for paying players was only £29.3m last season – but that is still up from the £25.2m which this calculation gives us for 2001-12.
We don’t know yet how our players’ wage bill compared with other clubs. The certainty, however, is that everyone increased what they were paying players. They always do. So my educated guess – and it has to be a guess until Deloitte publish their report in March – is that Hughton’s cheaply assembled squad were paid less than most in the division.
I can furnish a few more facts, though – about what happens, generally, to clubs who clamber up from the Championship.
In every Premier League season bar two, at least one promoted club has gone straight back down. One of those exceptions was 2010-11 when Swansea, us and QPR stayed up – although QPR only survived because Bolton failed to beat Stoke on the last day.
Second season syndrome doesn’t really exist. In the history of the Premier League, only eight clubs have been relegated in their second season. Nevertheless, it happened to that club in Suffolk, it happened to QPR last year but it didn’t happen to us.
The real “syndrome” is that clubs outside the top bunch continue to find Premier League life a constant struggle. Even those who, to our minds, are established, do not have a steady upward graph of improvement. They have seasons when the struggle is desperate. Even when, as is the case with most of them, they are bankrolled by multi-millionaires.
Once more, I offer actual facts in evidence.
Fulham arrived in the Premier League in 2001. Mohammed Al Fayed had given them a total of £212m by the time he sold up. But their finishing positions have been as follows: 14, 14, 9, 13, 12, 16, 17, 7, 12, 8, 9 and 12.
Modestly successful, I’d call that. Pertinently, they built that long period of survival by chiselling out points at Craven Cottage. In their first decade in the Prem, they won only 23 away games in total, or fewer than three a season on average.
This season they’re in the poo.
Sunderland are owned by Ellis Short, who runs an £8bn private equity and hedge fund. He lets the club operate at a loss of more than £25m a year. They finished 20th, went down, bounced back and have since finished 15, 16, 13, 10 and 17th. They are currently rock bottom.
Stoke did reach a level of consistency, thanks in no small measure to the generous support of their chairman, BET365 multi-millionaire Peter Coates (he’s given them £86m so far). They reached a Cup Final. But their League form got marginally worse during the Tony Pulis years (12, 11, 13, 14, 13).
What conclusions do you draw from all this? I’d invite you to share my view, that Norwich City did spectacularly well in their first two seasons back in the Premier League, punching well above their financial weight. But we should not have expected a continued, uninterrupted improvement.
Of course we hoped for one. I did, definitely. My heart skipped when we signed the Wolf. £8m! Crikey! But that is loose change to most Premier League club. Malky Mackay spent £35m at Cardiff, for instance.
Our chairman and chief executive were still talking about a top ten finish at the recent agm.
But that is seldom, if ever, the way the Premier League works. Every season is difficult for all but a handful of clubs. And every so often there is a brutally grim campaign thrown in. Even for clubs as big as Newcastle, who had an awful time last season.
For us, things will always be harder than for most. We have no Fayed, Short or Coates – no Vincent Tan or Assem Allam either, thank heavens. Our squad has only benefited from one biggish window spend. It is still cheaply assembled compared with almost everyone else. We don’t pay top wages.
So we’ll always hope other clubs have bigger troubles than us. We’ll pray for survival, hope for a decent run of results, and – step by step, window by window – try to get better.
Call that defeatist if you like. Call it the little ole Norwich mentality. But, again, here are some more facts.
In the 112 years the club in the Fine City has existed, it has spent more seasons in the third tier than in the top division. Of the 22 seasons the Premier League has existed, Norwich have been in lower divisions for 15 of them.
So although the bloke behind me at Sunderland was shouting that our draw there was “effing sh*te”, I celebrated a valuable result. Although there were folk on message boards whinging about the draw at Palace, I took considerable cheer from talking to home fans – all of whom were devastated by not beating “teams like Norwich”.
We could sack the manager. We could drive the board out. But we cannot change the fundamentals of our resources relative to others in our division.
The only thing we, as fans, can do is decide whether to boo or cheer. I have no facts as evidence about that. But we all know which helps and which damages.
Great piece, Mick. This is what I’ve been trying to tell anyone that will listen, but unable to articulate it as well. It’s always been my opinion that the last two seasons we overachieved and now we’re just about finding our current level at around 14th. We just need to keep looking up rather than down.
This is sound common sense. We know that some teams/managers can get teams to punch above their weight. Look at Norwich in 1992-93. But over time, we can expect to over achieve by a relatively small margin. Even Paul Lambert has struggled to sprinkle his magic dust over Villa.
The way a team exceeds expectations is by togetherness, all involved – Board, manager, team and fans all pulling in the same direction. City have not done as well this season as we all would like. But we will be best served by sticking at it and getting behind the team.
If you are happy to cheer the Palace and Sunderland results, more power to you, but please don’t try and make me feel like I’m a bad supporter for not applauding terrible performances against dreadful teams.
What none of the above takes into account is that we have spent a large amount of money, perhaps not vast in terms of Chelsea, but large for us, to essentially make our team less entertaining to watch, for poorer results, and to suck the soul out of many of our beloved players. I don’t care how much Cardiff or Chelsea have paid. We shouldn’t have paid a penny to make our team play worse than they did.
I think many ‘outers’ would agree with me that we’re not angry that we’re in the bottom half or not winning every game. It’s that the team doesn’t feel like our team anymore. There’s no leadership on the pitch or off it. There’s no visible plan for many games. There’s no plan B. We have no idea who our first choice team is. We can have 35 shots in a game and not score. We’re a mess and there’s no evidence it can be turned around.
To me this is the crux. When a City player is on a run, instead of excitement in my gut growing with the expectation of a goal, it now sinks thinking “how are we going to cock this up”, which invariably we do. Watching City has become a chore.
Fantastic article Mick, but football is a mixture of the rational (stats) and the irrational (opinions). I get that some fans around me just don’t like our current style of football, and blame the manager for this.
There are probably no stats to support this, but my opinion is that the style of football is fairly typical of the bottom half of the Premier league. Pick don’t think there are many swashbuckling teams down there. Even Swansea are only ONE point better off than us. Broadly, as you point out, we are about where we should be. Our stated ambition is to climb to 10th this season. We might well achieve that.
The sad reality is that survival in the league, with modest resources, necessitates tight, often turgid football. So those fans who, perhaps rightly, dislike our style, are really turning their thumbs down at the Premier League.
So for me, sacking the manager makes no difference. We will still end up in much the same place, i.e. collect about the same number of points. Which must mean the same results. Which surely means watching us lose lots of games. That’s how it is. Is 10th the limit of our ambition. Er, yes.
I’ll be interested to see if OGS turns Cardiff into a top 8 side without spending any more money. I’m not going to bet on it though.
I’m taking up lots of pixels, but here’s another way of looking at it:
For those who are unhappy with out form and results, what are the expectations?
If we assume that it takes 40 points to stay up, and that 50 points gets you to about 9th, that might represent the height of our possible ambition. 60 points puts you up with the Evertons and Newcastles, Tottenhams. Unlikely on current resources.
We’re on track for about 40 points. Could a different manager and style of play improve us so that we win 3 and draw 1 more game over the course of a season than we currently are? Because that’s all we’re talking about. The margins are that tight.
Excellent piece, must have been painful to research.
Good article Mick, and well backed up with the facts at hand. As you point out, we are punching our weight right now. I think where the frustration lies is in the inability to finish in the final third – Hoopers recent vein of form saw us starting to pick up some points, albeit draws when maybe wins were needed against fellow strugglers.
The 8 million pound man so far has been an enigma, or at least how best to use him within the system employed by CH is one. When he has been fit, he’s been having to come too deep to get the ball and support the midfield. So by the time he’s needed back up front, he hasn’t been able to get there. Rooney had a similar problem when playing for England, the problem there is not money but the system employed.
When RVW was abroad, I’m told he used to sit on the heels of defenders and use his pace to beat them to balls behind the back or in the channels, I guess in a kind of counter-attacking fashion.
We don’t currently play like this, play tends to be built in a patient, careful with the ball manner. Which begs the question, why spend 8 million on a potential Dutch international striker, if you are not going to set the team up according to his strengths ?
This frustration is by no means a reason to replace the manager. Results, by no means great, are not bad enough for that yet. The bottom half of the table win on average less than 1 in every 4 games, so expectations do appear to be overly high.
People tell me on twitter that all the managers in the teams below Norwich have been replaced, all bar Big Sam anyway. Well, the thing is, their form doesn’t seem to have improved since the replacements have come in. Not well enough for them to leap-frog us in the league anyway.
Give it time, and hopefully some good recruits in this window, and I think we’ll start to see improvements in the system and then results. The time to replace a manager now is at the end of the season – any replacement wouldn’t be able to use the transfer window as effectively as the incumbent.
Excellent piece.
Dealing with facts, it’s the only way to look at it. We are not at the bottom of the league, neither are we in Sunderland-esque ‘trouble’. Fact. We’re not playing very well. Fact. We’re not scoring enough goals. Fact. But we are competing. Fact. And we are not about to be relegated. Not until we’re a few wins away from safety with time running out. Fact. Some fans have us down already, but we’re as close to another 11th as we are relegation.
Great article Mick and thanks for outlining the stats that support my views about our realistic aims as a club in this Premier League. Most supporters see the logic of this view and understand the resources at our disposal. On this basis I have supported Hughton as manager up until now.
However, to respond to a few points made in the article and subsequent comments:
The nature of the results and ‘points accumulation’ (which is the clinical process it feels like) is what is increasingly difficult to take. Yes, under Lambert we did not finish as high in the league, and yes at present Swansea are only a point above us, but in both cases I would be more proud to say I support those teams than the current one. Is three points for a solid win preferable to three boring draws? In my book, yes.
Also, to pick up the point about wasting transfer spending on a squad that is playing uninspiring football. On paper, that great pitch on which no game is played, I think we have signed exciting, attractive and fast-developing players – I find it difficult to believe that we could have spent the money we did any better. Hughton and McNally should be applauded for this.
However, I have resigned my position to the fact that the current manager and his staff do not play football, and do not utilise the resources they have, in a way that means I can continue to support their employment.
Yes, we are realistically limited to a mid-table position at best, but it’s how it is achieved that now counts. We have the squad and we have the infrastructure to benefit from a manager who will get us playing in a way that inspires, rather than one that depresses.
I still worry about the end of season run we’ll be facing compared to our bottom table rivals…
Mick’s article demonstrates that we need a manager who enables us to produce performances and results that punch above our weight, a manager who does this by togetherness, fitness and outwits opponents. CH did this in 2012/13 although there were, in my view, signs in the 2nd half of the season that he had weaknesses and he might not be able to maintain this.
I was happy with the points at both Sunderland and Palace, we would be in a much worse position if these had gone against us. My concern, based on recent performances and results against ordinary opposition at home, is that, as points become harder to achieve in the second half of the season as last year, we will not reach the 40 point mark
So Mick’s assertion is that our current position is due to resources? I’d suggest that this is not only untrue, but that we could be 9th and 13 points clear of relegation with no extra resources.
If you look at the games below and converted them into wins we would be on 29 points, Palace (18th) on 16.
Palace (A) +2pts
Fulham (H) +3pts
Sunderland (A) +2pts
Cardiff (H) +2pts
All of these games were highly winnable, and with the exception of Fulham our manager suggested we were the better team. None of the results are a stretch or against vastly superior squads. All teams are below us. Against Cardiff we had 31 shots and couldn’t score. Sunderland are bottom of the league. All of these teams have played so poorly they have sacked their managers.
Hughton supporters said these were the games we should be judged on and where we would pick up points, then decided draws and losses were OK.
Are we to believe that another manager couldn’t have coaxed these results out of our now highly international squad?
I’m sorry, I don’t.
Should we accept that it’s okay to drop points to every team below you except one?
I don’t.
I’m not suggesting we’re title contenders and have the money to go ‘all the way’. But Football is a promise, that on any given day 11 men can beat 11 men. That over a season you should hope and believe your club could inspire and entertain their supporters, achieve just that one extra place that takes them to Europe, or score that goal that gets them into a Cup final.
Instead we have long justifications of why our team should be doing poorly, we shouldn’t dream of more, and mustn’t grumble.
I hear Manchester United have decided they can’t compete financially with City and Chelsea, so they’re changing Old Trafford’s nickname to the Theatre of Lowered Expectations.
Mick
Thanks for your clear analysis of the financial situation. I think most supporters are under no illusion about our place in the food chain. My concern is aesthetic. We have sacrificed much of our playing traditions as a club for ‘possible’ Premier League survival. Let’s be honest, a lot of the football we play is turgid and uninspiring. If the football club only exists as a business entity and its expectations begin and end with achieving 17th place, then I’m not sure what the long term effect will be on the supporters. At the moment there is little to excite us and make us believe that there is more to the game than scrapping for a point at Selhurst Park.
The only flaw in your argument Dave B (12) is that football is actually a game and not just a mathematical prediction exercise. If every side won every game against those below them in the table, it wouldn’t be too much fun would it? The point is you can decry 9 points deemed lost, but so could just about every other side in the league decry points they deem they should justifiably have won – including Sunderland and Crystal Palace who would both be claiming the 2 points they deemed they didn’t get from us… Even most of the top sides have dropped points at various times against sides in the bottom half of the table.
The most cogent critique against Hughton is our style of play – ref James C (9) and Dave B’s earlier comment (3). Yet even here whilst most of us would have some comments about seeming lack of leadership and imagination at times, when you compare our performances now with a year back, there has clearly been change and improvement. This is especially given that we have still been picking up points, even with Hughton’s top midfield trio 2/3 or even 3/3 missing for some games now.
In short there is incremental change and improvement and there is recognition of the main current weakness – our inability to get the ball to our new strikers in telling ways. It says much for our Board that they are showing the patience that many of City’s supporters are not. My own belief is the patience will be rewarded – but as Mick argues, that does not mean it may not be tight or we have the entitlement to avoid a relegation battle. We didn’t last season – it was the last two games that lifted us to 11th – and to avoid relegation this season, our second half of the season will have to be better than it was last year. Can we do it? Yes, I believe we can, and our support being unified on match days will help.
@12 DaveB unfortunately football has never been as predictable as you suggest, just because a team is below us gives no automatic right to beat them.
14 & 15
I did not say we SHOULD be 9th. I said we COULD be 9th and that resources (Mick’s argument for why we should aim LOW) has little to play in it. Money is no excuse for the performances we’ve been seeing.
I’m not even the one saying these were winnable games. Take it away Chris…
vs. Palace
“At any stage before the sending off, we felt we could win it.”
vs. Fulham
“It is a concern when you do not get the result you feel you deserved.”
vs. Sunderland
“I felt we were the team most likely to score”
vs. Cardiff
“On the balance of chances, we should have won.”
So four games we could/should have won and didn’t. Why is that?
Resources?
Players?
Supporters?
Club structure?
Manager?
Answers on the back of a postcard.
Dave B (16 – end of): couldn’t find a postcard and haven’t got any stamps. The answer is..that’s life, that’s football – s*** happens and not everything goes the way it was planned. I’m amazed you’re still a footy fan if that doesn’t make sense.
Would you prefer us to be playing nice football in a lower league or battling in the PL? Obviously the ideal is playing nice football in the PL but for that the recipe seems to be foreign owner/foreign coach/team full of foreign players. And before you say it, no I not being anti-foreigner. A limit has to be brought in to (1) help clubs promote more UK talent and (2) level out the playing field in the PL.
Dave B, on first reading the impression I got was that you thought we OUGHT to be 9th, pretty much the same as SHOULD. Of course we COULD be 9th, but so could everyone else in the division.
I’m also not sure that Mick said we should aim low. I thought he suggested that some people’s expectations are unreasonably high, solely on the basis of money spent in one transfer window. Given our resources (and that’s not simply on the back of three seasons in the EPL) we should not be expecting anything other than an annual struggle to stay out of those last three spots – along with nearly half the others clubs in the league.
We simply don’t have the resources in terms of playing and coaching staff as well as financial to match a Fulham (several continued years of incremental building, assisted by being close to several larger clubs with spare playing staff to borrow), or clubs backed by very recent injections of large sums of capital such as Cardiff, Hull and Southampton.
In the matches you mention though (and I attended all of those) we should have been in a position to have won at Palace if Mike Dean or his linesman had seen the shove by Chamak (more than a half against 10 men), the Fulham game we were in the ascecdancy and could have been further ahead before they equalised, at Sunderland we had enough chances to have been out of sight by half-time and against Cardiff we came up against a ‘keeper playing out of his skin. One of these days our ‘keeper will produce something similar.
So, none of your answers then – and I’ve filled my postcard – except to repeat a comment from Michael D above – …and our support being unified on match days will help.
OTBC
Dave B appears to be getting a bit of a kicking for having the temerity to suggest that we should expect better than we are currently getting. Why do we persist in this notion that, because of who we are, we should not aim higher.
We previously had a Manager who, with a weaker squad, got them to believe they could beat anyone. They didn’t always, obviously, but at least they gave it a go.
We currently have a Manager who, with a better squad, seems to make them believe that everyone is better than them and they should be happy with draws at Sunderland and Palace.
They shouldn’t be, they are better than that.
Derek P(19): I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Dave B. He’s big enough and ugly enough to take it and has had plenty of opportunity to state his case, including his own stats-based platform (last week).
Why this arrogant notion that we should be going to Sunderland and Palace and winning easily. The inference is we are inherently bigger and better than them? How are we bigger than Sunderland..or Palace? Certainly in head-to-head stats (Dave B should appreciate this), we have no track record of being superior to them – S’land A (6 wins/21), Palace A (11/51) before this season. Fulham was a bad result but they are our number 1 bogey side (beaten them just 5 times in 19 at home)…and before you ask, Everton away? just 5 wins in 25. A point there would be fantastic.
@20 Statto
I didn’t say easily. I didn’t say should (although you could use the argument that Hughton was arrogant enough to say so). I said we COULD have won at these places and that our loss of pts to these teams was not due to resources.
Feel the need to show some support for Dave B here. Agree with most of what he’s said. I too get frustrated at being told we should not expect or aspire to any more than we are currently getting. All very boring at the moment. How many more seasons should we have to settle for what we get, and at what point am I allowed to believe we deserve more?
Excellent article Mick and possibly the most interesting follow up discussion I’ve read here for some time. Resources is clearly a factor & it’s this which clearly divides the top 7 or 8 from the rest of the division who are all much of a muchness. I take the point that even with our resources we could have been higher but every club outside the top 8 have as much right as we do to claim the same. I’m sure all of these clubs target games against us as ones to win. It’s for that reason that draws away at Sunderland, Palace etc, while not exciting, are decent results. There’s clearly a divide on peoples thoughts on the manager but I believe that if a change was going to come, it would have happened by now. I therefore echo the comments above about needing a united front on match days as our support will be vital in another tight season.
@22 I guess it’s a matter of personal intrepation as to whether you take the view that “being told to aim low and not aspire to any more” is somehow a “little Norwich” syndrome, or a frank expression of the reality of our position, as indeed it is for 11 or 12 other teams? Either way, I do not subscribe to the theory that it’s possible any team to build their squad year on year. Football, by it’s very nature is cyclical, managers come and go, as do players, so there are peaks and troughs to always consider. In theory, we should be on an upward trend, given the money spent and current squad. However, the reality is a combination of factors, ranging from injuries, team selections, substitutions and a general level of player underformance all combined that account for our current predicament. Whether all of those give sufficent grounds to justify managerial change or, indeed, whether changing the manager would result in a significant improvement to some, or all, of the above is the fasinating topic of debate raging amoungst those of a yellow and green followers.
Mick,
Nice piece, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as simple as that. Obviously, money plays a part in the Premier League and no one is going to deny that.
I would also agree that there are certain clubs that are far richer than we are. Therefore, as ever reaching the heights of finishing in the top five or six in the league is a tough ask.
However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to compete below that level. I certainly don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t be looking to finish seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth in the league.
I would also say that your piece doesn’t 100% make sense, because on one side you are saying that everything is determined by numbers – but on the other saying that we have outperformed what our numbers suggest.
But if that is true, then why shouldn’t we continue to do so? Or to put it another way, if we finished 11th and 12th with less money, then why shouldn’t we expect more progress with money spent. If not, then why bother to spend the money?
I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that not everything is determined by money in this league. For instance, Newcastle are having a good season – despite not spending a dime in the summer on transfer fees. West Brom finished eighth last season despite not spending a great deal.
I hear what you are saying, but I would prefer to think that our board would want us to keep moving forward, rather than accept the fact that we are moving backwards. If we stay up by the skin of our teeth this season, should Hughton’s job be safe?
I don’t think it should. I also think we got great value in the transfer market over other clubs, so it’s not about what you spend. It’s quite easy to spend £7/8m on average players, but we haven’t done that.
Time to be positive I think.