I’ve kept my MyFootballWriter powder relatively dry recently.
While others have vented their feelings on a range of the recent hot-button topics such as safe-standing, investment, or the recent inability to convert semi-decent performances into wins (or even goals), I’ve watched from the sidelines with a sense of detachment.
Not because I’ve lost faith in “the other woman” in my life that is Norwich City. No, the old girl still holds a fatal attraction for me that is difficult at times to fathom but remains as keen as the day I took up residence at Carrow Road 30+ years ago. But I currently don’t feel the highs or lows anywhere near as keenly as many of my fellow Canaries (Other than the loss at Millwall, which was so far beyond acceptable that Mrs H was forced to take away all sharp objects from me for 24 hours).
Am I a “happy-clappy”? I’m certainly more forgiving of the current set-up than many, but that wouldn’t preclude me from losing my (we’ll go with…) wits at 5 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon when the eleven men in yellow have failed to convert possession into goals yet again. Currently I feel unmoved however. In homage to my fellow MFW columnist Martin Penney, a fan of the musical analogy, I remain “Comfortably Numb”.
After some soul-searching, the reason I believe is expectation. Not that I’m smugly sitting back, looking on my fellow supporters with a Shearer-esque sneer, condescendingly opining “What were they expecting?”.
I think years of painful experience have just given me the ability to spot this season for what it is fairly early. It’s a dud. A damp squib. A firework that you light on bonfire night that never goes up. And try as we might to ignite that banger and get us a show, other factors are combining to dampen our fuse and leave us underwhelmed and disappointed. Having accepted that fact, I’m no longer as prone to the bipolar mood swings as others.
What I see now is that whilst the Webberlution gave us a chance at promotion, should everything have gone perfectly on the pitch (which was always a long shot), it wasn’t about immediate success. It was about transitioning from the Norwich City that we have been over the past few seasons to the Norwich City that we have to become given the financial realities.
Fast-forward to August and let’s play a little Mystic Meg with the squad. Loanees Gunn and Reed will be gone, and the likelihood is that Oliviera, Pritchard and Maddison will have also departed to bring some much-needed money into the club. Tettey’s contract will be allowed to run its course and at 31 with knees made of marmalade he’ll be allowed to depart with a pat on the back and our thanks but no chance of a contract because the days of us paying aging players the wages they are used to are gone.
Likewise, as much as he can still be a game-changer, Wes’s decision over whether to retire will effectively be made for him as he’s unlikely to be given the option of another year on anything like similar money, especially given how infrequently he has been used this year.
The bulk of the squad will be made of what I think of as the new Norwich. Young players such as Godfrey, Matthews, Murphy, Lewis, Phillips, and Cantwell, combined with the recently arrived contingent such as Zimmermann, Trybull, Stiepermann, Vrancic, Husband and Raggett who are paid a far more modest and affordable wage than their predecessors.
They will be juxtaposed with what is the old Norwich. The players who remain on Premier League contracts that we can’t get rid of because we’ve paid them more than any prospective purchasers are willing to match. And whilst some of these players are repaying some of those bigger wages (Klose, Pinto), equally you have the Naismith’s, Jarvis’s, McGovern’s who aren’t contributing but have another year at least to ride the gravy train of our ill-advised contracts.
Add in old hands like Martin and Jerome (who earned contracts that are nonetheless expensive), and a marquee signing that provides leadership and stability going forward in Hanley, and the wage-bill remains vastly bloated.
Whilst Klose and Pinto may be picked off by clubs who are willing to pay big money for players who perform solidly regardless of circumstance, Webber isn’t Derren Brown, and he can’t hypnotize clubs to come in for a Naismith or Jarvis (no matter how many column inches are given to attempts to whip up a possible January move for the former).
We won’t truly be able to move forward financially until these contracts have expired and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there was a chart in Stuart Webber’s office of how many days there are to go until the last of these high-wage contracts has ticked over – at which point he can pop a glass of something fizzy to celebrate that he can finally press on without the past tying one-hand behind his back.
Until this time however, we’re in-between eras. Our heroes of yesteryear are going or getting old. Our mistakes are continuing to haunt us. And Daniel Farke is trying to balance bringing the young players that will form the new Norwich in gradually while Webber does his best to transition the old players out.
Early in the season it became apparent that too much was changing within the squad for this to be a promotion-challenging year. Equally, despite our recent poor run, performances remain reasonable and we aren’t being beaten by massive margins, so relegation remains an unlikely prospect.
As such I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’m not watching a season of struggling for points. I’m watching one team die, and another one rise to take its place. So I’m enjoying the likes of Maddison, Pritchard, Hoolahan and Gunn while we have them. And enjoying seeing our youngsters start to emerge.
But I’m not going to stress over the table or points which won’t always come our way. My hope is in the future and not in the now.
Excellent stuff Andy.
Oh boy are we paying for the sanctioning of the arrivals of Naismith, Jarvis and others on ridiculously long and inflated contracts.
You make the very valid point that Webber-Farke cannot by definition get to where they want to be while a few of the old guard remain. Two at least remain pretty much unsaleable so we’ll probably be stuck with them till 2019.
I wish I could share your optimism for our future, but it is unwritten and your guess is as good as mine (probably better tbh)!
This is good straight talking and reasonable but there are two fatal flaws in my opinion.
1) you make the assumption that Webber will stick around long enough to see this upturn.
2) You also assume that Farke has the management skills to achieve this turnabout in our fortunes. Personally I would have had more confidence in Alan Irvine creating such a team of youthful players.
Nevertheless I don’t disagree with your general observations.
Thanks Gents for nice comments.
I’m not entirely sure I do have a positive outlook for the future, or that Farke will be the man to provide such (although I don’t rule either out). What I do think is that until 2019, we are still, to a certain extent, living in the past because there is no immediate way to undo the past mistakes.
Whilst the blend of young players and our cheaply acquired Germanic contingent will form the base of our squad next season I’ve no more idea than anyone that this will result in an upturn. Just that the picture will be a little clearer than now when we’re still in flux.
I have to agree with Cyprus: I have said several times myself on MFW that I am not confident Stuart Webber will be here for as long as I would like him to be.
He is working to a brief: how much of that brief he has constructed himself and what proportion of it is imposed on him I do not know, but in my working days I was always open to a better offer if it came along and if it suited me. I doubt Stuart is any different.
I just feel that should he depart the whole thing will really fall apart as I believe he is doing as well as anybody could in making the best out of a bad job.
It is such a shame this particular season had to be the one that ended up as a period of transition.
I always had the impression that Alan Irvine was not interested in being manager of NCFC and I’m sure he would have had some pretty valid reasons for adopting that stance. When you’re that close to the inner circle, you pick up the vibes…
I saw nothing in Irvine to convince me he was likely to be a long term solution. I think we would have continued in much the same vein as AN, trying to sign players we can’t really afford. He didn’t plug the defensive holes – which Farke did in dramatic fashion & only stopped when our sole consistently effective DM got injured.
I still think Farke is the best man for the job, given our present financial predicament.
Spot on piece. I too have become semidetached about my beloved, rather as I did when Ken Brown and Mel Machin oversaw a terminal decline from the top division many moons ago. At least relegation isn’t nailed on, though more likely than promotion. So I’m fairly chilled and dreaming of Christmas future where the new Norwich fill us with cheer…….(I’m sure some doom mongers will be along in a while to prick my dream bubble.)
I would expect Klose and Pinto to leave this summer too. They will then be about to enter the last season of their contracts. I doubt we could afford to offer them a new contract or that they would want to sign. To get a transfer fee instead of losing them for nothing they are likely to be sold.
I fear next summer will be just as turbulent as the last.
good write up, it is quite a scary when you sit back and ponder what could happen . but this is football and we are Norwich City, so therefore the future is uncertain and unpredictable as picking the lotto numbers.
I am not sure that Webber will be about that long, as easily as we were able to get him, it will be just as easy to see him depart.
As to Farke, I think he will come to a realisation that his footballing ideals cannot be played out in this League, he will have to change or fall on his sword. We have not got the money to waste on getting shot of him. We are basically have to go with what we have got.
Like CCanary comments. I would have more faith in Mr Irvine creating a good solid championship team, he knows this country’s football
We know we have not got a Magic Money tree about to start bearing fruit nor are we likely to have one planted. I have heard many times that there are not people out there looking to pump money into a football club. But then we hear that the unlikeliest and perhaps unglamorous footballing hotspots of Barnsley, have investment. How that pans out we wait to see and I am sure many of us yellow & greener’s will be keeping an eye on.
It proves money is available, if those holding the reins are open to it, but sadly as we know our reign holders are not. yes they have saved this club, but that was seasons ago, with football and ownership of a club have changed dramatically since those days, I am not one for hanging onto the past, honestly I see more mistakes made over that tenure and money wasted, that outweighs the credit for saving the club in the last century still brings.
Somewhere the gods of football have blank pages in their Norwich City’s books, ready to be written, I would love to have a peek at what could be in store.
Then on second thought perhaps I wouldn’t
Andy, you’ve absolutely nailed the fundamental issue of the squad’s development being hindered by the presence of the “2019’ers”.
Alex Neil actually encountered a similar problem back in 2016, following relegation, with just two senior pros, Whittaker and O’Neil, out of contract. Subsequently offering both contract extensions proved bizarre in light of his previous comments.
Knowing that parachute payments were going to disappear in 2018, to offer Jerome a two year extension in 2016 – his contract would have expired in 2017 – and to then do the same thing again with Russell Martin back in August, just compounded the number of 30 somethings with contracts continuing until 2019 !
Excellent article.
I´m afraid in the time-scale you´re talking about Mr. Head, Webber will have been and gone, and been and gone somewhere else, well before that´s completed. Farke too ( I hope ) won´t be here either, if the way he´s started, he intends to continue. A long-term process it undoubtedly will be, but too long for these two, I´m afraid.
Brilliant column Andy, and as per all the comments, absolutely nailed the current problems at our beloved….
Surely the fact that (of all clubs, and no disrespect to them) Barnsley now appear to have joined the financial gravy of foreign investment shows that there ARE people out there with the desire and finance to support a club like ours?
As for the players, another publication today states that Jarvis has not kicked a senior ball in anger since 2016. Given our soon to be parlous financial state, if he had any shred of pride and decency surely he would cancel his contract and walk away (if capable due to injury…).
Apparently yesterday Naismith indicated that he wants away to get first team football. Unless we really are being sold up the river, I thought that he had been injured for almost all of this season. Nice to get some loyalty for all the money NCFC have been paying him, but a fee, any fee, and to remove his wages could free up some money for something else perhaps.
Yes, the future has to be with our younger players which is exciting, but I do wonder what sort of eleven we will be starting with next season – and if Mr Webber will be here to see it.
O T B C
Andy, I’ll see your Comfortably Numb and raise it with my Pretty Vacant.
I didn’t expect much success on the field this season as the pre season mood music seemed to be telling us to manage our expectations. I didn’t imagine that things would be as bad as the Millwall debacle, but I have enjoyed the wins at Sheff Utd, Middlesbrough and little 1p5wich.
I reluctantly accept that this season and next are going to result, at best, in mid table nothingness (although if the next 4 games go badly this may be an overly optimistic prediction).
I do wonder what’s happening off field. I would imagine that Delia cringes at some of the quotes from the Times interview as they rebound on her. I can’t imagine that Ed Balls would be happy to be a mere figurehead who will just accept that the way things are being run now are the way they always will be. Whatever you think of him and his political career it is undeniable that he knows how to influence those in power; perhaps he’ll be chipping away at Delia and Michael about the need for additional income into the club..
There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply, so I’ll continue my passive acceptance of the situation we are in…..probably.
Interesting comment, Don.
All I’d say about Ed Balls is that, being a politician, his undeniable skill in influencing opinion formers et al is likely to be a little too subtle for what is required in this case. A bloody great cattle prod wouldn’t come amiss but please consider that even that approach will not work on the immovably intransigent.
Plus as a non-executive, he doesn’t really have that much clout. I actually quite like him (at least he knows a fair bit about football) for what it’s worth, but I do not believe that in this scenario we can expect too much from him. It’s not in his remit, after all.
Chipping away at a plan that is set in (Steve) stone will not work.
Barnsley was a bit of a wake-up message, however: many are called but few get up.
You probably won’t get the reference above but in Pistols terminology we have bodies. About four too many on ridiculous contracts.
I fear your references are probably early 70s prog rock and therefore beyond me.
I was offered some corporate hospitality in the directors box and boardroom for a forthcoming away game (prior commitments meant I had to turn it down). If both teams are in the same division next season (and if we are still crying out for change), I’ll consider smuggling in the cattle prod if the invitation is renewed.
As far as I can see we really need a couple of wins. Never mind the Balls jokes, where’s the six pointers?
Bodies? It’s an abortion.
Good shout on the ‘think in the now’ mindset. Even if the now is rather 50/50. Just have to ride out the season and perhaps relent to the fact we’ve always been a selling club, no matter what romanticism we might have of storming the Kingdom of Heaven that is the Premier League with the Maddison’s and Pritchard’s of this world.
The reason Webber came to us was that he was perceived as having done a brilliant job at what at the time was a smaller club.
If he does a brilliant job for us too, then he may well be head-hunted again. I wouldn’t worry about losing him just yet.
Love it…wait until halfway through the season and then call the obvious. That reminds me of a drunkard I used to talk to when I was a steward; he always seemed to regain his consciousness to suddenly give me his pearls of wisdom about what was going to happen…after the game.
For me Andy a high number of responses / comments generally means that it’s a good article and/or you have hit a chord with the fans, so this one is stacking up well.
I had wrongly thought that Naismith and Jarvis were out of contract this summer.
Would love to see a breakdown of individual player salaries/bonuses but that’s never going to happen, BUT at a rumoured 40 to 60k a week each for those two, plus Martin, Jerome and Hanley on a rumoured 20 to 40k each week, then if all five hang around for the full 2018 / 2019 period, then they are rumoured to cost us in the range of 7 mil to 12 mil for said period and some of them may not play at all. If those salary rumours are true then OH DEAR, we really are being haunted by past mistakes BIG TIME.
OTBC
Great comment.
Other than Hanley these are all Neil legacies.
And to think that I grew up believing that the Scots were very frugal with money!!
(Obviously that only applies to their own, and not other peoples!!!)
O T B C
Hi Andy
A fantastic read and a very predictable gloomy out come unless the Smiths have a change of heart.
Keith I agree with you on Webber he came to city with a growing reputation it has been slightly dented at present and needs an uplift so I can see him staying till possibly next season but no much beyond that.
Naismith is good a leaving a sinking ship just ask the rangers supporters just like Whittaker did and they didn’t want him back.
Jarvis has been mentioned in dispatches and the club must find away to pay him off surely there must be an insurance claim that can pay him off.
Irvine when he left didn’t he say he want to be up north as a manager again, now in London as an assistant to Moyes.
Klose, Pinto, Pritchard, Maddison and possibly Godfey could all be gone even Delia and Hubby would shy away from selling all of them in a oner.
A one year option was to help the club secure players while negotiations took place on a longer contract and so city didn’t lose players for nothing, this has now become a noose that can strangle cities finances.
Last thing on the Barnsley take over the last local owner is still working with the new owners to make sure of a clean break and that all the staff are treated well, the new owner have said changes will happen slowly to ensure that it is a successful take over and that the club progress to the premiership it all sounds great so why can’t city put out feelers and test the water, simple Delia doesn’t want to lose her toys.
Something I that will be jumped on.
Delia and Hubby sit in their PASTRY TOWER thinking all is well, 20,000 supporters will buy ST next season using hard earned cash, the poor millionaires will not be for turning.
Couldn’t agree more with the bulk of the main article, and the majority of comments. The main thing that worries me is when (not if) City go down to Division Three again and the excuse from our beloved BOD that ST prices need to go up to cover the lower TV money…………….
This is the best article about Norwich City that I have read for a long time. It sums up exactly where we are now and where we are likely to be for the next couple of seasons. We can only hope that Andy’s “new Norwich” give us something to cheer about.
Just seen a few Barnsley supporters on sky and they all said that the investment gives them hope of better things to come, Delia and co don’t give us anything to dream about except relegation
This season is a dud because the owners business plan is not fit for a modern championship team.
The whole self sustaining package might be suitable for holding onto division two status but even this is doubtful in the current climate.
The club is evendently in need of new owners with huge resources if we are to remain in the championship.
As it stands we are not safe from relegation as the club is hamstrung by the poor stewardship of the current owners.
Can I ask your contributors how much they would expect a new investor to put up? Would he first buy out the Smiths (and presumably the other shareholders)? How much “new” money would the Club receive? £50 million perhaps?
That would, more or less, put us in the position we were in last season with the first parachute payment. Our investor would need to continue to put in £30 million every year to just keep the finances where they are now.
We have had chances to establish ourselves as a Premier League club and, for whatever reasons (including bad recruitment) blown them. I would love to see us competing successfully at the highest level but I can’t see any future except that stated in Andy Head’s article.
There is a dual issue at NCFC.
One is the off field activity – The majority shareholders are not for selling, but cling on to the club that the dearly need at the expense of it. Football has moved on, but Norwich City is almost becoming it’s own tribute act. The ‘Webberlution’ has shows little signs of working this far and he will be gone once internal divisions rear their head, which may come sooner than some think.
On field: Whatever is or isn’t going on at board level, the manager and coaching staff are not remotely getting the best out of the squad as a whole. That is incontrovertible. Farke seems a nice guy, but is way too methodical for me and doesn’t allow for the complexities of modern football, especially in The Championship. His over-planning is his undoing and will never have the squad to play his type of football successfully on a regular basis. The Farke you see now, will be different to the one in 5 years time and that won’t be at NCFC.
So we have the double whammy of both sides not achieving, so where does one aim first?