Trying to catch up with the BBS this morning after a slight gap, it strikes me that this football management lark is a right doddle. Let’s see if I’ve got it right.

All the gaffer has to do is: offer Given enough extra bunce to stay (should have been sorted out last week); offer Distin enough extra bunce to stay (should have been sorted out before his agent started stirring it with Man City); offer Caldwell enough extra bunce to stay (should have been sorted out before he started on about Hibs/Coventry/wherever); make some promises to the senior squad about maintaining their differentials with all of the above (not to worry, it’ll be a year or two before those chickens come home to roost); line up one central defender, one left back, one or two midfielders and an extra front man (all to have serious European credibility and when their agents start touting alternative offers they’ve had, must meet their wage demands without delay as well). Under no circumstances worry about whether all of this will be affordable, or how much in the red we’ll be if we fail to qualify for Europe next season or when the Sky money is cut back.

Wonder what he does after lunch?

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

Answers

All P*ss-easy?

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

I know exactly what you mean DrB. We seem to actually be doing a half decent job on the transfer front. Hopefully money saved from not being held to ransom on player salaries will be used wisely, rather than as dividends to DH.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

....well, it ain't exactly rocket-science.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

Well, I think my point is that in a way rocket science is exactly what it is!

Too obscurely put perhaps, but I was trying to suggest that the job involves quite a difficult prioritising of all of these different demands, because we simply can't afford all of them against a limited budget. Every time we give in to a demand, whether it be Given, Distin, Caldwell or anybody else, we limit the pot available to pay the wages for our summer signings. I have a strange feeling that the people who are now shouting for these demands to be met sharpish will be the same ones claiming incompetent management in the summer because some other club gazumps the contract negotiations of our favourite would-be purchase.

OK, why is that remotely like rocket science? There's an SF short story called "The Cold Equations" that describes the plight of a young stowaway on a shuttle who just wants to see her brother again (yeah I know, cutesome or what, but it reads better, honest). The point is that the shuttle trajectory has been calculated on the weight not including a stowaway, and the thing is bound to crash unless she is ejected. The lives of the base crew (including the brother) depend on the supplies getting through, and she is a goner anyway, so out she has to go.

Well, you see what I mean. The cold equations are to do with solvency rather than orbital trajectories, but does it never strike you that someday an ambitious club is going to get this wrong, and therefore crash and burn?

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

I suppose the really impossible task is to keep us lot happy. I dunno, we finish fourth and qualify for Europe when most of us would have been pleased with more modest progress (notice I didn't say we'd settle for it) before the season kicked off. But looking at the relevant threads this morning, I saw:

"It's a bloody disgrace"

"Verbal diarrhoea ... doomed to failure"

"[NUFC] need to get their heads from up their @rses"

"management incompetence"

and ""flippin dog's breakfast".

It seems to me that the only way for "management" to have avoided this characteristically well expressed bile would have been to give in to at least three sets of wage demands before they went public. That means that the players have got one hell of a bargaining tool, and surely accelerates the day when one of those ambitious clubs goes bust. I want us to be successful as much as anybody (and be ambitious), but I certainly don't want the club to bankrupt itself trying.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

Bill - several, if not most of the quotes you have clearly taken objection to originated with me. So, as I had suspected from your initial post, it is my criticism of management that you clearly dislike.

I can certainly understand why the cumulative impact of my comments on numerous issues, could lead someone to think Management could never do anything right in my eyes. However, I would like to think this is largely because of the wide range of issues I comment on. I try to view every issue on it's own merits, and will always try to give credit where credit is due - I'm not certain this is always noted.

As I think you know, I am a very keen fan of NUFC and enjoy discussing any and all issues relating to the Club. I want us to be successful, indeed I want us to be the very best. I passionately believe that highly competant, professional management is an essential ingredient in becoming the very best. I have no idea how superior or inferior our Management are as compared to other clubs and frankly I don't really care.

Because of my professional background I can offer a slightly different, if often critical, view. I actually try quite hard to create wider interest on this bbs and to keep things lively. However, based on several recent comments, I'm beginnning to wonder whether I may be swimming against the tide. Perhaps my irreverance is going against the grain with the majority of contributors who may view my criticism as herecy. Perhaps this really is purely a "fan forum" rather than an "NUFC forum" as I have viewed it to date.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

Chill, Clarky. You're views are respected. They may not be agreed with everywhere but that doesn't mean they ain't valued.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2002

Whoa, sorry there Clarky.

We've all got a legitimate point of view: yours tends to be towards the management-critical end of the spectrum, mine tends to be more on the lines of it being a difficult job to keep everybody happy.

Just thought I'd put a different spin on the line that had predominated until then. And please don't say that spinning is my professional line. I'd only be annoyed... there's more than a grain of truth in it! ;-))

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002

I think what DrB says is very valid. If it comes across as criticism, Clarky, it shows that we are listening to what you are saying, and personally I find your criticism of NUFC disquietening precisely because I value your opinion. I think what DrB is saying is more general than personal though, as all fans like to winge as it's the easiset stance. A good CEO needs to be unpopular at times.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002

If I can take this thread off at a slight tangent, as opposed to hijacking it, what I have picked up over the last few weeks is a growing sensitivity from a number of BBS'rs that their strongly held views are not universally endorsed, and therefore not generally welcome. Not true. It is becoming relatively easy to identify the individual posting before seeing the name, and equally easy to guess how those posters might react to a contra view - Jonno, Macbeth, PB, Softie, Gav, Clarky, Screacher (well, maybe not, he's a wild card), etc. But that doesn't mean that views shouldn't be expressed. Most are well considered. Offence is rarely taken (where is Rik these days?) and soon forgotten. The politically correct thread is a case in point. As it happens I agree with Dr.Bill (who as some of you know is my long lost identical twin brother) on the subject of fees/wages, although I was pleased to see that we had kept Dyer. Very good article in the Times today that says some players (Beckam) are worth there wedge because they put bums on seats, others (Anelka) aren't, and I feel that way with Dyer compared to Distin. The article also praises Houllier for pushing back on wage demands (Anelka), but methinks that's a lot easier when you already have a team staffed to the gunnels with good players, less so when you are trying to build said team. So keep on saying what you think guys. Some of us might even applaud you.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002

Thanks for the feedback fellas. I'm rather relieved.

I usually find this an invigorating place for debate on all the issues affecting NUFC, and try very hard to be objective even though this is often critical of management. I'm so pleased that other contributors I respect agree that we should openly express our views without holding back in the interests of keeping this place 'lively'.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002

I always enjoy your posts Clarky (The Rottweiler) if you went with the flow then we'd all just get washed away into a sea of banality. It's exactly because you are such a knowledgeable guy that your opinions attract such strong responses. Now that the back patting is over, how would you manage the club - based on our small knowledge of the financial situation? Would you pay Dyer 60k?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002

You couldn't give me an easy one - just to be getting on with, could you swifty? (!!)

First, let me say that this must have been an extremely difficult question for the Club, given the projected financial situation in football.

In all honesty, I don't believe KD is worth £60k pw - in part because of his injury record, which makes a 4 year contract at £60k pw very, very risky.

However, he is such a high profile player - a franchise player in US parlance - that I don't think the club had any option but to secure this contractual agreement with him at the best price they could possibly negotiate. In the post-Bosman situation, I believe they simply had to protect his asset value, that is his future resale value, by extending his contract.

The only way this could blow up in their faces is if he keeps getting injured - always a possibility - so I hope they have him heavily insured. I guess the other way it could backfire on the club is if the entire financial structure of the game goes to cr@p, and transfer values collapse.

On balance, I believe I would have done what they have done.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2002