Canaries Not Flying
After capitulating to terminally ill Charlton Athletic, Norwich City Football Club were relegated. Like Southampton, it has taken just four years to spiral from flying high in the English Premiership, to landing in League One, the third-tier of English professional football...
This season has been quite mixed for the East-Anglian teams. Peterborough, remarkably, find themselves promoted to the championship. If they keep hold of their youngsters, they'll be a real force to reckon with in a couple of seasons. Luton, predictably perhaps, fell out of the professional league. Ipswich just missed out on a play-off place in the Championship and as a result sacked their manager. If Norwich had shown that much ambition in 2006, where would they be now?
How did Norwich find themselves with a lame wing? That's a good question. In terms of support, Norwich is a big team, even for the Championship. Home matches are typically watched by more than 25000 people, and the typical away support is significantly large that many Championship teams even couldn't accommodate as many supporters as tickets could be sold. So, how did it happen that such a big team could be relegated. Other recent cases of big teams being relegated from the Championship were overtly the result of financial mismanagement, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton. That is not the obvious cause here - at least there has been no bankruptcy or administration involved. I think the cause in this case is, quite plainly, poor football managers, although not simply on-the-day team selections and tactics. Poor managers, who undoubtedly know their football, but who are unable to work within the constraints of a club like Norwich and who function poorly in the transfer market.
Upon falling out of the Premiership, the club's signings didn't mesh, leaving Norwich floundering rather than challenging in the Championship. When it was clear that Norwich would not be bouncing back immediately, the cost of the squad should have been slashed, and their position in the Championship consolidated, or the full weight of the parachute payments should have been invested for a win-or-die promotion push. Instead, a series of ill-advised transfer deals were made. There were a few good buys, such as Dean Ashton but even he was bought half-a-season too late due to the board's indecisiveness. Up to then, the scene was just being set - there was nothing fundamentally wrong at the club, apart from a lack of ambition, gross indecisiveness, and a few incompetent decisions when the indecisiveness was overcome - certainly nothing that is uncommon in the Championship.
But then the board selected Peter Grant as Nigel Worthington's successor. This was a bad choice on so many levels! I've been trying to think of good things to say about Peter Grant, but the only thing I can come up with is that he loved the club. That's not enough. He tried to mould his own team, the Green and Yellow haggis army, but his man management skills were, at times, comical, and at other times cringe-worthy. We had gone from probably having the "nicest manager" (not necessarily the best trait for success!) to one of the nastiest. He publicly lambasted his players, and it wasn't long before morale amongst the players was at rock-bottom. This coincided with the time that the club needed to preserve its financial resources, taking a reality check on life outside the top-tier. Instead, Peter Grant's transfer activity was hardly astute, and the boards earlier property gambles were clearly unravelling too. Drastic action was needed as the Canaries nested at the bottom of the table, and in October 2007, the action the board took came in the shape of Glenn Roeder.
Glenn postponed Norwich's fall, I'm sure on the back of simply rescuing changing room morale. By last summer, he had respect of the bulk of fans, and it looked like the board had made a good choice. However, at a time when finances were clearly stretched, Glenn embarked on a training ground clear-out, with no obvious way to fill the gaps wrenched into the team. The squad was already small, now it could be described as a skeleton of a squad, at best. Relying on loan players is never a good idea as anything other than a quick-fix or an interim solution. The core of the Norwich team was now a team of loanees! Furthermore, something that doesn't bode well for the near future, is that promising youngsters were let go. It was true that many of the youngsters were, at best, only challenging the fringes of the first-team, but they would be needed as an ingredient of any healthy squad. Even if they aren't needed as emergency backup, they keep the top players fighting for their places, and more importantly they can develop as players to break into the first team or be a source of funds in following seasons. I expect that they didn't compare well with the youngsters Glenn was used to at clubs such as Aston Villa and Newcastle, but Norwich isn't on the same plane as those clubs. For most of the season, the playing team consisted of the maximum number of (expensive) loan players. Would young inexperienced (Norwich!) players really have done worse than a relegation place?
I don't want to pick individual events that contributed to Norwich's downfall (Huckerby, anyone?) because I think the real factor was the person driving them. The result would have been the same even if the specifics differed.
This season, the supporter's consensus opinion of Glenn Roeder quickly deteriorated from Saviour to... well, something I wouldn't write in a family-friendly blog. He destroyed any cohesion in the dressing-room. He was contemptuous of anyone with critical comments - players, media and, most disingenuously, supporters. Eventually, the board had to do something - and the club's league position certainly wasn't the only reason they did finally act.
Even the current manager, who I respect highly - both on and off the pitch - was a strange choice. He is such a part of Norwich that his blood runs yellow, but he had absolutely no management experience, and wasn't even directly involved in the footballing-side of the club before his appointment! Even the Canaries' most ardent supporter and fan of Bryan Gunn, would agree that he was an odd appointment. It is a move that could easily turn out to be fatal for the board - as no local fan would blame Gunn, even if he was to prove as a really dreadful manager. (Although, according to Wikipedia, his win ratio is better than that of the experienced Glenn Roeder, even with the team inherited from Roeder). It hasn't worked here, and it looks like it won't work for Newcastle and Shearer, either.
Last summer, the club unexpectedly lost £2 million of planned investment. The full story behind that has never been revealed - but in League One, £2 million can go a long way. I, for one, hope a way can be found to bring that back to the table!
On the plus-side, Norwich City will now sell the best pies in League One. On the ball city, never mind the cookery!
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