Interesting article https://www.football365.com/news/watford-are-the-club-that-embraced-the-chaos Reproduced below :- Watford are the club that embraced the chaos… Date published: Thursday 24th January 2019 8:28 Adalberto Penaranda is probably the perfect poster boy of the Watford FC ownership fog. In June 2015, he was signed by Udinese (Pozzo family-owned). He was immediately loaned to Granada (Pozzo family-owned). In February 2016, he was sold to Watford (Pozzo family-owned), before being immediately loaned out to Granada (Pozzo family-owned). Then Granada were sold, ending Penaranda’s loan deal, so they sent him to Udinese (Pozzo family-owned) instead. After two further loans at Malaga, Penaranda made his Watford (Pozzo family-owned) debut on January 6, 2019. A strong whiff of Modern Football catches in the throat. The Pozzos were the first simultaneous owners of clubs in Spain, Italy and England’s top flights. After Watford used loan regulations to bring in 14 players from their sister clubs on temporary deals in 2012/13, the EFL moved to change the rules. The arrival of foreign owners has allowed this club to establish itself in the Premier League and become a shrine to short-termism. No club in England’s top flight has traded more players in the last three years. Then there’s the story of the forged HSBC bank letter, provided as proof of funds that allowed Gino Pozzo – Giampaolo’s son – to become sole owner in 2014. The club was fined £3.95m, the largest ever EFL financial penalty, and the club’s executive chairman Raffaele Riva resigned. But scratch below the surface, or perhaps just take a small leap of faith, and there is a story beneath the ownership complexities that deserves to be told. Watford have established themselves as one of the best-run clubs in the Premier League. At a time when competing with the financial elite has become increasingly hard, they are on course to finish in their highest league position for 40 years. ***** Before 2012, Watford were a Football League club by almost every measure. They had enjoyed eight top-flight seasons in their 115-year history, the era of Graham Taylor, John Barnes and Luther Blissett giving way to inevitable mediocrity. Before their takeover, Watford had suffered significant financial problems and hadn’t even finished in the Championship’s top ten for four years. Their record signing was striker Nathan Ellington, bought for £3.25m in 2007. The Pozzos’ promise to secure Premier League consolidation looked like the typical over-ambitious platitude of those desperate to claw some quick PR. But Watford have found a way, from Championship mid-table to secure Premier League club and potential challengers for a European place for only the second time in their history (sorry Anglo-Italian Cup, not now). And if the speed and sustainability of the journey is impressive, the ingenuity of the method trumps all. The first thing Watford did was accept their place in football’s financial hierarchy. The latest financial figures (covering the 2016/17 season) placed Watford 16th by revenue and 15th by wage bill in the Premier League, while there commercial and retail income was lower than Burnley’s. As chairman and CEO Scott Duxbury told the Financial Times: “If we just simply replicate what the bigger clubs are doing, then we’re going to fail. We simply don’t have their resources.” Duxbury was tasked with finding a different way, and relied upon a scouting network far beyond the norm for a club of their size. The plan was to buy players in high volume from clubs, leagues and countries who would demand low transfer fees, with the intention to improve them and sell them on at significant profit. Duxbury, together with Gino Pozzo and technical director Filippo Giraldi, have regularly spoken about their obsession with transfers. Many don’t work out, but enough do. The Pozzos have form. At Udinese, they established a scouting system that was the envy of Serie A. Between 2000 and 2007 alone, Udine signed Vincenzo Iaquinta, Sulley Muntari, Asamoah Gyan, Samir Handanovic, Cristian Zapata, Mauricio Isla and Alexis Sanchez for nominal fees and subsequently sold them all at far loftier prices. ***** Replicating the same strategy 15 years later was always likely to be more difficult given the general boom in scouting systems, but Watford have found a way. Take Richarlison, signed from Fluminese and sold for £30m profit after 12 months. Take Odion Ighalo, sold for £20m. Take Abdoulaye Doucoure, dropping strong hints about a possible move to Paris Saint-Germain; he was signed from Stade Rennais for £9m. Targeting South America has been a deliberate strategy, to the extent that Watford currently have representatives from six of the 10 CONMEBOL nations on their books: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Players from that part of the world typically command lower salaries than European players. They are happy to use Watford as a stepping stone, and Watford are happy to let them. If they move on up, both parties win. Pretending to be something you’re not helps neither. Domingos Quina is the latest example, picked up at the last minute after Watford heard that West Ham were happy to sell an 18-year-old entering the final 12 months of his contract. Quina never made a league appearance for West Ham, but has already played eight times in all competitions for Watford and scored a memorable first Premier League goal. His value is already at least ten times more than the £1m they paid in August. Just as controversial as player short-termism is Watford’s regularly changing cast of managers. The Pozzos have employed nine different permanent – the term clangs – head coaches in six-and-a-half years. But again, it’s all part of the plan. “Coaches, they have a limited shelf life,” Duxbury told the FT. “They’ll either be very successful and maybe go on to another bigger club or they won’t work out and they’ll move on. We don’t want that disruption when a coach leaves a football club.” ***** It’s a bold strategy, but in many ways an admirable one. If the Premier League is becoming increasingly short-termist, what’s the point in fighting the tide of what Gary Neville famously coined “the immediacy of modern life”? Rather than sticking fingers in their ears and heads in sand, Watford have learned to thrive amid the chaos. Having players and managers picked off by bigger clubs is an inevitable hazard, so why not embrace it? There are finally signs of change given Javi Gracia’s new contract, but don’t be fooled too easily. Watford will remain guarded against the rug being swept from under their feet. And so they should. One mistruth that must be addressed is that Watford supporters are in any way critical of the model. Before Watford played Burnley on Saturday, former manager Sean Dyche spoke of a club that had gone through “a radical shift from when I was there, from a community club built on the community to now built on a model”. If that implies that there has been some loss of connection between supporters and their club, it is deeply misguided. The commitment to the community and the club’s history has remained throughout the Pozzo ownership. Saturday saw the second anniversary of Graham Taylor’s death marked with a poignant tribute and free drink for every supporter. These things matter. Watford fans do not need a consistency of starting XI from season to season, or even the same manager, to feel close to their club. They merely need to be satisfied that the club and its staff are focused on making the club the best it can be. At few grounds in the country is that more obvious than at Vicarage Road. Daniel Storey
He's probably right. Look at the price being quoted for HudsonOdoi and he hasn't even started a game. Quina shows great promise and as ridiculous as it sounds he probably is worth that sum now. Apart from the opening few lines it's quite a good read
Full stop. In the 7th para of the article, ‘there’ is used instead of ‘their’. All this talk of the wretched May - largely by me - has put me in a bad mood. Brings out the grammarian in me.
But you'd be banking that decision on his potential. Not what he has shown so far. To claim his value has gone up over £1m per game so far is silly, although I will concede we perhaps underpaid originally for him. Will he be worth £10m+ in the future? Most likely. But not now.
When is a journalist going to write a piece about Watford without mentioning our 'regularly changing cast of managers'? I'm sure there are plenty of clubs that have had more than 9 managers in 6-and-a-half years. In fact, it's probably fairer to say we've had 7 if you don't include McKinley and Oscar Garcia.
A quick trawl through Wikipedia shows that, surprise, surprise, other EPL clubs change their managers too. Huddersfield - 9 managers since 2012 Wolves - 8 Palace - 8 (plus Keith Millen as caretaker on no less than 3 occasions) Southampton - 8 Cardiff - 8 Fulham - 8 Everton - 7 Leicester - 5 So come on football writers, Sky/TalkSport pundits etc etc, change the bleedin' script
Surely his value is what he is worth to both us, and a buying club. I'd imagine both Watford and other potential suitors value him at £10m+. Chelsea value Hudson-Odoi at around £35m, as do Bayern. That means that is his current value. Value and current ability are different things. I'm sure there are wingers out there that would cost around £10m and perform to the same level as Hudson-Odoi at the minute but his current value includes future potential.
I like this article and the author because it's a positive one about us. All those that right non-positive ones about us are ******* idiots who don't know what they are talking about and can **** off.
To be fair... Quina was probably worth at least £5 million the day we bought him. It was daylight robbery and under the circumstances, West Ham could do nothing about it. Fortunately we got him before the big boys could
Was he?! He was highly rated I grant you, but he’d played minutes in a League Cup game. I’m not doubting his ability to become a very good player. But just last week or so we were all finding it hilarious that Bournemouth paid £19m or so for Solanke - who although hasn’t achieved much, has done more in his career than Quina. But no suddenly a kid who has had played a handful of games, half of which were against far inferior opposition is worth £10m - £12m?! Take the yellow tinted glasses off. Had we paid ‘at least’ £5m for Quina on deadline day, I’d say that was about right. To claim his value has doubled since then? No chance. Great in 2 games, okay in a few and largely anonymous in 90m against non-League opposition. He’s a good player who could be great but let’s be real.
He has massive potential and has performed extremely well in the few games he has played at 19 years of age. Realistically, he is not worth 10 million, years ago, even our star performers weren't worth that. However, when we consider the amount of money that is spent in the Prem for mediocre players, we could ask for that price and teams wouldn't bat an eyelid and would still buy him. Barcelona have just spent £65,000,000 on a 21 year old midfielder who spent the last few years in a pretty poor league. No matter how good he his, that price tag is ridiculous but it has still been paid out. In my opinion, if teams were after him, we would be stupid to take anything less than 10 million for him at this point in time and even that is a massive 10x profit
Great read thanks for posting that. It’s nice to read something positive about Watford for a change. But we all know the secrets out now. @wfcmoog is an armchajr journalist hired part time by Gino.
So that's us out of the cup this weekend. Thanks football365 (we always seem to have a bad spell after we get some praise)
