For want of something better to do on a Saturday night, I tapped the following three words into a Google search box: ‘Kenwyne Jones wages’.
Somewhere near the top, this popped up: http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/273675.html
And in the second part was, apparently, the answer: ‘Jones has been fined two weeks’ wages, around £80,000, by Stoke after texting manager Mark Hughes to say he was unavailable to play against Liverpool on Sunday…
Which was interesting; about right I suspect for a player of Jones’ ilk. No Remy, but always a handful. And at 29, he’s been around the block a fair few times. His goal-scoring record isn’t the greatest. But I have him down as an awkward one for defenders.
So £40,000-a-week. On the assumption that his wages didn’t change in the midst of the simple swap deal for Peter Odemwingie that took one to the Britannia and the other to the Cardiff City Stadium.
What’s interesting is what appears if you type ‘Peter Odemwingie wages’ into a Google search box. This appears: http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/transfer-news/West-Brom-Peter-Odemwingie-wants-pay-rise-to-40k-a-week-to-snub-Newcastle-Wigan-interest-article784151.html
Odemwingie demanding a pay rise of £40,000 to stay at The Hawthorns. And to not then, presumably, turn up in a car park outside Loftus Road one transfer window night.
The point being quite simple. In the current Premier League market-place, £40,000-a-week gets you a Kenwyne Jones or a Peter Odemwingie. Loyalty comes extra.
It also gets you a winning goal against one of your relegation rivals. And that, as we all know, can be priceless.
It gets a club off its knees and it gives a new manager all the lift he needs to drive on and up the table at a crucial point in the season. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can walk across the Taff tonight. Vincent Tan’s tiff with Malky Mackay will be so much history.
For this is the point that niggles away at me as the knives continue to sharpen for Chris Hughton.
And I’m not about to revisit all his managerial strengths and failings; this decision, that decision. A wrong sub here; the wrong shape there. Fine. Whatever. Next…
But there is one decision that is not in Hughton’s hands. And nor – to my knowledge – has it been in any Norwich managers; past, present or future.
And that is how much he is allowed to spend on a player. That is a decision that sits with the board.
If a manager were given a free rein to spend whatever he liked on a player then, of course, any manager would pay whatever it took to get the best players to play for them.
But that’s not how it works. Someone else sets a ceiling. Hands him a budget to work to. In effect, ties his hands.
And this is the question. Where is that ceiling wages-wise? If a Jones or an Odemwingie are out of Hughton’s reach, then you get what you pay for – a Hooper, a van Wolfswinkel or an Elmander. Or, indeed, a Becchio. Who came at the price of a Steve Morison. Now back to plying his trade on loan at Millwall.
Of all the charges that are laid at the City manager’s door, I’ve yet to see daft as one of them.
It is not rocket science to recognise that – maybe bar Hooper – none of his strike buys have delivered. To anywhere near the level required to compete effectively at this level.
And, by the way, nor do I set much store by goals conceded columns. When a team like Spurs are shipping five at home to Manchester City, there is something new going on. If Norwich are returned to sender, it will be the ‘Goals For’ column that despatches them south, not the ‘Goals Against’.
Which brings us back to money and wages. And a transfer window that has come and gone without Norwich’s evident short-comings in front of goal being addressed.
“If we’re making mistakes like we did, then we’ve got to be scoring goals – and we’re finding that tough at the moment,” said the manager after this weekend’s 2-1 defeat against Jones and Co.
And then there is that whole Steve Bruce quote: ‘In the Premier League, any manager is only ever as good as his strikers…’
So you have to presume Hughton looked long and hard at that January striker market; did he throw names at the board – only to hit the Jones-type ceiling?
Or was the ceiling relaxed, but he just couldn’t find the players willing to make the move east?
Players – and their agents – will go where the money is; throw enough at the pair of them and they will move.
Or did Hughton shy away from his Oliver moment and not ask for more? Does he still believe that van Wolfswinkel can turn the corner form and fortune-wise? Or did he recognise that he’s had his lot; this is the hand that he has dealt himself – now he has to make certain players deliver?
My fear would be that, as a board, you end up falling between several stools. You stick by your man manager-wise and not flow with the message-board tides, but then neither do you enable him to address the biggest gap in his armoury and play/pay at the level of a Stoke or a Cardiff wages-wise.
But then even if change had been forthcoming manager-wise, unless the new man can pull a Michu-like rabbit out of the hat with his knowledge of foreign fields, would we not be going round the same block?
Slice and dice this squad any which way you want, but I strongly suspect that if you pay £20,000-a-week you get one player; if you pay £40,000-a-week you get another player.
And if you pay £200,000-a-week you get Luis Suarez. And you can play 8-1-1, 5-4-1, 6-3-1… whatever combination you want. And he’ll still rip you to bits.
It’s as simple as.
Hi Rick,
I cannot disagree with anything you write in broad but I think the answer lies within the structure. Take off Gutierrez and bring on Redmond and we start tearing them apart up the left. Bring on Fer instead of Elmander and we start creating though the middle. Of course we miss Howson terribly but if we had started with Tettey and Johnson as the two defensive midfielder, Fer in the middle and Redmond on the wing we would have had a demonstrably more effective attack. The change came about 15 minutes after us “Couch Managers” were saying “But where is Plan B?” Too slow to react.
What I would really like to know is what was said at half time. Was it “Ok lads we have them on the ropes lets just keep pressing upfield and doing exactly what we are doing” or the more likely “OK…Let’s drop in and hold the lead” which fell apart in two minutes of brain fade in the defense.
Solskaeher (forgive the spelling) changed his shape in the 38th minute. We waited till the 74th.
Yes we were unlucky not to score and why Marshall keeps reserving his bet performances for us I have no idea…but our overall mindset seems to impress on us that we are not good enough to play football at this level so we our first target is DO NOT LOSE. It should be DO WIN.
If we suffer defeat trying to win the support will be huge…but defeat in the face of these defensive errors is going to really depress the crowd.
Actually I disagree with this. Looking at the respective squads of much of the bottom half I reckon ours stacks up well. When we got van Wolfswinkel everyone said what a coup we’d got. Hooper, Fer, Snodgrass, Redmond, Pilkington and Ruddy would be welcome additions to most teams struggling in this league. Villa seem desperate to get Hoolahan because Lambert (and most of the Norwich crowd) recognise how good he is.
Consistently, all season long we have been less than the sum of our parts. We have consistently failed as a team. This is Hughtons fault, his job is to form the players into a team, it hasn’t happened. I no longer accept hearing ‘we played well but things went against us, or their keeper played great, whatever.’ When this happens again and again it ceases to be bad luck, rather it is a failing of the team. Finally to me it is a failing of the manager.
I now hope we stay up, I no longer think we will.
OTBC
The sad thing is that I do not believe a “Kenwyne Jones” would make any difference under our current approach.
And it does not all come down to money. If we can only afford £30,000p.w for our strikers then you overcome that tactically and by motivating the team to show they they can match or better their counterparts, for some to move onto greater things. I appreciate that will only take you so far, but I feel we could have done much better than we have this season. We had no trouble scoring goals two years ago without a £40,000p.w striker!
And why be surprised with 2 minutes of madness yesterday when we had 45 minutes of it last Tuesday!
Having a wages ceiling isn’t what stops him from making substitutions before the 70th minute. Nor is it the reason that when he does make late changes they are nearly always ‘like for like’. (Yesterday’s triple sub, incidentally, was clearly the uncharacteristic move of a very desperate man). Having a wages ceiling isn’t what prevents him from motivating a team to play with passion and spirit all game, every game. Having a wages ceiling isn’t what causes him to alienate the likes of Holt, Hoolahan, Fox and Becchio. Nor is it the reason that his team is seemingly incapable of recovering from a losing position.
Having a wages ceiling isn’t what causes Hughton to approach every game with a plan based on fear of the opposition.
His fundamental approach will never benefit a team with any ambition whatsoever. Never was a man born who is less suited to leading a club whose anthem includes the words ‘Never Mind The Danger’!
We should not stick with him and totter to relegation. Better to make a change and at least try to save our season.
OTBC
Brilliant article, you clearly have a solid grasp of the nuance
Shocking that Jones and Odemwenge are on GBP40k…..
We did look totally different when Fer and Redmond came on. Hard to criticise as he looks so energetic when he plays but some of his speculative shots are a bit way out and should look for the pass a bit more. Nonetheless, love the way he is not afraid of anyone and just attacks the defense.
Look forward to your next post!!
Excuses and interesting viewpoints can be placed aplenty, but it’s now got to the stage where the average fan could take over and the outcome would be largely the same. We can all get paid £15/20k a week to set the team up to lose. I was happy to give Hughton plenty of time to improve our standard of play based on his signings, but that time has expired…we have gone backwards, and that’s the crux of the argument. Even if we are miraculously saved by three worse sides, the board have shifted from ambition with prudence, to an ambition-less fool called prudence. But that, I would suggest, comes from not removing hughton, as opposed to the financial restrictions placed upon him. Can anyone, deluded board included, really see a miraculous turnaround?! Thought not.
‘Deluded’, ‘no ambition’, blah blah etc. All we keep hearing about the Board. But look at the plain facts: we have not been comprehensively outplayed by anyone we’ve not been thrashed by (slight paradox but the point is outside of the crazy expensive teams we’ve kinda ‘competed’ with all teams, despite the results). We’re not so awful as to be adrift of the rest – a la Derby, Sunderland etc in seasons gone by.
We know we have a set of talented individuals who aren’t gelling, and are often so close to getting it right. But not close enough. What would you do as a Board member? I’m not advocating sitting on your hands but what a difficult situation to be in. The problem is, however rubbish we think we are, we still have an advantage over other teams, however small. Hughton might just drag us out of it. He might not. But his replacement would need to be super-inspirational or he might just blow it all. What a difficult decision.
Gordon, Paul, Peter C, Toad & especially Frank – I salute you for your excellent comments which so eloquently summarise how many of us now feel. Many others have said that the time for change has now passed with the closing of the transfer window and that we have to stick with what we have and cross our fingers and toes! Wisdom seems to suggest we need 5 wins for salvation, so how many could a Hughton team win? We all know about the final 4, so that leaves 10, take out Man City (H), Spurs (H) and Southampton (A) and that leaves 7 winnable games for a Hughton team. And there’s the point, changing manager now, bringing in a motivational, attack minded coach who goes out to try and win games would turn 7 winnable games back into 14 winnable games. The risk of “glorious” failure is surely now no greater than the risk of “sleepwalking” our way to failure under Hughton, and at least it would be glorious!
Sorry Rick, but this is nonsense. Look at RVW. We have someone who has scored dozens of goals in different countries. He comes to Norwich for a record 8.5m. I don’t know his wages, but I’m sure it’s enough to inspire him to score. Yet he looks like a lost schoolboy on the pitch. In comparison we spent 450k on Holt and he bagged us 20+ goals in two seasons and led the team. There’s an interesting study that shows wages are not a motivator for good performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Of course, money helps, but look at Torres, four years at Chelsea, massive price tag, and he’s still not scored as many goals as Holt did in two with us.
Money helps, of course, but as we’ve all seen (QPR last year) on its own it won’t save you.
I read this article and can’t help thinking the conclusion you present is that we are a Championship team and never will be PL.
Cityfan – you effectively disagreed, then agreed. I was simply stating that the board are ‘deluded’ and show ‘no ambition’ if they think that anything other than a ‘super-inspirational’ coach s going to get us out of this mess. I don’t understand how that’s a ‘difficult decision’?! That’s what I keep hearing repeatedly, and it makes no sense. It may be difficult to source the right candidate (out of the numerously talented coaches across the continent!) or just continue with what is destined for relegation (or at the very least terrible viewing). Let’s make a statement, hire a decent enough name and go down fighting at the very least.
If you start googling footballers wages, you’ll very quickly get mad and bitter. All 40k per week says to me is how ludicrously the wage scale has got out of hand that such an average player should get so much.
I googled Jones’ scoring record at Stoke – 1 goal every 6-7 games. That suggests to me that despite his contribution yesterday, he isn’t going to be the saviour of their season.
Everyone has made good points about my club Norwich but the plain facts are we can’t score and defense isn’t the best in two games against a woeful Cardiff we had 58 shots at goal and scored 1 goal I got 2-1 on relegation after man city game we will be odds on I cannot see where we are going to get 16pts from I have been a season ticket holder for 35yrs and Gerri g one next year whatever
Dave B,
Tom Haylett, aka Rick. Long story.
Beg to differ, fella. ‘Nonsense…’
In life you invariably get what you pay for.
RVW hasn’t played in the EPL; he’s never played up against a Vincent Kompany. Becuase he scores goals in Portugal means nowt. And you can hire Jose Mourinho and it won’t make him bigger, better, stronger. He is what he is.
He looks a schoolboy because he’s a mid-sized striker against big, powerful, EPL athletes. That’s what Norwich paid for; something off the £8.5m shelf; not off the £14m one which gets you a Zaha.
Look at his wages… I’m sure they inspire him to score…
I would argue that the other way; all-too often, the more you pay a modern day footballer, the *less* hungry they become. And I can cite 101 examples of that.
In fact Holt proves the point; he stayed hungry because no-one ever paid him £40,000-a-week. Always had a point to prove; to reap his due rewards. He had never been fed the kind of wages that comes to blunt a player’s game. Why he wanted it…
IMHO, of course.
@13 Tom aka Rick
Not trying to be difficult, but didn’t you just argue in your piece that the higher the wage the higher the caliber of player, only to say paying Holt less made him a better player?
While the manager may have had limited finances compared to others, he did choose to buy players who were almost entirely unproven in the Prem and in many cases that’s come back to haunt. Elmander hasn’t scored, Becchio hasn’t played, RVW isn’t cut out for PL life, Redmond, who I do rate highly, isn’t providing the quality of finish required, Garrido barely starts, and the jury is out on Fer.
We’ve also now taken on the wages of two over 30’s, one of whom is now starting ahead of a summer signing.
Olsson is probably our best signing and, not surprisingly, has large PL experience. Hooper has also done well and has experience in a top tier British team.
My point is this. We didn’t have large amounts of cash, but we could have spent what we did have more wisely. We have purchased, or loaned in 10 players this year. Almost an entire team. Could we have purchased fewer, but proven/higher quality talent?
The exception to the central argument is WBAs Berahino. The BBC reported he was on £850 a week. He has out-scored Hooper this season. The market is what it is, Yes, but at any wage level you can find a player who can hit good form. What is evident is that the probability of any Norwich player having a good game at the moment seems to be getting less and less and there’s no sign of change for the better in the near future.
10) Hughton clearly isn’t up to the job but as the Board, it must be a very difficult decision to make because, as we all know, getting someone new in may just be costly and get the same result. They cannot be accused of being deluded or lacking ambition because of course they want us to do better. But genuinely, who could they replace Hughton with? It’s surely as ‘deluded’ to believe that right now someone else would make things better (even though it feels things can’t be worse – but we’re talking about bringing in a whole new coaching team who will need weeks to get our players performing – time we don’t have). The only ‘new’ manager to be appointed among the clubs in trouble who has done well is Pulis – a proven Premier League manager who has shown time and again what a good coach he is (regardless of his style). So I’m saying there isn’t anyone else around who you’d absolutely pin hopes on. And therefore, because there is no guarantee, perhaps the Board would rather stick with what they know in Hughton, help and hope he can get us over the line and make the changes in the summer. It’s risky but no more or less than bringing in someone new. That’s why I’m saying it must be such a difficult decision. What I believe is irrelevant. Although for the record I think he should be sacked today, so we have three weeks to bed in a new coaching team in time for the Spurs game. OTBC
On wages: studies show a direct correlation between wages paid and success. It’s part of the Moneyball equation – it doesn’t matter how much a player costs in transfers, if you pay them high wages they are more likely to perform. I’m not sure using Kenwyne Jones as an example here really adds up – he’s one of many exceptions to the rule and frankly he could have been paid minimum wage and still scored on Saturday thanks to our p**s poor defending.
@15 – using Berahino as an example surely points to the value of bringing players through the youth system. The question is do we have any youngsters (Murphy twins aside) that might be ready for this level of football?
14 – I kind of agree with your point about players with the right experience but using Hooper undermines your argument a bit – the SPL in no way reflects the rigours of the EPL and a few European games can’t possibly reflect that either. He has a higher level of adaptability, perhaps, than some other signings because he is used to climate, no language barrier etc – yet Elmander also played in the Prem for a while and speaks excellent English, but can’t score.
Also players with the right type of experience are seen as being better value – and no wonder when you see some domestic transfer fees in recent years – but this really hasn’t worked out in City’s case this season.
I think Tom(Rick)’s overall point could have been strengthened by talking about ambition. I know any team can have ambition regardless of wage structure. Much as wage does not necessarily equal success, if a potential signing knows there is a wage ceiling, are they likely to want to come here if they know they can only attain a certain level of reward even if they play out of their skin?
I seem to recall that when Steve Bruce has Jones playing for him, he said he was the hardest player he had ever had to motivate. He will be a two min wonder, that why he has moved from club to club so often. Managers soon work him out.