“No-one likes us, we don’t care”.
It’s remarkable how the Canaries have become footballing public enemy number one since the beginning of the season.
After our less than distinguished start to the campaign, the armchair critics were out in force saying we didn’t deserve to be in the Premier League because we weren’t ‘… giving it a go’.
My response to that nonsense is that is exactly what we are doing. We’re giving it a go. We’re giving it a go without the pending injection of millions of pounds of funding from a sovereign wealth fund that the country of Saudi Arabia has amassed from the huge profits made from fossil fuel sales; profits that are spent on projects around the world to try and improve the reputation of a country where a woman still needs permission from a man to marry, start certain types of business, to have an abortion or leave a domestic abuse centre.
Mind you, they were finally given permission to drive a car in 2018.
There was the usual flapping of faux outraged hands from all sections of the media when the Newcastle take over went ahead last year. But, inevitably, it has died a swift death and the interest now is all about who they’ll be spending some of that money on in the transfer window and whether they’ll avoid relegation at the end of this season.
You can bet every penny you have that anyone and everyone involved in the game, whether it is the Premier League or the people paid to write about it will be getting down on bended knees every night and praying that they do.
Then there’s Chelsea.
A writer from The Times passed her audition for the Mail Online on Sunday by telling the world how we fans were collectively ‘annoying’ before going on to knock the club’s business model.
The one that isn’t like Newcastle United’s. Work that one out.
This is, incidentally, the same newspaper that, last April waxed lyrical about the Canaries, paying tribute to our “… smart leadership, coaching and rich reward to sticking to their methods”.
Chelsea are, as we all learnt last week are in debt to the tune of around £1.2 billion. This includes a loss of around £140 million last season. That didn’t, of course, stop them spending £97.5 million on Romelu Lukaku last August – who now doesn’t seem to be able to get a game with them and is, as a result, hankering for a move back to Italy.
But at least they’re ‘giving it a go’. So the media treat their numerous off-field indiscretions lightly for fear of upsetting the suits at Stamford Bridge and being banned from the best matchday hospitality in town.
As far as Billy Gilmour – at the moment, being metamorphosed into the Queen Mother of football – is concerned, enough has been said about his presence and contribution already this season, as well as the reaction his presence provoked from a section of the away support at Selhurst Park.
Chelsea fans are, it seems, a delicate bunch, and are all collectively upset to the point of flouncing that one of their own should be subject to criticism from the supporters of the club he is currently on loan to.
He has, they protest, been named as man-of-the-match in several Norwich games this season. They are referring, of course, to the facility on the BBC website that gives anyone the chance to give a player a mark out of ten post-match with a list of the average marks inevitably seeing Mr Gilmour have the highest average – thanks, in the main, to hundreds of Chelsea fans all giving him 10/10 on their phones at around 5pm every Saturday.
We had the same with Oliver Skipp and Tottenham fans last season, so it’s hardly a new thing. Funny haha and all that.
Anyway. In amongst all of their blue angst, no-one has, conveniently mentioned, including the representative of The Times I didn’t name-check at the top of this piece about the way the Chelsea faithful all took a collective dislike to a loanee of their own, Saul Niguez this season, with the Atletico Madrid loanee on the end of an online broadside following a 1-1 draw with Everton after he’d posted on Instagram.
Bad enough for Thomas Tuchel to publicly defend his player and condemn the Chelsea fans responsible – who didn’t, incidentally, find himself named man-of-the-match on the BBC website after that match, with his critics only giving him an average mark of 3.49.
Maybe we should all vote for Niguez as MOTM match after every Chelsea match in future!
On and on it goes.
Plucky Brighton & Hove Albion? £306 million in debt.
Everton? £409 million in debt.
Tottenham? £831 million in debt. Thank God, Daniel Levy is the ‘smart operator’ we’re constantly being told he is, think how much it might be if it wasn’t for his presence at the club.
Even this season’s media darlings, Brentford, are £74 million in debt, with most of that owed to their owner, Matthew Benham.
Now, especially in the case of Brentford, people will inevitably pop up somewhere along the line and explain how it isn’t really a debt as the owner/consortium/wealth fund will never ask for the money back so, in effect, the club isn’t in debt at all.
How handy is that? If only the owners of all of our houses, yes, those financial institutions that many of us will hold mortgages with, could have such a benevolent attitude towards all of us.
I was reading an article on The Athletic last week (its comments section is swiftly heading the way of the BBC Have Your Say section ) where the rights and wrongs of football right now were being discussed at the foot of a not unreasonable article that touched on several areas of concern. It concluded that, perhaps, the Premier League could do a touch more to keep its member clubs, particularly those who, however vehemently they deny it, are desperate to join a European Super League, in some kind of order, not least the way they operate financially.
One of the comments was from someone who stated that the most corrupt thing he found about the Premier League was that “… it allowed clubs like Norwich to be in it”.
He had at least twenty ‘likes’ for the comment and, I am sure, it now has a lot more than that.
I could just see the steam coming out of his ears as he typed that comment. The sheer audacity of it. If it isn’t one of the neighbourhood cats defecating on his front lawn, it’s Norwich City being in the Premier League.
Like I said. No one likes us. We don’t care.
Sorry Millwall.
These debts in the EPL are shocking and unbelievable Edward.
Competing in this league with a self funding model is doomed to failure. Competing on wages alone is impossible.
It blows the purpose of FFP out of the water.
Basically we are being criticized for not spending money we haven’t got.
Is the lady in The Times praising this cheating or financial stupidity from the EPL clubs you mention, it’s one or the other.
And then to say we are “annoying” by being financially prudent is ridiculous, if not a sign of insanity.
I have said on here over the last couple of days that I would like to see Delia consider outside investment. But not to people who will leverage the Club or have a human rights record like some who have recently passed the fit and proper persons test.
Quite how is a disgrace, until you realise it only excludes serial killers.
But if they promise to mend their ways then they can reapply.
You can just see it ….Dexter …The EPL Season !!!!
I’d rather play in the lower leagues than risk the possibility that this club could disappear or sell to such people.
Say the Brighton owner wants out ?
If he calls his “loan” do Brighton go bust ?
It’s not a loan anyway, it’s a way of getting round FFP
Financial Fair Play isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
The whole thing is a joke.
Im a Millwall Fan of many years and as things stand i do NOT want Millwall in the Prem,
YOU CAN KEEP IT
Don’t blame you at all Mick. You and your club are better than the PL. It would look to suck the life and soul out of you….and you’d have the name of your official cous-cous suppliers on your shirt collars before you could blink.
The Premier League is just a plaything for foreign money and as a long term Millwall supporter I do not want Millwall to finish higher than seventh – but definitely not lower than twentieth!. The comments from Coventry supporters after their game with Millwall were much the same so it is reasonable to assume this is a widely held view in the Championship. The sooner the self styled “big” clubs clear off to the ESL the better.
The mortgage comment is interesting. Many years ago a man worked for me and he was living in a leafy suburb that was out of my price range. He had a mortgage but this was with his father in law so he knew he could take risks with work as he would never lose his house. He couldn’t understand why the rest of us didn’t follow the same path and criticised our choice of taking a mortgage with a bank when surely a loan from a millionaire relative would save all that interest (as a club we are one of the few who pay interest on our modest working capital debt). Until you mentioned this I hadn’t really made the comparison
Hi Ed
I really enjoyed reading that.
So much so that I forwarded it to diehard Lion Nick Hart who helps us out with our MFW Millwall previews, which I’m pretty sure will be back on the agenda before the year is out.
Thanks Edward great article. I cannot wait for the day one of the big clubs implode. Football is a cesspit of corruption and I’m pleased that our club has tried to maintain some level of sense. Saying that some investment would be very welcome. However should we travel back down the pyramid I would still support my club. Perhaps we would lose some of our fan base but I suspect a lot have never experienced a home match against Sheffield Wednesday on a cold frosty Tuesday night along with 14000 hardy souls. The people who stick with their club through thick and thin will still be there unlike those idiots who raced to take photos of the posing Renaldo as he scores against the side they profess to love.
Hi Edward
Spurs £850m in debt but that is for a world class stadium 🏟 even 28th the owner Lewis being a
multi-Billionaire he refuses to spend big and has stated the club has to be self financing and sadly the old beloved stadium could do that.
No one is asking for for the club to spend Billions on players and accure large debts but in 25 years the stadium has had a few links of paint a couple of new restaurants and struggles on 27k crowds and all we hear is the club can’t afford to upgrade the stadium.
15years ago it was said by the owners a new stand would be built once it was an established premiership team and the cost was £20/25m that must have doubled by now.
Sadly what ever league you are inthe infrastructure along with the playing side needs to be upgrade continuously and these so called owners have neither the money or appetite to do so is lack of ambition when owing an expensive toy is poor judgement on their part not getting investment that can help finance is a poor business model for all to see.
There has been significant investment in infrastructure at colney. Maybe the development of academy players and ability to attract better first team players with our facilities was (rightly in my opinion) valued more importantly than a 40,000 seater stadium in lower level of championship or league one.
Maybe these colney facilities will reach investment maturity soon and the new stand will follow when we’re established championship contenders and a premier league yo-yo team.
After that, we maybe able to progress further to an established lower level premier league team.
Having supported NCFC since birth in the 80s, with the exception of the prem 3rd place and uefa cup year, I’d take the championship contenders and these yo-yo years over any other type of existence.
Much more value and entertainment in a championship season ticket than premier league in my opinion too.
Been around a bit longer first game late 1959.
My point was that the ground needs up dating for the paying public and to generate funds to support a self financing club.
Colney is a work in progress but no matter those facilities potential signings will want EPL not championship football and if Rick Parry gets his way the parachute payments will stop sooner than later and being a Yo Yo club becomes unsustainable
Brilliant piece Ed, articulating so much of what I have been thinking.
The South Stand was replaced with the new one opened in 2004. The cost led to the £23m debt which threatened the club’s solvency when we were relegated to league 1 five years later..
The Colney training complex has had two complete revamps, the second ox which was largely completed last year but has more phases planned.
Thought some of the colney revamp was raised by fans investing in a scheme .
It was but the fans got paid back, so it was only ever a loan. With very good interest I may say.
Excellent writing. Thanks. Some fascinating numbers. Maybe the Premiership will eat itself. Here’s hoping
Good article Ed,
The irony is, some of our bankrupt fellow-passengers in the Prem, were they to get relegated, would actually be able to correct their finances under the current parachute construct – as we have done.
Here’s a wicked idea … if we get relegated to the Championship, lets cut adrift from the Premier League, including creating a situation where any Premier League club wanting to sign a player from EFL clubs has to pay a £10m securing payment (non-refundable) before they pay a transfer fee. Then we can agree our own TV deal with TV money trickling to all EFL leagues, and cut free – using stable business models of course!
Wicked!
COYYs !!
Like that idea. The current structure is unsustainable and, despite their public objections, all of the elite clubs, plus Tottenham, will be talking about the ESL with their peers in Spain, Italy, Germany etc. They’re not against the concept at all, indeed, they all want it to happen. It’s just a case of agreeing how its presented, getting the veneer nice and smooth so their fans see their reflection in it and fall for the hype. They don’t give the tiniest, most remote of shits for the rest of the pyramid. But they do want their fans onboard. Once that’s achieved, ESL will be here.
EFL will need to stick up to them and refuse to yield to any demands about how their clubs cannot play fixtures on ESL nights-the latter doesn’t want anyone going to watch a game when they could be at home paying £11.99 to watch Atletico Madrid vs Man Utd. So whoever gets a new TV deal with the EFL, post-ESL, will be up against it as well. But the new league (4 leagues of 20 with 3 one each of north and south?) would prevail. We can all play with how we’d like to see that work out. But it’ll come, of that I am certain..
I may be getting cynical as I approach my fourth decade on this mortal coil, but does anyone else think some of the criticism aimed at Norwich is starting to go beyond harmless banter?
It seems to me we’re clearly not welcome at the Prem table and every minor action by the club or its fans gets pounced upon to help ram this menacing message home.
The media reaction when a small number of fans were pictured filming Ronaldo after he scored was bizarre – I’ve seen this happen at countless other clubs without so much as a wimper.
The reaction to Gilmore, again bizarre and taken out of context by many media.
I don’t have any problem with pundits picking on poor performances and the paucity of our goals for column, but calling our fans ‘annoying’ etc is starting to grate.
It won’t happen, but in the words of the great Keegan, I would love it if Norwich stayed up, mainly now just for the seething reactions of our many detractors.
I often feel that the Premier League & its acolytes are gaslighting us. Their M.O. is unsustainable, unethical & morally bankrupt, yet it is apparently us that is in the wrong…
I’ve said it before, the sooner the ESL happens the better. Let the SuperClubs bu–er off and leave the rest of us to enjoy proper football. Everything would scale down a level or two, player wages, player quality, agent fees, average crowds even, owners wealth. But although the remaining bigger wealthier clubs would still win, overall I’m sure things would be more competitive,
You seem to conveniently overlook the fact that to achieve each of the last 4 promotions from The Championship, we have run a debt. In one promotion season that was as much as a 38M overspend.
We flaunt the rules too. We’re just lucky we haven’t been caught out, yet.
Looking forward to the hacks having a go at the whole of the Leeds support because of one idiot throwing a bottle at celebrating Burnley players.
Great article! The Premier League has become an all consuming monster. The broadcast media put a lot of money into the Premier League and demand their pound of flesh as a result – criticising teams for cancelling games fo CoVid saying ‘we have a right for those games to be played as we paid the players wages for those games to take place’. Is it any wonder that non-comforming teams like City are on the receiving end of comments from other media outlets, after all, all they want is a slice of the money pie too.
One thing the article does confirm is that having a millionaire/billionaire owner, for the vast majority of the EFL, isn’t enough to guarantee success. Swapping Delia and Michael for someone else may only ensure our elevation in the Debt league……