wonderful stuff on oink'un

Someone has just uncovered a real gem, from Aug 2018.
Any guesses who the author may have been?

Posted August 26, 2018
"There's three main problems at Norwich City
(In ascending order of importance):
3. The manager. He''s never convinced; he doesn''t know his best team or best formation. What was the point of going three at the back to tighten things up last season, only to throw this straight out and go back to being so soft it''s unbelievable, with a defence like a sieve? That means the entirety of last season was wasted. It must confuse the players hugely. It certainly baffles me.
2. The players. When football fans search around for someone easy to blame, it suits them to overrate the playing squad, because it gives them hope of better things under a different manager. I don''t share that hope. This squad is the epitome of mediocrity. I look at much of it and think "who are these people?" Without Maddison, we''d have been in massive trouble last season. Well, we''re without him now... and sliding. Pritchard, Murphy and Gunn have gone too, and none of them have been replaced with better or equivalent players.
That''s a comment on Webber''s poor recruitment - but it''s not all his fault either. Webber, the squad, and Farke are all symptoms of a much more fundamental problem:
1. The board. The poorest owners in the Championship. A league which continues to change rapidly. Unlike in the past - think of the late 90s, when clubs like Swindon, Grimsby, Port Vale, Tranmere, Stockport, Crewe or Bury could all do perfectly fine at this level on gates of much less than 10,000 - there''s really only one club in this season''s Championship which doesn''t naturally ''belong'' here: Rotherham. And they have backing: like Barnsley in the division below.
It probably needs re-emphasising just what a miraculous job Messrs Lambert, McNally and Bowkett did in getting us out of this league and, however briefly, establishing us in the Prem on such a low wage bill. In 2010/11, along with Derby, we were one of only two clubs in the whole division who maintained a wages/turnover ratio of below 60%. Most others were at a minimum 90%; many were well into three figures.
But miracles don''t happen twice. Huddersfield, who many will point to, will almost certainly go back down this season and slide back into anonymity - but even they, built sustainably, have had substantial cash injections from their owner along the way. Burnley, a real model club at present, might struggle this year... and actually sailed very close to the wind before going back up and staying there. Almost everyone else are funded beyond their natural means.
But our owners can''t do that. So we start each season, or under any new manager, with one hand tied behind our backs. It''s precisely those constraints which led Lambert to leave; he knew we couldn''t sustain it forever. At Brighton, meanwhile, Hughton prospers because he has real backing - from an owner with deep pockets who knows that the only way to profit in English football is, one day, to sell the club on having dramatically improved it through his investment.
Yet are Brighton not a community-oriented club? Are Watford? Are Crystal Palace? Have any of them ''sold their soul'' - or just got real amid the most competitive football club structure in the world? But getting real is what our old, patrician owners steadfastly refuse to do.
In a world in which little Barnsley can be bought by foreign owners, it is not even in the realms of plausibility that nobody with the means required is interested in Norwich. 25,000 gates each home game; an incredibly loyal support built up since the Centenary Season; passionate, yet understanding, remarkably so at times; just two hours from London in a city which has come up in the world over the last 20 years; spent four years out of five in the Premier League this decade... and no-one''s interested? Do me a favour.
The problem is the owners have no interest in selling us. They''re hamstringing us; more than that, they''re overseeing close to inevitable decline. English football isn''t going to suddenly become less competitive: it''s uniquely popular globally, and more and more plutocrats and consortia want a piece of that action. The bubble isn''t going to burst - but the way things are going, NCFC will.
Personally, I don''t think we''ll go down this season. I think we have a better squad than at least eight other clubs. But we''re heading inexorably downwards. On the pitch, we may be in crisis in a matter of weeks: there''s major shades of Peter Grant''s final month or so here in how things are looking. But off the pitch is where the real problems lie. This ''model'' isn''t working and was never likely to work; and in many ways, all it amounts to is an arse-covering exercise. For a pair of joint majority shareholders who cannot compete in a footballing world which has changed out of all recognition since they first became involved.
They have to sell the club. And they have to go. If they don''t, we''ll be back in League 1 in no time... and highly unlikely to get as lucky again."

Posted By: Henclrikus, Oct 17, 22:56:38