In their wake comes a Twitter/email/message board campaign to try to persuade this man, who’s got his hands full with expensive fast-moving machines, and who’s barely heard of the club and has never, ever been to Carrow Road, to dip into his back pocket.

Fernandes, diplomatically, says never say never. Makes time in his schedule to go to a game (Southend). Has informal talks with the Carrow Road hierarchy.

But diplomacy can last only so long. Eventually he rules out investment. We are left to be consoled by the possible prospect of unspecified corporate synergies.

On the face of it, a cyber soufflé. But two questions remain. Firstly, how privately hopeful of investment from Fernandes was the club? Secondly, has the courtship only failed for a while? Has the Malaysian's long-term interest been piqued?

2.. KOSICHGATE

A subject reopened at one’s peril, given the amount of heat (as opposed to light) generated last time, especially once Joe Kosich made the mistake of getting into a slanging match with fans, which greatly confused the issue. It added to the impression already put about by the club that Kosich was not to be taken seriously. Which might or might not be true but was actually entirely irrelevant. The only question here was not Kosich's credibility, but the credibility of any investment interest he might have sparked through writing about Norwich City. And the latter was not governed by the former. This very much needs to be understood.

Briefly, Kosich is an agent or middleman, who works to bring football clubs and investors together, and is best-known over here for the stunt of putting Tranmere Rovers up for sale on eBay. It should be realised that although the Tranmere owner was angered by the stunt he kept Kosich on.

Back in February Kosich wrote a blog for the US website BigSoccer in which he analysed Norwich City and strongly backed it as an investment. Out of all the clubs in the world he picked the Canaries. On the back of that “buy” recommendation he said he got some tentative initial inquiries from possible investors.

 This prompted a story in the EDP.

All that follows is on the assumption there were such indeed expressions of interest; given the secretive nature of this kind of business it is simply impossible to check that. However it would be very surprising if the blog had not stirred some interest among the many wealthy American sports fans, and there was no suggestion from David McNally, when he gave a Radio Norfolk interview in the wake of the story, that Kosich had invented the interest, only that he had exaggerated it. Actually Kosich had downplayed it, and here we come to one of the problems associated with Kosichgate, which was that many fans relied on that interview for an accurate view of the situation. Unfortunately McNally’s comments bore very little relation to the story that was published and were mainly either wrong or illogical, whether he was criticising the story or Kosich.

It would be long-winded to itemise the mistakes. Simplest to quote a Pink ‘Un message board contributor: “I put my hands up to committing the cardinal sin of not reading the article first! Having now done so, I would agree that the article is fine and that Mr. Kosich doesn't appear to be quite the pantomime villain McNally made him out to be.”

And yet McNally said flat out the EDP should have suppressed this plainly newsworthy story. A call for censorship from the chief executive of a football club where the appointment to the board of a director of the EDP's parent company caused fans to worry about – yes, indeed - the suppression of unwelcome stories.

And to complete an unhappy few minutes on the airwaves, when McNally moved on to Fernandes and Lotus, about whom he was by contrast positively sunny, he was so ill-prepared he floundered over the job title of Mike Gascoyne, the Lotus executive and Norwich fan he said he knew and with whom he had talked about possible investment or synergies. Not McNally’s finest hour as NCFC chief executive.

So, where are we now? McNally’s attack on Kosich, talking disparagingly about timewasters and denigrating him as “this character”, effectively declared him persona non grata at Carrow Road. Even in these strange days of political enemies suddenly finding out they’re bosom pals it’s hard to see how the club could turn round and use any investment connected to Kosich. Which doesn’t matter, assuming nothing concrete was ever going to come from the initial expressions of interest. But that was – and still is – pretty unknowable, and that includes unknowable as far as the club was concerned. Only Kosich and the interested parties might know, and even they probably wouldn’t.

My understanding is that there was interest from private equity and family wealth, which could mean anything from a drugstore owner in Peoria to Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. And Buffett now comes in handy as an improbable but by no means impossible example of why I said earlier that Kosich's credibility is not relevant here. Just supposing Buffett, who is a real sports nut, had read Kosich's blog, which is perfectly feasible, and either contacted Kosich or the club directly to say he was interested in handing over a great deal of money? No-one would remotely think Buffett lacked credibility. He is worth $40bn and is probably the world's most famous investor, known as the Sage of Omaha for his financial acumen. And yet his interest would have been sparked by Kosich.

I also understand, and this is an important point, that Kosich would have been looking for his fee from the buy side, ie the investors, and not from NCFC or Deloitte’s. It would have cost the club nothing. Perhaps, though, that was not clear at the time.  The other point to remember is that by blogging about the attractiveness of Norwich as an investment, Kosich was, as suggested above, potentially cutting himself out of the action straight away. There would be no reason - apart from a moral one - for any investor who'd read the article then to hire Kosich; they could have used their own people or gone straight to the club. Indeed, that may even have happened.

The question that remains is why McNally came down so hard on the story and Kosich, when he could have limited himself to a few anodyne comments. Or even thanked him for saying such nice things about the club as a possible investment. There is one intriguing possible answer, for which - unfortunately - I have not a shred of hard evidence. This was indeed happening at just the time the club was schmoozing Fernandes. Perhaps, just perhaps, McNally was worried Kosichgate was hampering efforts to persuade Fernandes that he was the club’s one true love. So Kosich’s reward for boosting the previously rather low profile of Norwich City in the world’s biggest economy was to be slapped down in public. Just an idea.

3.. NEWSOFTHEWORLDGATE

 not only either is or isn’t true but if not true then can easily be proved not to be true.

Now defamation is an odd and subtle and highly specialised branch of jurisprudence, like maritime law or the manumission of slaves. It is generally best dealt with by the few specialist firms. London-based, and expensive. Lawyers who know what you’re talking about when you mention the effect of the Galloway judgment on the Reynolds defence. The club, though, decided to use its normal firm of solicitors, Leathes Prior, in Norwich. And that worked out fine – Leathes Prior must have done a competent job because the result in Norwich City FC v. News International was a win for the underdogs. An apology,  undisclosed damages and the club’s costs paid. The three requirements for victory all met.

As to the amount of damages, one cyberspace rumour put it at £20,000. The club later said the windfall had paid for Stephen Elliott’s loan move, so at least his agent knows what the amount was.

So, a clearcut result, but there are two aspects worth looking at. Firstly this is the club’s post-settlement statement:

"Norwich City Football Club are pleased to announce the successful conclusion of the libel action against News Group Newspapers Limited (the publishers of the "News of the World"), following their publication of an article on Sunday, January 24, 2010. A settlement has been reached which involves the publication of an apology to the Club and its Chairman Alan Bowkett, together with a payment of a five-figure sum of damages. In addition, the Club's legal costs have been paid in full."

This is the News of the World’s cyberspace apology, which presumably was worded the same way as the printed version:

"On 24 January we said that Norwich City was on the brink of financial meltdown and could go into administration that week without major new investment. That was wrong because the club was not on the brink and they do not need new investment to stave off administrators nor had they called in administrators. We apologise to the club and to its chairman, Alan Bowkett, for any distress caused by our error."

There is plainly something missing from that apology – apart from good English, that is. And that is any mention of having to pay damages and our costs. Now there are no hard and fast rules on this, but it is common practice for such facts to be included in the apology. That is partly because papers that have caved in as comprehensively and quickly as the NotW did are not really in a position to refuse. It's like the end of a war - the winners get to write the peace treaty. And arguably this is the most significant bit of any such apology. It signals to readers that the paper has made a complete climbdown. Words – ie the “sorry” bit – are one thing but coughing up money (and having to admit to millions of people that’s what you’ve been forced to do) is what really matters.

The other intriguing aspect was that the paper printed the apology at the top of the page rather than somewhere less conspicuous, which is normal. The defamation expert from whom I took a second opinion made the point that "the NotW doesn't offer top of the page unless they have very little option", indicating that the paper had been worried about the seriousness of the libel. It suggested, my second opinion went on, there may have been more money to be had from the paper. “It might mean they paid substantially less damages than they might have expected to."

4. JONESTHEVOICEGATE

A much-trumpeted concert cancelled. Because of the sudden realisation that it couldn't be fitted in with plans announced months before for extra seats. The public reason, anyway.

The club's official statement was this:

The review undertaken on behalf of the Club has identified additional areas for extra seats, which has extended the work beyond what was originally planned. This work will therefore cause more disruption to the stadium over the summer than was originally anticipated.

Unfortunately it is not possible to install the extra seating and host a concert and with sincere regret the Club has had to take the decision to postpone Tom Jones' appearance.

However this explanation (which I have no reason to doubt) was not believed by some fans, who said the real reason was poor ticket sales. Some quoted figures to back that up. This from the chairman of NCISA: "Apparently they were hoping to sell 17,000 tickets but with two weeks to go had only shifted 3,000 including less than 100 for the hospitality package." But the odd thing was that none of these posters who were effectively saying the club had lied to them seemed bothered by that. An example of the extended honeymoon period being enjoyed by the new directors.

5. SCGGATE

Probably the least surprising decision by the new board was the axing of the Supporters’ Consultative Group, which had copped flak over the meeting held immediately after Peter Cullum went public. Of course the blame here was entirely the club’s, for calling the meeting, but that point was not always appreciated. It certainly made the SCG an easy target. One obvious solution would have been to reform it. In particular by having the members chosen not by the club (which had led to accusations of favouritism and a lack of independence of voice) but by various outside organisations, such as NCISA and the Norwich City Supporters’ Trust.

On October 26^th, 2009, the club, following a review of its consultative process, made this announcement:

“Although as part of the changes the main meetings of the Supporters Consultative Group will no longer take place, streamlined and target-focussed [sic] supporter working groups will continue to meet with Club officials to consult on a wide range of key areas, including:

- Ticketing
- Supporter Experience (Home and Away)
- Disabled Supporters
- Long-Distance Supporters
- Young Supporters

Further announcements about the composition of these groups, their meeting dates and their targets will be made in the near future. Each group will meet four times a year.”

Now "the near future” is an imprecise term, but as it happens nine months have now passed and the club has not made any announcement to fans about the composition of these groups, their meeting dates, or their targets. Nine months equals three meetings of these groups. And one area covered, significantly, is ticketing. An issue – assuming that ticketing covers ticket pricing – that is beginning to give fans pause for thought. Is the lack of a promised announcement on how fans should make their voice heard down to the club not actually caring about consultation? Which is how it looks. Or is it just good old-fashioned incompetence? In one sense it hardly matters, because the effect is the same.

And, of course, the composition of the focus groups is still presumably (since we haven't been told otherwise) in the hands of the club, so the axing of the SCG hasn't actually addressed the complaint that the fans who get consulted lack obvious independence.


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THE 2009/2010 SEASON - A NEW BOARD concludes on the next page