No I’m not. I’m basing it upon a reliable Valencia news outlet. So probably best to ask before you assume?
I don't believe for one second that we cannot afford to pay Capoue his full salary. There is quite a lot of crap in our squad that need moving on and can easily raise finances that way. Of the older players I would say Foster and Capoue are vital to us. For vital players you make allowances. We can sell the likes of Pererya, Pussetto, Kiko, Doucoure, Gray, Success, Deeney, Sinclair even Welbeck and Deulofeu if we have too. This frees up a lot of salary and gives incoming transfer funds. Don't forget Holebas, Mapps and Gomes have also gone, freeing up even more salary. If we want to keep him we can afford it for one season. We have to keep the important players and I think we all agree Capoue is pretty vital to us.
It's a matter of opinion. Unless we replace him with someone his equal, then our midfield will be pretty lightweight and weak without either Capoue and Doucoure in it. We should be creating a side to dominate the division. We have the squad to do it, but without those two players and no replacements, the midfield will not be strong enough to ensure we dominate the league...IMO of course. So I would say Capoue is vital to our promotion push. It's been a long, long time since we played a match without either of them in the side.
Sure - but we have to have takers for those players. It really isn’t as easy as just saying ‘let’s get him, him and him out the door’ clearly. People still seem to think there’s a queue of clubs waiting to take all these players off our hands. We have to be realistic. We are probably dealing with offers as they come and not dealing with them in the hope of something else yet to come...relegation and a truncated pre-season likely confirms that. I want Capoue to stay, don’t get me wrong. And I’m very critical of the ownership right now so this isn’t a defence of them. But we also don’t know what affect Covid has had on finances either. We simply may not be able to afford the wage bill and be making tough choices which allows us to keep Sarr and others whilst adding the wages of Estupinan and Suarez and not have those wages paid by Spanish clubs.
Our current wage bill is about £55m and the Championship average is £34m. In selling Delufeou, Doucouré, Welbeck and Pereyra we free up £16m immediately. That means you only need a further 15% reductions to meet the average, and we needn't do that in the first two years whilst parachute payments are in place so feels manageable. Assuming that the external debt can be serviced you'd think we'd ok.
If you want to move players on you can do it......don't fall into the trap of thinking it's a tough thing to do. If we are ambitious and serious about bouncing back, then at least three or four high profile players need to be retained. Capoue, Sarr, Hughes and Foster are the vital players as far as I'm concerned. We need Suarez too and hope he lives up to the hype but on what I've seen of him, he'll be very good as will Estupinan. But it's probably a little easier keeping them as they are young and are making a name for themselves. Same goes for Pedro and Quina, who will be good for us, but are not being chased by other clubs right now. I would like to keep Welbeck too, as we need an alternative to Suarez, until at least Cucho arrives. If we sell any of these players, then our chances of going up greatly reduces.
Yes....I'd go along with that. Without Capoue AND Doucoure and no replacements for them, then I don't think we'd be promoted. I think our midfield would get bullied and would be too injury prone for an entire season.
It's going to be a strange start to the season in all divisions, tranfer activity is going to be slow but we're much better placed than most to adjust our squad over the opening few weeks. It's a shame to lose capoue, for someone i was meh about when he joined he's arguably one of our best signings. Technically superb when he's on form. But we're rebuilding with the goal of promotion so we'll definitely see some additions, the manager sounds promising and the setup looks better from the outside, our squad when the window closes is going to be quite different - should be interesting and stressful in equal measures.
This made me chuckle as my boys are the same. Ahh the incredibly witty variations of his song that we sing in our household, he will be a massive loss.
I think what people fail to understand is that if we go straight back up there is still a huge financial black hole to fill. Bouncing straight back Doesn’t make everything all ok and like nothing ever happened. Sure, financially we need to go back up so we need to strike a balance of not stripping the squad too much so we have the best chance of doing so, but equally something, or more appropriately some things have to give. Even without relegation we’re a good £30m down from the season before. Our league placing alone cost us £15.2m from finishing 11th. The full impact of Covid will be about £9m and lower facility fees from finishing lower another £5m. So even if relegation had been scrapped we were already £30m down from the season before. Then there is relegation, parachute payments are £100m, the equivalent of finishing last in the premier league but split over three seasons, and in season one it’s £40m. So that’s £60m lost even if we bounce straight back up. So that’s £90m of lost revenue compared to a normal mid table premier league finish, the Pozzos are only worth £100m themselves, so seriously how is that funded? As I said I understand the need to strike a balance but equally cuts will need to be made, if most people on here had their wages cut to a third for a year they’d have to make changes to their lifestyle, there would be no other way round it.
You have to make the assumption that Doucoure is going. I think we'll all agree that is likely to happen. If we are not able to bring in replacements, then keeping Capoue is vital.
So....by that do you think they'll both be still with us by the close of the window? If so, that's fair enough, if not, it's a strange comment to make.
I think in fairness Doucoure will leave. Not sure Capoue will though and I think the Valencia story is rubbish
...and of course we'd be one of the favourites to go straight back down again......we will never be a guaranteed prem side.
I’m not predicting anything, I’m not believing everything written by children and idiots on twitter, and I’m certainly not getting emotional or depressive over footballs equivalent of vapourware What happens happens, clubs will adapt plans many times through windows I’m sure, and at the end I hope we have the best most exciting squad the club can afford under present financial constraints
You only have to look at the balance sheet to see we are strapped for cash. We’ve been relegated and Pozzo has run up a mountain of external debt.
I’m a Somerset cricket fan and I’ve woken up today to the news that Dom Bess is leaving us to join Yorkshire. It comes two weeks after the news that Surrey have signed another of our top bowlers. We are one of the best run counties, usually turning in a profit of about £200,000 a year. That’s a lot in cricket terms. But coronavirus has hit cricket very hard, the non test match counties especially. I have absolutely no knowledge of the finances at Watford. None at all. Others here are much better informed than me. But I’d be very surprised if the combination of relegation and coronavirus hasn’t hit us hard too. We may be desperate to offload our biggest earners. Capoue out on loan for a year takes him off the wage bill, Deeney, Welbeck, Doucoure too if/when they leave. It’s hard at times but I think we all have to always keep in mind the strange times we find ourselves in this year. Decisions may need to be taken that in any other normal (non virus) year wouldn’t need to be.
I would also say that clubs are planning for scenarios where no fans will attend games this season. We went into lockdown in March, 6 months later and fans are not in stadiums yet. If I was the FD I'd be planning for a second lockdown over winter however unlikely, and the subsequent restrictions on attendances after that. In Watford's case, combine that with the enormous drop in revenue from being relegated and you could understand a fire sale of any player going into this season on a wage of more than 40k.
But still some fans are complaining about paying said money to watch games live via their streaming service. If you're so worried about the financial side stop moaning about paying out to watch games live.
Its a buyers market and when you must cut costs you occasionally have to accept the best offer which may be well below what you'd want. There are a list of about 8 players we assume they'd like to sell and get a fee for. How many have we managed to sell this close season so far ? The only moves so far have involved those where we won't get a fee.
How did Capoue and Doucoure play after the covid break? Both a complete waste of a shirt IMO. Sell quickly.
Excuse me but as a season ticket holder I deserve free coverage of every game, the right to only attend the games I want to (I.e. when it's warm, against a big team in the cup and when we're doing well), my seat should be for life and no one should dare sit in it (even if I don't turn up), Deeney should pay for all my drinks during pre season and Gino should personally be keeping me informed of the day to day running of the club.
