Two down now with Estupinan leaving. Maybe let's see where we are by the end of the window before crowing "when's this fire sale starting then?"...
I think it's fair to say that this is no longer a fire sale but a clear out of all the bad eggs in the dressing room. Estupinan has clearly been one for years.
Agreed. But I would say given the seventeen players "not available" it's fairly obvious what we're trying to do here.
If that's the case, the non injured ones (honestly who even knows which they are), should be playing.
True. Seems we're taking no risks in getting any saleable assets injured and hoping the rest of the squad can get us to a relatively strong position by the end of the window then whoever we retain can then be integrated back in and hopefully we can push on. Safe strategy financially, risky results wise but paying off (just!) so far. I think the '17' figure can probably be scrapped now. Of that group we can safely assume Janmaat, Masina, Gray, Hughes, Success, Dele-Bashiru, Perica, Penaranda and maybe Dawson were/are genuinely injured/ill. With Perv sold that leaves Deeney, Pereyra, Sarr, Suarez, Welbeck, Capoue, Deulofeu and maybe Dawson who could be considered to be refusing to play, or close to a move so not being risked, or somewhere in between. So 7/8. Deulofeu is potentially still not fit but I think fits more into the second category with him still being nowhere near the training ground. Dawson could fit into either group as there's been no rock solid source either way to fully explain his absence.
Could be. Would indicate why they all looked pissed off on the bench against Boro. Also, would be deeply disturbing for a player like Hughes to be part of that. Would break a few hearts who seem to think he's the difference.
Thank you, @WatfordTalk for breaking this down and adding some reason to these discussions. This 17 figure is a joke. Its frustrating that lots of our players are unavailable, but most of that is not indicative of asset stripping or whatever. Sarr also only started training last week so - transfer interest or not - it doesnt make much sense to risk your best player when he's not fully fit. Like with Deulofeu and Dawson (and Sarr) I think a lot of the players are in this hybrid situation: we may be wrapping them up in cotton wool but they also have genuine injury issues. Suarez is another one - not clear what's going on with him - while Deeney had knee surgery this summer. Pereyra, Capoue and Welbeck have the clearest status of being unavailable in preparation for a potential move - likely because we are looking to shift their wages, not because they're refusing to play or we're having a fire sale or whatever - but I think its not so clear with lots of other players.
I'm not sure Saturday's line up will shed any light on anything. Thinking we'll have to wait till the window closes (or actually when both windows close) to have any firm idea of what the squad will look like. Still... it's not boring.
I wonder if Capoue is still injured?, if i recall he missed the last three games last season. surely if he is refusing to play, as many on here are indicating , he should be fined a large proportion of his wages. I am on a salary paid employment , if i just didn't turn up for work or refuse to do my duties in a professional way , my employee would i imagine suspend me on zero wages.
What we can say is despite all this going on, be any of it true or false, the players we have seen so far have been giving effort. When we were relegated I knew we would lose players that was a given. So far, only Doucs has gone for certain, with Capoue heavily linked away and Deeney to WBA, Birmingham and of course Sarr to Liverpool? None of these things have happened and they remain Watford players (injured or not). I feel the club needs to be a lot more vocal with the fans, be it through media or club statements. When was the last time Dux came out and said anything about what the future will be? I cannot remember. I know the press have quoted several Watford "higher ups" as saying this season is going to be massive etc. Vlad is a good coach who has installed a good groundwork into this team. Personally, the most worrying thing is who can we say will be the matchday squad for sure right now? We are playing what is essentially our League Cup side for Championship matches, which is not a terrible thing as it gives the youth a chance, something we have been saying for ages now. A downside to this is we have a very unbalanced side overall. Where we were once really strong in midfield has become our weakest link. It does need addressing but will it? We still have Capoue and Sarr on our books who are excellent wingers as well has Hughes who can play central. Attacking wise we have pretty good strikers at this level. Gray is OK (when fit). Pedro although not a striker in trade has an eye for goal and is young and raw, Sinclair who we used to write off as much as Success - has become surprisingly competent so far anyway. Throw in Sema who has also gained a bit of a bounce, and attacking wise we do have the talent. But, and this is the problem - when our better players such as Sarr and Hughes are fit, will they even play? If Gino is being a sly fox and holding out for better offers from say Liverpool, what happens if nothing pans out? Do we lose Sarr, Capoue and Hughes on loan, which we seem very happy to do, then make a sell on profit? We need to know what is going on, and I feel Vlad is as much in the dark as we are right now. I like the energy of the side I have seen so far and we have won 4 on the trot - but like others have said, luck will run out and we have no idea what a dip in confidence will do for such a fractured side.
Personally, I feel Ivic is on the right track by stripping it right back and creating a side with a good attitude but he has to be aware of the cut-off line. Maybe he has been a little naive a little in thinking academy kids and backup players can do the job, but I feel we've got away with it in our last two games. If he continues to ignore the quality players it will be a big mistake. At least until Hughes comes back, he has to use Capoue. While Sarr is in the building he has to be selected. Use Welbeck too, he's much better than the other options we have. He has to start feeding these players into the side, at least have them on the bench. We cannot afford to keep selecting the weak teams ,as he's done in the past two matches, and expect to get good results. It's not going to happen. Already, Duxbury has made it clear it's Ivic that is doing this. He's distanced himself from it, so there board are setting the groundwork to making Ivic the scapegoat. I'm surprised others have not picked up on that. So Ivic has to pick his strongest team from now on, in order to protect himself. The players he's using right now, maybe showing good attitude, but the drop off in quality is too great.
Exactly. If the exclusion of all the wantaways is down to Ivic he's not being made a scapegoat, Duxbury is simply supporting him.
Don't be so naive. He's made it clear that Ivic is not selecting these players. Supporting him would be a collective "we're all in it together" message. The few statements Duxbury has given is clearly saying it's all Ivic, not us guv. If you don't like it blame him. He's not supporting the head coach, he's isolating him. Duxbury is a master of spin. He's fooled you I see.
Sarr has been back in training just over a week, so Saturday may come too soon. Deeney is now back training with the main group, so it will be interesting to see whether he might make the bench at Newport. To my understanding, Capoue is still carrying the injury that forced him to miss the end of last season. The insinuation last week was that Welbeck has an injury too, which wouldn’t be a total surprise, but that might be a smokescreen along the lines of us being told Estupinan had a ‘little problem’. I’ve no idea about Suárez.
Long time reader but infrequent poster on this forum. Seen a fair few opinions on here and thought I'd share my own. The club has been run on a Premier league cost base for the last 3-4 years. Accounts show the annual wages as of last year at £84m. That level of costs is not sustainable in the championship where guaranteed revenue is £34m (I think inclusive of parachute payments). So clearly a cost-cutting exercise needs to be undertaken. Half the players who have been linked away too were absolute tosh for the vast majority of last season and some of whom the majority were happy to have let go should we have stayed up - why has that changed now we have gone down? Doucoure as an example - literally couldn't string a pass together or kick a football properly towards the end of last year (and towards the end of the year before that). If he wanted to go, the club were right to get rid of him - £22m (or £25m as some have you believe) is a great deal for him irrespective of previous bids received. Estupinan too - no one knew who he even was Jan / Feb time this year. He had one year left on his contract and could have gone for a free or nominal in 3.5 months time to Villareal - £15m is a great deal for him. Two players gone (not materially damaging the team in the same way losing Sarr would) and c. £40m received - and a long way gone to bridging the gap between the Premier League and Championship revenue streams. This is also not taking into account other receipts such as loan fees for Cucho. There is no fire sale going on here - it is a calculated cost-cutting exercise to preserve the long term future by getting rid of assets that either do not want to be here (e.g. Doucoure, Estupinan) or who do not form part of the clubs philosophy moving forwards (e.g. Deeney). The only other category of players not in the above would be if we were to receive a ridiculous bid in for a player - like £45-50m for Sarr which seems unlikely given the wider market conditions at the moment and the fact Liverpool are about to splash out on Thiago. There is nothing further to it. Regardless of the above, we still have a team easily capable of challenging for promotion. The championship this year is weak - Bournemouth have or are in the process of losing their best players, as are Brentford. Only Norwich and ourselves have kept our better players to date. Other 'challengers' like Swansea have lost two of their best players from last year in Gallagher and Brewster. We haven't lost anyone who cannot be replaced from within yet - let alone without looking to recruit externally (which will be done). Add the likes of Gray, Sarr and Hughes to Friday night's team and we are easily capable of going up. Adding to this, the few players we have been linked with seem to indicate the club going in a different direction with recruitment which is consistent with the footballing philosophy of Ivic. Young, hungry players who can develop with the club and grow into better footballers - Grimes, Morrell, Ngakia. Mix these with the younger players we already have (e.g. Wilmot and Quina) and the know-how we have in the likes of Foster, Cathcart, Murray and Gray and you have a championship spine who know how to get out of the league. Compare this team with the team West Brom went up with last year - it's not even comparable! Really don't understand the doom and gloom on here - there is a lot to be positive about and we will definitely be challenging this year to go back up again.
Nice to see you on here Mr Duxbury, I'm glad you've taken the fans' complaints about a lack of communication on-board.
I haven't believed a word Duxbury has said in years, so it's not me he's fooled. It's the people who listen to him and others in the club hierarchy who then seem to be most butthurt now they've realised they're unable to deliver.
A good post and comes from a different angle, but I will add some balance to it. A cost cutting excise does need to be done, that's true, but there has to be balance to it. Remember this situation is totally self-inflicted, and the people who made such basic mistakes are still around making all the current decisions. Do we have the trust and confidence in them anymore? Maybe, maybe not, but no doubt all will be revealed if they are on the right track or not. You say half the players were tosh last season, and while they under performed, they would be of massive benefit to us this season. I do not have a problem with Doucoure going, as it was probably the right moment for him to go. But to only get £20m for him was ridiculously low. How the board could accept such a low figure is beyond me. A player approaching his prime, a superb athlete who is rarely absent through injury, he covered the most ground out of everyone in the Premier League last season which backs up his incredible engine. He's an experienced Premier League player now and still had 3 years left to run on his contract. Everton were desperate to sign him too, which as you know, normally makes them go a little higher in order to make the signing. There is no reason why we should have given him away for about £10m under his true value. Dreadful from the club. They then go on to sell probably the most promising wing back in Europe for just £15m!!.......Villarreal couldn't believe their luck and ensured he signed for 7 years. They know how valuable he will be, but our board thought £15m was a good deal. Forget all this 1 year left on his contract nonsense, that just doesn't add up at all to me. Why would Villarreal not wait until January then sign him for free on a pre-contract?, why did the club bring him over and include him in pre-season? why did the club put him on a two year loan (which was recalled half way through) if he was out of contract by the end of it? There are too many indicators to suggest he wasn't in his last year of contract. I believe Watford had an optional 1 year extension which they used taking him up to 2022. You say there's no fire sale, but it's clear by the squad Ivic is picking, the club are prepared to let all the "star" players go. They are not available to us, so in effect, they've already gone. So far, and this is just my opinion, I don't not believe the squads picked for the Boro and Oxford matches would get you anywhere near the promotion places. You can now see our defence is the best area, which shows you how big the drop off has been. If we're left with forwards being Murray, Gray, Perica and Success.....you can forget it. If we allow our midfield to only contain Chalobah, Cleverley, Quina, Dele-Bashiru and Phillips.......again you can forget it. You need Capoue and Hughes added, and if not them, a couple of players of similar ability. We're now in a situation where a Charlton academy reject is our only natural option for left back on Saturday. That's unbelievably bad planning. Yes, young, hungry players are good to have, but they have to be of sufficient quality in the first place. Ngakia is a good example of the level of player we need to be signing. Players like Sierralta and Stevenson will do nothing for the cause. Trying to make a player out of Navarro will not work, and although I hate to say it, his injury is a real blessing for us.
To think it was only a year ago that we were signing players of the quality of Craig Dawson. What has happened to our club??
How very dare you use facts and reality when there is a clear fire sale going on (already 2-3 players have been sold!!!!!) and the way the owners (who have given us the second most successful period in our history) communicate with me in a way I disapprove of.
Mildly ironic given how much anyone questioning anything about the club seems to hurt your own precious fee-fees.
I would agree to an extent that it is self-inflicted, as poor recruitment over the past 3-4 years has hindered us. But to another extent, the players have to take the blame for last year. It is the same team with the addition of Sarr and Welbeck as the season before, who for 3/4 of the previous season were brilliant. What went wrong? Ability doesn't just evaporate so you have to question desire and application of those on the pitch. Some of those performances post-lockdown were a joke - would have loved to have seen Deeney's distance covered in some of those games (thinking City or West Ham where he was just trotting around the pitch offering nothing whatsoever), which to me ultimately boils down to effort. If so, I'm happy they're off. If you were basing Doucoure's performance of the season two years prior, then I would agree we could have got more. But I don't think we can really expect more judging off his performances last year. Going off the trajectory of his performances over the past season and a half, his value is only really going downwards. Be interesting to see at Everton how he gets on. I know Villareal were after a left back as Moreno got injured - perhaps explains why they brought their search forwards. Also to them if there is a risk he gets snapped up by a Spurs, Man United, Barca etc then it would seem worth the risk to spend the money when it is likely his re-sale value is only going upwards. Just unfortunate we went down as I'm sure if we'd have stayed up he'd still be here with a new contract. If he doesn't want to sign a new contract with us in the Championship then I don't really see what other choice we have other than chancing our promotion. Be interesting to see the team news come the Luton game - feel that will be a much better time to judge what we intend to do this season as opposed to the Boro game. Do still feel we have a great chance of going up - as a comparison, West Brom's team on the last game of the season was as follows: Johnstone, Furlong, Ajayi, Bartley, O'Shea, Livermore, Sawyers, Pereira, Krovinovic, Diangana, Robinson. Possibly 2/3 Premier League quality players. I really do think even our team v Boro is possibly better than that.
