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"Trip To The Vets" ACN Pod 123
957 Plays1 year ago
Ffion, McG, Jon & Tom discuss Knapper's early start, Wagner's last game(s), and the rollercoaster of NCFC experience that for many is currently set to apathy...
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Team's Decline
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Long Come Nourish podcast. The solemn sojourn has tried our sad and scantily clad sentiments, as City have slid down the standings to 17th. I'm joined by Fionn, Mcgee and Punt. Let's get at it. It was pretty bleak on Sunday, wasn't it Fionn? It was. Obviously a 12 o'clock Sunday kickoff at the best of times is not great, but I was sort of struck I was at the ground quite early and
00:00:49
Speaker
just how the complete lack of pretty much buzz I felt and then getting into the stadium I cannot remember that many empty seats certainly around where I was in the Upper Barclay but also looking around the whole stadium it really struck me about that so I don't know if that's apathy or a reflection of the kickoff time or combination of factors but yeah that that didn't set the tone particularly well for the game
00:01:17
Speaker
And then we kicked off.
Game Atmosphere and Fan Reactions
00:01:20
Speaker
And I think there was a quote from Wagner that we played well in the first four minutes or something like that. I don't know if that was a misquote or lost in translation or something. I don't know. But the first 15 minutes were just painful to watch.
00:01:38
Speaker
And the reaction of some fans to the first goal and particularly the second goal, you know, you had the thing where people start sort of ironically cheering the other team scoring. And yeah, it is very, very clear that he has lost the crowd.
00:01:56
Speaker
and the team have lost the crowd and usually when that happens at Carrow Road there's no going back from that.
Controversial Red Card and Fan Resignation
00:02:03
Speaker
There are the obvious parallels to the Worthington last game which I think was the Burnley 4-1 and felt very similar to that.
00:02:12
Speaker
And yeah, it was just a horrible, grim afternoon. And then, ironically, in the second half, I think we actually had a few goal-mouth scrambles, and we could have made the score a bit closer. But of course, it turns out that the red card shouldn't have been a red card anyway, because it's now been overturned. And that was, I think, the only thing that made us look even vaguely competitive towards the end. Yeah, just terrible. Yeah, I wanted to pick up on the worthy element.
00:02:42
Speaker
What was weird to me was how different it was actually to the worthy vitriol and toxicity in that you mentioned the empty seats.
00:02:54
Speaker
they sort of manifest themselves in the lack of noise, that there was kind of a collective tut as the sort of third goal went in, just an unbelievable level of, oh, right, yeah, losing again, are we? And other than some very, very smattering of Wagner out, Weber out, sack the board, compared to not even as bad a run as we've been on this time,
00:03:24
Speaker
There didn't seem to be the ire and the vitriol and the fury and the spittle that we've had at other managers in the past. So, Mcgee, what do you think? Do you think we've just got to the point where we don't think it's even worth being angry anymore?
Wagner's Challenges and Community Efforts
00:03:42
Speaker
think there's a level of resignation, and you could hear it from the beginning of the game. I watched it on TV, not in the ground, but the sort of pre-kickoff rendition of On the Ball City was so lackluster. You could almost hear sarcasm from 15,000 people who were singing along. I don't know where that resignation comes from, but it's one of
00:04:06
Speaker
You know, this is the third time in a row that this team has surrendered, essentially, for all of the amazing things that FACA gave us. We surrendered in the second Premier League season, went down with a whimper with Dean Smith. Last season, it just petered out.
00:04:24
Speaker
And it feels like nothing that we try is going to make a difference. But I also think there's a sense of resignation from, does the club leadership have it within them to fix this? There isn't vitriol at Wagner for standing in the way of some bright lit uplands that we could get to if he would get out of the way.
00:04:48
Speaker
Like, I don't think that people think that replacing him is going to make everything. He's good. He's not going to fix things. I think the other thing is worth saying is like I feel sorry for him. And I think there's a level of resignation rather than vitriol because he's not a bad guy. He's been brought into a terrible situation. We gave him a ton of credit for simply not being Dean Smith, but he's not he's not up to the job. And we know that it's not his fault that he's not up for the job. And so I don't think there's a sort of a
00:05:18
Speaker
He hasn't let us down. He hasn't turned his back on us. He hasn't slagged off the crowd like previous managers might have done. There isn't a bitterness in there either. Do you know what I mean?
00:05:37
Speaker
substitution where he's taken someone off, or there's been a bit of complaint around him not necessarily changing games positively when he does make the substitutions, but he does make them. He's not one of those that collects additional reasons for you to be cross at him, like not making any subs until the end, or never taking off a certain player. He does sometimes stick with certain formations. He does sometimes change the carousel of players that he tries.
00:06:05
Speaker
I think that actually, as a manager of a football club or a head coach of a football club, I think he's very good at the job in terms of he's good at saying the right things, even in his absolute resignation. I mean, he sounded so heartbroken after the Suntan game, but he sounded even more down after the Blackburn game, talking to Chris Gorham, saying, I love the club.
Management Change and Team Comparison
00:06:26
Speaker
I love this community. He's so good at avoiding
00:06:32
Speaker
giving us extra reasons to have a problem with him. And I kind of second your point around, you know, we gave him credit for not being Dean Smith. To be honest, I still give him a lot of credit for that. I am still, you know, last time that Punt and I podded on this vehicle, Punt was already vagging her out and I was still very much, well,
00:06:58
Speaker
I don't really blame him. And to be honest, whilst I think it's absolutely inevitable that the change is coming, I'm still not really Wagner out. I'm more sort of someone else in. You see what I mean? I've got no issues with him as a bloke. And I think that the football he wants to play and he was able to get us to play in very small bursts, like if we count the football that
00:07:24
Speaker
was nice to watch and we won games playing earlier in the season. If that's what Wagner football is, yes, sign me up for that. But I just think he's been dealt a really bad hand, including the front two injuries, which I still think is a massive asterisk against this bad run. But you obviously were very early on the Wagner out train. You didn't even want to be there, you know, on Sunday.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and it wasn't a difficult decision. So I said to my girls, do you want to go to the Norwich men's match or do you want to go to the Norwich women's match because they were kicking off at two o'clock. So it was completely inconceivable that you could watch the both games. It wasn't even a decision because one team and I'll get into Wagner in a bit, but one team is well structured and well coached and appears to be lots of good humans that are doing good things.
00:08:24
Speaker
and another team seems to be an absolute fucking mess. And that's not dressing it up. And I think actually the apathy that I feel, and I've stopped caring about the men's football club as much as I ever have done really over the last few years, I think I'm not the only one who feels like
Fan Apathy and Coaching Concerns
00:08:44
Speaker
that. To Fionn's point about the swathes of empty seats that are at Carrow Road and the general just kind of lackluster nature of the crowd,
00:08:54
Speaker
I just think so many people have had enough and I really can't put my finger on why. But I think there's a lot of us there and it needs an injection of something different to bring us all in a different direction and to unite the fan base again and get us all behind whatever you want to call it but say a project.
00:09:15
Speaker
On Wagner especially, I think you're giving him a hell of a lot of credit when actually the basic expectancy that I would have right now is that any coach that came in that had their badges or had a decent CV would be getting more out of this current group of players, regardless of the fact that we've got five or six injuries.
00:09:40
Speaker
he or she should be getting a lot more out of this group of players than Wagner is. I mean, from noises that I've heard, the dressing room's a bit of a mess, from noises that I've heard that they're not...
00:09:51
Speaker
really listening to what he and Pelach are trying to do. And it just worries me that, I mean, we said this when he first came in, like, is he a busted flush? Young boys in Schalke is that representative of actually where he's at right now. And it turns out that it absolutely is, I think, for me, that we're not well coached, and we are trying to deploy a system that he is
00:10:14
Speaker
so completely wedded to that it doesn't seem like there's any adjustment or change. As you say, Tom, with subs as well, it's like for like, it's not massive changes in information. It's a coach that I think is at the end of his tether and needs to be put out of his misery. And if it was a pet, we'd have done a decent thing by now.
00:10:40
Speaker
I don't know. I think there is blame on him and I think there is blame on the club for not pushing the button on his exit. And I don't care about the context that is wrapped around it in so much as nappers coming in and webers on the out. It just doesn't matter. The fact that there is this absolute paralysis around being able to make a decision
00:11:03
Speaker
is just so poor that it's untrue. I think the one thing that you said about the apathy and people, the empty seats and the apathy, you used the term, you have to galvanize the fan base and get everyone together again. It's the use of the word again. I just feel like we've had a few too many sort of reinventions in the last
00:11:33
Speaker
two, three years. Basically, we had such an identity under Farka. We were so unified for four years that we've now kind of lurched into a crisis every six months. Puntland and I spoke yesterday, and it's important to remember the bad run and form at the end of last season. So again, just to clarify, I think and expect and believe Norwich should and will change their manager
00:12:00
Speaker
within one game away. And I think it's the right thing to do. I just was so...
00:12:08
Speaker
disillusioned with Smith, that Wagner is just so much less awful than him, that that's why I'm someone else in. Because he genuinely seems like a terrific human being. Yeah, I completely agree with that. The community stuff that he has done, the effort he makes to attend things like dementia sessions and football in the community stuff and Nest is fantastic.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I know that a lot of that is done in a box ticking exercise, but he does it with a kind of enthusiasm and genuinely seems to enjoy that side of the club. And he does seem to genuinely have bought into and enjoyed and got the bug of Norwich as a community club. So I don't know. I just find it very difficult to be against him. But you're completely right. He has to get more out of the players than he currently has. And it may well be that his message has just gone
00:13:00
Speaker
gone blank. One thing I wanted to pick up with you, Theon, you mentioned the dressing room. I am a huge stan for Kenny. I love the guy. I've seen positives when he's been in a bad run of form and everyone else hasn't.
00:13:15
Speaker
I've always believed he'd be a good captain of the team. He sounded. I mean, I honestly can't think of a player that sounded more like he was going to cry in a Norwich sort of tracksuit after a game. You know, he sounded so broken and he kept talking about the players have to take responsibility. It was almost like he was giving it was almost like he was giving a press conference the day after Wagner was sacked rather than straight after a performance. Did you see what I'm coming from?
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, I heard the interview as well and yeah, he sounded absolutely broken. Yeah, it's just, you know, they were talking about how the players need to take responsibility, as you say, and talking about having a meeting this week and all of this. But I just, I can't work out what will be said in that meeting.
00:14:09
Speaker
that will improve on make a change from what we've seen in the last what is it six seven weeks since we shipped six at Plymouth and you know if that wasn't a wake-up call I don't know what was and yet of if anything we've probably got worse since that Plymouth game in terms of
00:14:25
Speaker
the performances and the lack of leadership, I would say. I agree. I think Kenny is a good captain, but I'm not seeing the leadership on the pitch. And it's frustrating when we signed as well these players in the summer who had the experience and the leadership. And we thought that was what we were adding to the squad that was missing last season. And obviously some of them are injured. Barnes is one of the
00:14:52
Speaker
the biggest candidates for for doing that role and obviously he's not he's not on the pitch at the moment but yeah I'm just not I'm just not really seeing on the pitch where that's happening and yeah hearing Kenny speak like that is yes just sobering really because a
00:15:15
Speaker
I just don't see how the players can sort of lift themselves from that. So I feel like it kind of has to come from somewhere else. The subtext is, listen, if we're not going to listen to the manager and they're not going to get rid of the manager, then we've got to almost have our own alternative tactics that we work on during the week and follow them instead. He kept talking about us taking responsibility and it not
00:15:38
Speaker
He kept stopping himself from saying, you know, it's not, it shouldn't all just be Wagner. But, you know, this is the same, this is the weird thing about football and, you know, he's the mad dog 2020 guy. Like, he's the shit dancing around the sheriff's hat, getting the inaccurate mayor nickname. Like,
00:16:01
Speaker
that's that guy. It's the same guy. And for him to have had the roller coaster that he's had, I think he's the only one that was in both of the promotion seasons and actually played like a significant part because obviously Hanley was there for both promotions under Farka, but hardly played in the first one, like the first few games or whatever. Like Mcgee, do you feel like
00:16:24
Speaker
Do you feel like we still need a big turnover of squad? Or do you feel like there's more to Punt's point about he should be able to do more? Do you feel like actually we have had enough players come in and out now that this should feel like a new direction, a new dawn, but the sun just keeps not coming up?
00:16:44
Speaker
You should be able to get more out of the team than he's getting now. I think that's pretty clear. I don't have the insight into the changing room and what they're doing on the training ground, Neil, that John has, but clearly some things are up.
00:17:00
Speaker
It sounds intense. You can't just put it at his door. They have had that turnover. They talked all summer long about needing to tackle inexperience, fragility, confidence by bringing in those people that have been around the block. We're bringing in some old hands.
00:17:24
Speaker
they don't look any different. They look just as fragile as ever. They're talking again about confidence. We brought Danny Barton from Sunderland to be the kind of experienced backup
00:17:40
Speaker
and he's not getting any minutes. You can't put any of that on Wagner. I mean, maybe he's not getting enough out of them, but that goes back to the recruitment that looked pretty hot after the first few games, but it's kind of falling apart now. Sacking Wagner is probably the right thing to do, but that's not a solution. That's just dealing with the kind of immediate low hanging fruit that you can deal with.
00:18:08
Speaker
Well, it might be a solution to the fact that we are heading for relegation unless something changes dramatically. I mean, I mean, we are, I mean, it's, you can't continue a run like Norwich or Ron and expect anything other than relegation at the end of the season. Now, whether or not you have to do something, you know, Barnes and Sargent coming back, Hanley, hopefully being able to be 70%, 80% at least of the player he was when he comes back.
00:18:36
Speaker
there's going to, should in theory be a good chunk, you know, a good double figure chunk of games where we've got a much better squad, match day squad with those three players. And we've got now, you know, those three players would improve all of the bottom half of the championship teams and few of the top half as well. So, you know, Wagner or a new manager is going to have for, you know, three and a half, four months of the season, hopefully.
00:19:04
Speaker
you know, almost a third of the matchday squad to be better than what they've got to pick from now. Whether or not that would be enough if we stuck with Wagner to avoid relegation, in theory, it should be because there should be enough points towards playful. But the problem is that is in that brittle confidence and at two nil down, you can see that the play and I was talking to my eldest now comes
00:19:29
Speaker
I mean, he has started his season ticket career. I mean, I started with Europe and finishing third in the Premier League and he started with this shit. It's not for the first time on Sunday. I did say, I'm so sorry, Ruben. I'm so sorry that this is what you think supporting Norwich is like, because he's just a few years too young to have missed out on something brilliant.
00:19:50
Speaker
the on sunday you could see they were scared to play progressive balls forward because we'd already made a couple of howlers that resulted in uh goals and once you've got a team that's so brittle and so got such a lack of confidence and so used to losing that they think i could try and bend this round this player and progress play but
00:20:14
Speaker
I don't want the third goal to be on me. When we're looking at the video analysis tomorrow morning, when we're all being brought into colony an hour early to have to look at our woes on tape again for the 10th week in a row, I don't want it to be me that gave away the goal that killed the game off. And that seems to be the weight on their shoulders that you can almost visibly see their body language get worse after the second goal in that way. And to your point, Majee, about
00:20:39
Speaker
it looked at the start of the season like we'd fixed the problem of brittle confidence with those old senior heads. And I think Barnes is probably, you know, he's got a smaller sample size than some of the others. So maybe he's benefited by not being in this bad run. So therefore he got slightly higher, higher status than the others. He really did seem to be calling people out and joining people and shouting and getting players heads up and at the start of the season.
00:21:05
Speaker
one of the issues we got is duffy is another key person who supposed to fix that and he has been the architect the architect of some of our biggest mishaps you know he was really poor on sunday and and so. How every however experienced you have many hundreds of games you played compared to the people next to you.
00:21:23
Speaker
If you're the one cocking it up, however junior the player next to you is, if he says, come on, heads up, get your head focused in the game, the younger player is going to go, what's your fucking fault? We're losing. Why are you telling me to have my head up? I think you've turned the page so fundamentally, we might as well look at the fact that Nappa's coming in Monday, Webber's gone end of Saturday. That decision was made yesterday or announced yesterday.
00:21:51
Speaker
It seems to me that NAP has been bought in and job number one is going to be use the international break to find a manager, surely. Yeah. Why else make that change? You'd have thought so. Or it is purely on the basis that Stuart Weber has checked out and they need a figurehead again. And actually, like there seems to have been discussions that have happened with
00:22:13
Speaker
Nappa, probably Neil Adams, the board, whoever it might be, I would be fascinated to hear their logic as to why they are continuing with him beyond last weekend. It completely beggars belief because, as Fion was saying earlier, once the crowd goes,
00:22:31
Speaker
You will never get them back. It does not matter how many games Wagner wins in a row now. If he won the next four in a row, the specter of this return, the specter of a couple of losses, it hangs over him. The fact that he's lost so many people so quickly after all of the brilliant work that he did in terms of trying to get the fans on board,
00:22:54
Speaker
just speaks to either how poor his coaching is, how poor the squad is, or a little from column A, a little from column B. I'm not so sure. But yeah, you're right. NAPA has been brought in because there is an immediacy about this situation. There is a crisis that is occurring at Carrow Road. And thankfully, the board haven't
00:23:15
Speaker
But it would have been really easy for them to just go, well, we can't get into the 27th of November anyway. But so at least they have acted in that regard. What he does from here.
00:23:26
Speaker
genuinely don't like this. And this is the scary slash exciting thing. None of us know anything about Ben Napper, short of the fact that he's supposed to be quite progressive. He's been well thought of. He is or has been part of probably the best run football club, you know, kind of in the top two divisions over the last few years. He has been a, you know, a big part of that.
00:23:50
Speaker
And, you know, it's the likes of Arteta, Permurta Saka, and others that have really lauded the contribution that he's made towards that football club. So we should be getting a good one. What we don't know is how brave he is, how bold he is, you know, kind of what his views on head coaches and should there be a set philosophy and all of those things. And I just think... But he can't not think that coming from Arsenal.
00:24:19
Speaker
I mean, Arsenal have had a set philosophy for like getting on the court of the century. But he's a small cog in that machine, isn't he? Like right now, and he's going to be an integral cog in the Norwich City machine now.
00:24:32
Speaker
I think we need to hear from him really really early. Lightweber came in, he did a series of interviews with local press, with local fan media and really set out his stall and said this is how it's going to be and this is what I think has been poor in the past and this is how it's going to go and I'll be searingly honest and you might not like it all and we didn't like it all.
00:24:53
Speaker
I'm gonna be honest with you and actually what he was that's your weather. That was fine i think we need to be as abrasive as you ever. We need to know what he thinks we need to know what he's about we need to know what makes him take and the kind of project that we can expect moving forward until that point.
00:25:13
Speaker
I think people will remain skeptical. But yes, you're right. In terms of coming back to point, yeah, he's got an international break where I think he needs to sack a coach and get a coach. And that is not an easy task. It isn't. And in terms of the people that are currently out of work that fit the mold of what you think he'd be going for, I've said this before, it is a really difficult thing to Google.
00:25:39
Speaker
trying to find managers that are not like the absolute top level that couldn't possibly. It's easy to find out of work managers that have managed European teams because that's easily available. It's very difficult to find
00:25:54
Speaker
tangible candidates based upon the fact that we're now going to be paying Smith and Wagner and the new coach all at the same time. Because I don't think we've finished, you know, we've got all of these contracts to pay up. And, you know, I don't know what, you know, obviously the specifics are going to be around Wagner's contract.
00:26:14
Speaker
But he's going to be due a payoff and so therefore, are we going to be going even more into the bargain basement in terms of buying someone? Are we going to be able to coax anyone from another club? Maybe not because we know we haven't got any money. The accounts particularly grim from a reading point of view.
00:26:36
Speaker
Theon, I'm not expecting you to come up with a name, but have you got any particular flavour of coach, i.e. young and progressive, from abroad, unknown? I heard some talk on Sunday from
00:26:54
Speaker
around where I was of the need for a disciplined old school manager. Obviously fans are having opinions around the type of person they want even if they don't necessarily know who we could get.
00:27:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think probably we need to look at the season and think, are we saying we want to get a manager in to somehow get us in the playoffs, say? Or are we getting a manager to save us from a relegation battle? I don't think we're quite there yet. Or are we looking beyond this season? Are we saying
00:27:33
Speaker
you know this season we maybe we're going to be mid-table but it's a longer term project it needs more of a rebuild so we can look beyond this season so I think that's probably the first decision that has to be made by NAPA and the club and probably the fans as to what our expectations are. In terms of the type of manager based on our last two appointments of
00:28:00
Speaker
Smith and Wagner. I think it's probably fair to say that they were both managers kind of on their way down, you know, like Wagner was out of a job and Smith had just been sacked by Villa. And it would be nice to have a manager who's on their way up. And I'm looking at some of the other championship clubs who have recently appointed new managers, Bristol City have just appointed
00:28:26
Speaker
Liam Manning from Oxford, you know, that's an interesting, exciting young manager appointment, QPR, disappointed, the guy from Hamaby, you know, again, he's relatively young, it's an interesting one. So yeah, it's that kind of angle is what I'd be going for, with an eye to this maybe being a longer term rebuild project, and something that we can believe in and get behind, like we were saying earlier, really.
00:28:55
Speaker
I mean, the concern of it being a, so I think that's a really good, good point. So I'll throw it straight to Mcgee. Is this a short term, just keep us up, make it stop, stop conceding goals and keep us in the league situation. Bear in mind, we're only in early November, but you know, is it that already, or is it actually we risk
00:29:22
Speaker
building for the future with a young, impressive person who might even take us down and then bring us up again with a bit of momentum. The accounts would suggest we can't afford that to happen. What say you? Whereabouts are you with us? Do we just write off this season as mid tables the best we can do? It's only November.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, but we've been playing incredibly badly and we're in 17th with a squad that doesn't exactly shout redemption story. But the good news is, old school manager who specializes in keeping teams up who's currently available, Neil Warnock, absolutely nailed on. He's there and waiting. Paul Lambert's also looking for a job.
00:30:18
Speaker
I don't necessarily want that, but I also don't not want it. It would at least make this season memorable. But there's also some talk of Jack Wilshire, which I'm not an up-and-coming manager expert in the way that others are, but I thought that was a fascinating shout. I'm always of the view that if I've heard of the person we've appointed,
00:30:30
Speaker
There's a redemption story that would be one for the ages.
00:30:43
Speaker
I get very nervous. I want us to be looking at someone who can come in to be a cog in a machine that NAPA is going to build that is part of a project and won't necessarily have their own imprint they want to put on the club.
00:31:04
Speaker
but has the skills to fit into that overall architecture. So if I've heard of them, I mean it's a bit of a cliche ACN hipster cliche that if we've heard of them they're bad, but that's kind of how I feel.
00:31:16
Speaker
Well, I mean, that will kind of be the case with, you know, you mentioned the recent championship appointments. I'll be surprised if there were too many, you know, Bristol city podcasts talking about, oh, this Oxford chapter is the one for us. And, you know, same with QPR, you know, it's, there is an element of that, that we've just zigged twice. So now it's time to zag, like even just from that point of view, but there's also the dynamic you've got to think about.
00:31:43
Speaker
on that point. If you were to appoint someone like Warnock, try and say it with a straight face, you know, you've
00:31:55
Speaker
You're appointing them at the point where you're saying, and here's this guy, Nappa, that's never done the job before. And oh, by the way, he'll be your boss. So a more old school figure might be a bit uncomfortable with having his short term pension topping up scheme based around this young whippersnapper who's never had the keys to the car before.
00:32:18
Speaker
So to me, it is far more logical that we go to league one or league two, or we go abroad and someone sees the opportunity to be a couple of seasons away from the Premier League with relatively more money than they used to, even though it's not as much money as other English clubs could offer them.
00:32:42
Speaker
It's all going to come down to timing, though, Shirley Punt. We've just missed out on two that might have been on our long list, as Vion said. It's just down to who sees us as the right next career step. Norwich do have a history of talking people into that, though. We haven't got anyone to show. Nappa will need instructions on how to give a tour of the veg garden. On the ridiculousness,
00:33:07
Speaker
scale, I can probably see Mcgee's Neil Warner can raise him a Frank Lampard because I know that's a team talk, like probably a nonsense story. But I mean, of all the Tories that we could appoint, I think I'd probably rather Liz Truss than Frank Lampard. I mean, it would just be. Has she put her name in a frame, Liz? Well, she's an Irish fan. Apparently she's seen with a scarf on. So it must be must be. So you allegedly.
00:33:36
Speaker
I'm very much of a, let's go down a project route, let's get, you know, of every Norwich manager that has ever been successful.
00:33:51
Speaker
You've never heard of them apart from Paul Lambert, surely. We've only heard of Paul Lambert because apparently you won the Champions League and he likes to mention it. And he played really well for Celtic. It is always someone that is out of the blue that actually is a bit left field and fits maybe Norwich. Alex Neal. Yeah, Alex Neal came out of nowhere, didn't he? But actually that was
00:34:15
Speaker
absolute you know kind of it was a shrewd move from a shrewd guy in David McNally who had had this guy on his radar for some time from what he was saying at the time when he appointed Alex Neal you would hope that Ben Nappa has those same networks has the the same eye on on head coaches and it isn't just it actually it feels like it would be really lazy if it was someone like Jack Wilshire it would just be like well I'll just go back to what I know
00:34:42
Speaker
So that would worry me actually more as much as he might be, you know, a young up-and-coming coach, it would almost just feel like, well, are we going to be Jack Wilshire's Nouri City? And is this just going to be Arsenal Light rather than Ben Napper's Nouri City? And we get a coach in who can fit, as Matthew said, the architecture, really. Quite like the sound of Arsenal Light, if I'm honest. Well, it sounds all right. But at the same time, you know, Nouri Jara, I feel like Nouri Jara are unique.
00:35:11
Speaker
community-based football club that does so many good things and we need a human that fits our football club and I think Ben Nappa has to come in and he has to grasp that quite quickly but he also has to grasp that
00:35:26
Speaker
the same old, sorry, you know, kind of, I don't know if you're going to go back 10 years, it would be someone like Alan Kerbershlee, like those types are not going to fit here. And there is no point appointing that kind of type. I don't think that that will even be in his mind to go back to the tried and tested model. I feel like
00:35:45
Speaker
there would be no point having a sporting director, if that was the case. There's an element though, isn't there? So it's a really interesting kind of, if Edie was here as well as saying some bonkers things that would be the title of the podcast, she would probably talk to kind of the human element of, from a psychology point of view, this is Napa's big break, right? Like this is what, you know, in terms of Napa's career, he is taking a huge step up. This is the most seniority he's going to have. Okay, he's taking a step down, obviously the football period to do it.
00:36:13
Speaker
which is relatively normal. So there's an element of risk in going, in having a double unknown. So one of the things I wanted to bring up for you, and I don't know whether or not you've seen any of this, I've started to look a bit more at the brewer's coverage and kind of the Atanasio reception forward slash vitriol that he is currently getting.
00:36:41
Speaker
He's really unpopular with the Brewers fans and seems to be getting a rough ride of it and he's constantly derided for not investing in the squad, not constantly that they bring up things and make kind of slide comments about how there's something like 100 million less in kind of salary than other so-called contenders.
00:37:08
Speaker
Do we feel like, what's your take on this whole Atanasio needing a three year probation period via the people who I love with all my heart, but have overseen a club that is 77 million pounds in debt? Yeah, it just feels like in the same way that obviously now it's not happening, but that there was a slated handover for the
00:37:38
Speaker
sporting director job. It just feels like we're sort of being very, very cautious, very softly, softly. And yeah, I don't know who pushed for that really. I don't know if that was on our side or their side.
00:37:58
Speaker
But yeah, I'm not sure if it's just kicking the can down the road really. I've not followed really what's happening with the brewers. Matthew might know more about that than me.
00:38:14
Speaker
I've been to see the Brewers play at their stadium. They have a big slide, like a literal slide that their mascot goes down when they hit a home run. And I don't know much about Atanasio's wealth, but if he brings that to Carrow Road, then I'm all behind him.
00:38:31
Speaker
But the brewers are a small market team. Milwaukee is a really small city compared to the New York's and LA and Atlanta and so on. They have to outperform their size. They have to get every single trade right. They have to use the kind of money ball approach.
00:38:56
Speaker
and that sounds familiar right i mean we don't we're not going to be a massive team from us from a self-funding point of view with the stadium the size it is and the catchment area the size it is and like this is the thing that
00:39:12
Speaker
People say, well, Delia's not getting it done. I haven't heard anyone say what the alternative is, other than, wouldn't it be great if somebody won the lottery? That's not a plan. What people want is for Marc Attanessio to walk in the door and say, I've made 600 million quid in my life, here's 200 of it.
00:39:32
Speaker
It's just not real life. Unless we want to be taken over by the kind of people in football who do have hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds to burn. And I don't think that we are the kind of club that would ever want that. Do we want to be
00:39:51
Speaker
Saudi Arabia's B team in the UK. I don't think we do. So this sense of self-funding doesn't work. It's like, okay, well, what's the alternative? Show us what that is. It's not Mark Attanasio. He doesn't have the funds for it. And what the Brewers shows us is that he's the kind of person with a decent amount of money who could keep us stable, but he's not going to write a blank check and take us to the promised land.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think my concern about they're different sports and they've got very different financial setups in terms of regulations and attempts at parity, which does make it easier in most American sports for the small market teams to compete if they well enough run and if they're gambles to your point about trades come off right. The
00:40:38
Speaker
The challenge I've got to the Delia out brigade is, to your point, to just something better. There is the thinking that over the next five to 10 years,
00:40:50
Speaker
his consortium, his hedge fund lads, having half of the club and then bringing in other investment people to kind of chip in and kind of farm off shares that way to try and bring in money regularly. That might be a business model that could work if there is success on the pitch and there is Premier League money regularly coming in.
00:41:15
Speaker
you know, that's all kind of medium-term stuff. You feel like he would definitely, and his people would definitely have an input into this kind of hedge coach element. You know, he's now got a very, very firm seat at the board in terms of decision-making. So, Punt, what do you reckon is the, what do you reckon we should be setting our sights on? What do you think we should be setting our expectations as in terms of how this season could go?
00:41:43
Speaker
bearing in mind, we have got January around the window, so Jack Wilshire might be able to, and Ben Nappa might be able to borrow a couple of Arsenal lads, although the last one we loaned was fucking shit. Yeah, Ben Nappa was probably key in that Marquinhos loan, so yeah, that went well. I think for this season, for me, it is about stabilising, it's about ensuring that we're not going to get embroiled in a relegation battle,
00:42:09
Speaker
but it's also about trying to put some foundations in place that will allow us to use that as a springboard so that we can kick on next season. I'm not saying like, right, 23, 24 off, because with a fair wind and a crowd that believes and players that are galvanised,
00:42:30
Speaker
nothing is beyond any team in this league in terms of going on a decent run and the Coventry's or the Luton's of last season is testament to that fact that if you build momentum you can get somewhere. I have no expectation that's going to happen so I think that we need to take a considered look at where we want to be and how we want to shape this football club moving forward because the last
00:42:58
Speaker
I don't know, three seasons can only be considered in the cold light of day now that the accounts are available as an abject failure, like an absolute abject failure. I mean, the last season that we were in the Premier League, you look at those set of accounts and it's people that are way more learned than me, but are identifying the fact that we had an average wage of ยฃ52,000 a week per player.
00:43:23
Speaker
and which is higher than Brentford, Brighton, probably some other clubs in the Premier League. Did we get any value for money out of that? Absolutely not. So to talk about putting the footings in place for a sustainable football club is about ensuring that money is spent well and
00:43:43
Speaker
this season's recruitment again is probably you know kind of speaks to the fact that we we have not been doing that Shane Duffy's been given a three-year contract on an exorbitant amount of money this is by the man Stuart Weber who used the catchphrase which he'll probably use on some kind of high performance podcast at some point in the near future you know you need to focus on the root not the fruit
00:44:07
Speaker
I mean, Shane Duffy is so overly ripe at this point that it is ridiculous. Genuinely, he's lost it. And the same can probably be said of for sure. The same might be said of Barnes, if he doesn't hit the ground running when he comes back. But we've completely abandoned the principles which got us in such a, which had us in such rude health and had us lauded as one of the model football clubs up and down the league.
00:44:35
Speaker
We're nowhere near that now. And that's where I want to see us pivot towards is being a properly run football club again. Okay. Well, one thing I'd say on that is we wanted some experience and we wanted some people to come in and
00:44:53
Speaker
It's tricky to blast where before that, when three years might be a bit rich for Duffy, but we don't know. There might've been another team in for him. He went to the one that offered him the longest final pension top-up.
00:45:11
Speaker
But just bid him then. If that's what he's here for, a final pension top-up, then you're not the guy for me, mate. Yeah, I know. Get Danny Barton and Matt actually play him. Whatever. But this is the thing. There's no guarantee on how well his form would hold up. And early in the season, he did look like he could be competent at Champions League level. At Champions League level. He certainly didn't look like he could be at Champions League level. Championship level.
00:45:40
Speaker
And I do think that we have to, again, get this whole kind of, we zig for a bit, and then we zag for a bit. Like, we feel made the point about, you know, it seems like a bit softly, softly. It feels like we make, we make footballing decisions sometimes as a football club that are not the way that a true business minded person would, would make the decision like this bonkers handover period, and like the like the not getting someone to start for ages. And
00:46:11
Speaker
And I feel like we also suffer from knee-jerk reactionism. We effectively say, well, we've tried it this way. Now let's get some kind of journeymen, old people, because everyone's complaining that we've got brittle confidence. So I always feel like we went too far in that direction, rather than maybe buying one person who is maybe a slightly higher caliber, but is slightly younger. But it's all conjectures. So wrapping up, Theom,
00:46:39
Speaker
Can I have a prediction for Cardiff? We are going to lose. Cardiff have a very good home record. We are very bad. We are going to lose 2-0.
00:46:55
Speaker
I predict I'm going to have a really great time going to Cardiff on Saturday. I'm glad to have picked that out as my match pick early in the season. I've never been to Cardiff before, so I'm delighted with my timing on that. I think that we're going to nick a 1-1 draw, scoring in the 85th minute to give a bit of a boost and a bit of momentum, and it will make Napa's job a lot harder to make the decision on Monday.
00:47:21
Speaker
So who's going to be your guaranteed scorer then for that equalizer? Sara. Okay. John Punt, guaranteed score line please.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're going to lose. I think we might get a hiding. I just think the confidence is so fragile now. I'm going to say 4-1 Cardiff with Shane. And I'll tell you what, here we go. Shane Duffy. I know he can't play, can he? He's out. I was going to say he'll score at both ends, but he won't do that. He's done it before. Yeah, exactly. He has done it already. I don't know. He'll score for us. We'll just lose badly.
00:48:02
Speaker
OK, well, I think we will win 3-1 because of some kind of very, very odd penalty luck, some other kind of very, very odd, you know, disallowed goal that's not fair on Cardiff Park. And that will make, to your point, Napa's job very
00:48:25
Speaker
uncomfortable come Monday but I still think it would be the first thing on the agenda and you know to your point John if it was a pet maybe they've just had a really energetic walk but you're like no no no the vet has said that this is the way it needs to go. Look we are where we are it's a very very roller coaster ride supporting this football club and it just seems that every year we think we might have a bit of a boring kind of stable
00:48:49
Speaker
season. I think probably Farka's first season was probably the last time we had a kind of non-eventful season really. I mean even then we were buying into a new style of football and stuff so it felt like things did move on but but since then every season's either been spectacular, horrendous or full of woe and turbulation. So, new coach soon. Looking forward to that. Thanks Farka and bye.