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"Shouting At A Duvet" ACN Pod 96
49 Plays2 years ago
Edie, Jon & Tom consider whether the endgame for a certain sporting director is upon us...
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Transcript
Introduction and Context Setting
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Long Come Knowledge podcast. We're in a bit of a quandary so we thought we'd open the floor and ask for some questions. There's nothing worth talking about on the pitch. So John, Edie and myself thought we would just have a mailbag only episode because there's been a few things happening off the pitch that a few of you have got some questions over. Punt, let's jump straight into what social media asked us this week.
00:00:49
Speaker
there's a bumper mailbag and I think it's kind of all around subject matter that might be quite obvious.
Stuart Weber's PR Strategies
00:00:56
Speaker
I think there's no better place to start than our very own website editor, Mr Nicholas Hayhoe, and he asks, I simply cannot believe that Stuart Weber, an intelligent person, thought that the Times interview would do him any favours, so why did he do it? And Nick is explicitly asking for
00:01:14
Speaker
Edie's raw and unfiltered expert PR opinion on the matter. So you may as well kick us off. So I think it took so many readings and rereadings to get one's head around that article. And what was amazing was that every time I read it again, there was something new that made me just go, yeah. So yeah, essentially the reason I think he did that interview thinking that he would be interviewed as a person
00:01:43
Speaker
as a figure in his own right. And that kind of keys in with everything that's going on right now in terms of this gigantic radioactive midlife crisis. And I think this is the folly of somebody who believes in honesty top to bottom. That's a word he uses all over the podcast and it's all part of the kind of key messaging, not of Norwich per se, but of his own personal brand that he sought to enhance through all of this.
00:02:12
Speaker
ill judge madness. And this is essentially someone who's mistaken honesty, I think for authenticity. And also for accountability, because in his so many actions,
00:02:29
Speaker
He's telling a story that isn't particularly helpful to fans and the club. And then he just seems to say things and wants to be taken at his word. For example, the sort of charity motivation of this mountain climbing thing. And essentially he's created this situation where he, if anyone went to their employer and said, I want to take on a really big challenge,
00:02:57
Speaker
No employer in the world would ever say, no, you can't do that. But as long as key deliverables were made and performance was judged to be consistent, there's no way on earth that that kind of side quest would be judged to be terrible. But what's happened here is that this is someone who clearly, when it comes to honesty, I think it seems that honesty is
00:03:23
Speaker
There's only one person allowed to be honest, because if more people around Stuart Weber were more honest with him, they might say that things were a bad idea. And so this idea of this cloak of invisibility of charity, he's kind of outraged and angry that despite this charity cloak, people have got angry. And then that can actually be a lovely misplaced bit of outrage.
00:03:53
Speaker
that's what ends up with a man who ostensibly says that he wants to inspire children or a disability children, as he phrased it in his interview, has ended up, I don't know, how do you inspire children by shouting at a duvet cover? That's my question.
00:04:10
Speaker
it's gone so terribly wrong and I don't know who's advising him or who's allowing you to advise him. I think that's a really interesting question because the more eagled eyed Norwich City fans among us may have seen a gentleman called Neil Ashton who is kind of formerly of
00:04:29
Speaker
pretty much every tabloid rag there is, and formerly of Sky TV's The Sunday Supplement. He has been in the director's box pretty much every game, I would say, for this season. He also, as I understand it, is giving PR advice either to Stuart Webber or to the football club. But again, as I understand it, he's being paid quite handsomely for it, and he's there on match day, like, kind of all the time.
00:04:57
Speaker
So we've now got a communications team at the club who think, who probably I'm guessing, you know, may have thought that actually that interview with the Times wasn't a particularly good idea, especially given the optics of the fact that he'd, well, he'd previously turned down all the local media requests for time because he was waiting for relegation to be confirmed.
00:05:18
Speaker
He then goes and does this to launch his charity, I think, but then kind of inexplicably thinks that, you know, football and the charity can perhaps be, you know, kind of aren't linked and it isn't going to come up in the interview, which just seems really daft to me. But you've now got a guy giving PR advice.
00:05:38
Speaker
to either the club or the Weber's and it's just I don't know I mean how have we ended up where we're at where he's made everything and I would say he as in Stuart Weber has made everything a lot worse for himself in the space of you know what it was a catastrophic 24 hours wasn't it in terms
Sports PR vs Reputation Management
00:05:56
Speaker
of
00:05:56
Speaker
you know, him confronting fans, him doing, you know, that interview going out for memory winter, and the result on the pitch and the performance on the pitch, it's just, it was a really dark, dark 24 hours. And I just think if that's the kind of PR advice that they're getting to do those kinds of things, not necessarily the confrontation, because I'm sure, you know, Neil Ashton wouldn't have advised him to have done that. But it's just, I don't know, there's so many bits about it, which just smell really, really bad, don't they?
00:06:26
Speaker
There's a difference between sports PR and essentially like reputation management. And I think that's the mistake they've made here is sports PR is very much about, it's much more motivational. It's much more about like building a kind of buzz about things. Whereas reputation management is legit just scrutinizing plans and going, what can go wrong?
00:06:51
Speaker
So hiring a betting brand as your sponsor and either checking and seeing pornographic content and thinking it's okay or not checking, that's not a good plan. Setting up Winter Wonderland and not really making sure that it goes well or has any kind of robust plan behind it.
00:07:14
Speaker
Not a good plan. So it's it's it's sort of all of this stuff is like you need somebody to look at all the cracks and anticipate disaster and No disaster has been anticipated. So I think this is the sports PR thing
00:07:28
Speaker
But this is wonderful that actually, well, can you remember the heady days when all we had to talk about on a podcast was how shit the Norwich City Christmas Fair was? And here we are talking about this. Edie, I'd really like your take as well. And this is something that I wanted to bring up.
00:07:47
Speaker
People may have seen that there's quite a notorious Twitter account that tweets Norwich City News and they had unearthed the fact that off the back of an Eastern Even News headline, Stuart Weber is now refusing to speak to Argent journalists and we understand that is definitely true as well.
00:08:09
Speaker
I think that's a terrible look when you need people pulling in the same direction. And again, does it kind of feed into this whole PR advice or is there some kind of siege mentality? I mean, given the PR guru that you certainly are Edie, what would your advice have been to Mr Weber? Well, it's the weirdest thing because I've never, ever seen the EDP
00:08:36
Speaker
get to that sort of stage where that I mean, that's a really extreme font color, wasn't it? And so it's you can see that relationships have really broken down there. But it makes sense if you think that Weber is like, he thinks we're small time, is it worth? implies that he thinks we're small time and that we're embarrassing and he has to
00:08:57
Speaker
kind of concoct these other activities to kind of reinforce his own sense of his status. Is it worth just pointing out what was on the homepage? Sorry, on the homepage, I live in the digital world. On the paper, what was it that got his eyes? Because not everyone would have seen it. So it was a massive
00:09:19
Speaker
headline and essentially it was, do you really want to be here, Mr Webber? I think was, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but that was essentially it. That wasn't run in the EDP. It was definitely run in the evening news who have different editors, whether that was an editorial decision or a sports desk decision, whether they talk to each other, I think would probably be up for debate because as I understand it again, you know, kind of, I think
00:09:44
Speaker
the
Leadership and Cultural Shifts in the Club
00:09:45
Speaker
club and the sports journalists at Archon all seem like they had pretty decent relationships, whether that, you know, kind of suffers off the back of this. I just don't think it feeds into this whole, and this is, you know, culture because, you know, when we were promoted and everyone was saying, oh, the culture is brilliant and everyone's pulling in the same direction. And then actually it was Stuart Weber who said, and that will be tested when things get hard.
00:10:08
Speaker
and things are really hard now, and actually it feels like it's all going to shit, and actually the club probably are the catalyst for some of that as well. But I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of this is in the post-Ben Kensil era. So whilst not every decision ever made under Ben or under Ben's team was right,
00:10:36
Speaker
by any means and the coming out and owning it element was really strong and that was one of the things where when they made a misstep including BKA including other things they reversed it they certainly didn't react by
00:10:53
Speaker
refusing to speak to journalists or by going out and shouting at a duvet. It's not a good look to have to be restrained by your wife and bundled back into a building because it's not much different from being told it's not worth it, Geoff, and bundled back into a cab on
00:11:14
Speaker
tomb land at one in the morning. When that wife is also part of the exec committee, it almost kind of doubles down and makes even more... So it's basically a fellow senior employee of the club and your wife is bundling you back into a... to stop you shouting at some bed clothes. It's, I mean... Right, it's not ignored the noise, is it? It's definitely not ignoring the noise. No. Let's go to the...
00:11:41
Speaker
Let's go to the protest. So first and foremost, ACN and any right-thinking individual completely supports the right of anyone to protest. Full stop. If you feel passionate enough to scroll on a piece of household apparel, good for you. We should always live in a country where that is possible. Not necessarily encouraged, but possible.
00:12:09
Speaker
So that's that. Now, having said that, I think it's nonsense what was scrawled on it, whilst also completely understanding the frustration that's at the root of why people might feel that they want to
00:12:25
Speaker
shout and swear at a building and then got lucky that actually someone poked their head out of a building. And I do believe, sorry to interrupt, but I believe that Gary, who shouted embarrassing, has now issued an apology via the Eastern Daily Press. Yes, he has. So, you know, passion has subsided. Embarrassed. But I totally understand. I totally understand the the ire because watching awful performances and the
00:12:54
Speaker
I talked about it earlier in the season. What I dislike about the Premier League, other than the lack of parity, which is my number one problem with English football, European football, full stop, my issue with it is just the embarrassment of
00:13:13
Speaker
the fact that we were unable to correct the narrative and the fact that where we sit in the English football narrative is as a yo-yo team who actually are really quite tiresome to everyone else to keep coming up because whether or not you're accurate in your estimation that they can't afford to be here or why don't they make an effort, why don't they try and stay here, they want to go down.
00:13:38
Speaker
relevant of whether or not that's right or not, when you don't do anything to challenge that narrative, it is so embarrassing to, you know, when you go and, you know, speak, I work in London, so you go and speak to colleagues of other football teams, I interact with, I don't tend to interact with many Norwich City fans through work because most people I work with don't, aren't from around here and don't live around here.
00:14:00
Speaker
It's just tiresome to just be the butt of all of the jokes all season all the time and have absolutely nothing from an ammunition point of view to say, yeah, but at least we're playing brilliant football or yeah, but at least we are doing it. So I totally get why people want that to change. Where it falls down is the logic of
00:14:19
Speaker
and you know black people on social media that we can say you know is this time it's time to sell up is time to take over to play. Which which offer that they have turned down in the last ten years would you would you have them take because do you think for one second in this tiny little goldfish bowl of the tiny little sports market that is knowledge do you think there is any chance that if there was a bigger who is much as sniffed at knowledge.
Media Relations and Communication
00:14:48
Speaker
then that would not make it into the local press. Bearing in mind, it always gets out because it's in the bidders' interests to try and drum up fan opinion, to try and encourage the club to effectively look awful if they don't accept, even if the term is to start with a derisory or not what they want. It's like protesting, you might as well have stood there with a sign saying down with this sort of thing.
00:15:18
Speaker
Because there's no alternative. And whilst there's no alternative, be angry by all means. But unless there is a solution, your ire is aimed at the wrong place. So what's the right place then? So what's the right place? I think that's where Norwich fans are at the moment.
00:15:40
Speaker
We don't know where to direct our anger slash frustration slash anxiety is that lots of people are just looking for someone or something to blame. And the situation is a lot more nuanced, isn't it? It is. Unfortunately, Stuart Weber has to live with the fact that
00:15:56
Speaker
we as the guy whose faces the transfers of nor city i mean that is a is a massive generalization because of zoe's involvement in contract negotiation all the rest of it and and mario the in the scouting team and the other scouts etc but he's the guy who fronts up as i'm the guy who's the sporting director and it ultimately is his responsibility the product yeah he's the product starts and ends with the leader
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah, so he's the product. Well, he's the leader with regards to product on the pitch and he's a shared leader of the wider football club, which is, I don't think the right thing either. But with regards to the product being awful on the pitch,
00:16:34
Speaker
If you're going to take the products when it's good, you also got to have a way of fronting up and it's staggering to be trying to do anything from a point of view or any kind of point of view to try and launch something and not in some way say front up and address the fact that look.
00:16:55
Speaker
We've got things that we need to learn and things we need to improve on the pitch. And this is something I'm doing aside. It's just Beggar's belief that he doesn't accept that he needs to create and start communication. And the best way of doing that is to trust the journalists who aren't there to catch him out. And headlines like that, do you really want to be here?
00:17:23
Speaker
that exists, that is only possible to print that in a vacuum. And he's provided that vacuum by his media availability or lack of. I think also it does really show that there is a revolutionary new point that perhaps football PR people, and I'm not yet prepared for, where previously certain local newspapers in this area
00:17:48
Speaker
may not have printed very much news about certain Norwich players or former Norwich players who have been arrested for and prosecuted and jailed for pretty bad crimes. So for now,
00:18:02
Speaker
for a paper to actually be raising this sort of stuff and putting it on front pages. It goes to show that actually, whereas previously, the game would have been played by the sports journalists. Now, Archon needs clicks. It needs to align itself with the views of its readership. And I think what they've done there, rather than just keep this lovely, cosy relationship going, they've actually looked at all the message boards and seen that actually
00:18:30
Speaker
there's something that needs raising on behalf of their readers. So it's even more important in that climate and that new situation to build relationships and to have just a really concrete communications plan with them.
Fan Reactions and Club Decisions
00:18:45
Speaker
Shall we talk about the altercation a bit more and our kind of thoughts on it? Because I've I mean, I was I say, I'm fortunate isn't the word, but I was about 10 yards away from it when it started to happen. And you could see the lads out there with the bed sheet and, you know, with the red writing on it. And they were obviously kicking off and there was security. And then just out of nowhere, Stuart Weber appears. And I didn't hear what he was saying, but he was clearly taking the bait and there was
00:19:14
Speaker
I know some people have said that he was blowing kisses at them. I didn't see that, but he was definitely having it out with them. And it just, as I said before, you can't, it wasn't the best time to catch him because we've just lost three nil. It's now inevitable that we're going to be relegated if it wasn't inevitable before, but you can't simultaneously say you can't print on the walls of Colney, ignore the noise.
00:19:37
Speaker
and then confront fans, especially when that guy has actually put quotes out of the newspapers or interviews before, saying that he wanted to punch supporters in the face. He was probably two steps away from potentially following through on that threat. Does it feel a little bit like the beginning of the end game? If it does, and I think this is a wider debate, and this is probably where
00:20:03
Speaker
the ownership comes into it but how long does that end game last and how does it affect Norwich because I've said this on this podcast I've said it several times the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of
00:20:14
Speaker
Not necessarily our owners, but the board itself has been implicit trust to the people running the club to run it, to run it as they see fit because they are football people and they have the expertise to do so. And when it's going really well, I, you know, Stuart Weber and Daniel Farker are ripping up the championship.
00:20:34
Speaker
That's amazing, and everyone's on board. But when it's not going so well, what is the level of scrutiny in the boardroom? What are the issues, what you said earlier, Edie, about key deliverables? What are the key deliverables that need to be achieved from the board's perspective to be able to go about their business without that level of scrutiny? And given the fact that probably the most important employee at the football club
00:21:03
Speaker
wife is now on that board, are we concerned about the level of scrutiny that might be offered because there's a clear conflict of interest?
00:21:17
Speaker
I was going to say, I mean, it's impossible for there not to be a conflict of interest. You know, we, you know, we're talking about people that we've met and know a bit. And I was, as I said at the time, hugely concerned when Ben Kensall left, because I saw from the business side of things, having worked with him,
00:21:41
Speaker
in a kind of, you know, I don't have that relationship anymore with the club. I've moved on from that job, you know, nearly two years ago. But having worked regularly as a kind of client-supplier relationship with the club and seeing the business workings of Carrow Road and what the culture was like and how it was lived there, I honestly, I think there is, I just think you can draw a direct
00:22:08
Speaker
line between his leadership being taken from the club, the business side of the club, and how badly they seem to know how to act in almost every situation now. And yes, he's got nothing to do with the fact that we're being relegated from what's on the pitch point of view because he wasn't involved in that. And yes, that's not why there's people shouting at Stuart Weber, if you see what it means, although
00:22:36
Speaker
you do wonder whether or not under Ben, whether or not the way that this whole campaign and the mountaineering element would have come out, wouldn't have been A, timed better, and B, the kind of holding our hands up to the reaction of it might have been time better. I was so worried when it was announced, well, there's not going to be a replacement. We're just sort of going to divvy things up between us. I thought, well, hang on. None of you have done that job.
00:23:06
Speaker
You know, that isn't the job you've been doing.
Organizational Changes and Leadership Critique
00:23:10
Speaker
And you've only got to take a cursory look at LinkedIn to see the steady stream of people that have left the club recently. You know, senior people, people who were
00:23:23
Speaker
involved in the day-to-day running of that club and there's still some fantastic people there in the commercial team who were there under Ben's leadership. There's some fantastic people in marketing who are performing their roles admirably in terms of what the club being an important part of the community
00:23:46
Speaker
making sure that from a digital point of view from Wi-Fi in the stadium, fan hub, fan engagement, football in the community, more corporate engagement with regards to partners of the club who bring lots of revenue to the club, that is all healthier than it's ever been. And that all happened and started under Ben by recruiting and training up this fantastic team who are now leading it really well.
00:24:17
Speaker
I just feel like the running of the club just feels like there's a vacuum there in terms of skill sets since Ben Kay went. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to stop us winning on the pitch. But the issue you've got is with Stuart Weber, I honestly get, you talk about personal brand ED.
00:24:39
Speaker
his personal brand is I don't give a fuck his personal brand is I know more than supporters his personal brand is is almost going back to that famous quote that annoyed us all a few years ago what do they expect down there that I almost feel like that is his
00:24:54
Speaker
that is his kind of approach to football supporters, you know, with the lazy extra bit of doing something for charity. So if people criticise you, they're criticising charity. And so therefore, they are the bad people. Well, yeah, well, I, you can, yeah, you can view it that way. But I put some put, I'm almost putting that that site, I mean, that was just, you know, that was just a PR Partridge own goal.
00:25:19
Speaker
He isn't he isn't a he must be a nightmare to try and PR in any way He must be an absolute nightmare because he we've we spent time with him and You know his
00:25:33
Speaker
he is locker room bants like that is that's his sense of humor but he is but i think on that mate he clearly knows when he goes into an interview he clearly knows what points he wants to articulate and he clearly knows what he's going to say so it should to an extent like it should be easier to pr him because it's not like he's doing an interview and he's going to say you know like he should have some idea but they're the things he wants to get across mate that's the difference my point is when when you want him to sit on something when you want him to quash at something that is his natural
00:26:02
Speaker
um his natural leaning towards something that's the thing that must be an absolute nightmare like you know in terms in terms of getting him to not come across as adversarial to the people who ultimately pay his wages you know this is the thing he he he trots out the line this football club is going to be here long after we are when it suits him yet he also then you almost can't have that view at the same time as saying i can leave anytime i want
00:26:32
Speaker
you just think what or which one what are we are you lucky to have this opportunity or are we are we the are we lucky to have you because we we feel like we i feel like on balance we are lucky to have had stuart weber at the football club because he and his scouting network and his contacts and um and likewise joey have done some fantastic things in terms of the product they put on the pitch the philosophy that they have
00:27:01
Speaker
either been part of creating or given Daniel the space to create with those few years. As far as I'm concerned, the same as Emi going to Villa, it doesn't take away anything from how brilliant Emi was before he left. Nothing's ever going to take away from Daniel and Stuart and that kind of three, two out of four year run that we had there. But now there's this massive, he was talking about this being the end game,
00:27:28
Speaker
I just feel the reason that I said yes immediately when he said, is this the end game is he doesn't seem the sort of person that thinks, hey, he's done anything wrong. You try telling him he shouldn't have done that. So he said so he will have done a picture of the scene immediately after he's bundled into that into that corridor back into the director's entrance. And do you think there is any contrition there? He said, no, I should have lamped him.
00:27:52
Speaker
Oh yeah, 100%. We're not getting a crime down from him. He's been suited. He's achieved amazing things, but he's not suited for the role that he's sitting in right now because he's a leader. He's a figurehead. How many businesses have had their CEOs completely just asked to leave immediately after saying something dreadful in the papers? It happens all the time.
00:28:13
Speaker
It's a business, it shouldn't be any different and I know he can bring us, he's brought us various bits of magic over the years but what's happened is anyone that can challenge him has been one by one disappeared and now there is nobody scrutinising him and now he's like basically a former cutting-edge rock star
Strategic Planning for the Club's Future
00:28:33
Speaker
in his mid-40s, has moved to Switzerland for tax reasons and is putting out dog shit albums. That's where he is now. Steel Shelton Steel, and there is no steel around him. So this is the thing, this is the other thing that I worry about for us as fans, people who, you know, whether or not we want to or not, find it very difficult not to adjust our mood based on how knowledge gets on.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I do not want the timing is awful because I want him as Motivated for this football club as he has ever been because we're about to need to really fucking nail the next set of transfer decisions
00:29:08
Speaker
Do you know what I mean? This is the time of year that Stewart Webber earns his money. Who are we going after? What is that shortlist? Which markets are we going to get better value in buying players than others? How are we strengthening and shaping this squad? Who are we keeping? Who are we getting rid of? I think we're getting rid of right now.
00:29:28
Speaker
The who we're getting rid of is really important. So I started thinking about this this morning when we knew we were going to podcast. And it was ultimately, I think for balance, we need to, and you've just touched upon it there, Tom, we need to say, like, how do we ultimately judge Stuart Weber's tenure? If he went tomorrow, like, how would we judge it? Does he leave us? And I think this has always been his measure.
00:29:47
Speaker
does he leave the football club in a better place than he found it? And you would undoubtedly right now say the infrastructure is better, actually the facilities at Kearney are better, the squad is arguably better than when he found it. The transfer criticism, the players that he signed, certainly in the Premier League, I think the criticism around that is 100% fair. But I think we have to consider
00:30:09
Speaker
his ability to extract value out of the players that we've got in the squad, i.e. when and who to sell them to. So if you look at, say, someone like Ben Godfrey, £25 million in the bank, is he ripping it up for Everton now? Absolutely not. Jamal Lewis, £13 million, definitely not ripping it up for Newcastle, not getting anywhere near the side. Both the Murphy twins, £20 million combined. And actually, right, Jacob's doing OK for Newcastle, but Josh, I think, you know, his career is really languishing.
00:30:38
Speaker
Lovely to see Jacob last week, by the way. Every corner in the fans, that was terrific. That's a prime example of someone who left at the right time for a good value to a good location and has basically, well, to be fair, his brother has as well, but he's obviously not as visible and just comported himself in the right way. Similar to James Madison when he came back. It is possible to leave one club and go to another and still be a good guy. But I think the point that I'm trying to make, and Marley Watkins actually, weirdly enough, leaving for a seven-figure fee when we've signed him on a free,
00:31:07
Speaker
Those kinds of deals demonstrate that Stuart Weber, when selling players, can be an absolute wizard. So I think we need to judge him on the whole body of work that he's undertaken. And that does include the failed Premier League recruitment, but that does include his ability to have, or his absolute ability to have put this football club on a much better financial footing than when he found it and have improved all the facilities around him.
00:31:35
Speaker
But this does feel like the end game, and it does feel like, right, so what do we do next? So Edie, what do we do next?
00:31:44
Speaker
Well, I think just to add to that, the levels of anger, which at various stages we're all feeling about things, come from the fact that we've just, the squandering of something so astonishing. It's that anger that comes from when you see someone that has so much promise and so much talent and, you know, achieves so much, then just basically,
00:32:08
Speaker
let it all run down the drain for shits and gigs. But... Are you talking about Lorny leaving the podcast? Yes.
00:32:18
Speaker
But in terms of what comes next, this is where it gets like, right now, it's entirely still possible. I don't know if anyone's seen any of the TV dramas about the Theranos and WeWork kind of incidents. It's entirely possible to go back to the board right now and go, sorry, Icarus, I flew too far.
00:32:39
Speaker
too high. I did loads of dumb stuff. I've ruined it. Sorry. I'm still not sure. I'm sorry. Series trying to work out whether or not you were being Icarus or you were talking too Icarus. Essentially, a bit of recognising of what's gone wrong and a bit of accountability. I think there's still a chance to reel this back in because everyone's angry because they want what was there before to come back. This mountain stuff is getting in people's
00:33:07
Speaker
big time cost of living crisis, terrible performance overall as we exit this season. It didn't have to be this way and it was so pointless. So I think it's entirely possible to just rein this stuff back in because everybody knows that the alternative is a bit tricky to find and locate and sort. And I think like for me, what I'd like to see is actually just a readjustment of this scenario.
00:33:32
Speaker
and the setup that has allowed this insanity to occur and just more regulation, more checks, more scrutiny and that involves the addition of people, like more people in the board perhaps that can actually challenge these dumb decisions. That's what I want to see next because in terms of like ripping it all up and burning it to the ground to start again,
00:33:57
Speaker
That's a very end of the last decade kind of vibe and we've seen how that goes politically as it's going to be fairly similar football early. So yeah. I'm really conscious that this is a listener question podcast and we've taken one listener question. So shall we have another which kind of feeds into this, which is from Stuart Wardrope and he asks,
00:34:19
Speaker
It's crystal ball time. Where do you think we will be as a club both on and off the pitch in 12 months time? Tom, do you want to start us off? Off the pitch in 12 months time, I don't think Stuart Webber will still be with us. I do think Zoe will. I think there will be a new CEO, COO, some kind of
00:34:46
Speaker
chairman style position who will come from football elsewhere, maybe someone from the lower leagues won't be that much lower than us because but I think on the pitch
00:34:59
Speaker
And I basically think that I can't see Stuart Webber ever climbing down from anything, so I think he'll basically continue to get cross, leave. He's got to climb down from the mountains, mate. Yeah, very good. So I think the soft pitch, I think things will calm down over the summer when it's quiet and we'll have a new kind of structure in place there. On the pitch,
00:35:22
Speaker
I don't think there's gonna be that much activity in terms of the squad. I think we're not gonna have that much of a different squad. I don't think you're gonna get much value for many of the players and the contract situation is that I think we probably can afford the couple that we want to hold on to.
00:35:38
Speaker
and the rest will probably will kick the can down the road and see how we are in January. So based on that squad and what I think is possible from that squad and the little glimpses just in the last few weeks, we've seen of 20 minutes here, 15 minutes there where we can play a bit of decent stuff. I can't see how this team can't be in and around the playoffs this time next year, but certainly I can't see a 99 point title winning campaign. Edie, what do you reckon?
00:36:10
Speaker
one word fallow this is this is our four field rotation system is completely gone to pot so this is our fallow period
00:36:21
Speaker
Is that it? Yeah, that's depressing. Yeah, next year. But the thing is, you do have to, springs have to coil in order to explode upwards. Like, you're gonna have to have some time with nothing. It's what they call in the therapy business wintering. It's where you just, you knuckle down, you take care of yourselves, you get your bearings back, and then you can start to rebuild. So it will be quite boring.
00:36:45
Speaker
but it needs to be boring because it's just been a bin fire for the last year and everyone needs to chill out and just, you know, get back into the routine of getting on the train, going to the match, watching the match, getting on the train, coming home and then thinking about other things at some stage in their day. Blimey, well that's cheered me right up. For what it's worth, I can't...
00:37:13
Speaker
I can't disagree with Tom and I like to disagree with Tom whenever possible but I do think that actually there will be a period of flux and change in the boardroom and within senior leadership roles and it'll be really interesting to see how that
Closing Remarks and Audience Engagement
00:37:27
Speaker
shakes out. I actually think in terms of I've watched a fair bit of championship football this season
00:37:34
Speaker
quality wise is an absolutely dreadful division. So, you know, that we should be punching at the top of that league. And if we're not, there is very serious questions to be asked very quickly. All right, let's have a couple more questions. Duncan Edwards, I really like this question. Although you'd have to have seen the Twitter clip to appreciate it.
00:37:55
Speaker
But he asks, if you were to burn your city shirt, what would be the accelerant of choice? And would you draw on it with crayon first? And this is obviously alluding to the video that came out on Twitter of a young man burning his own, burning his Norwich shirt. And he'd written on the back something like zero, the nut, you know, the obviously the numeric zero and then put like ambition and fight and all the rest of it, which I thought
00:38:22
Speaker
was interesting, probably the club shop wouldn't have allowed them to officially print that on a shirt. But also, he did it with this season's shirt, which he'd have either had to pay 50 quid for, or even if it's in the sale for now, like, you know, 25, something like that. So, Tom, I know you've got to go very soon because you have, you know, kind of actual work-related business to do, but yeah, what would be your accelerant of choice to burn a Norwich City shirt?
00:38:50
Speaker
I would go for a Molotov cocktail. Been watching a lot of Band of Brothers recently. I'd make a Molotov cocktail and be really performative about it. Drop it from a really great height, maybe off the side of St. Giles car park. And yeah, I would set up, get my best friend's drone on the case to sort of get it, put it together and then effectively probably put some drum and bass shit on it.
00:39:20
Speaker
Cool. Well, that's nice. Nice. Edie, before Tom goes, do you have anything very quickly that you'd like to add? Yeah, and I think I would essentially just flambé it in a French restaurant. Nice. Brandy. Yeah. Probably like some... Voila, I would say. Like that.
00:39:37
Speaker
So we've gone through some of your questions. We didn't get to all of them. Sorry that we only got time for a quickie, but we will see what the weekend brings us in terms of media availability, conversations, and see how things move on. And depending on whether or not we get any inkling as to how things might be progressing off the pitch, we may well...
00:39:57
Speaker
kick this debate on further next week but in the meantime we appreciate you listening we appreciate you getting involved on the old medias of social any extra questions as and when they occur to you feel free to just shout it over on the twitters and enjoy whatever you're going to do this weekend that doesn't involve football i think we might have got to to that point now mind how you go