- Olympic expert Dr. Paul Ford MBE arrives to solve City’s injury crisis.
- Lee Dunn steps up as Assistant Sporting Director to drive future recruitment.
- Andrew Blofeld earns a promotion as Dean Rastrick departs for Premier League.
While the transfer window doesn’t open until the summer, there have still been some personnel changes for Norwich City. What do these changes mean, and what impact will they have?
Let’s speculate.
The changes
As reported by Canaries.co.uk, Lee Dunn will become Assistant Sporting Director while looking for a new Head of Scouting.
Meanwhile Dr Paul Ford MBE is Norwich City’s new Performance Director. His background is impressive, including 15 years for the British Olympic Association.
Sporting Director Ben Knapper was especially excited for his hiring. In a statement he said “He is a vastly experienced high-performance leader, and his knowledge of elite athlete management across multiple sports will be invaluable for us going forwards.”
Development
The Norwich City development section has seen a shake-up with Head of Football Development Dean Rastrick departing to Everton while Andrew Blofeld upgrades to Head of Football Administration and Operations.
At present Rastrick’s replacement is yet to be announced.
Redundancies
In some unfortunate breaking news, according to the EDP, there have been some redundancies as part of the Norwich City restructuring process.
These cuts are across the media, communications and marketing teams as well as some other non-football aspects.
Some people may be cynical, suggesting that these elements are disposable.
First of all it is worth remembering that these are people losing their jobs.
While some may say this can increase efficiency there is the increased risk of less effective communication and increase the risk of mistakes.
As someone who has had personal experience with this what you may think is streamlining can lead to problems later on.
Context
What could this mean for Norwich City?
Given the extent of the squad’s injuries this year it would seem that Dr Ford’s appointment has been made with addressing fitness issues.
While sometimes hires outside of football can prove tricky (for example Brailsford at Manchester United or Sir Clive Woodward at Southampton) it makes sense to have someone used to working with Olympic level athletes addressing fitness concerns.
Elsewhere it seems to be more of a case of musical chairs as some people depart and others are promoted to fill the gap before new hires come in.
More to come?
It would be a stretch to call these new Norwich City management hires exciting but it would appear to indicate things are changing.
The word “transition” has been used a lot recently. Unfortunately more often than not this has been in a negative context as we go from one unfortunate hire to another.
The Clement era season 2
Given Clement’s immediate impact on Norwich City, there has been speculation that some board members (Knapper, Zoe Webber, etc) may be having some tough conversations in the summer.
That being said if there’s one thing that Clement seems to have achieved it has been in pulling people together and getting the best out of the resources available.
With any luck these new Norwich City hires will mark the start of a more consistent era as opposed to another transition.
“Tough decisions”
Unfortunately this desire for improvement is tempered with knowing how difficult the process of redundancy can be.
With the amount of employees cut yet to be confirmed this will be a big test of the Attanasio era.
High profile management can be a big benefit but it may be looked on less kindly with more redundancies and if there aren’t results that represent a return on these “tough decisions”.
