Defensive Recruitment History

This is partly true. Some players didn't want to sign for us. I say partly because on occasions we have dropped out of buying someone if the club we buying from wants a little more. Whereas other clubs in the same boat would pay a bit more to get their man.

 

Our only hope in this regard is somewhere in Udinese's warehouse they have another oven-ready batch of championship contenders (unlikely as they're **** now too).

 

I keep reading this but can anyone even name a current Swedish international? What is the bar to play in goal for Sweden? Even Scott Loach has had England call ups which I imagine has a higher bar?

 

Too obvious, troll harder next time.

 

Yes, in the entire world of football our owners and their "amazing scouting network" have been physically incapable of finding a reasonably priced, competent centre back, other than Dawson (who doesn't actually fit the "competent" criteria), in the past THREE YEARS.

It clearly has absolutely nothing to do with them being completely arrogant about that area of the squad and assuming we'd continue to just get by for at least another season, and being blatantly reluctant to ever invest any real money into the defence.

 

Also;

Foster - PL Relegation
Dawson - PL Relegation
Cathcart - PL Relegatiln
Mariappa- PL Relegation (twice?)
Femenia - Real Madrid B relegation

We quite literally have a bunch of losers in defence and wonder why we lose.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Please do have another go at offering a synopsis of what I said. This time try to avoid the basic errors of twisting the argument and ignoring a key point.

 

I think in fairest to the owners as far as some of the comments in this thread are concerned they are the second ‘poorest’ in the league. The only way we operate at this level and try and stay at this level is through selling players for profit, and in fairness that has always been our model, it’s now just on a grander scale.

The PL is awash with money, but every other club in the league has it and the vast majority of it is used up on wages and transfer fees. Unless you have very rich owners the only way you compete is by buying better than the other teams, and by better I mean smarter. The teams that struggle the most are the Villas and the Fulham’s who spend loads and buy badly, it’s almost impossible to get yourself out of that position. The only way for a club like us to actually make money out of the PL and not rely on player sales is do a Norwich. Just get promoted, don’t spend any money and inevitably get relegated, if by some miracle you survive one season, you won’t survive the next. To compete you have to spend and you have to have quality and even then there are no guarantees.

The pozzo approach is pretty well known now, the approach the positions on the pitch like a poor mans Arsene Wenger. Defence requires the least talented players and gives the lowest return to them on resale, so they fill it with players are as cheap as possible. They like to spend the majority of their money on midfielders as they see this as having the highest impact on results and the best resale value. I think they get an unfair reputation regarding the players who go out on loan. It’s almost always work permit related and these players never cost a lot in the first place. Ultimately they’re all speculative punts who may or may not work out and the harsh reality is more probably won’t than will, but they only need the odd one to be a success. The ones that can play for us straight away generally get in the team/squad, Sarr/Richarlison/Pedro.

The hard reality is for us fans though is that if those players do well then we will sell them, because we have to. The hope is that this continual cycle helps us to incrementally improve, but it’s a slow process.

Then you’ve got the Bobby p type signings. Talented, so can win you games, but mentally weak or lazy hence why they didn’t make it at the bigger clubs they’ve been at.

The hope is that when you chuck it all together you get enough decent performances from these type of players that collectively along with the young raw players and a manager that can make the defence greater than the sum of its parts we survive at this level. I think their plan is no more complicated than that.

I personally think that given time and few more seasons we would’ve eventually got to the point where the squad and the defence would’ve have incrementally improved to an acceptable level.

The one big mistake (or mistakes) this season has been around the managerial appointments, that is ultimately what will cost us, not our defensive recruitment. Unfortunately getting relegated will set us back in the process five years. If we then get promoted again the whole process will start again. They won’t suddenly start spending tons of money on defenders, they’ll look to incrementally improve the whole squad season on season through player trading and it will take a long time.

That may be depressing for some, but without bottomless pockets it’s that or just going back to being an average championship side essentially doing the same thing but with a lot less money.

 

It's both, if the Pozzos had been as ruthless in replacing under-performing defenders (and attackers) as they have been in replacing under-performing managers we wouldn't be in this situation.

I had the impression in the earlier years of the Pozzo era that as soon as a player appeared to not be good enough they were quickly shipped out and another new signing was brought in from somewhere until the team clicked. It seems they have become complacent in doing this and expecting the managers to somehow perform miracles with the dross which has been left stinking up the place.

 

Easier said than done though isn’t it. So they don’t buy Sarr and spend that money on defenders instead. We’re already the second lowest scorers in the league so what happens without Sarr at the other end of the pitch? Who do we sell for profit to survive?

 

Re your second point we were dealing with much smaller budgets then, easier to ship a free/cheap defender out and replace with another, not so easy to do at a higher level.

 

Classic handmaid's response

 

You're forgetting Janmaat relegated with Newcastle

 

Burnley. Just in answer to all of those excuses. Burnley.

 

Pretty easy to not offer new, multi year deals to old, failing players who were never much good in the first place.

 

Burnley are a great example, but how many other examples of that are there? And what happens when Dyche leaves? The answer is we don’t know, but we know what happened when Pullis left both stoke and wba, curbishley left Charlton as an example.

Realistically are our owners going to rip up their model and take up pretty much the opposite approach and give complete control to a manger?

If they did is that a guarantee of success and how would they do it without player trading?

If we got rid of the owners and took that approach, again how would it work without money? Burnley is a great example, but there aren’t many others are there? We did it ourselves with GT back when money was far far less of an issue, but we never managed it with anyone else did we?

 

I refuse to accept that signing players like Pope, Rodriguez, Tarkowski etc would have been beyond our means, would not have massively improved our starting 11 and would have somehow harmed our fabled model.

The issue is, that my priority of Watford being a good team, is different from Gino's priority of wheeling and dealing.

Gino clearly thinks that 2 more years of average, injured Janmaat will be enough to survive, whilst he signed more Lukebakios.

I disagree and think that we should focus on building a team, not using our squad as a holding facility for the misfits of our network who have not yet found willing loans.

 

We managed to sign loads of players for cheap in the first few seasons of the Pozzos somehow, both in the Championship and the Premier League, and also ship them out when they weren't working.

Just look at how many players we signed and sold in our first few seasons in the PL for example, it seems absolutely nuts, but it worked. Those who point to the fact that most of our defensive signings were cheap forget that in part this was because the Pozzo transfer model used to be to sign loads of players for cheap in the hope that a few would turn out to be good enough, then they'd get rid quickly of the ones that weren't.

They've stopped doing that so much in the last couple of seasons and had us over-reliant on past their use-by-date players with no real competition. It also leaves us out of options when the few signings we make don't work out.

This season the only senior players we signed were:
Pussetto
Sarr
Welbeck
Dawson
Joao Pedro (kinda)

By contrast in 17/18 we signed:
Gray
Richarlison
Hughes
Chalobah
Lukebakio
Dahlberg
Zeegelaar
Deulofeu
Carrillo
Femenia
Wague
Bachmann
Ndong
Foulquier
Karnezis

In 16/17 we signed:
Success
Pereyra
Cleverley
Kums
Janmaat
Kabasele
Kaboul
Dja Dje Dje
Zarate
Niang
Mariappa
Sinclair
Kenedy

Sure most didn't work out, and quite a few were loans, but players knew they wouldn't stay if they didn't perform. It was a constantly revolving door. The Pozzos tried and failed and eventually found something again and again. That approach eventually got us promotion and kept us in the division, but for the first time they've been complacent, and it shows. They kept the revolving door of managers (though were maybe too slow with Gracia), but not of the under-performing players whom managers reasonably could not get to perform consistently any more.

For those that claim "signing players is not like it is on computer games", if any club and its owners demonstrated otherwise it has been ours. Remind yourselves of the incredible number of players that have come and gone through our club during the Pozzo era (prior to the last year):

https://www.transfermarkt.com/fc-watford/alletransfers/verein/1010

 

Some of those players you’ve listed are farcically bad though, I’m not sure it’s a bad thing they’ve moved slightly away from that approach. I’m not sure if you’re advocating signing a load of absolute dross and hoping some of them work out as the solution?

 

It had been working until now - say if the Pozzos' strike rate was out of every 5 signings we'd get 1 hit, 2 mediocre, and 2 dreadful, we'd get more hits and more competition and options when we brought in 15 players every summer than when we just brought in 5. We wouldn't have known many would be "farcically bad" until we got them in.

If last summer was supposed to be a more considered approach to signings than previous revolving door summers, there's no indication it has been more effective.

 

I’m pretty sure most of us hated that approach, bringing in donkeys like Zegellar, folquier and wague who come in and play one or two games, are universally horrendous and then have to be shipped out again.

Our current approach may not be right, but that one definitely wasn’t right either.

 

I’ll keep saying it: Rodriguez - £10 million.

 

It was amusing, but I didn't hate it. We knew it was how the Pozzos operated, it was what it was. It also kept us in the division, so it certainly wasn't wrong.

 

Wasn't Foulquier crowbarred into our squad this very season?

What are you saying has changed for the better?

 

I’m not necessarily saying anything is better, but lowerrous seems to be saying it was better when we signed 10 players, most of whom were awful and maybe 2 would be ok was a better approach.

Im basically saying neither of those approaches are great.

 

Yeah. Basically signing **** defenders is bad, no matter how many you sign.

 

It’s hard to argue against the Burnley players you’ve listed. There must be loads of potentially great young defenders in the lower leagues which we don’t appear to bother trying to scout.

 

He went to a bigger club than us.

 

Dyche is the football brain at that club and he's an excellent coach. He's proved that beyond any doubt now.

They show what can be achieved if you get the right manager and allow him to manage. He knows the type of player he wants and he's very strong on character.

The saddest part of this is that Dyche was our manager, then we inexplicably sacked him. It was the wrong call at the time and history has also backed this up.

Had we kept Dyche, I believe we'd be better than Burnley. We'd be strong at the back, and have that clean sheet mentality, but we'd attract far better midfield and forwards. I think Watford are seen as a more attractive proportion than Burnley.

It's all immaterial now, as we took a different path. We were still successful, but it's a skin of your teeth success, rather than a solid "no fear we're going down" feeling. I've always felt Watford were just a nudge away from being relegated. We've always gone on these long bad runs, especially at the end of a season which breeds no confidence in the following campaign.

What we need is a coach who would demand a performance, even if there is little to play for. Dyche & Joka are the only two I can think of that had that about them.

The guy we have now is the closest fit to Dyche we've ever had. We do need a steely British coach, who will take no crap. But that will only get you so far. He also needs to be very tactically astute. Getting both of those qualities in one man is a tall order, if not impossible. So a strong tactical coach as a number two, is also very important.

I do think Pearson and Shakespeare have to be given a chance, no matter what, next season. I think you have to look at what he has to work with. There are far too many limitations. If you have defenders who cannot defend and strikers who cannot score, it's very difficult for anyone to make it work. For example, if you put Ings up front and Ake, Dunk in defense, we'd be a comfortable mid-table at least. That's just three players. Get the right players in and we'd be an excellent side.....IMO.

 

I don’t think getting rid of Dyche was the wrong call, because it was never a decision to be made. It wasn’t like the owners debated the two paths, they have their way of doing things and the incumbent manager was always going to be shown the door. Dyche also suffered a relegation with Burnley, he never would’ve got as far as he’s got with Burnley if we’d kept him and we got relegated. Rightly or wrongly it’s extremely rare for any club to keep a manger through a relegation, more often than not they don’t even get the chance to be relegated, they're sacked before it happens.

 

I beg to differ. It was the wrong call. He did an excellent job keeping a real ragtag squad in the Championship. It was an amazing achievement, and his reward was the sack.

I rarely would be critical of the Pozzo's, but for me, the first big decision they ever made was the worst they've ever made......but I respect your opinion as seeing it differently.