My affection for the US political drama The West Wing is limitless. It is impeccably written, highly intelligent, and often prophetic. It also introduced to me the term “The Lame Duck Senate”.
These are Senators that have been voted out but remain in power until the new senate is sworn in. It is customary that Lame Duck Senators avoid voting on bills that go against the will of their constituency. Therefore, while they remain in office, their power is limited.
Why bring this up? Since his joining, Stuart Webber has given a deadline for his departure. With no contract extension over the summer, he is due to depart next year. His tenure is effectively 9/10th’s complete. While he has not been voted out, his decisions will reverberate far beyond his stay.
Some of his decisions have been unmitigated successes. In particular revolutionizing the training facilities, from the comical, to the innovative. He also ensured we were a force to be reckoned with in the Championship, with two promotions and a record points haul. For that, we thank you, Stuart.
When he arrived he spoke at length of ‘the sins of the past’ and previous regime ‘p!ssing money up the wall’. Indicating the financial situation he inherited was from overspending. While our financial situation is always precarious thanks to our ownership, it’s not completely true that seasons of Premier League revenues were frittered away. Money had been spent on future prospects or players that retained their value. Of course, there were also some well-known ‘poor signings’.
While there were budget deficits when Stuart arrived, they were covered. McNally and Moxey era signings underwrote everything Webber has done. He was able to sell*:
Alex Pritchard (10M)
Jacob Murphy (10M)
Jonny Howson (4M)
Cameron Jerome (1M)
Graham Dorrans (1M)
Declan Rudd (1M)
James Maddison (20M)
Josh Murphy (10M)
Nelson Oliveira (1M)
Ben Godfrey (20M)
Jamal Lewis (15M)
… and eventually Max Aarons (another potential 25M) and Todd Cantwell
That’s over £120M, or put another way, approximately 3/4 seasons of Championship budget deficit covered. Unfortunately, our business model has remained unchanged, and those deficits will still require filling in our next Championship foray. So as Stuart sold the Murphy’s for 10M a piece, the next Director will sell Dowell.
When joining. the strategy was buy low, sell high, or develop young talent for profits. It sounded great. Yet Webber has failed to consistently generate revenue through his signings.
Webber has purchased 43 players so far, about 10 a year. Of those (according to Transfermarkt) he has sold four – Emi Buendia, Marcel Franke, Dennis Srbeny and Marley Watkins – for somewhere between £35-40 worth in nearly five years. That’s ignoring the cost of recruiting 43 players, many of whom barely played, had contracts terminated, were loaned out, now train separately from the main squad, or were never sold. True ‘p!ssing it up the wall’ territory.
Worst of all, we have recently broken our transfer fees record and (in my opinion) I’d be surprised if we see business sustaining profits on too many of the incoming players. Our recruitment, once touted as being a strength, has become a liability.
This would all matter less if Premier League finances were secured. However, under Stuart we’ve also failed to meet the publicised goal of Premier League survival. We had one abysmal Premier season with a handful of atrocious signings, with another record-breaking relegation looking increasingly likely. We are sliding back to the Championship with fewer assets than ever before and nothing that resembles a team.
In short, we have a failed recruitment strategy and a failed Premier League survival strategy.
For me this raises the following questions:
1. Should Stuart still be signing players?
2. Should he be choosing the next manager?
3. Why are we still awaiting Stuart’s contract update?
4. Is it time for Adams to step forward?
Lastly, do we have a Lame Duck Director in our midst? If we’re down by December do we want the same decision-makers at the club signing players and coaches? Or is now the time for a new regime to step in and prepare for the next five years?
***
Note: Transfer fees are provided from Transfermarkt.com to me in dollars, so I have converted them. Consider them crude approximations.
A very interesting read and something that the rising band of Farke detractors could well do with considering. Personally, I believe Farke has produced miracles to get us promoted twice with the players he has been given to work with. Of course, Stuart Webber was responsible for appointing him so that has to go in the plus column in my opinion. It would be wrong to play down how difficult it is to get out of the championship. We have achieved it twice with the poorest owners in the top two divisions. To me that says that Farke and Webber must be getting something right between them.
HI, @Suencfc.I’d be more inclined to say that DF got something right in getting players such as Aarons, Godfrey, Buendia, Vrancic, Stieperman and of course Pukki playing the way they did and achieving the thrill of two Championship titles with previously unheard of players.
SW must also be credited with the total transformation of facilities at Colneyand for that we have to be eternally grateful..
As I said in my comment yesterday however, where SW has got it wrong is in signing so many unproven players and I feel that we would have been better paying the asking price for the likes of Aer from Celtic and perhaps keeping hold or Hugill, as opposed to sending him out on loan.
I may well be proved wrong come May and I sincerely hope that I am, but until we can see DF consistently pick more or less the same starting 11, I don’t see an upturn in our play and getting some more points on the board.
Thanks for the comment and I agree that Farke did well to get us out of The Championship. He did have two unbelievable talents (Buendia and Pukki) and without them our results always struggled. That is a tick in Webber’s column. But beyond that one transfer window (three years ago) we’ve not seen talent on that level purchased.
I would note that we’ve escaped The Championship five times under the current owners. So that’s not unique to Webber/Farke. We’ve always done better in The Premier under different management too.
100%
Buendia and Skipp got us promoted, not DF, last season.
And you are right to point out that Delia and Michael have made more good calls than bad.
Obviously those that think big spending in the prernier league is the way forward. They are Probably too young to remember what happened to Ipswich at the start of their slippery slope…. When (cheer up) George Burley (oh what can it mean to a, sad Scots, and his football team) decided to spend big on Finidi George, Marcus Bent and Matteo Sereni….
I think the owners have made some good calls and would not have been able to hang onto the club without having success in their appointments. Marcus Evans could afford to make bad appointments as he could pump money into his club to cover losses. That is not to say we haven’t made mistakes like the appointments of Hamilton, Gunn, Grant and Adams and keeping Hughton and Worthington in post a bit too long. I was already well into middle age when Ipswich spent big in 2001 but there is a link with what happened to us in 2013. After a successful start to Premier League life both clubs put some money into building a squad that reflected established Premier League status and both got relegated after spending relatively high amounts of money and without being 1 of the 3 worst teams in the division. The decline at Ipswich started when they missed out on promotion and we face the same problems if we fail to win promotion for any length of time. Anyway I see Ipswich as a town club who punched massively above their weight for a generation or so and should really settle down to life with their peers like Colchester. We should be looking slightly higher as one of the top 30 clubs
The more I look at it Dave, our recruitment success has been largely built around a golden period between Webber’s arrival in 2017 and the summer of 2018 (plus bringing in Daniel of course).. This coupled with a group of starlets all coming through the ranks built the core of the two Championship teams (the 2021 side contains a much larger amount of the 2018 class than I thought – look at the appearance stats).
There are obvious exceptions such as Skipp as Gibson last season, but unless any of our new recruits or youngsters out on loan are hiding something spectacular, then the chances of any major resales are looking slimmer (bar Todd and Max, although their values must be dropping right now).
This is not to criticise the work Webber has put in since he started here, and the efforts ploughed into the academy. Hopefully he will leave some solid foundations. Yet clubs, players and coaches go through purple patches, and for whatever reason cannot always replicate them. Has this happened to Webber? Possibly? Is he just not up to Premier League standard? Again, possibly. I genuinely hope not, but if the (admittedly tenuous) rumours are true that he may get a contract extension, then I really pray that it doesn’t ultimately backfire on us.
coupled with a group of starlets all coming through the ranks…. Overseen by Neil Adams no less
I did a rough tot up of market values of the squad and came up with £100m. This includes about £50m for the players we bought in Summer who have yet to appear in the club accounts in earnest. Aarons is a large chunk of the rest. Cantwell is a big part but his value must be falling as he stays out of first team contention. The final 8 figure player is Omobamidele who looks a fine prospect. We should start to see other players emerging but I’m not seeing it. Idah and Mumba have a certain amount of quality but would we sell either for £25m? At the moment we would appear to have a fairly weak squad for next season
Boom and there it is for all to see Stuart Webber and still Bold as Brass !!
Webber and Farke have an holistic approach to the development of Norwich City FC. They have an equal right to the plaudits when things go right and must share equal blame when things go wrong. And things have gone badly wrong with our forays into the Prem, we are now a joke, the jibes are coming thick and fast, it’s a terrible time to be a Canary fan, the worse I can remember in nearly 70 years of following the club. To get it wrong once is forgivable, to get it even more wrong a second time is a disaster. Never mind the why’s and wherefores it’s a fact, and they both need to go, for their sakes and for ours. Carrying on in the same way is pointless (sorry). I don’t know what the answer is but please put an end to this mess.
Clearly this is a personal thing, but I think getting mullered 7-1 at home by Colchester in League One comfortably beats being bottom of the Premier league as the “rock bottom” of being a Norwich supporter. Actually I think all of the years under Rioch, Hamilton and Roeder were also massively worse than where we are now.
We’ve never been under such public scrutiny in such a woeful state, true; but I couldn’t give two hoots what the media say or think.
Apparently Newcastle are going to comfortably get out of trouble despite being one point above us. Even though they can’t find a manager and won’t be able to spend any money until January. But we’re not getting out of it because we’re Norwich and we always do this, and apparently we don’t care.
I guess it’s all about perspective.
I would say that we have never been so far out of our depth in any division we have been in so although we have had worse seasons in terms of being in lower divisions, this is probably the most alarming in terms of quality gap. I have memories of bad runs in the top flight but none as bad as this from the off.
We do seem to be languishing in dead water, despite SW’s best attempt at a reassuring rallying cry. Short of a (literally) unbelievable turnaround in results City are heading to the slop bucket marked ‘Championship’ faster than a greased ferret dropped out of a hot air balloon. With many months to spare, sadly.
Then we have the ‘succession problem’. Who is likely to want to come? The Nunos, Contes, and even Howes of the footballing world wouldn’t give us a second look. So how do you continue the existing process (from the point of view of maintaining the wonderful stuff SW has done behind the scenes)? We’re reduced to nabbing a successful manager from League One or a mystery man (or woman) from the lower leagues in Europe. Things may not get better.
Interesting times. Of course if Farke just wins the next five games then we wouldn’t have to worry.
We will not be nabbing a mystery man (or woman) from the lower leagues in Europe. The post-Brexit rules mean that they would not get a work permit!
Good research btw, Dave.
PS. Transfermarkt.co.uk quotes figures in sterling rather than dollars which saves all that conversion mucking about.
Good tip, thank you.
It is the combination of Webber and Farke that has failed. Webber’s signings have been poor with one or two exceptions. The thing that worries me about Farke is his apparent fall out with certain players (Todd , Sorenson??). A strong manager would get the best out of players. Is it motivating to say we can’t beet top teams? Or we are favourites for 20th place?? No the premier league has exposed both men’s weaknesses and in my view both should go now. Sad because we enjoyed part of it but realistically it is the way forward.
Some interesting analysis, of course. But is it a fair and balanced portrayal of Stuart Webber’s record?
Just a couple of the many points that spring to mind:
1. Yes: Maddison, Godfrey and Lewis (accounting for the bulk of the revenue you cite) were inherited by Webber and Farke. But NONE of them had started for the first team. Farke – in consultation with Webber – was the first to trust Maddison as a starter, and the first to play either Godfrey or Lewis. Previous managers neither played them nor rated their potential as Webber and Farke did.
2. Yes: we’ve sold only a handful of Weber’s signings. But any number of others were signed on a shoestring (the only resource available to Webber after the disastrous 2016-17) and were critical to turning the club round. Leitner, Stiepermann, Zimmermann, Vrancic, Trybull, Hernandez – all were instrumental in achieving a totally unexpected return to the Premier League.
3. Not to mention – as you conspicuous don’t – Teemu Pukki and Tim Krul, surely two of the best free signings made by Norwich or any other club. Truly, only you could write a history of Webber’s period at Norwich without mentioning them.
Interesting to note that it was only an unpunished stamp on Hanley by an Ipswich player that gave Godfrey his big break. He was out on loan at Shrewsbury and doing well with them and Maddison was playing for Aberdeen. What is worrying is the fact that our young players no longer seem to be making the same progress out on loan. Adshead is with Gillingham and Martin is with MK Dons but neither are getting the game time that Godfrey was getting
It’s too easy to say that the signings have been poor. Buendia, Pukki, Leitner (for a season), Stieperman, Trybull, Aarons, Godfrey and I’d be surprised if Omodamibele doesn’t turn out to be at least as good as Godfrey. I think you could argue that he did well to get the money he did for the Murphys, Pritchard and Howson, given that they had to sell. Yes there are failures too but these are to a large extent offset by the two promotions and their financial benefits. You also have to credit them with the Skipp loan signing.
The failure is in not bringing in a couple of experienced PL players (a difficult ask perhaps with our budget) who have seen it and done it before, rather than Budesliga relegated players. The issue there is probably wages, not transfer fees. Webber has also completely modernised the training facilities – not a bad legacy in general terms.
But there’s the agony of the present season. It’s still not too late to turn it around but after watching the last 20 mins of the Leeds game (and the rest) I do wonder how Farke’s going to turn it around. You may be right about the failed PL survival strategy. Farke’s body language at the end of the Leeds game didn’t look good – he looked broken.
I hope not. I’m curious about Sorensen – I had him down as the Skipp replacement. Farke seemed to handle Buendia and Cantwell well last season (Cyprus Canary).
Paul,
A couple of points:
1. Aarons and Godfrey were not Webber signings.
2. You’re right that he signed some players that catapulted us to the Premier. However, the signings you mentioned were neither sold for profit, nor failed to secure Premier status. So I think it’s fair to say, Webber had a Championship strategy, but nothing beyond that.
Thanks for reading.
David,
Give Farke credit for developing Aarons and Godfrey and bringing them through and for promoting us twice in such a joyful manner.
But yes it looks very likely that the strategy for establishing us in the PL is a failure. I hope we’ll be proved wrong but I have little belief that we will stay up.
Paul,
You’re right, give credit to Farke for developing those players. But we can’t assign them to a successful recruitment strategy. Webber simply didn’t recruit them.
Correct to say that he handled Burundi’s and Todd last year but why has it all gone so badly now. I will not undermine their past achievements but I do feel that SW and DF are sadly past their sell by date. We are hardly fighting off clubs looking to steal them away.
However we feel about them our only chance of survival is to change manager this month. I am genuinely sad to say that but it is the hard truth.
I’m not sure that Farke handled Buendia and Cantwell well last season. He didn’t really go as far in his criticism of Buendia as he did with Cantwell so he probably did ok there but his comments about Cantwell were ridiculous. If anybody in any other industry spoke like that in public about a young employee they would be severely rapped over the knuckles. The fact that Buendia left despite the fact that we won promotion says something as he hasn’t exactly gone to an established PL club
It’s not like our youngsters either on loan or under our 23’s 21’s 18’s are ripping up trees is it .
I do feel sorry for Farke he must be thinking these signings aren’t good enough for the Prem and I wonder if his substitutions and formations are to highlight their shortcomings .
But looking at Delia’s tenure Worthington ,Hughton ,Neil ,Farke all couldn’t buy players good enough to survive in the prem except Lambert .
Exactly. He saw the value in getting top Chump players, borderline Prem, but making sure he got guys with the character because he was, at the time, a lads lad and he could lead them to war and they’d follow. Chris Wilder gives me that vibe.
And PL, chosign borderline guys for whom this would always be their biggest club, chosen generally as more mature guys with young families (generally), he knew they would die for the shirt and 27,000 hero worshipping. Krul, Hanley, Pukki…. Guys like that. Ruddy, Martin, Drury, Hughes, all those sub crap but brilliant heroes like Big Nelson…. In my opinion, those are the key characters for keeping a club of this size up for that vital first season.
My bet is CW will have learnt a valuable lesson last season and would be a prime candidate in my book, along with guys desperate for one last crack at the Prem, they will always try that little bit harder.
There is enough quality in this squad to survive under the right manager with the right signings in January but only if a manager gets his feet under the door now,
Webber did quite well until this season when unfortunately, judging from what we’ve seen on the field recently, he’s blown £50-70 million undoing all the previous good work.
In truth the club now urgently requires a complete root and branch change with new owners capable of meeting the purchasing power of the championship billionaires. I’m afraid they’re no longer exclusive to the premiership.
For all clubs the signing of players is a complete lottery, most do not work out well, the real money is earned from developing youngsters, we’ve had a decent record for achieving success in that area with Neil Adams playing a major part.
I’ll be sad if DF’s reputation is harmed, he’s a good man who has achieved so much. SW is a talented operator who appears hugely ambitious and it is his reputation on the line here and it’s not looking good.
Wow. The most contentious and pointed thing I’ve read on MFW, Archant articles, the Athletic…. Anything anywhere. I’m glad you said it because I’ve tried before to say “how much do people think mistakes like Fahrman, Franke, Watkins, Husband and literally dozens of others have cost in wages and agents and ‘nominal fees’.”. I also laugh when they herald Pukki. I’d have a rye fitter from Carlisle who offered so much more on and off the pitch. Well actually I’d prefer both on the pitch together to be honest.
Well done for saying your piece, and you left out the shambles after Huddersfield’s promotion too. He helped get them promoted with half a squad from Premier League loans (it seemed) and once promoted, it was carnage under Wagner.
However, I think it’s fair to say judge him on Colney and judge DF on Carra Rud at 3pm on a Saturday.
Neil Adams will be capable but he needs to learn the ropes but the writing is clearly on the wall. This season is an unequivocal disaster and I’m afraid only the blinkered didn’t see it coming in the summer,… and I’m sure SW knows he can’t take this any further.
That means Delia and Michael have a massive call to make sooner than later. Director/Coach or go back to having a manager that leads from the front, like Paul Lambert did better than anyone in the last 25 years. Oh…. And he kept us up after promotion.
Has anyone considered the elephant in the room with getting 3 bundesliga players this summer?
At first, mario, Marco, Tom, Mo, Zimbo…. These guys enabled 4-2-3-1 and Farkeball better than any others, especially notable with the double pivot of either Tom or Mo and the second pivot with Marco or Mario….. maybe they went back to Bremen this summer because of 1) intricate language when coaching and b) it’s been the default formation on the continent years before it came to England. In the whole of the summer, we signed only Gilmour and Sarjent for whom English is a native language and when you think about it, Gilmour spent the whole second half of last season learning 4-2-3-1 under Tuchel so he would have been pinged as to knowing DF’s philosophy without language being an issue.
‘Just a thought’.
Good article, it would good to compare Webber’s hit rate with a person in a similar job. Does he over our under perform? If Farke is involved in the signings then they are both culpable for the players signed this summer, If they can’t perform at this level then where is the value and where is any profit. We needed to stay up to pay for the spend and that will not happen i am afraid, so a big fire sale next summer is the likelihood.
Good point. Consider this…
Alex Neil’s season in the Premier League where he ‘wasted so much money’, he signed..
– Tim Klosse – Played for many seasons (117 games)
– Steven Naismith – Complete waste of money
– Robbie Brady – Good player, sold for profit
– Graham Dorrans – Decent player, eventually sold for slight loss
– Ivo Pinto – Decent player, played for his whole contract (85 games)
– Matt Jarvis – Unfortunate injuries
– Ben Godfrey – Sold for massive profits
– James Maddison – Sold for massive profits
– Andre Wisdom – Waste of a million quid
– Mulumbu – Free transfer, played 20 games
– Jake Kean – Free transfer, didn’t do much
A couple of small duds, plus a Naismith clanger, but some fantastic players and massive overall profits.