[SOLD] Gerard Deulofeu

Interestingly as well (this is off the top of my head, so someone may know the story a bit better) Parma were owned by the crowd that own and bought Grenada off of the Pozzos. They were forced into a sale to a group of fans after they failed to deliver on a number of promised.

 

He couldn't play for us though, because he had some small problem.

 

Indeed, plus Pozzo stood firm when it came to making sure that our real attacking talent, like Success, Gray and Deeney all stayed at Watford. Great to see that we are the priority.

 

Championshipitis. It went around our squad like wildfire. Still a few to recover from it.

 

I know you’re being sarcastic but they’re crap players that clearly nobody wanted. It is what it is with them surely? You can be annoyed they’re on our books, but it seems a bit pointless to be annoyed we didn’t sell them but we loaned Geri out when the reasons are fairly straight forward.

 

I think it's ridiculous that the club are clearly lying to us over and over and over again and yet people are prepared to let them off every single time.

They can take the piss because people believe them.

 

I don’t really get the lie or the relevance of it? So he’s fitter sooner than we were told? What do you suppose the benefit of that is to anyone?

 

The lie is to protect assets at the expense of our football team.

What's good for Gino isn't necessarily always good for WFC.

 

Protect assets from what? Being sold?

 

Genuine question, what was the lie? Club updated almost a month ago that Deulofeu was 'close to returning to full training'. Month later and he's fit enough for a few minutes off the bench. Sounds about right.

He didn't play because 1) He didn't want to. Same as Welbeck, Pereyra, Suarez, Estupinan. 2) We presumably didn't want to rush a player back from a long-term injury, when we know he's not staying anyway. If we had forced him to play, and rushed him back, he would have been fit for 1/2 games off the bench, at most. Why risk that?

 

Because it might have kept our dream of Carabao Cup glory alive for a bit longer.

 

shame he didn't sign off with an appearance against those ****s up the road. Imagine their carthorses trying to defend against him.

Though I suppose being brushed aside by our B-side without even a shot on target is even more humiliating than getting thrashed by a side full of superstars LOL.

 

While I love a good conspiracy theory and a good bash-the-foreign-owners session as much as the next man.... I'll get worked up over Deulofeu when he plays significant quality minutes - maybe. When Chalobah "came back" he was on the pitch but rubbish for an extended period. Most of us believe he's still not back to his former self. During that spell he received an invite to the England camp. He's by no means unique. Let him get healthy somewhere else and we'll see if we can either bring him back or sell him for something approaching his worth. Having an 80% Deulofeu for 15 minutes per game may not help us get promoted - even if is does help us feel less like second class citizens.

 

You would say no to an 80% Deulofeu for 15 mins a game?

 

Yes. He's a top class player, but if most of these are true (as is common in players coming back off of ACL injuries)... 1) won't make a tackle 2) won't take people on 3) gets muscled off the ball 4) hasn't got his acceleration.................. what role would he play? He's not going to get loads of space on nice clean pitches in the Championship. They're going to send legions of knuckle-dragging defenders at him to chop him down. Like as not he'd get injured again and help us not a great deal.

 

Surely it’s all moot, he didn’t want to play in the championship and it wasn’t really his fault we got relegated as he missed half the season. He’ll be on fairly high wages as well, surely the next best option to forcing him to stay and okay against his will is to loan him to our other club. Let’s not forget despite the crap we’ve got from Udinese TE is actually one of their better defenders.

 

The panic in defenders would still be a joy to behold. As others have said, he was far too good for this level, injury or not, and would have been an outrageous asset.

 

I don't think it was the plan as such, but both teams did well from each other in the window. Can't really complain at Geri moving there as it appears nobody wanted to take a risk on buying him, though I suppose I'd rather have got a 'fee' for Pussetto (not one bit surprised at Pereyra going there, that was kind of expected, if we got something around £8m for him that'd be good). Still, two international defenders and a big ********* striker, yeah, we'll take that

 

Not raining on Troost-Ekong as he’s likely better than what we have. But he demoted to their 5th choice CB this summer so not sure we can claim he was one of their better ones - certainly not in their eyes anyway.

 

Likewise I doubt Geri actively wanted to go to Udinese, just that they were the only club willing to take the 'risk' on him

 

I think with most players (outside of the top, top class ones) "horses for courses" is very much in play. We see it regularly where players look bang average, then they go to a different club in a different league and are world beaters. The happens happens the opposite way as well. It's way too early to tell, but I'm cautiously optimistic that the English game suits him better.

 

I don't know if that's fair to WTE, who seemed to cope just fine in Italy before Udinese got a shiny new toy, but that's definitely true of Pussetto, and currently Pereyra, Fessi, Okaka and maybe Deulofeu too (if I were him, even if I didn't have hangups about the Championship, it might not be the best league to come back to after a long term injury lol)

 

Interesting that Geri still has his locker as per Ben Foster's latest channel. Geri back in Jan to power us to 100 points I reckon.

 

Let's say hypothetically:

• We're top in Jan (possible)
• We get an irresistible offer for Sarr (likely)
• We have a recall clause on Geri (no idea)

Is this something that could actually happen? Geri is getting paid the same either way, if I him I would be bang up for spending 4 months ****ing on Championship teams while earning PL wages.

 

The guy wears tights and gloves in April, don't think he'd be bang up for Blackburn in February!

 

If we're near the top in Jan I don't see that we'd sell Sarr. It would make no sense, especially given that we'd already held out this summer and he's by far the most important player for our promotion push. For the sake of a few months we might as well just keep him and go up.

 

Deulofeu in the Championship would have been interesting. He would have the quality to beat four or five players at a time before putting a shot wide rather than his usual one or two.

 

Well spotted.
But is that a reflection or has a squatter moved into his locker?

 

Oh, I hadn't seen this. Please refer to the Ismalia Sarr thread to see how nonsensical your idea of his "lack of end product" is.

 

He'd be absolutely tearing it up in this league. Single-handedly winning us games and ignoring that toss pot Ivic's instructions not to leave his own half and play as dull football as humanly possible.

I miss him immeasurably.

 

We are who we are, we're never going to have anyone with 'end product' good enough for some people, or else they'll be snapped up in a flash

 

Goal or assist in pretty much every other game on average, playing in a mid-table and then relegated side in the Premier League... "no end product".

Makes sense.

 

Luckily we're OK down the left (and no, I'm not for a moment suggesting King Ken is as good as Geri!), have we played Geri down the right?

 

GD is clearly a quality player . He has undoubtedly been looked at by the very best teams
that there are . But there are reasons why he is not at Barcelona\Liverpool\Bayern Munich etc .

 

His injury got us relegated and has left us in this wretched situation. I hope van dijk dies.