Money talks: so how do Norwich make themselves heard?

Sometime during the 48 hours leading up to last Saturday's must-win affair against Leeds United, something about Norwich City seemed to change. For the best part of the previous eighteen months, its supporters had been at loggerheads with the club, and even each other: with the togetherness and upward mobility which characterised the Canaries earlier in the decade collapsing amid a torrent of recrimination, in-fighting and bitter frustration at the decline from the Premiership to an apparent battle to avoid relegation to League One in less than two years. But late last week, a huge number of supporters appeared to have reached the collective realisation that there was no point in continuing to pontificate and harbour regrets: the club is where it is, and it's up to everybody connected with Norwich to accept it, unite, and look with confidence to the future.

This sudden shift in mindset was followed by an uplifting second half fightback and priceless three points against the fallen giants from Yorkshire, not to mention highly encouraging displays from debutants Mark Fotheringham and Simon Lappin. Now, this weekend's trip to Luton inspires a good deal of optimism, rather than fear; and given how positively the team played for much of its last two encounters with both Leeds and Wolverhampton Wanderers, the first seeds of recovery can at last be glimpsed. With Chris Brown, signed during the transfer window from Sunderland, and youngster Chris Martin also involved, Saturday may in effect have represented the de facto birth of Peter Grant's new Canaries: for it had always been woefully unfair to judge the manager merely on a squad of players inherited from his predecessor, and a very thin squad lacking in confidence and quality at that. But with Fotheringham a probable long-term replacement for Youssef Safri, and Lappin maybe ultimately intended to succeed Adam Drury at left back, the future is suddenly starting to take shape: and on the evidence of the second half against Leeds, it may hold considerably more promise than many - not least this observer - had allowed themselves to believe.

So in today's piece, what I want to do is, at least for now, draw a line under the many criticisms of the club and those running it articulated all too frequently over recent months, and simply pose the question: how, in the absence of a sugardaddy, with debts of around £20m, and the end of its parachute payments looming, can Norwich best hope to move back into contention for a place in English football's ever more monied top flight in the months and years ahead? Emphasising these harsh realities isn't intended as a criticism, incidentally: it is simply meant as a reminder of the enormous challenges faced by clubs either not in their first year of parachute payments such as Birmingham City or West Bromwich Albion, who have not recently been taken over by rich consortia such as Sunderland or Southampton, who have not had £25m ploughed into them by five new board members as with Derby County, or who lack the good fortune of having a wealthy benefactor on hand such as Reading, Fulham or Wigan Athletic: clubs who are considerably smaller than Norwich, yet have been able to hold their own in the top flight thanks at least in part to the largesse of Messrs Madejski, al Fayed and Whelan respectively.

Doubtless, many reading the above few lines will smile to themselves and conclude that this writer has become a sudden apologist for the Canary board: but not a bit of it. All I am trying to do is ask, in the absence of the advantages enjoyed by the various clubs above, how do City seek to redress the balance? It is not a sign of craven defeatism to acknowledge that, in English football 2007, money talks as never before: with those fortunate enough to be part of the gravy train enjoying a quality of life far removed from a number of clubs who, according to fanbase and tradition, should in theory have a far better chance of prospering. Never mind the chasm between the Premiership and Championship: merely the gap between clubs relegated only last season and those forced to cut back as a result of failing to make a quick return has become astonishing. Wolves and West Brom are historic rivals, with the Molineux club traditionally perceived as slightly bigger than the Baggies; but the on-field gulf between the two sides, illustrated by two 3-0 victories for Tony Mowbray's team already this season, is down essentially to finance. Wolves, relegated in 2004 after only one season, don't have it; West Brom, demoted last season and with three of the previous four years spent enjoying the riches of the top flight, very much do.

Indeed, while the Championship has always been depicted as topsy-turvy and immensely unpredictable, the simple fact is that four of the last six clubs to be relegated are in strong contention for a swift return; and an exception, Derby, benefited from the cash injection mentioned above. Moreover, with even the side finishing 20th in the top flight receiving £27m next season, the position can surely only become worse: with a group of clubs effectively between the Premiership and mid-table morass of the second flight beginning to detach themselves, perhaps for many years to come.

This is the context within which Grant and his board have to operate: so what should they do? Build slowly, focusing on cheap acquisitions from Scotland and placing a particular emphasis on unearthing further young tyros such as Martin; or, once the club has adjusted to the loss of parachute payments, gamble just as it did earlier in the decade? The 2001/2 season was a wonderfully evocative and memorable one: for many, it was the year when Norwich at last woke up from the hangover of Munich, Milan and relegation, and developed a whole new twenty-first century identity: in essence, a huge number of supporters rediscovered their pride in their club.

But an awful lot of nonsense was written by journalists throughout that centenary campaign, and uttered by the manager, players and board members too: so the theory went, Norwich were that season's surprise package, expected pre-season to be threatened by relegation rather than challenge at the top of the division, and who unlike big spenders such as Manchester City, Wolves or Birmingham, were operating under no pressure, and with literally nothing to lose. Take this startling quote from Nigel Worthington, uttered on the eve of the play-off final, a contest which had become the richest in world football, with a difference of at least £20m on offer between winner and loser. According to the manager, in a contest which presented a fantastic opportunity for his side, led to such an exodus from Norfolk that the Milennium Stadium at times appeared to be drenched in swathes of custard, and offered a long-overdue ticket back to the promised land, "there (was) nothing at stake at all for us in this game".

There's kidology, and then there are self-fulfilling prophecies, and Worthington's comments fell very much into the latter camp. For while Norwich played with inventiveness, pride and passion for so much of the final, what was noticeable was what happened when they took the lead in extra time. All of a sudden, the players seemed to realise there was something at stake: tens of millions of pounds in fact, and in a panic, fell back and fatally began playing for time with almost half an hour of the match still to run. Birmingham's equaliser was a virtual inevitability; and with all Norwich's momentum lost, so arguably was defeat in the unutterably cruel penalty shootout which followed.

But the curious thing was just why Norwich had portrayed themselves as such plucky, overachieving underdogs in the first place. For while Worthington undoubtedly represented the right fit for the club, and brought with him a practical common sense which was both refreshing and served him immensely well in his dealings with the board, actually, the relative success of 2001/2 was not some minor footballing fairytale: it was the direct consequence of a real gamble taken by the board in the months following Worthington's arrival. With supporters' faith in the directors at a desperately low ebb following the debacle of Bryan Hamilton's ignominious spell in charge, and the club apparently drifting bit by bit towards the-then Second Division, Worthington was effectively able to hold a metaphorical barrel to the board's head: the squad I have inherited is woefully inadequate, and needs real, significant investment if I am to turn the club's fortunes around, and you are to recapture the fans' confidence.

ITV Digital's deal announced with the Football League gave the board the impetus it needed: and the key was not just the £2.3m spent in transfer fees alone over the next year or so, but the quality of player the club was suddenly able to attract. Drury, Mark Rivers and Clint Easton were all individuals in their early to mid-twenties who arrived with strong reputations, and were expected to improve and enjoy their best years in Norfolk; Gary Holt was already proven, and provided crucial bite and drive in the middle; and Marc Libbra and David Nielsen offered something different, and on their day, something a little special up front. All came from a category of player the club had been priced out of competing for since its financial collapse of 1996: and signalled a total change in strategy. In reality, the bare minimum which should have been expected from such a squad (which already boasted such reliable figures as Craig Fleming, Malky Mackay and Iwan Roberts) was a place in the top six: perhaps even a strong challenge for automatic promotion.

But no club of Norwich's means can afford to commit to such a gamble without real success being quickly forthcoming. The Canaries' conduct throughout that campaign was bizarre: in reality, it could scarcely afford not to win promotion, and that was even before the collapse of ITV Digital in March 2002 threatened a disastrous shortfall between what had been spent and what was likely to be recouped. Perhaps it provided the impetus for the late surge into the top six which resulted; but it still didn't stop the manager's continued insistence that anything beyond real progress on the previous year's miseries could be treated merely as a bonus, rather than something which should have been the demand all along.

There is bound to be a temptation among many supporters to compare where the club is now to where it was in 2001: but if those at the helm do opt to gamble again at some stage in the years ahead, several lessons from the experience of earlier in the decade should be borne in mind. Above all, it needs to be far tougher and more demanding in its whole approach: such investment doesn't just make success a possibility, but actually renders it a requirement. Norwich's ultimate failure - albeit by the narrowest possible margin - to be promoted meant, thanks especially to the ITV Digital fallout, it had to gamble still more: failure to go up within three seasons of its policy shift to one of speculating to accumulate would have had horrendous long-term consequences.

And sadly, although the move in 2003/4 into signing an even higher bracket of player, whereby Darren Huckerby, Matthias Svensson and Leon McKenzie were recruited permanently, and Peter Crouch and Kevin Harper arrived on loan, all but guaranteed promotion, the board had little option other than to direct the revenue provided by a year in the Premiership towards covering the losses resulting from the initial spending spree which began three years earlier. Supporters assumed that the arrival back in the land of milk and honey meant that all the club's economic woes had been solved: actually, the hole dug was so deep that only by remaining in the top flight for a number of years could it have really transformed its status in the game.

That was the impact of defeat in the play-off final: it dramatically narrowed the club's window of opportunity, and also prevented it from significantly profiting from life in the Premiership, as opposed to just bailing itself out of its worst problems. The gamble taken by the board demanded immediate success: and in its absence, it has to be said that (here's the second lesson to be drawn) it ultimately failed. Instead of consolidating in the top flight in 2002/3, coming down and bouncing straight back up with a squad expecting to survive comfortably, Norwich's belated return to the big time was with a squad which could have stayed up, but was considerable odds against doing so. The best chance had already gone: and when relegation did follow, the club's debts remained so significant that much of its parachute payments had to be put towards safeguarding the future, rather than creating a team likely to go staight back up again.

Hence the stagnation and discord which has followed, among a fanbase which had had a taste of success, and not unreasonably expected it to continue. Charges of 'lack of ambition' and 'mismanagement' have frequently been made: but the economic realities of the modern game mitigate hugely against a club like Norwich transforming its status back into an established Premiership outfit. Yet with all that said, the final, paradoxical lesson is this: the only way in which the Canaries' fortunes began to improve again in the first place was by gambling its future in the hope of success. Without it, the fans would have become ever more disenchanted, attendances would surely have fallen creating a knock-on commercial impact, and City's slide would have been bound to continue.

Such, therefore, is the incredibly fraught, delicate balancing act which the board has to perform. It could now opt to live very much within its means - but in the absence of the kind of miracle performed by Adrian Boothroyd at Watford last year, that will almost certainly condemn it to mid-table mediocrity or worse for as far as the eye can see; and of course, will inevitably result in the fans becoming more and more angry, and at least some drifting away in disillusionment. Grant's initial signings are certainly encouraging: but he is unable to operate in the kind of market inhabited by the club between 2001 and 2004, and as a result, it is wholly unrealistic to expect a similar surge back into contention.

Brave words have already been expressed by Chairman, Roger Munby, about the need to be "better, more clever and more competitive" in terms of how the club maximises its off-field revenue, and certainly, the progress in this area over the past seven or eight years has proved surprising at times: the club has grown considerably off the pitch. But it is still extremely difficult to envisage how the sort of income needed to catapult City back towards the top of the division can be raised; and in its absence, barring a freakishly talented group of youngsters being developed through the academy, the same dilemma is likely to remain. The club cannot afford to gamble its future again; but such are the growing iniquities even within this division, let alone the Premiership, in many ways it cannot afford not to. How those in charge go about attempting to square this fiendishly challenging circle will provide the key to what progress and success can realistically be hoped for in the months and years ahead: whether, indeed, what happened on Saturday represented the birth of a brave new world, or merely, an all-too-frustrating false dawn.