Don't know why people are surprised. The terms of the deal were already revealed late last night by our resident ITK
Finding this transfer approach to be seriously wearing thin. I know he has his work permit issues but even so, it’s frustrating to hear of all the talent we accumulate to only take an eternity to play and in some cases, never see play at all. Compounded by the fact we have players in our squad in those very positions seriously misfiring. ‘A view’ to me, makes me think the fee would still need to be negotiated. I’d imagine if we go up he’ll potentially join up with the squad and if we don’t, he’ll be sold
Cucho alone? No. But it's a symptom of a wider issue, where the focus is not on the wa the team, but on the network of 'assets.' I'd say it's that policy which leads us to have probably better players in several positions out on loan, than we have at home. It is also why we sign players who are not what we need, but who perhaps fit the primary aim of player trading.
They are bought to see for profit, not to develop for us. They are a separate line of business to us.
Agree mate. Think if we get promoted then he will be with us. If not then the “view of a permanent transfer” become reality.
That's at best half true. The Pozzos aren't billionaires. They can't afford to run the club in the model where we buy 2-3 players for 10-40 million every year - much less the model like really big clubs use. They have to buy players cheaply and develop them. The costs and rules around doing this domestically make it a very difficult model (see Jadon Sancho). So you have to buy significant quantities of cheap foreign players and see if a decent number of them become either good enough to play for us, or good enough to play somewhere else, so we can sell them and use the money to buy someone here. Lukebakio is a great example of this. He got good enough to sell for a tidy profit, the result was that we had enough cash to get Sarr. If Cucho is only good enough to get 8-10 million from a Spanish club for him (I made that number up), well, so what? We paid almost nothing for him, his wages have been aid all along and we'd have money to go buy a defender who is good enough to play here. I don't see why people (not saying you are one of them) seem so upset by this. If we were owned by Jeff Bezos, sure, he could sponsor the new kit for 75 million and pay another 40 for in ground advertising and then we could go buy all sorts of people. The Pozzos simply aren't in that financial category. Honestly, blokes like Messi are richer than the Pozzos. We have to play the hand that we have, not the cards we wish we had.
Reading the page on the Watford site again, it says Matheus Santana has joined Recreativo de Huelva permanently. Odd then that the Spanish side announced his arrival 10 days ago as a loan transfer. https://recreativohuelva.com/2020/08/04/matheus-santana-cedido-al-recre/
His contract expires on the 30/06/2021 which is also the end of the "loan". foreign loans (as we know) are considered temporary permanent transfers as the players registration need to be moved. So from Watfords perspective he is gone permanently - I'm sure they would have said loan if the player was going to return..
In these debates why does it always have to be multi billionaire v Pozzo. Or Mariappa verses Laporte? The fact is some other Premier League clubs without billionaire owners are very well run, have little debt and controlled expenses. Additionally they also have sensible squad development year on year. Meanwhile we have Pozzo. Large external debt. Significant "other expenses" in the accounts compared to similar clubs. Shambolic unbalanced development of the first team squad (including a bizarre winter transfer window which played a significant part in our relegation) and all while the owners are seemingly completely distracted by a network of player trading across Europe.
Maybe Cucho fans can breathe a sigh of relief! The link has now been edited to remove the phrase "with a view to a permanent transfer." https://www.watfordfc.com/news/official-seven-departures-confirmed Struck me as a bit strange that it said that in the first place as the Getafe announcement made no mention of any permanent option and a lot of Spanish media actively highlighted (at least prior to Watford's announcement) that there was no option. Of course, it's still likely he doesn't play for us. But I think he could have a top season for Getafe, playing as an out and out striker in Bordalas' 4-4-2. and that will mean that if he does leave for good next summer we'll get much, much more for him.
I think we agree then ? Its a separate line of business and as you say Lukebakio is a good example. Profits from that line of business can then be used to fund acquisitions for us, yes. I guess others may have issues if they believe that 1/ we make a net loss rather than profit given the number of players involved and how few actually "get sold for a profit" or 2/ it takes so much time and effort that not enough attention is paid to actually running the football clubs eg the lack of attention paid to the defence over the years.
I'd imagine the option to buy Cucho is relatively high if it does exist. Getafe won't necessarily pay it. The fact he isn't coming this season makes me think Luis Suarez will stay.
They’ve edited it. “with a view to a permanent transfer” has become “with an optional break clause in January”.
oh wow. So they’ve edited it twice now. What a farce. But obviously great news. I wonder if the website admin got the wrong end of the stick but that’s quite the leap from “with a view to a permanent transfer” to “with an optional break clause in January.” This seems like one of those things you might see on a ‘banter era’ twitter thread.
I can see where you're coming from but he's signed a loan contract so say it's a loan. Once that runs out report he has left the club. But then seeing as the article now states 'with an optional break clause in January.' for Cucho's transfer, it looks like they do as much proof reading as I do when I make long lists in the loanee or Academy threads!
There no doubt that we failed miserably last year in bringing in defenders. I'm sure a lot of the "other expense" comes from musical managers. So, no doubt the Pozzos aren't without sin. But their net worth is still orders of magnitude less than virtually every other club in the Premier League last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_owners_of_English_football_clubs 3 of the 4 lowest net worth owners were relegated. The only club more skint than us which survived was Burnley. We've been punching above our weight class for several years, but got caught out this year. Money is needed to "paper over the cracks" when squad development doesn't deliver the conveyor belt of talent that it should. Honestly, most clubs we realistically compete with don't get to perpetual mid-table solidity by developing their own talent. I've said elsewhere that I think that the big gap in the Pozzo model is in setting up the club structure to leverage our player acquisition strategy. I noted the Red Bull clubs as an example of the way to do this (again, albeit at a far higher price point that we can aspire to). You decide what style of play you want to have, what system(s) you're going to support and you play those in you academy, U21, U23 teams and in the senior squad. When you acquire players, you acquire them with an eye to whether they fit into that style. That doesn't mean that you ONLY buy players that fit that, because a) If you're buying teenagers they can grow and develop into something else and b) sure, even if you want to play like Bielsa, if you find the next big strapping target man and can get him cheaply, buy him, loan him and sell him on. So bottom line I don't think that the problem is in the scouting and acquisition strategy, I think it's at the Giraldi>> Manager(s) >> youth setups where we don't define and adhere to a "Watford Way". So I think we're largely in alignment on at least that point. Fundamentally, however, We still are going to be in a mode where we just can't support having a lot of high earners on the club. And TBH, in most cases, to be solidly safe, that's what it takes. Look at Bournemouth. Everyone there was on the same page for years. All knew what Bournemouth was about, how they play, etc.. They were well managed. They ran out of talent and couldn't afford to buy enough. The Pozzos and the club weren't relegated because they have less money. But it was a big factor. Another 20 Million spent (i.e. 1/5 of Gino's net worth) would have seen us clear in all likelihood. We just didn't have it.
Lol this thread is about to take a funny turn. We just changed the clause in the announcement from option to buy to option to recall in January.
It's the clubs media team getting their own back for all the crap they put up with about releasing the kit.
As I mentioned in another thread, I believe this misinformation or "little mistakes" are deliberate. Not sure why they are doing this, but to be honest, I don't believe a word they say anymore. The official website is about as credible as Sport Witness.
I'm hearing that there may actually be an option to recall in January rather than an option to buy at the end of the loan. I'll keep you posted. Do you think they'll actually manage to announce the correct coach when they finally announce him ?
There's no way things like this don't go past Duxberry for a final sign off. Either they're putting out wrong information on purpose or someone high up at the club messed up. Would love to see that chain of E Mails between Gino, Girladi, Duxberry and the website administrators.
I wonder if we exercise the break clause in January, will Getafe demand the league is immediately stopped due to Watford spoiling the integrity of their league? Could be interesting.
No. ESSO m8. Poor quality info from BP. However the club have just announced "Neil Piersen - New Head Couch joins on a 22 year contract" so at least that's confirmed a key role in advance of the start of the season.
Don't get me wrong, I was also a fan of a team featuring the likes of Lee Hodson, Joe Garner and Mark Yeates, butIbut think you'd be pushing it to say the on pitch awfulness is worse than before the Pozzos started with their balance sheet building exercise.
Who does that actually really apply to though, other than Estupinan who has only had a break out season this season which we couldn’t have seen coming? Who has been significantly better that what we have, has their work permit and has been out on loan that we haven’t integrated? All our best buys come straight to us, all our players that need work permits don’t for obvious reasons.
It applies to all the players who are signed not to play for us, using our resources. Some of them are clearly better, in areas that we are desperately weak in, but it is irrelevant because improving our team is not the 'model.' The model is using our club to lure talent for the 'network.' We've become a honey pot for a trafficking business. That even after relegation, some of our fans still defend that, is quite amazing to me. Our owners completely ballsed up at least the past 18 months, if not longer, but people are queueing to defend their methods, because of ancient history like Lee Hodson, who was at least, committed to Watford, rather than it being a paper exercise.
If you are a car dealer the more cars you can buy and sell the more more money you can make, like anything you can sell really. You can only pick 11 players to play football, you can only name a squad of around 25+ and you can certainly only afford to pay a certain amount of them, especially if you can’t take them all in the squad. The Pozzos are worth £100m, only about two thirds of our yearly revenue as a premier league club, so for us to succeed they need to buy and sell players, the more the better and naturally they all can’t be housed at Watford. The best players come straight to us, Sarr, Richarlison, Pedro assuming that is they don’t need work permits. If they need work permits obviously they can’t come to us anyway. The young raw talent that need work permits get loaned out, I mean that’s literally a no brainier isn’t it? You’d have to be ******** to not understand that. It stands to reason that as it takes at least two years to get a passport some might turn out to be ****, some might turn out to be really good.. but unless they’ve got their passport AND we’re not half way through a season so they can’t be registered in our squad then naturally they will stay out on loan. Without that system we don’t have any money to buy players like Sarr. I really don’t get the issue with a system that literally has improved our club immeasurably and enabled us to operate at premier league level for five seasons, it’s madness.
Am I missing something here or has the article been updated, it says optional break clause in January and doesn't mention any transfer options??? Edit: ignore this, note to self, read the whole thread before engaging.
That system puts the interests of the team I, and presumably you, second. Sure, you can rationalise it with the one instance where it seems to have worked as you explain (selling Lukebakio and buying Sarr) but the overwhelming majority of the time it has left us with players like Success, Peneranda, Pussetto and Foulquier padding out our squad whilst our obvious weak areas go completely unstrengthened. If you enjoy the marginalisation of our team, good for you. If you're so chuffed with the glamour of seeing players with big reputations give zero effort for us, because they see the club as just a spoke on the network, then great. But calling people retards because they support Watford and not Pozzo Inc is pathetic.
