At the age of 10, Abraham Lincoln was kicked in the head by a horse. Those who found him thought he was dead; he spent the night unconscious and wasn’t expected to recover.
In 1958 – five years before the “I have a dream” speech – Martin Luther King was stabbed, the knife missing his aorta by less than an inch.
Steve McQueen was due to be at the home of Sharon Tate on the evening of 8 August 1969; he didn’t make it, so avoiding the massacre carried out by the Manson Family cult (he was on their hit-list).
We’re all familiar with other ‘near miss’ incidents. The ones above – at least the first two – are striking and thought-provoking because they had important consequences.
Whether you attribute them to fate, divine intervention or just coincidence, there’s no doubt that narrow margins play quite a part in human affairs. And we’re inclined to read a lot into them.
Where am I going with this? To a couple of thoughts on the ownership of Norwich City.
Of course our Board and owners shouldn’t be closed to outside investment. It’s my understanding that Delia’s Times interview and Michael’s comments at the AGM were borne of frustration at their previous attempts to find investors, and came over as more closed and definitive than they actually are.
Setting that aside, could City’s current ownership structure be viable for now and the future? Does it inevitably doom us, as many claim, to Championship mediocrity or worse? Or could it be the basis of a top-flight club?
Here’s where we return to fine margins. We’re having this conversation about ownership only for one reason: we got relegated last season. If we’d stayed up, it would be a small discussion around the fringes.
How fine were the margins at the end of last season? If we’d beaten Sunderland at Carrow Road on 16th April we’d have moved seven points above them, surely too much for them to recover. The corner count in that game was 14-0 to Norwich, and marginal decisions about penalties went against us.
A week earlier we played at Palace, having won the previous two games. It’s hard to remember now, but Timm Klose was playing outstandingly; at 0-0 he was injured, ending his season and damaging ours.
Bits of luck, or fine margins, with major consequences.
It seems to me that City’s ownership structure doesn’t automatically condemn us to the second tier and mediocrity. It can succeed, at least to the point of getting us into the Premier League and keeping us there.
With one big reservation – it doesn’t give us room for error.
We can’t do a Bournemouth: spending £9m on a player, finding he’s a dud, and promptly spending another £9m to correct it.
As Ed Balls said in an early interview after becoming City chairman, our model is sustainable – but only if we do everything well. In particular, our player recruitment and decisions on the manager (now Head Coach) have to be spot-on.
Which clearly hasn’t been the case over the past year, or for most of the past four years. Hence the restructure announced at the weekend.
Some fans, I know, have dismissed the management restructure as irrelevant; I have to disagree. A lack of football expertise in the Boardroom, and a Chief Executive role that covered everything from operational management to dealing with transfers, were working against our chances of getting key things right.
We needed a different set-up, more appropriate for where we are in 2017 and where we want to be. The step of restructuring marks a renewed professionalism at Board level and I detect the growing influence of Ed Balls (who’s easy to dismiss, but was actually admired on both sides of the House of Commons for his organizational abilities).
Adopting the structure that has served Southampton so well isn’t a bad start.
Other fans have said the revamped structure is all very well, but its success is dependent on putting the right people in those pivotal roles of Sporting Director and Head Coach. And…they’re absolutely right.
To me, there’s reason to say “so far so good” about current changes. However, no-one can properly judge until we have those people in place and they make their mark – probably beginning with the squad changes in the summer.
The recipe for success is largely in our hands. Get it right, then we can hope for the fine margins to be kind.
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Sometimes, football gets put into perspective. Encouraged by Mick Dennis, I went to Carrow Park at lunchtime on Saturday to watch the Down’s Syndrome game organized by the Community Sports Foundation.
The players’ commitment to the game, and to each other, was humbling and inspiring. It was brilliant, and brought obvious joy. Huge credit to everyone involved – not least the Barclay and Snake Pit for their half-time reception of the players.
It is amazing how fans pick particular moments as being season defining. Cam’s disallowed goal, that Newcastle defeat, GON sending off at Stoke etc etc. We were relegated from the premiership because we stuck with a young manager who was out of his depth and we are in the current position for the same reason. Football is a ruthless game and had we done what was required in Jan 2016 we would probably still be in the premier league. Now we are where we are and this time we need to get it right and then just maybe we will get back there. Fine margins and rub of the green will still be a factor but without a steely determination to do what is required when it is required they will be irrelevant.
Cyprus canary #1: I largely agree.
My point was that, even with (clearly) unsatisfactory recruitment and (possibly) the wrong manager, we still almost survived. Fine margins, and perhaps not justifying the big conclusions some drew about our ownership etc.
I applaud the Board for not just hoping it’ll come right, but taking determined action on the structure of the club. Now for those big appointments…
Lincoln, King, McQueen.
Their actions caught up with them all eventually.
Dave B #3: I hesitate to ask you to elaborate on that….
Well, they all died premature deaths related to their actions. Lincoln and King assassinated because of their political positions. McQueen from asbestos (exact cause unsure, possibly from film sets, possibly military activities).
My veiled point being, you can only live on fine margins for so long.
In sports, if you leave it to the fine margins, eventually your luck will run out. People who are winners over sustained periods encounter luck eventually, but their careers aren’t dependent on it. Newcastle didn’t leave promotion down to a few fortunate/unfortunate results, and they’ll go up.
Dave B #5: Thanks for the clarification.
I – and I’m pretty sure Ed Balls – would agree. Though Newcastle were helped a little by having £85m of surplus talent to sell after relegation.
Good stuff Stewart.
I think the Buddy Holly plane crash is one I would have listed – Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup from his band drew the wrong but subsequently right lots on coin tosses and didn’t make the plane.
Don’t trust me on the names – I’m a heavy metal fan – but I remember what friends tell me and the point remains.
I’d hesitate to compare the shooting of Lincoln with that of MLK.
Both politically motivated for sure, but in different times and with different agendas.
Meanwhile it’s a few good books for me for the next 10 days – I don’t expect anything to happen on the NCFC front.
#1 Cypress. Football is a ruthless game. After beating Southampton on the 2 January 2016, City were 14th in the Premier League, with 23 points from 20 games. Personally, I don’t recall there being much clamour at the time for managerial change.
Even by the end of the month, having lost the next three games, City were still 16th, albeit the gap to Newcastle, in 18th, had reduced to just two points.
City were never going to sack a manager in that situation
We trot out money as a reason for our lack of success when it suits us.
We then talk about our finances being in good shape when we need that story.
But then we shout about not becoming another Leeds when we talk about spending our money or money we don’t have. Except Leeds are above us now.
We have or don’t have money depending on the requirements of the day. Classic chewbacca defense.
Gary #8, despite that position the evidence was there that this young manager was not learning from his mistakes, hence my post at that time that I believed we had a choice: stick with Alex and be relegated or change and stay up. To be fair it may have been early February but nonetheless it was how I felt at the time. That is my point about the need to be ruthless. Now I beleive we are talking the right talk and need some good decisions. I personally do not beleive we are out of the race even now. Nearly but not yet.
Dave B #9
Remind me how long Leeds spent outside the top flight, after their ludicrous overspend… I’d hope we get back up much sooner, without revisiting the chasm of debt we were previously in.
There’s no spin. We ARE in good financial state, since we are solvent – doesn’t mean we have a huge surplus for transfers.
“We ARE in good financial state”
I’m not sure what your definition of ‘good’ is.
– We had to sell players to stay solvent this season.
– Our revenue stream is reducing significantly season on season.
– We have to let players go for FREE because we need their wages off the books.
None of these are good indicators of a club in a good financial state. None. The reason this is particularly worrying is that we don’t have owners who will bankroll us in the short term. So they will do anything to keep us in the black. IF we are not promoted by the time our parachute payments finish then don’t expect our club to resemble the one you see now. So to talk about ‘fine margins’, our fine margin runs out when the money goes.
I’m not suggesting we follow Leeds’ model, but the club we hold up as ‘worst practice’ is above us. Worth considering.
BTW I predicted our current state on this site two years ago.
“I TOLD YOU SO” KLAXON:
“I predicted our current state on this site two years ago”
Well done you.
That’s the trouble with saying everything will go wrong. In sport, it normally does, eventually. Funny how so many people are concentrating on our drop to league one and not the success of employing Lambert and McNally. Or the fact that our relegations haven been ‘disastrous’ – which they weren’t, just not quite good enough, as the writer points out. In the same way that Roy Hodgson put together a fine England team that failed only in one game of knock out football. His time with England wasn’t disastrous. Fine margins.
It’s hard to argue with those facts when laid out by Dave. There has still been no satisfactory explanation as to what will transpire when the parachute payments expire and Delia smiths non investment policy comes to the fore.
Dave B is right, inasmuch as we had to reduce our playing budget this season after relegation.
Due to good housekeeping, we could do it without selling a single player who didn’t want to leave (and a single player most of us would regard as key). No fire sale was forced on us, as was forced on QPR and may others.
We were also able to buy new players. Our problem this season hasn’t been the strength of the squad, but its performance.
Norwich’s finances are a bit like mine. I can’t go on the fancy holidays that some others do, but due to careful management I’m not in trouble either.
If last seasons relegation wasn’t disastrous, it’s difficult to know what is. It’s singly the most costly event in the clubs entire history, the true cost of which still to be established. Coming as it did at a time when a good number of championship clubs are flexing their new found financial muscle, courtesy of those dreadful investor types. It could well be that the ownership of the club has frittered away the last chance Norwich city has of returning to the Halcyon days of top flight football of the seventies and eighties and part of the nineties.
#12 Dave B – you’re being somewhat over dramatic with your assessment.
Any club which is relegated from the Premier League will naturally experience a significant drop in income because the parachute payments are less than when you’re still in the PL.
Players at the end of their contracts, who’re over 24, can be picked up by other clubs for “free”. These are probably the same players who you’ve previously referred to as “dead wood”.
It’s hardly rocket science predicting that clubs without parachute payments have to cut their cloth according to their current status.
Dave B, I suggest you review your understanding of the Chewbacca defence. To say that our club has its finances in a decent state, for a club of our size, and then say that we can’t compete with other clubs, which are much bigger than ours, is perfectly fine. Both statements are simultaneously correct. It’s a simple case of understanding the realities.
Delia Smith non-investment. 53 million on players. Gippeswyk Town would take that type of non-investment!
I fundamentally don’t understand your comments Stewart and Gary.
Stewart, you make it sound like players not wanting to be at the club is a good thing. To me that’s two strikes. One – we HAD to sell players and Two – First team players didn’t want to be at our club.
Gary, you’re suggesting that it’s a natural experience to lose huge amounts income. Again there’s two strikes. One – we were relegated and Two – we seeing massive loss of income.
WRT the dead wood. Again, it’s not good we’re losing money on players we could have sold a couple of seasons back (Ruddy at least), it’s not a positive that we have players we don’t want, and it’s not a positive that we can’t afford their wages anyhow.
In none of these cases do combining multiple elements create a positive net outcome, or at least neutralize the issue. Everything you mention is bad unless you’re a PR company spinning it.
Very very odd.
Dave B #20: I think we’ve all grasped your point that Norwich got relegated last year and it’s a bad thing.
You seem to have extraordinary difficulty grasping anything else. Almost any other club suffering relegation, without the backing of a very rich owner, would have had to sell key assets willy-nilly. Because of our good housekeeping, we could keep things together through selling just one player in the summer (Redmond). We could reject bids for Howson, the Murphys and others.
It’s clearly true that our signings have been a mixed bag, with one or two on large salaries and not contributing. Whinging about it is pretty easy (though I confess you excel at it). The Board doesn’t have that luxury; it has to do harder things like changing the club structure to try and do better in future.
#20 Dave “the optimist” B – it’s very simple. TV monies of £68m last season in the Premier League are substantially reduced to £42m this season, £30m next, £6m the one after if we’re still in the Championship. Norwich are no different to any other club in this respect, yet the previous response suggests we’re somehow at fault?