It's the board's fault

Judging by his public utterances Worthington is a borderline cretin - yet our board gave him an annual budget of something around ?20 million to manage and spend entirely as he saw fit without any input from them. We all saw the results yesterday.

Doncaster has recently defended this "non-policy" declaring that there are only two options: either the board has no input at all into footballing matters - as is the case at Norwich - or Hearts-style the board picks the team and picks the signings. Well looking at the record of the two teams recently, and despite the problems at Hearts the latter option looks the best (least bad?) of the two.

In less than a year we will find out how much Doncaster is paid for mis-managing the club. But in the meantime I will point out that at other clubs the board does have an input into footballing matters. Ferguson recently said that he has always had to make a case to the board when he wants to sign a player. And Redknapp does not have the same control over the budget that Worthington had when, for example and as he cheerfully admitted yesterday, he has not the faintest idea what Djimi Traore earns.

If the board of Norwich City FOOTBALL CLUB were to divert just a little bit of their time from working out how to turn a profit from pies and property development, and spent it considering the football side of the business - then fantastically costly mistakes like Hughes could be avoided.

Posted By: Kelly Monteith, Jan 14, 13:03:01