Giaretta - New Contract

(I promise I will post no further screenshots from this interview series )

 

I'm pretty sure in excess of 99% of Watford fans hadn't heard of them before, but then they got linked and a few wannabe ITK's proceeded to put them on a pedestal as the answer to all our problems.

 

I know you've said this a few times but it doesn't necessarily actually mean a great deal, in fairness - the majority of football fans have relatively little knowledge about football behind what they see on the pitch following their own team, particularly when it comes to foreign leagues and clubs, and even more so when it comes to technical staff.

The facts were that Manga had an extremely successful track record at Frankfurt unearthing multiple unknown/unfancied players in similar price markets to the ones we were expecting (and stated in interviews) to be shopping in, who were extremely potent and went on to be sold for enormous profits, in the meantime having a strong hand in building a team that took a a relatively unfancied, 'smaller' club to becoming Europa League champions. This was known at the time, just as now.

 

Isn't that like literally word-for-word what Pozzo said in the summer in answer to the same question?
These people would make great MPs.

 

Laughable.

 

It's a shame but I understand why difficult questions weren't asked as access is everything. Even in an hour though, could've asked a few, his back story is irrelevant. Just a few questions that would've either elicited interesting responses or a telling lack thereof...

Why last time we were promoted did we spend the 7th highest on agents fees in the whole Premier League? We only bought Louza for a significant fee (and even that was only £8-9m which is peanuts by Premier League standards). How on earth were we only behind Man City, United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and Spurs given other clubs further down the table were dashing £20-30m on a single player?

Why are our operating costs so much higher than other similar sized clubs?

Why are Watford the only club in the whole of England to have conducted a transfer with Mogi Bayat since 2018? If he was that good at sourcing players, surely other clubs would be knocking his door down, we're hardly operating in the most moral industry...

 

Sorry to break my own rules, I said no more screenshots, but this teensy weensy one just tickled me too much:



Giaretta is saying the quiet part out loud, outlining his exact approach to every single transfer window, just without realising it.

"This time next year, Rodders..."

 

It would almost certainly have been a “telling lack thereof”. Nothing worse than a question longer than the answer.

 

No idea why anyone is getting upset about the questions asked in this interview or the responses. Its a real step in the right direction towards openness. If anyone was expecting the background internal fights to be aired in public they are daft. If anyone was expecting Giaretta to say that he's done a **** job they are equally daft. No great revelations but we were never going to get that, nor would we get it from other similar clubs. It's good that he's giving an interview to the local paper and being interviewed by a smart guy who knows and supports the club and knows how far he can prod to get comments. This was never going to be an interrogation.

 

Highly fair questions nonetheless. Especially the first 2 which are factual?

 

I suppose one positive is you may now be clear about what his role is, so you can cease your absurd campaign to absolve him of all accountability because "nobody knows what he does".

Anything that erodes your decade of whataboutery is to be valued, although I imagine you bought Giaretta's "holiday in Greece" without question!

 

Pretty obvious and already explored, this, though, isn't it? Because the answers are intentionally vague, misleading and obfuscating in various measures, and (to some of us, at least, if you choose to view it this way) contribute to a pattern on display that indicates the culture may not really have changed at all (although, of course, few really expected it to).

I don't quite understand how you can claim it's a real step towards openness when nothing said by Giaretta was anything other than pre-approved lines almost directly/literally parroting what his bosses have already said. As another poster said in reply to one of my screenshots, it's extremely 'political', and nothing more. Even Andrew himself has previously reported, and again expressed here in follow up to the articles dropping, his belief that Giaretta's 'explanation' for the Edwards firing saga is total untruth. If that's what you're prepared to give credit for openness for, then fairplay, but we have very different thresholds.

 

As I said, if you're expecting anyone ever to come out and spill all the behind the scenes internal debate and fights over Edwards then you are living in a dream world. This is not a TV soap opera. No other club gives interviews to explain all their internal squabbles. Not really sure what you genuinely thought he should say ?
As I say it's a step in the right direction. 2 years ago he wouldn't have spoken to the WO.

 

No other club has underperforming sporting director friends of the family who get fired, then reinstated and the manager then fired instead. No other club brings in entire scouting units and then gives them no budget and fires them 6 months later because there are "people everywhere". No other club pays an agent under investigation for financial crime to transfer a player who he doesn't represent from one group entity to another. No other club manages to pay astronomical agent fees despite being one of the lowest spenders in the league.

Hope this helps clarify why other clubs don't feel the need to explain these things.

 

But as I (thought I) said - it's not about expecting them to come out WWE style and spill all the tea, and it's sort of disingenuous to wave the comments away in that sense, because very obviously, I'm not expecting that to happen - no one is. I'm not a child/naive idiot, shockingly.

My complaints are about the nature of the answers that he did give, which I've outlined more than once, now.

I don't believe it's any kind of step towards openness from two years ago to come and trot out purely fluff, mistruth, and pre-prepared and already publicly available lines to the Wobby - it's purely a charade aimed at appeasing a level of fan discontent far higher than it was two years ago without actually having to do or concede much of anything at all.

 

Didn’t say they weren’t fair - but in this job you have to have in your mind a balance of things, including the likelihood of getting an answer, asking something that causes the interview to shut down etc.

Asking difficult questions doesn’t bother me at all, but I also want to be in a position to go back again future.

 

Fair enough I get the point on balance, and the Bilic one was intriguing stuff. On this one though I am inclined to agree with Chumlax that (while not blaming you) Giaretta has just come word for word with pre-prepared statements/half truths already used by Pozzo and Duxbury. As with other things he touches, Giaretta seems to add little to proceedings.

Happy to admit I absolutely loathe Pozzo, Bayat, Duxbury and Giaretta. These individuals make my blood boil so these days I will never give them the benefit of the doubt so take my comments in that context!

 

Yes I just don't think we will ever get the real juicy revelations coming out in these interviews and I understand if for that reason you find they valueless. It would be good to hear them say that signing Manga's team was a punt based on expected promotion/investment and that maybe with hindsight they pulled the trigger on the Edwards experiment too quickly, but I doubt we'll ever hear them say that. I'm still glad to see they are actually open to talk, even if what they say is pretty "safe".

 

Is this true @The undeniable truth? Which other club figures have you been buying holidays for?

 

Yeah, I will just say to totally outline again, I (and I'm sure I can say we) really appreciate the journalism we get from you, particularly compared to the Wobby's role in recent years.

You are not also not 'answerable' to us by any means, of course, so it's also very much appreciated you coming on here to give us some further insight into what you report and have some additional discussion.

 

Ignore one of these 'nots'

 

Only Giaretta TBF. I thought he deserved it, and let's just say he set me up with some "butterflies".

 

Well, you obviously wouldn't ask the whole paragraph! The questions would just be the first part of each paragraph, the rest was context in a post on a forum.

 

I saw it as opening the door for him to inform/explain/update fans - how far he chose to step through the door was his choice. It’s as frustrating as an interviewer as it is for a fan (I just happen to be both), but I’d always rather give it a go and see what I get.

You hide your disliking for them well. Would never have guessed…

 

Any time. I was a fan before I worked at the WO, after I left and I will be when I depart again. Some of the things that have frustrated me in recent years with regard to communication I’ve been able to improve. Others are harder, and some I’ve no hope of doing anything about.

The key is to know the difference between each and use time/energy in the best way possible. Part of that is talking to fellow fans. I still get some telling me I’m too easy on the club, and others who say I’ve written a positive word about the owners.

In a strange way, that probably means I’m getting the balance right!

 

I knew what you meant - what I was ham-fistedly trying to say was any question of any lengthy on sone topics would have brought forth very short answers.

 

And now we've got to off load Louza and I doubt we will even get a peanut!

 

But being successful in one place, whether as a manager, player or anything else, is far from a guarantee of being successful elsewhere. A huge number of people seemed to get giddy with excitement about an appointment that wasn't much more than a punt. Manga was like hearing about your mate who always wins a few bets but never tells you about the ones he lost.

Manga should be judged upon the signings he made at Watford - Ferreira, Araujo and Kone. Crap, crap and a touch above crap on occasions.

 

It would be a nonsense to judge Manga on signings given the tiny sample size in the context of the amount of cash wazzed up the wall on dreadful players over the years by Giaretta, Pozzo, Giraldi.

He was never given a chance either in terms of time or budget. And in any case Araujo was a loan (add him to about 50 other failed loanees over the years), and I'd take Ferreira and Kone every day over the utter garbage brought in at significant expense by the dolts still on the Watford management payroll.

 

Which players are credited to Manga? Is it Ferreira and Kone? Well I personally have always been happy with the Kone transfer. And I’m really hoping Ferreira comes back to us after his stint in Udinese. But my feeling with him was that he’s a bit better than the Championship. Both good players imho. And clearly the Araujo loan was a bit of a coup at the time, even though he didn’t get much game time (that’s on Bilic, sadly, and I liked Bilic). So if that’s all Manga was able to do then I’d say his strike rate was pretty high, with his hands tied behind his back.

edit: I seem to remember that Bilic was quite excited about Araujo, so I’m not sure what happened there. Really can’t remember the timeline.

 

But with our financial situation he was always going to have peanuts to spend - everyone knew it. And what he did have, he didn't spend well. I'm not saying Giaretta, Pozzo or Giraldi have been good, far from it, but Manga didn't do anything to show he was any better.

 

It's hard to tell who signed who - story from the club changes every time someone new gets interviewed!

 

I suspect Pozzo has an overinflated opinion of our promotion chances when he signed him so thought he'd have decent chance of premier budget the next year. I don't think Manga's signings (if they even were him) are big enough sample to judge really - are Kone/Ferreira really that bad - imagine they will have resale value even if not what was needed at the time.

Meanwhile our family friend Giaretta was covering himself in glory with Kalu, Gaspar, Bayo, Kayembe and Okoye.

 

I might write a piece this week about the January transfer window, as the way things unfolded, who made decisions, the players we had lined up but didn’t sign etc all make for interesting reading.

I’m just not sure about raking over the coals again, plus I would want anyone to think the information came from CG (because none of it did) after I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago.