Norwich City have revealed that it cost £626,000 to take Paul Lambert from Colchester United to Carrow Road.
The move created a lot of bad blood between the clubs with the full cost coming to light as Norwich revealed a loss of £5.75m for their season in League One.
The £626,000 figure consisted of compensation to Colchester, legal costs and Football League fines.
Failure to win promotion back to The Championship would have put Norwich’s existence in jeopardy with net debt currently standing at £20.9m.
Norwich lost the first game of last season 7-1 to Lambert’s Colchester but after sacking Bryan Gunn the arrival of the former Celt sparked a title winning run with the Canaries currently sitting in a play-off place in The Championship following a 4-1 win over Ipswich last Sunday.
Promotion bonuses cost Norwich £856,000 with pay-offs to staff costing the club a further £465,000.
“It’s never nice to post a loss and we’ve posted a significant loss this year but it was expected, given that we are in the early stages of a business turnaround here,” David McNally, Norwich Chief Executive explained.
“We do expect to take this club back up to the Premier League over the course of the seven-year plan that we put in place and it was an essential part of our developing the foundations of that plan that took place in the year that’s just been posted.
“Making a profit is very unusual in the world of football these days. But at the very least you need to be at a neutral position or cash break-even, so we need to get back to those days and we will do during the course of the current financial year.”
McNally knew Lambert well after spending four years as Celtic’s Marketing Director.
Interestingly McNally replaced Neil Doncaster, current SPL CE, last year after Norwich were relegated to League One.
Prior to joining Norwich McNally was Managing Director of Football at Fulham.
Looking towards the January transfer window Lambert has been promised money to invest in the team.
McNally added: “We’ve been a buying club over the last three transfer windows. In the summer of 2009, January 2010 and the summer of 2010, we’ve bought players significantly ahead of any sales.
“We intend to continue in that vein. We have some budget left for Paul in the forthcoming window.
“Paul will perhaps have a target or two in mind and we’ll take it from there. It’s up to Paul who he allows to come to the club as part of his squad and if he ever decides to allow any of the players to leave.
“We don’t need to sell any players. If Paul decides he would like to trade that’s the football manager’s prerogative.”
Mowbray puts ‘Boro’s Barca plans on ice
Follow Video Celts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
How much will it take to bring Lambert from Norwich to Celtic…….
Celtic FC have got a manager.
He just needs our backing.