Duxbury Out

I’m absolutely comfortable with this sort of realism. I suspect that those who rail against it are, in general, younger fans who haven’t experienced quite as many highs and lows over a long period of time as others. I shall be forever grateful to GT for transforming the club from being a perpetual lower division one to a ‘top 30’ one.

 

This point is only really relevant when we are in the championship and not receiving parachute payments. Sure if someone like Forest was in the premier league I’d expect them to have a marginal advantage over us. But right now, at this point in time we are a more powerful club due to our revenue streams. Ditto next season when we go down until our parachute payments run out.

Following your line of argument as soon as Pozzo does well and gets promoted he is completely immune from criticism because some clubs left behind are bigger. He could set fire to all the premier league revenue and you would just say “Ah but Derby”.

 

Yes we have an advantage over those larger clubs due to the fact we have repeatedly won and retained premier league status. Well done Pozzo and Board.

What a bizarre thing to say. Of course he's not immune to criticism and the fact that "some clubs left behind are bigger" is irrelevant and doesn't stop that. It just shows that we are now competing against clubs with bigger budgets because we have done so well to get into this position.
There is a flawed logic amongst many posters (not nec you) which seems to go as follows "Once we are in the prem we have the extra revenue to make sure we stay there. Just strengthen where we need to and we should be fine" This ignores the fact that all other richer clubs will strengthen too and may sign the players we'd like. Particularly when we are a promoted team and second favourites for the drop from the start of the season.

 

You’re argument is a bit flawed because Gino got us to the PL and kept us there for five seasons, we never came close to relegation until the fifth season.

Are you saying that was just dumb luck?

 

Of course not. I'm saying the opposite. It was excellent management, with the odd mistake made along the way.

 

I’d say Pozzo outperformed in promotions and in the first 3 premier seasons to establish us. I’d say almost any other owner would have performed better in every other premier league season both in terms of squad and balance sheet management as well as club culture and team spirit, and as such I’d be delighted if they now moved on.

It doesn’t need to be binary.

 

OK. Presume you were happy in the first 4 prem years or do you believe 11th and a cup final was failure ? 6 years out of 10 in the prem but you believe a new owner with similar funds could do better ? Or are you expecting a richer owner ? Just asking. It's so easy to focus on specific transfer failings over the 10 years and ignore the bigger picture. The trajectory from 11th has been downward but it was always going to be.

 

But why was it always going to be? Why could Gino manage four successful PL seasons, but then it was somehow inevitable he couldn’t beyond that? What changed?

 

I have many grievances about the way we are run but I do not dispute the overall impact the Pozzo's have had on us since they took over. This is by far one of the most successful spells this club has ever endured and that is a fact. But a new bar has been set and we have moved on from the small time minnows we were 10 years ago and I expect the owners to address the clear as day flaws we have frequently seen over the past 3 years. We have needed to sign competent defenders since 2018, as well as finding adequate cover in goal. They have repeatedly missed the chance to do so and it stinks of neglect. Football is a fast moving business and if you react the slowest you will face the consequences. Sentiment only goes so far and it is fast expiring with Gino and Duxbury. I believe they have run out of ideas.

 

Battling the odds - you can only over-achieve for so long being outspent by all around you.

 

Season 4 was good results wise but the rot set in that previous summer. It was the point where no further attempts were made to invest in defence, players were given absurd contract extensions and debts had spiralled. Given the 8 windows since that summer I absolutely think many owners with the same resources and level of debt financing would have done better. It would almost be impossible to have arrived at a worse squad than we have now given that income and debt. Even with relegation and Covid thrown in. And as an aside the club would have been far more pleasant and have much better team spirit both among fans and players.

You will obviously disagree so not much point discussing further.

 

Or the alternative explanation is that Gino made a series of smart decisions over the course of 7 seasons that set us on an overall upward trajectory, then he started making some strange decisions that were often easy to see as completely wrong by mere mortals like us lot on here.

Our fourth PL season yielded our highest ever revenue of £143m, yet the following season it all collapsed. When our income was at our highest, we ended up significantly worse than the prior four seasons. Cash has nothing to do with it, bad decision making did, and they were all avoidable decisions.

 

Agree to disagree.

 

Cash has everything to do with it. For 7 years we made largely excellent decisions which led to success despite the relative financial imbalance in the prem. Since then we have made some par decisions but with less cash than others, and so the richer clubs overtook us. Look at how much cash WHU wasted in the last 5 years. But they could afford to write those cheques, and more, and look where they are now. Can you name a smaller club than us who have made excellent decisions to buck the trend 10 years in a row to stay in the prem ? No ? There are none. I kept saying, when we were in our golden run, that eventually our run of out-performing our finances would come to an end and we would be relegated in the near future, while others just whined that we should have got into Europe. We won't become an established prem team, not because of poor management, but because we can't afford to. Norwich owners have just limply accepted that. At least we have tried to overhaul our squad without bankrupting the club for our inevitable relegation this season, or next, or the following.

 

Good post. Gino and Scott have become victims of their own success. By succeeding so regularly and outperforming the expectations a club with our size and resources should have, they've raised the expectations of some fans so high that they'll never be pleased. Even with an 11th place finish and a Cup final.

Which, of course, isn't to say they haven't made many, many avoidable mistakes. They have, just like every other owner.

 

Brighton, Palace, Burnley and Southampton are all roughly speaking about our size.

 

Burnley are the only exception and they haven't survived 10 years have they ? Close though.... The others have larger fanbases and richer owners and even then 10 years of over achieving - I don't think so.

agree 100%

 

The biggest difference in capacity between any of those clubs and us is about 10k. 10k x £50 x 19 = £9.5m.

Obviously you’d rather have an extra £10m than not, but it’s about 6% of our peak revenue.

As you well know all the revenue comes from the TV deal and we had that like every other club, we managed absolutely fine for 4 seasons and should’ve by definition been incrementally stronger each year, compared to any team being promoted behind us. Instead we squandered it and went backwards.

As an example, having four managers in one season has nothing to do with Crystal Palace having a slightly bigger ground, has it?

 

But surely that comes with the territory of what they have achieved? I don’t think fans positive expectations of ‘better’ should be dismissed purely because the club was historically been at a lower place than it is now. I doubt Duxbury and Gino see it that way either. They achieved well over a consistent period and weren’t shy in coming forward in the media (Duxbury not Gino) and saying so. So why shouldn’t fans go along with it and be upset when they don’t just fail, but fail quite badly - and don’t speak to fans along the way about the how’s and why’s?

 

Because our definition of 'failing quite badly' is now getting relegated and getting promoted at the first attempt.

 

A goal of being ‘best of the rest’, cup-finalists and close to finishing 7th - to then go and do what you have outlined above? I’d say that is failing quite badly at the publicly stated goal, yes.

 

Without any context, sure.

I'd say that 'best of the rest' statement was one of the mistakes, by the way. Gave unrealistic expectations and showed they were getting carried away with the amazing success of that season.

Aston Villa's owners said they wanted to be one of the 'best clubs in the world'. Would they still be failing badly if they finish 9th this season?

 

Context works both ways though.

 

Sorry, fleshed out a little above

 

The main difference is the ability of owners to find losses and being a better bet for future premier league membership. CP, Soton, Brighton will be seen as better options than us given years in the prem.

 

The publicly stated goal will always be a statement to attract players. You can’t have a mission statement to just try to survive. That’s what we said under Aidy and GT second time round but we weren’t trying to compete and attract too European players.

 

I'm no longer worried, Duxbury is a man of his word.

 

Welcome back Ignacio Pussetto.

 

You say that, he was on the player odds to score today on Coral!

 

I'll believe it when I see it

 

‘Squad modifications’ is a fairly broad term.

 

Like in a video game, when you can choose new hairstyles and tattoos for your character.

 

Management modifications more like.

 

Reading between the lines here, but the only sensible way to interpret this would be to see it as finely veiled hint that TVORs robot horses are finally making an appearance.

 

Genuine question as I can’t remember. Was there the same vitriol towards squad and board when we were limply relegated under Aidy and GT ? Or was there just acceptance that that was an inevitable outcome and Board and players shouldn’t be blamed and abused ?