Problems And Solutions

Good grief. He’s here till 2023??

 

The transfer window element of our relegation season is interesting. I have a theory that the rule change with the window closing before the season starting was ultimately the reason we felt we had to move to bring QSF back. The club never voted for the early window closure, and since the rest of that league has realised the same and it will no longer be closing early. There is no doubt in my mind that the club would have panic bought at least 2 defenders instead of sacking Gracia if the window had been open until the end of August. This would have kept us up and maybe kept Javi in a job. Regardless of the Dawson mistake not a single person predicted our relegation in pre-season, the complacency was everywhere.

Secondly that great run of form we had when Pearson arrived came at the very worst time as again it created complacency that stopped us improving the defence, or attack in January. With Watford being one of the league's form teams last January under Pearson you can kind of see why we didn't buy anyone other than the backup winger we needed.

No reasoning for this season however - they've completely f*cked it up.

 

Jesus christ.

 

Financially or in terms of it limited our capacity to introduce more of a tiki-taka passing style, Deeney needs to leave in the summer. He should have left last summer although obviously Covid meant that there was less money sloshing about up in the Prem and that no 'ambitious' championship club could punt for him as their marquee signing. I do think, even if he has another year, we stand a good chance of being able to offload him in the summer. His big profile (yes haha) in media etc means that he has a decent shot at getting a fat paycheck in a retirement league like the MLS, or in Saudi Arabia, or even somewhere like Turkey. I also do think he would probably be more accommodating than Gray, given his history with the club, to accept some sort of cheap-ish payoff or mutual termination. Question is: will the hierarchy be ruthless enough?

 

Not saying your reasoning is wrong - but they didn't 'panic' buy two defenders in January that season...or one even! All indicators are that they never thought the defence was an issue - much like goal-scoring now.

 

I totally agree about Vlad, I've posted something similar on the Vladimir Ivic Sacked Thread

 

Here it is SkylaRose C+P from said thread: -

I'm going to say it, we should not have sacked Vlad!!!

His football may have been boring most of the time, but he did a bloody good job results wise with what he had to work with especially before the Summer window closed, if anything it was when the **** we could not shift and the players who did not want to play for the team came into play that our performances slightly dipped.

Overall had he been given a chance I think we would be in a better league position right now and more likely to gain automatic promotion. The football may not have been all that entertaining, but he would have got the job done and got us promotion, which is what his brief was after all.

The irony would have been that his reward probably would still have been the sack as I doubt the club would have renewed his contract which remember was only for one year.

 

Maybe I'm being generous, but I think the club are quite aware that we have a goalscoring problem right now, they're just not really in a position to do much about it - given both the high wages of Deeney and Gray and the lack of good, cheap options in January. Which good strikers joined the Championship this January? Austin looks decent but he is old and injury prone; Dike at Barnsley could be a good prospect but very raw of course.

I think not signing another defender (or striker) last year strikes me as much worse: we presumably had more cash and a higher calibre of player willing to join us but the club decided that we could get by without. Pure complacency rather than a case of being in a bad situation.

 

Very good points well made, but I have to disagree with the bolded bit. I believe that COVID did play a major part - you say that our home form remained OK without the fans, but performances were mostly flat and lethargic with many players unfit, out of form and demotivated, and at worst as bad as any we produced in the first half of the season. Even when we picked up points it was hardly convincing. One of the two home defeats was against Southampton, who we might have got something against had the season continued as normal, an awful display. With the momentum from recently beating Liverpool, even without GD we may have beaten Leicester (who were on a terrible run) and got at least a point from Burnley and West Ham away.

In the end we still only got relegated by one point and two goals, I'm sure a normal season would have added that and more, whether Villa and Bournemouth would have improved to the same extent or better though, we'll never know.

 

Regarding Deeney and Gray, irrespective of our financial position the club needed to swallow their pride and take their stupid money tinted glasses off and just get them out of the club.

They are contributing next to nothing to the club but costing us a fortune. Just because we once paid £18m for Andre, it’s absolutely irrelevant in the here and now. The club needed to forget transfer fees and negotiate with them to write part of their contracts off so they could join other clubs, or loan both of them out and pay however much of their wages was necessary. It really doesn’t matter how much we ended up saving ourselves, £10k/£20k per week? It doesn’t matter, it’s better than nothing, it frees up a bit of cash and gets two absolutely useless players out of the club.

Instead Gino’s stupid pride and stubbornness mean they both inexplicably get minutes because he just wants to continually double down on two monumentally expensive and stupid mistakes.

 

We were linked with a few decent LB's like Rose and Rodriguez, but I have a feeling that the early form under Pearson made the board revert to the belief that the defence was fine.

 

If we're in The Championship next season and Deeney is still out there ambling around like a buffalo then his legacy is 100% ruined

 

The only thing I'd say as a counter argument is that it's the same for everyone. Other teams may have been motivated by having fans in the stadium. Both our wins against Newcastle and Norwich were coming back from a goal down. Who knows, fans may have got on the players back or the anxiety from the crowd related to the players. It could have been unhelpful in those games, so may even played to our advantage having no fans. Certainly it's better to play away from home without a baying home crowd, that's for sure.

For me, as long as it was equally fair for all sides, which is was as all the bottom teams played more home games in front of no crowd during the run in, then it was not largely significant.

 

To me the biggest factor in Watford's relegation was the upturn in Villa's form towards the end. They had a couple of lucky breaks, like the ball over the line incident, and took encouragement from those to outscore us and Bournemouth. Although some of our performances were poor, we got about the number of points you would have expected from the fixtures we had left.

 

Personally, I felt things did conspire against us. Arteta fielded a deliberately weakened team against Villa. Resting 6 players and losing 1-0, that was a week before our match. Then he goes full strength against us to "ensure the integrity of the league". Pep did the exact same thing. He rested virtually his entire first team at home to Bournemouth and got battered by them in all fairness. They held out for a lucky 2-1 win, then, again, he goes full strength against us and of course thrash us 4-0. This was all in the final couple of weeks of the season. Bruce for Newcastle did the same. Rested his first team and lost heavily at City 5-0, in order to go full strength against us, but for him it didn't pay off as we won 2-1 anyway. Bruce even admitted to doing this.

Also VAR helped Villa enormously. The clear goal Sheff Utd scored against them in a 0-0 draw. Had that stood and they lost, that point not taken would have sent them down. The goal Sako scored at Villa. Nothing wrong with it as it clearly hit his back but was bizarrely ruled out for handball. The score was 0-0 at the time, and Villa went on to to win 2-0 but could and probably would have been so different.

 

Somebody should tell our players that.

 

While I agree with all of the above, the West Ham game so obviously ruined us. They'd been awful after lockdown and we had a great opportunity to drag them fully into the fight for survival with a half-decent performance. We were pitiful that evening and looked absolutely finished in the following games.

 

How?

 

Issue is - even when we had money; the decision making ever since 2017 has been largely woeful. The whole set up at the club is contradictory

 

Stop renewing contracts, allow them to leave on free transfers/loans, pay them off and let them go, remove them from the squad.

 

Agreed. There's always a way to move a player on. Gray is not that terrible that no one would employ him ever in football. If we binned him off tomorrow, there would be a long line of takers on a free transfer.

It's all about the transfer fee and the golden contract Watford gave him. No one would ever get close to that. What Watford should have done in the past is sell him when the opportunity arose. Leeds wanted him last season in their promotion push. That was a perfect opportunity to get rid.

Even this season, although a lot harder, we could have moved him on if we really tried hard enough. Admittedly it would have to be a creative deal, but that's bread and butter to Gino. Something like a free loan to another club plus they pay him a going rate salary, and we pay the obscene OTT bit above that.

It would have been the only way. But he could reignite his career, we'd get some salary off the books and there would have been room to bring in another striker on a going rate salary.

 

I would hope the contracts are not renewed and in fact Gray's never has. A loan would mean somebody wants them. Pay them off? I would remove them if we had better/any other options. I would actually remove Gray even if we hadn't!

 

Well there's discussion in the thread about whether or not we've extended Deeney's contract again. Let's hope not, but I fear we probably have. As for Gray, we could've made it clear he's not in our plans and terminated his contract, offered him for loan with us paying a portion of his wages, tried to get rid of him after the two lockdown breaches, force him to train away from the squad.

There was so much optimism in pre season, even with a young team. As soon as Deeney was fit, that's all dissipated. And Gray is just inept. Having them in the starting line up is really holding us back and blocking younger players and a better style of play. The footage of the two of them taking the piss out of Perica's stats on Football Manager that was put out on the official club YouTube says it all.

 

Mmmm... St Albans maybe?

 

Fixed it for you

 

Harsh. I reckon he could do a job as pwogwamme Dave's matchday assistant.

 

He is. It's just that his reputation seems to still be relatively intact with a small percentage within the game. He'd get another gig - but he shouldn't.

We also need to remember transfers aren't a two-way street...or a one-way street. Its take's 3 people to say yes for a deal to happen. I've always been of the belief that Gray has a cushy deal here and would be a pain to move on. There were rumours about Leeds - but it certainly wasn't reported as a deal that was ever close. I doubt anyone has ever been close to really wanting him from us.

 

No chance....Dave's alweady lined up as Xisco's weplacement.

 

Here's what we could have done with Gray:

• Transfer listed him in the summer as he isn't good enough and is one of the highest earners
• Fined and suspended him after he broke coronavirus rules
• Fined and suspended him after he broke coronavirus rules again
• Dropped him and made it clear his performances aren't acceptable instead of starting him
• Transfer listed him in January as he isn't good enough and is one of the high earners
• Settled with him to 'mutually' terminate his contract because he is bleeding the club dry

Just some options I would have considered if I were Gino.