In the end of an era for the club, and perhaps for English football too, Norwich City announced the departure of Delia Smith in a manner consistent with modern times.
The news was broken online via a statement entitled “Norfolk Holdings reaches agreement to enable majority control of Norwich City”. The seven paragraphs that followed addressed “the creation of non-voting preference shares”, their subsequent conversion into “ordinary” shares and an application for a “rule 9 waiver by the Takeover Panel”. Any mention of Smith and her husband and co-owner, Michael Wynn-Jones, came in passing.
There will be time yet to celebrate and commemorate Smith’s 27-year reign at the club as she passes the baton to the American Mark Attanasio. And there was something typical in the announcement being centred on practicalities rather than the personalities involved. But it was hard not to digest all that financialese and think that something about the game Smith loves so much has changed for good.
Smith did not see her majority ownership of Norwich as a financial investment. She wrote off money owed to her on more than one occasion. Nor did she see it as a side hustle, something to tinker with in between TV shows and cook books. Instead she saw herself as a “steward” of something that, if not actually owned by the local community, at least belonged to them.
Along the way she gave that community no shortage of happy memories: six promotions, five of them to the Premier League; two second-tier titles under Daniel Farke and the exhilarating Championship playoff victory of 2015; the League One title of 2010, even if it came on the back of a first demotion to the third tier in 50 years, was just as thrilling. Huckerby, Holt, Hoolahan, Maddison, Pukki and Buendía all became Carrow Road heroes during her time. Finally, of course, and as everyone knows, Norwich are on a 15‑year unbeaten run against Ipswich Town.
And yet there has not been a single year in 27 when Smith, the most prominent female club owner in the world, has not also been the object of criticism and abuse from sections of the Norwich support. Sometimes it’s been about a lack of money available to spend on transfers, or the sale of star players; at other times it’s been a perceived excess of loyalty to managers, or just choosing the wrong man in the first place (Glenn Roeder, Chris Hughton and Dean Smith being among the most maligned). More generally it was a “lack of ambition” that fans held against her, an amorphous term whose meaning could change on any given day.
Perhaps another source of ire amongst the support, however, was the fact Delia Smith had ambitions of her own. There was sporting ambition; most recently a target of consistently being a “top-26 club” (an idea that was both reasonable and regularly mocked). There was a belief that the club should be sustainable and debt-free. But there was also a desire to see Norwich City as truly embedded in the heart of the community, a club which generated both pride and passion in its support. When either was lacking Delia wasn’t afraid of letting people know it.
The most infamous and abiding moment of her quarter-century at the club came about as a result of this ambition. With a two-goal lead squandered at home before half‑time (not the last time this would happen) Smith took to the pitch during Norwich’s 2005 Premier League match against Manchester City and, well, you know what she did. Forever derided afterwards as a moment of drunken indulgence (she denies being drunk), the “let’s be havin’ you” cry was one of disappointment but also surprise. Smith believed the fans should and could be providing raucous support for their team, but were not. Norwich lost the match that day, and Smith that battle. Carrow Road never became the cauldron of passion and mutual support she hoped for, and in recent years has been characterised more by booing than cheering. In 2022, amid a dismal relegation season, Smith revisited the topic and categorised the crowd as “20% whingers”; this didn’t go down well, either.
It could be argued that Smith’s ambitions for her club were greater than those of the critical supporters. She wanted to succeed and to do so in a way that was both responsible and ethical. But while you can debate the sporting performance – she leaves with the club in what is described as “the Championship doldrums”, but just three years after one of the most successful seasons in living memory – her bold attempts to resist the tide of globalised consumerist sport seem to have failed.
Smith had always said she was open to taking outside funding from the right investor and, in Attanasio, has found someone she believes will continue to nurture the values for which she believes the club must stand. But Norwich will be joining a portfolio of sporting investments all the same, and its new owners are unlikely to be at every match and every function, the most passionate supporters of the club they happen to own. That time, it appears, is over.
