Ashton and NorwichCityFootballC lub

Dissapointing is the word to sum up the whole saga from Ashton himself to NorwichCityFootball Club.

Firstly, thanks to Dean Ashton for the quality goals and on the most part - effort - he has given us over the past year, personally I'll never see Ashton as a Norwich City legend, neither a personal favourite despite his obvious talent, however I wish him all the best even though I'm disappointed at how desperate he seemed to want to leave.

We entered this month under the impression Dean Ashton did not want to move and the club didn't want to or even have to sell. 20 days and a couple of mediocre signings later, made from more borrowed money we found ourselves admitting ?7.25m is too good to turn down and the player seemingly moving quicker than he has done all season once the Premiership door was in sight.

Nigel Worthington and Neil Doncaster both have a lot to answer for. The situation we are in now is where we have our most vital player out in Africa with no suitable replacement and a host defeats on record without him to prove it and our star striker is sold with 10 days to go until the transfer window closes. The spin by the club on this is that we have got a 'great deal' as we delayed the transfer by 2 weeks, in my book this adds up to poor time planning and shocking negotiation skills and it's not really the 'silly money' I was thinking about.

Last season our attitude was a disgrace for the most part as we conceded defeat before just about every game. This season we've gone into every game thinking we've already won it. The attitude of the club in general this season has been at times fairly disgusting, when the going has got really tough for the players, board and management they have refused to listen to the fans and at times even blamed us.

The sale of Ashton to a club that isn't much bigger than ours and were in a league below last season hurts. It hurts because West Ham's approach to the Premier League and their ambition puts ours to shame. We have no divine right to win every game in this division but when we went down we did have sufficient resources to at least mount a challenge. The club I feel is failing to learn lessons, I just hope we get back to the Premier League quicker than we did last time, but I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers
Adam

Posted By: Brandonio, Jan 23, 12:05:05