The impala doesn’t really stand much of a chance in the African savannah, writes Dan Brigham. Living a life constantly in fear of bigger beasts, they are hunted by lions, leopards, and cheetahs. Not much of a chance for the little guy, right?
Unfortunately, before we start to feel too sorry for them, the impala doesn’t help itself. Because, when it does manage to defy the odds and escape a mauling, the impala celebrates by… returning to the exact same spot it was attacked. Unfortunately for our impala, the lion knows this, so patiently waits for its lunch to stroll right back into view.
So, yes, you’ve guessed it, in this tortuous analogy the impala is Norwich City, and here we are, having walked right back to where we were in April 2017, when Stuart Webber arrived, took a look at the training ground, at the squad, and rightly – and famously – decided the club had pissed their Premier League money up the wall. So he set about doing the unlikely and plotted a way to survive among the big beasts. For a while, it worked, and it was wonderful, and we will never forget it.
Yet, six years on, Norwich City are furtively sloping back to the scene where they first got attacked. Sure, the place looks nicer, the facilities have been spruced up, and there are some absolutely cracking motivational quotes on the wall, but we’ve returned to where we were: also-rans in the Championship. Second-tier detritus. A tale of what-ifs and what-could-have-beens and are-you-kidding-mes.
It’s tough out there. Competing with the oil states, the billionaire Americans, the greedy agents; the constant thirst for success means a club of Norwich’s stature has to be smarter than smart to survive. It has to not repeat the mistakes of its past, it has to learn from its errors, it has to ensure there is accountability at the highest levels, it has to get far more decisions right than wrong. Only then will it be in the best possible position to take advantage of the luck it needs to survive – and potentially thrive – among the big beasts.
So where can Norwich be less impala, and act smarter?
Head coach
The role of the sporting director is to oversee the continuity of philosophy across the whole footballing side of a club. This includes appointing the head coach, who should fit the playing squad, not the other way around. That is, of course, easier said than done, but it is what we were promised and with good reason: it allows first-team recruitment and the academy to be joined up in the type of player a club is looking for and producing, which allows medium-term and long-term strategic planning, rather than stumbling through short-term fixes.
This hasn’t happened, though. The first rule of Sporting Director Club has been broken.
Dean Smith is a very different coach to Daniel Farke, and David Wagner is a very different coach to Smith and Farke. This meant that Smith’s style suits a different profile of player to Farke, and Wagner’s style suits a different profile of player to Smith. Whoever ends up replacing Wagner is likely to find themselves in the same position because Wagner’s system requires a quite specific type of player to be a success.
The result? We’re stuck in an endless short-term loop.
Academy recruitment
We all know where first-team recruitment has gone right and where it’s gone wrong. For every Teemu Pukki, there’s a Ben Marshall hiding in the bushes. Currently, the misses outweigh the hits, and that must change this summer.
However, one area that often gets overlooked is academy recruitment, and the academy as a whole. The successes of recent years – Ben Godfrey, Jamal Lewis, Max Aarons, Todd Cantwell, Josh and Jacob Murphy, and, now, Carlton Morris – were all either brought through the age groups or recruited into the academy by previous regimes.
Since the current regime entered Colney in 2017, the much-vaunted academy has yet to produce a genuine, key regular starter for the club. This can take time, and hopefully, some or all of Bali Mumba, Liam Gibbs, Adam Idah, and Andrew Omobamidele will become successful first-team regulars at Norwich – or attract large fees. If not, serious questions will have to be asked about how well the academy has functioned over the last six years.
Simply, without a successful academy, a club of Norwich’s size has no chance of punching above its weight.
Accountability
Zoe Webber is incredibly experienced in football, having worked in key positions at Liverpool and Fulham. Stuart Webber is also very experienced, having had success at Huddersfield Town, and held important roles at Liverpool, QPR, and Wolves.
Whatever your current view of them, their CVs are excellent and many football clubs would consider them assets. However, long-term success is possible only in a culture of accountability. And when Zoe Webber was appointed to Norwich’s board of directors in March 2022, that accountability was put in the bin.
No matter how welcome it is to have someone with a strong, experienced background in football on the board, it is entirely unserious that one of the very few people who has a direct and defining say in the sporting director’s future is a close family member. No serious business would allow such a clear conflict of interest. It is not a grown-up way to run a football club.
Culture
Which leads us to culture. Now, football is not a pleasant place. The egos are large, the money is terrifying, and the pressure is real. So any attempt to build a genuine, positive culture in that environment should be lauded.
However, a good culture doesn’t just happen by choosing some verbs and nouns and sticking them on a lanyard. Reading ‘The Barcelona Way’ isn’t enough.
A good culture has to be lived; it comes with internal accountability, it comes with actually being open and honest rather than saying you will be open and honest, it comes with remembering that the football club is for its fans and not its custodians, and it comes with choosing to communicate as effectively and as widely as possible with those fans, at all times, no matter the on-pitch situation. It is difficult, and very few clubs manage it, but that is no reason to not want – and expect – it from Norwich.
Being Norwich City is hard. Running Norwich City is really hard. We are an impala surrounded by predators. The club gets an awful lot of things right, and much of that can get lost when things aren’t going well on the pitch. Success for Norwich will always be underpinned by a large degree of luck, but that luck can be made to go further when the club works smarter.
They managed it in 2017, all too fleetingly, but the lions are licking their lips, and closing in again.
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Dan Brigham is a freelance copywriter and former head of content at Norwich City.
We can’t become a successful club by trying to mimic bigger clubs – we have to find our own identity again.
We used to be able to turn average players into quality players, now we are turning promising players into poor players.
Hi Dan,
A very interesting read and so much is true in what you say. The big question I would ask is has the ego of Webber affected the success of the club?
I have lost count of the amount of top people in different departments that have jumped ship, and sadly its the recruitment that has taken the big hit.
Most of Webber’s success has come from selling gems at the club when he arrived, We had a great success of picking up players released by the big London clubs – now we are paying lower leagues for their academy players that just aren’t up to making the jump.
Maybe Webber has out stayed his welcome just like the owners
Thanks Alex. There’s a lot of ego in football, so Webber’s not alone there. I’d say the academy hasn’t worked hard enough though – plenty of poor pick-ups from other academies that haven’t made the grade. It’s why they seem to have gone quite big on Gibbs being ‘young player of the season’ – I assume to show agents/players that we can still be a finishing school for young players, when the reality is we’ve had far more misses than hits.
I have always said Dan that the self-funding model is only a few seasons away from a disaster that could end up in relegation.
You cannot keep getting it right in Coach, Players/Recruitment shopping at Lidl while so many of our competitors are shopping at Waitrose or even Harrods. As you say big beasts.
You may get a good coach like we had in Daniel Farke but was let down dreadfully by recruitment last season.
Or you may have some decent players for the grade you are playing in like when Paul Lambert and Ian Culverhouse turned around Gunny’s catastrophic appointment with mostly the same players that lost 7-1 to Colchester to actually win the League One title.
Dean Smith in retrospect wasn’t the right appointment for the Sporting Director/Coach model because he is more of a manager in the Lambert mould. I hope and think David Wagner will be, only time will tell.
The club is about us the fans not the custodians, someone from inside the club should get brave and tell Delia that, but everything is skewered to reward or service the executive or the board. As you say Stuart Webber’s boss is his wife. Absolutely no oversight no accountability.
I got into a bit of bother with an article I wrote last week and just mentioned the affects of brexit as one thing that had an affect in our ability to sign players because, of well brexit !!
I was therefore shocked to hear Paddy and Connor say on the Pinkun chat yesterday that under the post- brexit rules we wouldn’t have been able to sign Zimbo, Steipi nor Onel and many others, is this true Dan, has brexit really made that much difference?
Why is this Brexit only really affecting City?
Many other clubs have recruited from all over Europe without real problems – Burnley recruited at least three of their promoted squad and are now looking at other in Belgians.
Is it just the money? Or are City looking at the lower end that hopefully might turn a bit of profit?
We have a few Brazilian over and offered one a deal that didn’t pass the criteria, and that tells me our recruitment team isn’t up to speed with the new regulations for bringing in overseas players.
It seems losing Kieran Scott has turned our recruitment into a poor shadow of its former self. Egotistical Webber has screwed the club up and lost millions due to losing a proven recruitment team.
Yeh, Brexit has had a pretty serious impact. Burnley could snap up some good players from Europe because they’ve played a certain amount of games in Europe’s top leagues or won a certain amount of international caps. We were working in a market of players who hadn’t had many top-flight games or international experience, and they’re no longer eligible because of Brexit (ie we wouldn’t have been able to sign Emi, Pukki, Stiepi, Onel now, but we would have been able to sign Leitner because he’d had a lot of top-flight experience in major European leagues). So we’re priced out of going for the kind of players Burnley have been able to go for.
Thanks Dan.
I’m surprised like Alex that it has made that much difference.
That is quite shocking.
So basically we are priced out of any European deals now, unless it’s really a player like Leitner and other mavericks.
Good piece Dan.
I like the headings which triggered my many thoughts, before I read the content.
Sadly your very apt content, not dissimilar to my thoughts, for me, say it all.
Gunn or Krul to leave? McGov, Aarons, Byram, Andy O, Sara, Hayden, Dowell, Rashica, Pukki, Placetta? Tzolis? Dimi? whoever else, Maddison cash if sold…. American share money…
Good news: We have the assets in our squad to cover the 66 mill black whole
Bad news: What the FCUK do we do then? and what will be left?
Like you, Trev, I sense a fire sale coming. With a fair wind we might even end up debt free. But, as you eloquently put it, how on earth do we compete next season?
I’m afraid the footballing world left behind Delia’s vision for Norwich two decades ago.
If an owner cannot make substantial investments at critical times they are no longer capable of owning a Championship club, let alone the Premier League.
It’s time we stopped looking back at “little Norwich” and started looking at the Brightons of this world.
The first thing that needs to happen is for Delia to let go of her fantasy and sell the club to somebody who can afford to invest in a better future.
Let’s not hear about nobody being interested in purchasing and our geography is all wrong because that, in itself, is as misleading as the term self-funding!
John, need to take a deeper look at how, Luton, Coventry and Millwall have reached the playoffs. Bet their total budgets, were less than ours!
Money isn’t everything, Lambert and Farke achieved wonderful things by coaching average players into star players, and had fantastic motivational skills.
But neither was truly backed in the PL.
The only realistic way you can sustain a place in the Premier League, which should be our ambition, is by attracting substantial investment.
If you look at the wealth of Coventry City’s owner you’ll see he’s worth a great deal more than Delia.
Luton and Millwall have had good seasons but will require increased investment to kick on.
Thank God , for someone who speaks sense John
The Coventry owner is a Norfolk boy and a Norwich fan. I’m sure he’d have been interested in buying Norwich if he had the chance.
The blatant conflict of interest had been largely kept under wraps and its crippling the accountability as you rightly say, when Stuart Webber alienated the fans by a litany of ridiculous comments including the famous 90% one (maybe that rubbed off on the field?) he was not held to task for that and thus the ego swelled and the cosy family environment at board level continued, Delia and Michael as ‘owners’ need to step up and manage or find someone who can.