Well, that was the week that was. Philip Schofield came out as gay [I wasn’t exactly shocked by the “news”], Keith Richards reckons he’s given up smoking 60 Marlboro reds a day and North Norfolk District Council has refused to fly the Union Jack at its HQ for “Prince” Andrew’s birthday.
But amongst this outbreak of earth-shattering, groundbreaking journalism one little piece did catch my eye.
Archant’s Connor Southwell [once of this MFW parish] wrote:
Norwich City Under-23 duo Josh Coley and Ciaren Jones have left the club after their contracts were cancelled by mutual consent.
Now how exactly does this process work?
Have they been told they are not what NCFC currently requires and agreed to move on in order to further their individual careers rapido?
That seems very likely to be sure but it’s a funny old time for this issue to arise. Normally in these situations, people such as Josh and Ciaren are released at the end of a season so I’m struggling to assimilate how this might happen in February.
With new recruits such as Melvin Sitti in place and a rather large batch of fairly recent recruits to the under-23 squad such as Simon Power, Rocky Bushiri and Akin Famewo [the latter through the Academy] we are probably becoming a little overloaded in that respect and it makes sense to offload those who are perceived as “not going to make it”.
But the part I don’t understand is the use of the cliché by mutual consent. Surely that normally refers to a bust-up between player and management team, which I very much doubt has happened here.
These lads have professional contracts which, although not exceptionally remunerative, would certainly be more rewarding than doing a nine-to-five until they find another team. Maybe the Sam McCallums of the future? I very much hope so for both of them but still don’t truly understand why they agreed to be released.
Talking of the nine-to-five, it was great to see our Sam Byram down at The Nest attempting to lay bricks. I’ve tried it and know how difficult it is, so I hope Sam performed better than me. Course he did [unintentional pun] – he was mucking about for the camera. I guess.
There’s nothing worse than a weekend of City inaction as I’m sure we’d all agree.
I fear next season it will be Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday for much of the time, so we’ll only have two international breaks to be thoroughly bored by.
But I do feel for the likes of Josh and Ciaren. If you’re binned off in a mainstream job there’s always another one down the road but football is ostensibly different. Very few who have played professionally would not do everything they could to stay within the game.
If anybody knows exactly how under-23 contracts work please don’t be afraid to tell me.
And if Keef would care to share how he, of all people, ditched the fags I’d be delighted to hear from him too.
Morning, Martin. An interesting thought to ponder.
I have zero idea how these things work, but I wonder if the wording is designed to support (or not scupper) their future career pathways? Or am I being too utopian….
Good read, as ever.
Morning Martin!
The under-23s quite understandably don’t get the same level of media attention as the first team squad so how their contracts are drawn up I genuinely don’t know.
I’d like to think you’re right. Hopefully if we don’t produce a player for ourselves we’ve at least produced one for another professional club.
Thanks.
Hi Martin
A good thought provoking read.
My take on this is that the club informed possibly their agent that they would not be offered a deal at the end of the season , So give them a chance of finding a new club it was agreed an early release was the best way to go.
A couple of years ago a similar thing happened at Blackpool and Bowyer who was manager at the time said come May there will be so many academy players released it will be difficult for them to get picked up so was giving them a head start.
I think you will start to see a lot more of this in the coming seasons, it could also be that their agents have already had offers for them if they are out of contract at the end of the season.
I see a Spurs misfit that tried his luck on loan at city a Mr Edward’s in finally proving his doubters wrong over in Portugal now he is getting regular football.
BT have done a film on Jimmy Greaves that is being shown on BT just before his 80th birthday, what a player he was scored on every debut for clubs and 46 goals in 49 games for England the best ratio of any English striker, got to see him play for and against Spurs and never given any stick by the supporters after he left.
Onwards and upwards
OTBC
Hi Alex.
Yes I guess you’re probably right about young Coley and Jones. It would certainly make sense and I can’t think of any other sensible reason myself.
Marcus Edwards was about as much use to us as Paddy Roberts, and dare I say Harry Kane. However it is indeed good to see him doing well.
As for Mr Greaves I cannot think of anybody else who has played a prominent role at Chelsea, Spurs and West Ham. I only saw him play once, for Spurs, ironically at Upton Park around ’67 when Alan Mullery broke his leg. He actually put a few tackles in that day – or tried to:-)
I’ve never met him but my father did in the 60s and reckoned he was a very sociable guy with no airs and graces. I don’t have BT so I’ll have to catch the programme later.
Thanks mate.
3 5 2
When godfrey becomes available i think we should and hope we play this formation it should suit us just hope farke will be thinking the same but i think he is mulish on a horse lol he wont change the zonal marking or formation its getting annoying .
Hi Jim.
Mulish on a horse – I like it, I think!
The thing with DF is that he knows what he likes and likes what he knows.
I’m less charitable about zonal marking at set pieces as I can’t stand it and I’m not sure we’ve ever really got to grips with it anyway. While Hanley, Godfrey and Zimbo might well make a 3-5-2 work [I’d recall Lewis over Byram for the left-sided wing back role] that system does tend to leave gaps in behind.
It has to be worth a try but I wouldn’t introduce it against Liverpool. One mistake and it’s one-nil. And I don’t mean to us.
Thanks.
The timing did seem odd, but I think EFL, and presumably National League, sides can still sign out-of-contract players, so I assumed this was to free them up for other opportunities.
Certainly if the club have already said they won’t renew their contracts, and nobody was willing to take them on loan and pay their wages, then there’d be no point in them kicking their heels at Colney for another 4 or 5 months.
Hi Keith.
Yes I agree that’s probably the slightly sad [to me] logic behind it.
I reckon National League might well be spot on but as I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them play I can’t say for sure.
Thanks.
And I imagine most if not all their remaining contracts were paid up. Hence the mutual agreement.
Hi Nick.
Put that way it seems a common sense all round. It didn’t occur to me that they would have largely been paid up but looking at it logically I’m sure you’re right.
All we can do is wish them both well for the future.
Thank you.
Agreed martin ? maybe the mutual was you aint gonna fit you better off leaving now and they more or less had to agree .
Hi again Jim.
As Nick said above if they’ve both been more or less been paid up on their contracts then there isn’t really a loser.
I can only equate it with the day that one of my old company’s sites in the North East had an ex-USAAF guy come in as site director and the previously over-indulged and largely underworked management team were faced with FIFO. Most fitted in but a couple of them volunteered to FO with pretty decent payoffs.
I’d never heard the FIFO term before – it must have been around 1995.
For what it’s worth the incoming guy was a narcissist and a bible belt zealot and if he’d been my boss I’d have FOd too!
Thanks.
What have Josh Coley, Ciaran Jones, Phillip Schofield, Prince Andrew, Keith Richards and quite possibly North norfolk district council got in common ? To the naked eye probably not very much. I don’t know about the first two but the others at various points in time have all been up to something. There’s more to this than meets the eye I’ll be bound
Hi Dave B [2].
The only response I can legitimately make to your comment is to say that Messrs. Coley and Jones are at the very beginning of their careers and I wish them all the best for the future.
As for Keef and “Schofe”, I idolise one of them but certainly not the other. My hero has never, to my knowledge, inhabited a broom cupboard with a soft toy if that helps.
Editor Gary is very liberal but I’m not going to give him a hard time by elucidating my thoughts concerning NNDC on MFW.
Suffice to say that Gordon the Gopher would be infinitely preferable to Cllr SB as leader. And I doubt I’m alone in that thought.
Cheers.
Hi Martin
The most probable reason for the two lads leaving was that they were not going to be offered a contract for next season so had their contracts paid up and that gives the mutual consent spin. Same as some first teamers who have gone the same way.
The other reason was that they breached discipline and were, thus, released but their agents negotiated a soft press release.
North Norfolk DC always had some decent staff but some “random” members. However, I retired from local government 9 years ago, though.
Hi Colin.
I remember Roedent referring to Chris Martin and Micky Spillane as the “Spice Boys” who might have committed the odd breach of discipline here and there, he he!
In all fairness I’ve never had a problem with any of the admin folks at NDCC who have always been very helpful.
“Random” members sums up my thoughts nicely – there are one or two I really don’t rate!
Thanks.