PM Henclrikus

The reasons I would say that transfer policy has been a “mess” at Norwich over the last few years is that there has been an almost seasonal change in personnel and philosophy meaning that there has been almost a constant state of instability.

Both Alex Neil and Webber are on record as saying that there was effectively no structure in place when they arrived. Furthermore, McNally’s sudden departure meant that we had to use agents to represent us in the Summer of 2016 and didn’t have a particularly productive summer, particularly in off-loading high earners (not easy I know).

Over the last few years there have been several heads of recruitment Ewan Chester, Barry Simmonds, Lee Darnborough as well as chopping and changing of structure (remember the “football board”?). Over that time we have also pursued different recruitment strategies, including the very unsuccessful “pursue players that are out of our league” strategy where we went for players like the Quag, Toivenen and Alderwerald. Contrastingly the ‘find promising youngsters’ strategy meant we picked up Maddison and Godfrey.

I am actually in the 'its hard to sign players' camp and I don’t expect every player to be a success but we do need a decent scouting system and to buy players that are needed in the squad and system not because they are available (Hello Ricky!). In fact, bearing in mind our business model, we actually should be trying to get a competitive advantage through having the best recruitment system, as we can’t just throw money around.

And the fact that other squads are unbalanced is not really a justification for the lack of balance in ours!

Posted By: Knitted Jesus, Nov 3, 10:59:11