Off Topic The Norwich Way...

obvs we can't compete for nightlife etc but is this how we need to go. Interesting what Delia says about finances when in the PL.

Norwich’s majority shareholder Delia Smith has taken influence from Guy Roux at Auxerre in rebuilding the club with an emphasis on youth

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Norwich City’s sporting director Stuart Webber (left), owner Delia Smith and managing director Steve Stone (right) at the club’s academy indoor arena. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
“It’s really simple for us. We’re a self-funded club. So we know where we are, we know our expectations,” Stuart Webber says. “Norwich is pretty unique; we’re the only club in the county, we’ve got a massive supporter base, we’ve got a massive catchment area. We do things because it’s right for our football club and we felt that it was right to revamp the academy and invest in it.”

Webber is giving a tour of Norwich City’s training centre. An intense 34-year-old recruited from Huddersfield last year to become the club’s first sporting director, he has a plan to make this compact site, hidden on a country lane off the city’s southern bypass, a cutting-edge facility. There will be new schoolrooms, changing rooms and pitches. The upgrade will help maintain the academy’s category A status but also – if Webber is successful – form the heart of the club’s footballing philosophy. He intends for the academy to produce one homegrown youngster capable of starting for the first team each year.

For Delia Smith, the club’s majority shareholder, the new direction is something she has been waiting for. “This change of strategy has been the best experience I’ve had since I’ve been a board director,” she says. “I think the structure of the all-singing, all-dancing chief executive, you could see in the end that can’t really work. You can’t have a one-man show. My big dream has always been that we work together and in the past that hasn’t always happened.

“On the academy side I feel very passionate. Not many people listen to me much but when I first became a board director [in 1996] I went to visit a football club called Auxerre and their manager, Guy Roux. The first thing he said to me, and he didn’t speak much English, was: ‘I never buy footballers.’ The academy had their own little stadium, they had houses built on site. Roux knew all the youngsters by name. And the record is there, isn’t it? They played in Europe, they never went out of Ligue 1. And Auxerre is the size of Thetford. Wow. That’s the kind of club I want Norwich to be. I want it to feel like it is part of the community.”

Smith’s passion is shared by Webber, who has worked in youth roles at Wrexham and Liverpool, though he sees an opportunity to take advantage of modern developments. “There’s loads of academies doing unbelievable work right now,” he says. “We’ve got world-class coaching staff in our country, world-class sports scientists, physicians, recruitment officers; 100%, we’re leaders at that. If you look at the ideas and philosophy Dan Ashworth has brought in since he went into the FA, it’s filtered through. There are thought-provoking people coming into the game, people who want to challenge, rather than it being an ex-player asking: ‘What shall I do now?’”

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Last month Norwich opened and, in short order, completed a bond issue designed to fund the academy redevelopment. Run in association with Tifosy, Gianluca Vialli’s football crowd-funding company, it raised its maximum target of £5m before it even opened to the public. The bond offered investors a 5% annual return on their unsecured investment, but it seemed also a vindication of the Webber strategy, one implemented alongside the managing director, Steve Stone. Stone has subsequently suggested such a model of raising money could be used again, perhaps to fund a safe standing section at Carrow Road.


But as Webber points out, the academy project is not a luxury. It has to work. A self-funded club has obvious limitations. Since his arrival Webber has set about reducing Norwich’s wage bill in anticipation of a first season in the Championship without parachute payments. Most of the players he has recruited have come from the lower leagues in Germany, as has the club’s first foreign head coach, Daniel Farke. For some the new club structure and emphasis on the academy is simple cost-cutting. Norwich are off the pace in the Championship and were beaten 4-1 at QPR on Monday. As investors continue to pour into English football, some Norwich fans feel left behind.

“‘Release the purse strings’, that’s the actual phrase,” says Smith. “Why don’t the board release the purse strings? Well, I certainly feel that my experience of the Premier League was that we never had any money. Even if we got promoted this year, we still wouldn’t have had any money, the way the wages are. I think the first time a supporter came up and gave me a rollicking face to face I was bit shocked. But you do get used to it over time. And I do understand their passion. I know. If you are a football supporter you understand. But I think perhaps the younger ones now don’t understand how it was before the money started corrupting it.”

It was Smith’s decision to pursue a self-funding model for Norwich but she insists she would be open to outside investment: “We’re not going to stand in the way.” She also says she would be willing to consider putting the club into fan ownership. But any agreement would have to be one she felt was right for the club. As Stone points out, “The club is already under supporter ownership.”

Three very different characters, Smith, Stone and Webber clearly share a vision for the club, one that attempts to build a local identity. But convincing supporters to share it is not a guarantee. “I think what we’ve achieved here with Stuart and Steve is a wonderful sense of unity, solidarity with each other,” Smith says. “We’ve got some work to do I think in getting our supporters really to buy into that with us. But it would be wonderful if we could go through everything and stick together.”

 

No one tells 'them' how to run a football club... especially when you're the best run club in the country...!!!

 

This is a message for possibly the best supporters in the world.

We need a 12th man here.

Where are you?

Where are you?

Let's be having you!

Come on!

 

"we’ve got a massive supporter base, we’ve got a massive catchment area."

FC Massive are quaking in their boots I guess.

 

Norwich fans certainly seem to feel more connection to the club than ours do. Which isn't difficult, admittedly. Crowds are still holding up well so there is a difference there.
Talking about Auxerre, I remember someone involved with junior representative sides mentioning in the mid 90s about Auxerre and how impressive things were after they played there. Same with a small place in the South if France, whose name I have forgotten, where they played in a tournament. He was comparing facilities as it was about the same size as Brid but had a stadium where the final was played which held about 8,000.

 

Without seeming weird I think she looks well for 76!

 

Hic

 

I'd rather her cook me a meal than our chairman.

 

You're sure you wouldn't rather she cooked our chairman?

 

Yes. Over a slow fire.

 

Hmmm...there's a thought.

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That is ****ing grotesque.

 

Goatesque?

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ive-vehicle-gay-pride-rainbow-colours-it.html

A town riven by social tensions, angry lobby groups, entrenched bigotry, and political hatred.

 

Come on fellas, give it a rest.

 

And yet it is more successful and attracts more visitors. Not surprising with its greater number of attractions and 3* hotels like this in Hull.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hotel-worker-guests-find-bloodied-18930175

 

He has issues because of an inferiority complex regarding Norwich.

 

No curry sauce?

 

People lambast the Allams for insulting the fans but look at drunken Delia...has she apologised yet for her sozzled tirade against the fans at halftime in an important game?

Must surely have knocked a couple of thousand fans off all future games, who won't attend again till she has left the club.