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Norwich (H) 9/8 Premier League


Bjornebye
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I think Norwich and also maybe Sheffield United are liable to surprise a few teams because they play pretty good football. Or maybe Premier League teams will have too much quality and it won't matter, always hard to tell.

 

I'd be careful here, though, I have a feeling they will create chances and not just sit back and hope for a counter somewhere. 

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6 hours ago, 3 Stacks said:

I think Norwich and also maybe Sheffield United are liable to surprise a few teams because they play pretty good football. Or maybe Premier League teams will have too much quality and it won't matter, always hard to tell.

 

I'd be careful here, though, I have a feeling they will create chances and not just sit back and hope for a counter somewhere

That's fine, we don't want teams to sit back.  I hope they try to play good football and leave us plenty of space to play great football.

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Just a thought, it’s looking a bit doubtful I’ll be getting a ticket for the Southampton game down here , used to get them sent down but something happened so was hoping maybe I could get some info on how to go about it , can get one I think but in their end whatever, but I’d give that a miss .if anyone’s going have a bevvy after the game that would be good if staying overnight, possibly a cheap sound room in my local, just a thought as it’s a long hike.

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Hadn't realised Norwich's DOF was a guy who worked here during the Rafa / Owl / Kenny years. Article covering that period and some of the players to watch out for on Friday night.

 

Stuart Webber was watching The Damned United at the cinema when he looked through the darkness and down at the message on the screen of his phone, one which could have changed the direction of his career significantly had it not been for the goodwill of the person delivering bad news.

 

Malcolm Elias, a leader at Liverpool’s academy, had tried to take Webber from Wrexham to work in youth recruitment. The text from Elias, read something along the lines of: “Hi Stuart, need to speak to you to tomorrow. Don’t worry…”

 

Naturally, Webber started worrying anyway and his fears intensified when he returned home later that evening in 2009 and saw a Sky Sports News story about big changes at Liverpool’s academy, with Frank McParland set to return to the club and assess its supposed failures.

 

Webber had been involved in youth coaching at Wrexham since he was just sixteen. He had grown up in Aberystwyth, a town in Wales so far away from any professional clubs the idea he might one day end up involved in elite football seemed ridiculous even to him, and this explains why his first career decision was to enrol at a horticultural college.

 

Though he loved his job at the Racecourse Ground, discussions about the possibilities at Liverpool had opened his eyes and the whiplash of being told the move was off stung.

 

Yet something else happened. Elias, who since leaving Liverpool has been embedded in Fulham’s youth system, had the decency to introduce Webber to McParland, even though he knew he was heading out of the door. Considering Elias’s predicament, he did not in theory need to worry about a 24-year-old kid from Wrexham who nobody else at the club had ever heard of. Fortunately, Webber and McParland hit it off and a renewed offer came back.

 

At Liverpool, Webber was exposed to some of the brilliant but also the grim realities at the highest level of football. Not long after his arrival, Rafael Benitez was sacked as manager. Roy Hodgson came in, then was sacked by a new ownership group after the old one left the club in the relegation zone and on the brink of administration. Fenway Sports Group were willing to implement different structures and embrace new ideas. That meant the hiring of Damien Comolli as the club’s first director of football. He brought with him from Tottenham a data analyst specialist. Michael Edwards became Liverpool’s first head of performance.

 

By 2011, Kenny Dalglish had returned as first-team manager. He had previously been an ambassador at the academy, where he had met Webber, who also had a strong professional understanding with Comolli – at least until the Frenchman was fired. Comolli had been the operator who taught Webber the most about planning, making him realise about the pool of talent globally, that there were good players to be found everywhere – you just had to find them.

 

Subconsciously, Webber was learning from everything he saw. McParland taught him about aggression: if you want to get a deal done for a player, you have to go to the player’s house and not leave until it’s signed and sealed. This helped him bring Raheem Sterling to Liverpool from Queens Park Rangers, and Jordon Ibe from Wycombe Wanderers; two teenagers who were signed for around £750,000 and sold for more than £65 million.

 

At Wrexham, Webber had absorbed experience from Joey Jones, the legendary Liverpool left back, as well as Denis Smith, the Staffordshire-born manager with 1,000 league games behind him. Pep Segura had worked closely with Lionel Messi as he grew up at Barcelona. At Liverpool, Segura showed Webber how to shape teams, build squads and, he felt most importantly, implement philosophy. Webber recognised he was surrounded by people who made him realise he actually knew very little about football.

 

Despite reaching two cup finals and winning one in 2011-12, the mood at Liverpool was not healthy. The players liked Dalglish, but some foreign stars struggled to understand him and he was not always there, leaving much of the coaching to Steve Clarke. Performance in the league had fallen way below the new owners’ expectations and by the time Dalglish was sacked at the end of the campaign, Webber was already fearing for his own position, given his unusual background and with so many of his allies having left.

 

He might wonder what would have happened had he stayed just a little longer.

 

Soon, FSG had dispatched one of its senior partners, Mike Gordon, to Merseyside, where Edwards impressed him with his ability to interpret statistics. Edwards, who was educated at the University of Sheffield, was deemed by some staff members on his arrival at Liverpool as being attached to his computer and too academic with his assessments, reluctant to acknowledge the human elements that can also define outcomes in football. Yet Gordon believed in his methods and after becoming the leading force on Liverpool’s infamous transfer committee, he was finally appointed to the role of sporting director in 2016. He has since clawed back respect among his doubters, particularly for the player sales he has negotiated, often bringing in extraordinary fees for modest talent.

 

Much has been written about Edwards but less is known of Webber, who has since worked for Queens Park Rangers and Wolverhampton Wanderers, before taking key roles at two other Championship clubs, helping guide each towards unlikely promotions.

 

It says much about his drive and vision that he had the courage to leave Huddersfield Town for Norwich City just a few months before The Terriers reached the Premier League in 2017. Norwich were struggling financially but he considered them to be a bigger club, where the chance of achieving sustainability was greater despite the odds being against him when he arrived. Norwich needed to sell big to be able to buy small.

 

While he has since recommended the refurbishment of the training ground and improved the range of facilities, Webber understands they are judged primarily by who they sell, who they sign, and sometimes who they choose not to sign.

 

Norwich’s rise to the Premier League owes much to the goalscoring exploits of one player. The Canaries achieved promotion in May having created a similar number of scoring chances to the season before, when their conversion rate was relegation standard, below even Sunderland and Burton Albion. In simple terms, Webber recognised that if the Norwich team could just sharpen up in front of goal, they would enjoy a much better campaign.

 

The difference proved to be Teemu Pukki, the Finnish forward Webber recommended when he was head of scouting at Wolves under the management of Stale Solbakken. In the January transfer window of 2013, Solbakken was sacked and replaced by Dean Saunders, the former Wales international whose managerial career had taken him quickly between three jobs including Wrexham and Doncaster Rovers. Saunders had never heard of the player, who instead signed for Celtic five months later, as Wolves tumbled out of the Championship and into League One.

 

Though Pukki’s goals-per-minute ratio at Celtic was not bad, he was largely used as a substitute in Glasgow, where he slipped into bad dietary habits and left after just a season.

 

Webber followed his progress at Brondby in Denmark where he scored 69 goals in 161 games. His contract was up in the summer of 2018 and Norwich did not have the money to spend on a new striker they desperately needed. It was agreed between Webber, manager Daniel Farke and Kieran Scott, head of recruitment, that Norwich could not really lose: Pukki was 28 years old and in his peak years, he was not on a huge salary across three years. In a worst-case scenario, he could always go back to Denmark if it did not work out.

 

Webber did not envisage him scoring so many goals but he did anticipate he would be able to convert from the type of chances Norwich had been creating. This was a team that rarely delivered crosses, instead posing an attacking threat through counter-attacks and quick bursts of combination play on the edge of the opponent’s eighteen-yard box. Of the 29 goals Pukki registered in the Championship last season, just one – away at Stoke – was a header.

Norwich sold James Maddison to Leicester for a record £21 million in the summer of 2018, with Josh Murphy also leaving for Cardiff, but their sporting director was not concerned that losing two-star players would come at the expense of wider development.

 

For a start, Norwich’s pressing without the pair improved dramatically. It was never something deemed a strength of Maddison’s, while it was also felt Murphy didn’t always appreciate when or where to run. This meant the 2017-18 combination of Oliveira, Maddison and Murphy offered a disjointed press, which resulted in Norwich being unable to get as high up the pitch as frequently as they would have liked.

 

Pukki’s signing was an altogether different process to that of Argentine Emi Buendia, who also arrived last summer. A deal for the attacking midfielder was secured in January 2018 ahead of the 2018-19 season, meaning Webber already knew he had a replacement for Maddison before the Englishman left. Whereas Pukki’s progress had been monitored by Webber for some time, Buendia was identified by two data specialists on Norwich’s recruitment staff.

Buendia’s name was flagged due to the number of clear goalscoring chances he was creating for a struggling team. He was aggressive, only 5ft7 tall, and considered a little overweight, but it was realised if he had a proper centre forward in front of him, he might be viewed somewhat differently.

 

Buendia was owned by Getafe but on loan at Cultural Leonesa, a club that ultimately could not avoid relegation to the third tier of Spanish football in the period he was assessed by Norwich. Webber can take no credit for the discovery of the player, but what he did do was get straight on the phone to Colin Pomford, the Madrid-based solicitor and agent who in 2004 helped bring Rafael Benitez to Liverpool.

 

Pomford made some calls of his own, and found that Getafe had financial problems, increasing the possibility of a deal. Webber flew to Madrid the next day and due to squabbles between officials from Getafe, left the room with no agreement in place. He would still meet Buendia – in a hotel close to Barajas airport at 1am – and the player left more convinced than ever that he wanted to join Norwich. The player’s English was limited, but Webber’s Spanish, though not perfect, was smooth enough for him to be able to talk enthusiastically about the opportunities that were waiting for Buendia at Carrow Road.

 

Inside seven days, Webber was back in Madrid and signing contracts thanks to persistence from Pomford. In the same period, he also sanctioned the sale of Alex Pritchard to Huddersfield Town, a player Farke certainly did not want to lose, even if the player was desperate to go.

 

Buendia’s loan at Cultural did not involve a break clause and this meant Webber had to reassure Farke he had an upgrade in pace for the summer – someone who could compensate for the losses of both Pritchard and Maddison. Though he sensed Farke did not really believe him, Webber’s guarantee was not an empty promise. It would ultimately help Buendia that he did not arrive in the English winter, in January when games come at players quickly and new signings are judged as saviours with expectations sometimes unrealistic.

 

Buendia would play 38 games and score eight goals in the Championship. While Webber thinks he’s the most talented player he’s ever signed in terms of technical and tactical ability, both he and Farke agree that if he continues to flourish in the Premier League, it is inevitable that he’ll play for Argentina and potentially earn the club a record fee which far exceeds the amount Maddison went for.

 

Smart scouts had heard of Buendia before he went to Norwich but none of them had pushed hard enough to sign him. The midfielder feels a degree of loyalty to Norwich for giving him a chance when others would not.

His agent, who previously represented Juan Sebastian Veron and Pablo Aimar, acknowledges that his client still has much to prove,  but if he quickly shines in the Premier League, the exposure could trampoline interest in him beyond the middle-ranking clubs and bring offers from the elite levels.

 

Still, despite all that, the most important signing Webber has made is Farke, the coach whose one-to-one sessions with players like Cuban winger Onel Hernandez have helped bring huge individual improvements in terms of numbers. Webber was close to signing Hernandez for Huddersfield, having first met him in the early hours of a cold winter’s morning in Wolfsburg where he was most struck by the player’s positivity. When he first arrived at Norwich, Hernandez struggled to deliver assists or goals, but his end product has since dramatically improved thanks to hours spent on the training ground with Farke.

 

Norwich have 10 players with backgrounds in the Bundesliga, and Farke being there helps Webber enormously. He was able to use his contacts and capitalise on the development of Germany’s first-choice under-21 goalkeeper Alexander Nubel to sign Ralf Fahrmann on loan from Schalke this summer. Farke was convinced Fahrmann, who has been Schalke’s first-choice No 1 since joining from Eintracht Frankfurt in 2011, wasn’t going to play because of Nubel’s presence and he encouraged Webber to ring David Wagner. Webber was able to discuss terms quickly with Wagner who sanctioned Fahrmann’s year-long loan inside 24 hours.

 

Months before Norwich won the Championship, the conversations started between Webber and Farke about the best way forward: should Norwich invest in lots of new signings, or instead try to ensure they kept the players that had taken them to the top flight in the first place by tying them to longer contracts?

 

Webber identified that other clubs competing in the Premier League following an unexpected promotion from the Championship have often found themselves caught in a no-man’s land where they end up doing neither – perhaps spending £30 million on two or three players who don’t necessarily guarantee the improvement of the collective.

Webber challenges accepted notions in sport. While he and Farke agree that the highly-rated Jamal Lewis (aged 21), Ben Godfrey (21) and Max Aarons (19) have the athleticism to thrive in the Premier League, they also believe their naivety will sometimes help Norwich. In the quest to find Premier League experience, promoted clubs have often fallen into the trap of signing players that have recently suffered relegation because they are the only affordable and attainable options. This involves Premier League experience of losing every week and being scared of going to places like Anfield.

 

Webber was told last season that Norwich needed players who understood what it was like to go to Rotherham on a cold Tuesday night. He asked the question, “do we really want someone arriving in Rotherham who thinks, ‘this is going to be really hard tonight?’ Or do we want someone who thinks, ‘I just don’t care about all that stuff…’?”

The players Norwich could get with Premier League experience tended to be the ones with bad Premier League experience, players who have lost more games than they’ve won – to Webber, it suggested that maybe they weren’t actually good enough to play at the highest level. He’d prefer players who can perform on Norwich’s own terms. Their first major test will be at Liverpool, the club which sent Webber’s own career spinning in a new direction.

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3 hours ago, easytoslip said:

Just a thought, it’s looking a bit doubtful I’ll be getting a ticket for the Southampton game down here , used to get them sent down but something happened so was hoping maybe I could get some info on how to go about it , can get one I think but in their end whatever, but I’d give that a miss .if anyone’s going have a bevvy after the game that would be good if staying overnight, possibly a cheap sound room in my local, just a thought as it’s a long hike.

 

I like the sound of that.

 

Any chance I can be bound and gagged and try, and I really will, to call you daddy through my ballcock? 

 

Do I get to be on the ten o’clock news after, or do you dissolve my body in a vat of acid, meaning my family never get closure?

 

Got to consider these things.

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