New sporting director Ben Knapper sat down with Canaries TV on his second day at the Lotus Training Centre.
How does it feel to be Norwich City's sporting director?
"It's a huge honour and privilege, so happy to be here now and the responsibility is certainly not lost on me. I'm hugely thankful to the board and ownership for the confidence they've shown in me. I'm excited to be here, and to get started."
What has the last month been like for you, and have you had much contact with the club already?
"It's been busy, but really exciting. As soon as I knew this step was coming, the first stage was about me leaving Arsenal. I'd like to say thank you to them as well, 14 amazing years and the club were fantastic with me and helped to facilitate a timely exit. I've tried to use my time as productively as I can, lots of conversations, with Zoe, with Stuart, and with David and Neil. All really positive. I've been trying to position myself so when I could finally get here I could hit the ground running and start being as impactful as I can from day one."
What are your early impressions of Norwich City?
"It's a fantastic club. My perception of Norwich before was so positive and I think that's the perspective in the industry. Everything I've learned about the club through the process and through the conversations with the board, the ownership, the executive team, and wider staff has just confirmed everything I already thought. It's a great club with some amazing foundations in place, and there's still so much to achieve. It's an exciting opportunity, and one that I'm really looking forward to."
What are your thoughts on the Lotus Training Centre?
"It's absolutely first class, I think it's something that the club can be really proud of. Of course, buildings or facilities don't create players or winning teams, but what they do is help to create a high performance environment that people are proud of, and will enjoy coming to work in every day. It can be inspiring to encourage people to push and improve, and I think that this facility definitely does that. I'm really excited to call it home, and what a place to come to work every day!"
What can you tell us about your background and experience?
"My background was in performance analysis, that's where the formative years in my career were spent. Years ago, working at Scunthorpe United... my first exposure. From there, I worked for one of the biggest data providers in football. Then I was fortunate enough to find myself at Arsenal at a pretty young age, where I had 14 amazing years, working through a variety of roles. That gave me broad exposure across a lot of different aspects of football operations, strategic elements as well, and I worked with some outstanding people. I think I'm someone who's got a lot of experience across different functions, if that's coaching and player development or loans and pathways, scouting and player recruitment, as well as trying to apply data to help inform decision making. All of those areas are things I've got experience in at a super high level, and hopefully I can bring a lot of those reference points here to help push this club on and help us improve across all areas of football operations."
If you were to summarise the key role of a sporting director, how would you do that?
"It's vast and it's a role that's still evolving, I'm fortunate here as it's very well established and I think that really helps. For me, it's ultimately taking ownership of the club's overall football strategy. It's about trying to create a club and teams that our supporters can be proud of. It's about trying to balance the short-term goals and ambitions with protecting and enhancing the club's medium-to-long-term sustainability and trying to provide the foundations that can help achieve success not only in the short-term, but foundations that can make that success scaleable and sustainable over the long-term. It's a vast role, lots of different facets, but that's what it means to me and that's what I'll try to do here."
What will be your first priorities now you've started?
"It's clear we've been in a really challenging period, there's no doubt about that. Everybody has been disappointed and frustrated about that, results and performances have not been where anybody wants and expects. That's going to be where my first focus is, to try and provide an impact for the men's senior team. I'm here now on the ground, I've been in the building for 24 hours and that's going to take some time. There's a process for me to get to understand context and see the way people work and interact. I have the benefit of coming with a fresh perspective, and then hopefully in the coming weeks I can start to get that information that I've not been able to get from an external perspective. I've been following closely from afar, having lots of conversations and looking at lots of information but there's nothing quite like being here on the ground and getting a feel and seeing it with your own eyes. That's going to take some time, but that's where my focus is going to be. To hopefully be in a position then to have clarity on where I think we can improve, where we can get better, where we may or may not need to make changes. That's certainly going to be my focus to start with."
Do you have a style of football or philosophy that you'll be looking to implement?
"Generally speaking, I'm quite a purist when it comes to football. I think that's understandable when you see the experience that I've had over the last 10 or 15 years and some of the people that have probably influenced me along the way. Ever since I was a kid, the football that I've enjoyed watching is attacking, proactive football where teams try and control the game with the ball. They'll be the protagonist in the game, and want to go to win the ball back high and be aggressive and try to entertain and score goals. That's what excites me as a fan, that's what I think is the best way to approach the game. I think that it's important to acknowledge regardless of playing style or philosophy people may or may not like, it's important to have consistency and have a team that's identifiable. I want to make sure over time, we can build something that people understand exactly what a Norwich team looks like. It's important that when people come here to watch us play, they'll understand what they're going to see, and they can expect to see some common themes, and what represents a Norwich City team. Whether that's men's senior team, women's senior team, or any of our academy teams. That's something that will take time, but ultimately for me it's aggressive, proactive and attacking football."
Have you had a chance to chat with David and the first-team coaching staff about that philosophy and their workflow?
"I've had numerous positive conversations with David before I came here, and yesterday as well. That process is ongoing. I've watched one training session, and some of the players are away on international break. You can still get a look and a feel but it's probably slightly different to what it will be like when everybody's back here in a typical game-week prep. Those conversations have been good, and of course it's different when you're talking to when you're watching and seeing what it looks like for real, so that process can now start, and I'm looking forward to doing that. So far, it's been great to be here and I'm excited to really get going."