Premier League season, 2021 / 2022

The club have announced the end of the Dafabet sponsorship. From a Pinkun podcast last week, it's pretty likely that we're getting an Asian Betting/Casino company instead.

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/could-bk8-casino-become-norwich-city-sponsor-8005622

BK8 apparently.

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I sympathise with anyone who has had to deal with problem gambling but I don't blame Norwich for chasing the highest bid when it comes to our shirt sponsor. We're not exactly the wealthiest team in the comp. Cigs and booze got banned, i'm sure gambling won't be tolerated for much longer.

 

Welcome back lads, if you play football like you did last time it will be enjoyable to true supporters (hopefully with a better outcome).
Enjoy reading your page, you have some really funny/good posters.

 

With that said, now BK8 have been confirmed, Jesus they're a problematic sponsor, way beyond just promoting gambling. It's pretty obviously "white label" gambling promotion (see below), and then there's their promotional material...

Spoiler: NSFW

• BK8 run two or three instagram accounts which look something like this:
  
  
• Their ads are very questionable:
  
  
  
• Very, questionable:
  

And it seems the club were only made aware of the problematic nature of the company today:


We've cut short an already fairly lucrative sponsorship arrangement with a betting firm, for this?

Shocking lack of due dilligence and awareness. Did we literally see the fee on the contract and not look any further?

They can't even get through the announcement day without tweeting to praise a goal against the club they now sponsor...:

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The one marked very questionable has Thai writing above it, maybe this sponsorship is going to try and get another Thai owner similar to Leicester?

 

Oh dear Norwich you really ****ed up this one.

 

Sorry to see the taudry nature of all these pictures and videos and having done due diligence and looked over all of them, I'm confident in saying that getting sponsored by BK8 has resulted in what I can only describe as a massive cock up.

Now its all hands to the pump to see if we can make any good come of this.

 

Anyone watching ch4 right now? Program about the gambling firms stranglehold on sponsoring football

Bah!

 

The main issue to take from this is the 'club weren't aware of issues until today'

Someone at NCFC who should have done due diligence (or you know, 10 mins googling) should be getting royally **** on for how badly they dropped the ball here.

 

OK, I'm feeling embarrassed about my emotionalism of two days ago. DH made some great points that calmed me down (thanks!) a) better for Emi to go now than in August when we can't get a replacement b) better not to put all our eggs into one basket and depend on one player who could get a serious injury.

Looking forward, I'm more worried now about the effect on Teemu than the loss of Emi himself. They depended on each other in the team - Teemu making the runs, Emi almost telepathically knowing where he was going to run. I have to trust Webber can find people to fill that gap and Farke can tweak the system if necessary so that the responsibility for the assists is shared out more evenly.

Still disappointed it's Villa, though.

 

Apparently our new shirt sponsor Joma is to be announced shortly and you'd imagine the new home shirt released along with it. That will stir this little BK8 storm up again just as the initial uproar starts to settle.

 

This was interesting & tackles a few myths

Having though about it, maybe this is better place on the stats thread.

 

Yes, this was very interesting. Benjamin Bloom does a fantastic job in his channel.

 

Can I ask what people mean when they talk about 'physicality'? Everyone seems to agree that the lack of this was one of the key reasons why we were relegated in 19/20, and we will need a lot more of it in 21/22 if we want to survive, but no one ever defines exactly what they mean by the word (a bit like 'clinical' )

I ask because it seems to me that the Championship has no lack of one type of physicality, judging by the pictures of Buendia's ankles after games.

So I can't think physicality simply means making more fouls. But nor can it be merely bulk and height, because there's plenty of that in the Championship, too.

So is it endurance as much as strength? What did those bang-average teams that doubled us in 19/20 have that we didn't have?

Or, despite the word itself, are we actually talking about something which is mental as much as physical? Rather than clogging indiscriminately as some teams in the Champs tend to do, making the correct decision about when to make tactical fouls (one thing Watford seemed to excel at this season judging by their yellow card tally.)

 

I have always equated it with robustness in relation to football, maybe wrongly.

 

In terms of recruitment, the club have said we came up short in terms of height*, strength and pace last time in the Prem. I've used the example before of Jamal Lewis getting bullied at corners vs Watford before. Whilst previously we've had the man marking vs zonal debate when defending set pieces, it's been pointed out that we basically had to use zonal because we didn't have the height when defending corners to man mark without leaving big mismatches. We conceded a collossal number of goals from set pieces in 19/20 (1 in 6 goals conceded were from corners), having the right players on the pitch in those circumstances could easily save us 10 goals next season.

Sure, the Championship is big and physical (which we did struggle with in 18/19, we conceded a load from set pieces then too), but when we're on the front foot and dominating games/possession, it's less of an issue. In the Championship, we're giving away fewer corners/free-kicks, to be taken by inferior players, with lower quality finishers. In the Prem, we couldn't afford the same weakness as it was exploited much more.

Both pace and height contribute to where our playing style came up short in the Prem. We're at our best when we have plenty of possession, and players in possession aren't pressed too hard/effectively. Our biggest wins this season came against lacklustre pressing. But equally, teams like Barnsley, Boro who press very well caused us great difficulties. We couldn't establish our attacking platform, in which McLean/Skipp have the ball on the halfway line with multiple players ahead of them. Without that, we were pretty ineffective. Our only way of establishing that platform is playing out from the back, and without it we can't pose a threat. In the Prem, every team will press well and cause us issues.

To mitigate pressing, or make it riskier for opponents to press, we need multiple ways to establish that platform. We only had/have Krul and the defence/CMs passing the ball between themselves until they can get someone facing up the pitch. That's where pace and height contribute. If Krul could go long to a 6ft4 attacking midfielder who can win a reasonable number of knockdowns, then you can shortcut that build-up phase, and also make it more dangerous for the opposition to commit 5-6 players to pressing our defence. Similarly, if you have someone with the pace of Placheta playing on the shoulder of the last defender, and our own defenders capable of making long passes (Gibson stands out here), you've got another weapon. It either makes a hard press riskier, or offers an alterative threat when pressed. Pace also offers much more threat on the counter, and makes a high defensive line riskier when we're trying to pass through a team - the opposition need to decide whether to use a high line and risk Placheta getting in behind, or drop deep and create space for Dowell, Cantwell, etc to create.

The kind of players we need, very technical but good in the air or seriously quick, aren't cheap. It's common for teams trying to survive on a budget to favour physical attributes (Stoke, Burnley, WBA, Watford...) but we've previously preferred to sign technicians like Leitner and Vrancic. I think the club underestimated how much the deficit in physicality would hurt us in the Prem. Now with a bigger budget, hopefully we can start to sign players who tick two boxes. Placheta** was a cheap attempt to achieve this, hopefully for bigger fees we can get someone more ready for the Prem.


*It's not so much height, as height as a proxy for aerial ability. Lewis, Buendia, Cantwell, Pukki, Trybull, Aarons, Duda, Rupp...none of them offer a lot in the air, but could easily have all played at the same time.

**I think Placheta may still come good, it'll be interesting to see how the club handle him. Hes clearly got an excellent temperament and work ethic, with the pace and eye for goal (at least in Poland) to be a real threat. His mental game and first touch need work, but arguably are both areas the club are well placed to improve on. I've previously said we should think about a loan for him, but perhaps more time with Farke and his coaches might be more productive. And we'll have the new soccerbot which aims to improve decision making. Farke worked with Tettey, McGovern, Hanley, etc to mould them into players who fit Farkeball better, perhaps Placheta could be another.

 

Not too impressed with Joma I would much prefer Adidas or Puma if I'm going to blow £70 on a polyester shirt with a name and number on it .

Joma have a few big clubs Atalanta for one they are a Spanish company I think.

 

Sounds like the club are going to have a day of panicked meetings to figure out how to respond to the sponsorship backlash. I wonder what clauses in the contract are helpful to NCFC.

 

Yes indeed. Zimmermann and Klose are two of our taller players, but are poor in terms of how high they can jump. Conversely, we've all seen relatively small players out-jump taller ones at set pieces. What makes a player like Cardiff's Morrison so dangerous is that he's tall AND gets high off the ground. Ron Davies wasn't tall by CF standards of his day, but he could leap like a salmon. (Sadly he paid a big price in later years for the damage caused by the strain he put on his knees to achieve it.)

Leg and body strength allowing a player to withstand physical contact with another player. One of the big improvements Emi showed this season was increased body strength. It meant he didn't get pushed off the ball so easily. In the EPL, even small players display this type of robustness (to use GE2's term). Last time in the top tier we were physically bullied by every team; even this season we failed to match up to Watford and Bournemouth in this respect. We often look like a team of Lilliputians taking on eleven giants. People often complain that referees don't "protect" our players, but in many cases it's just that our players have simply lost out in a trial of strength in which no rule has been broken.