The Championship 2020-21

Discussion in 'The Hornets' Nest - Watford Chat' started by Markoa$, Jul 26, 2020.

  1. FromDiv4

    FromDiv4 Reservist

    The family who own Stoke have created a lot of wealth from gambling.
     
  2. Moosegasm

    Moosegasm Reservist

    Very true!
     
  3. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    It is for some!
     
    Moosegasm likes this.
  4. Moosegasm

    Moosegasm Reservist

    I picked Andre cos he's been shagging Leigh Ann Pinnock for years. She doesnt need his money and masculine athletic guys are 10 a penny to her so I reckon he must be delivering a lot more in the bedroom than he is on the pitch.
     
    SkylaRose likes this.
  5. Dorset-Orn

    Dorset-Orn First Year Pro

    Not sure but the way they talk I think they completely overspent in recent years, paid some big salaries, and had more duds than even we did. I think they sailed close to FFP and the owner seems to be unwilling to keep bank-rolling the club like he did.?
    The Pozzos do lots of wheeling and dealing and a lot of our expense has been salaries, so their owner has prob just been pumping lots of money in over 7 years and then seen it all crumble, and has now pulled right back for now....
     
  6. 99mph

    99mph 4th Prediction league 2011/12

    I don't know enough about their transfer income, but I do remember lots of eyebrow raising at the fees for players like Jordan Ibe. I'm not sure if the wages listed online can be relied on, but big money players like Jefferson Lerma must be on a lot.

    No idea how that compares to Watford's transfer dealings or wages, but I suspect our flops might be significantly less costly, except Gray.
     
  7. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    EH had more or less complete control over transfers at Bournemouth, but he was pretty rubbish at it and wasted a lot of money. We know from managers like Aidy and Vialli, they don’t always spend the money wisely even compared to our owners. Demin wanted to take a bit more control from him in that regard even if they stayed up, which is partly why he didn’t stay on. Once you get relegated back to the championship you’ve either got to try and spend your way straight back and outrun FFP, or cut your cloth accordingly. It looks like MD had decided it’s the latter and he doesn’t want to put any of his own actual cash in anymore. That said I very much doubt Pearson would’ve been expensive, so maybe they just decided he wasn’t for them.
     
  8. ITK platypus

    ITK platypus Squad Player

    Norwich's strategy of building a Championship winning machine which then doesn't even try to stay up in the Premier League is extremely pathetic. For this reason I hope we and another team can hunt them down.

    Of the current top 4, we know we are well capable of competing in the Prem and would do our best to do so. Brentford and Swansea would surely give it a go and would be interesting to see.

    Norwich will limp to a pathetic last place. Waste of a promotion spot.

    Our job is to hunt them down and I think we can do it.
     
  9. sydney_horn

    sydney_horn Squad Player

    I agree that Norwich haven't really even tried to stay in the EPL but that is why I'm happy for them to go up with us. It will be odds on they will take up one of the relegation spots again which means only two others for us to avoid!
     
    W4BS and Hogg-DEENEY!!! like this.
  10. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Must be a bit frustrating as a fan, but I have absolutely nothing against how Norwich operate.

    Delia was a chef who sold a few books, she’s worth about £25m which is an absolute pittance even compared to the majority of championship club owners.

    They literally can’t compete by spending, over 80% of a clubs revenue goes on wages, whenever they’re in the premier league they’ll have less money than any other club in the league, so what’s the point in spending what they do have to line players and agents pockets to still get relegated anyway?
     
  11. TomWatfordFC

    TomWatfordFC Reservist

    Toney already back in the Brentford squad.
     
  12. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    What is this sorcery?
     
    EB Hornet likes this.
  13. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Depends on how precarious our financial situation is, if we go up, we'll need to buy lots of players, but will we be able to?
     
  14. WatfordTalk

    WatfordTalk First Team

    Hopefully they've rushed him back
     
    I Blame Pozzo and UEA_Hornet like this.
  15. Chumlax

    Chumlax Squad Player

    Will just say that Delia and her husband only own 53% of Norwich's shares, so they're not solely relying on her to pour her own money in.
     
  16. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    We should do a Norwich if we go up to repair the damage of the last few years.
     
    Forzainglese likes this.
  17. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    If it means we can win the Championship title, I'd be up for that!
     
    Forzainglese likes this.
  18. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Relentless this year isn’t it? Top 4 almost in a mini league of their own at this stage. It’s pretty unbelievable we’ve got 13 out of 15 points and in that time made up only 1pt on Norwich and Swansea.
     
  19. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    8 points between Swansea and Reading. If my memory serves me right it was very much like this in our promotion season, everyone kept winning and then finally, eventually, was it Boro and maybe Derby who dropped away?

    If Swansea and Brentford can just start ******* off some time soon that would be great.
     
  20. Brentford play Norwich game after next - one or both will drop points.
     
  21. leighton buzzard horn

    leighton buzzard horn Squad Player

    With the way football has gone it is beginning to make sense. Everyone celebrates the fact you get £150m if you go up, but to stay up you need to spend pretty much all of it and then some. Look at the financial trouble we are in if we don’t go up this season. Going up to take the money is dull but that’s the way football has gone - dominated by money rather than ambition.

    I don’t like what Norwich do but it’s logical.
     
  22. leighton buzzard horn

    leighton buzzard horn Squad Player

    On the night we slip up at home to Wycombe...
     
  23. ITK platypus

    ITK platypus Squad Player

    Agreed, if neither do we can consider ourselves very unfortunate.
     
    EB Hornet, PowerJugs, jackwfc and 3 others like this.
  24. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    I presume Munoz won't win MOTM due to the run Cardiff have been on?

    Good news...
     
  25. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yeah, in fairness it does have a similar vibe to it. 14 games left after tonight. Our last 14 in the promotion season we won 10, drew 3, lost 1. Gonna take one hell of an effort to copy that this time around, especially as that year we only had to play one of the three teams up there with us in that run in, whereas this time we’ve got all three to come.
     
    a19tgg likes this.
  26. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    It’s actually only just under £100m if you finish bottom (Norwich got just over £96m last season).

    Straight away there is part of the problem, Newcastle in 13th got £120m, so that’s £20m more than Norwich and they have 30k more fans every week as well, so that’s another £15/20m.

    So Norwich may have £100m coming to them, but so has every other team, except they’ve all actually got more.

    And as a team like Norwich if you want to sign any half decent players you’ll want relegation clauses in their contracts, but why would the players accept that if Southampton or Palace as an example will give them contracts without? So you’ve either got to scrap the relegation clauses, or pay them over the odds to get them.

    You’ve basically got to keep spending all the money you get and risk financial jeopardy if you get relegated, which you probably will anyway, just to attempt to tread water for maybe a few years.
     
  27. leighton buzzard horn

    leighton buzzard horn Squad Player

    Yep. The glory of it has gone. There was a championship play off final a few years back, I can’t remember which year, and after the final whistle the player who scored the winner was on camera and the first question was “how does it feel to have just scored the £100m goal?”.

    I don’t like it one bit but the Norwich approach does make sense.
     
    sherwood and wfc4ever like this.
  28. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    The only minor silver lining of that is at least it's close to being in our hands considering we can still take points of our rivals, rather than us having to rely on some of the many crap clubs in the divison to do us a favour.
     
    Carpster and UEA_Hornet like this.
  29. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yes and they’re all coming right at the end, which means we could feasibly be in pole position out of us, Brentford and Swansea going into the final 4 games.
     
  30. Siohmy

    Siohmy Reservist

    I wouldn’t rule out catching Norwich just yet. Ok, so it’s pretty unlikely as they are a very good side so unlikely they’ll drop that many points but they may only be 4 points clear after Saturday. Even though they’ve got their game on Sunday the psychology of having a 10 point lead, albeit with the same play before the others element yesterday, turn into a 4 point lead before playing again can be testing. Of course that relies on at least one of us, Brentford and Swansea (with their 2 games in hand) winning. It arguably would be better for us all to keep the pressure up. Swansea have the games in hand and Brentford play Norwich soon.

    Obviously it’d be great if both Swansea and Brentford collapse but that is highly doubtful. I do think Swansea may be the ones to struggle as the season draws to a close. That said we need to keep our players fit as I don’t think we can do without many starters from here on out.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  31. LondonOrn

    LondonOrn Squad Player

    That was some effort after what could have been a damaging defeat at home to promotion rivals Norwich who were in superb form and didn't lose an away game after Alex Neil took over:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31466186

    Interestingly if you look at the table on the bottom right of the page, you'll see we were in a pretty similar position in terms of where we were in relation to our promotion rivals, only I'm assuming Norwich won't collapse like Derby did - just behind Norwich on goal difference like we are with Brentford, and four points behind Middlesbrough who were that season's Swansea (Swansea's games in hand are Blackburn and Sheff Wed away and I'd be surprised if they won both of them, which would make them at worst three points ahead of us). Norwich continued their fine form with 26 points from their next 12 games, and Boro got 24 points from the same number, before both teams dropped points in winnable games that enabled us to get promoted. It would be surprising if both Brentford and Swansea show that kind of form, which I'd say makes our task roughly equal in challenge given the tougher run-in.
     
  32. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Swansea and Brentford seem to have had a much more settled first XI for much of the season whereas we've mixed and matched for various reasons, could that work in our favour? Only thing that worries me is the lack of cover in midfield, I like @Steve Leo Beleck's suggestion of Sema in midfield mentioned in the Success thread if need be, but I don't know if Xisco is that brave to make what would be a bit of an unorthodox move
     
  33. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    We won 15 of the last 20 games to get promoted in 2014/5.

    Would the same sort of run be enough ?
     
  34. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    If we beat Brentford and Swansea at the end, it probably would.
     
    wfc4ever likes this.
  35. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Annoying thing is that had we got our act together earlier, I've no doubt we could've coasted to promotion and won the title. We were cobbling teams together from the very first game of the season.
     

Share This Page