Jan 2020 transfer window

Discussion in 'The Transfer List' started by RMT79, Dec 31, 2019.

  1. Carpster

    Carpster Squad Player

    Only seen highlights of him myself. But Jesus he looks the real deal. Wouldn't come cheap but as someone else said earlier he could definitely go on and become a new Mahrez.
     
  2. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    5 years in the top division and a cup final. Just one year shy of what Elton and God achieved
     
  3. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    GT didn’t achieve the relegation in year 6.
     
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  4. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    Fair point but he asked what they had achieved, ie past tense.
     
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  5. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    He will move to the prem in the summer. It's unlikely we would still be a prem club at that stage and even if we were I suspect he would be too expensive and so more likely to move to a bigger club like WHU or CP.
     
  6. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    I can't help thinking that we've been left high and dry for defensive options for the final 13 games.

    Just look at our options on Saturday. We only had 5 fit defenders available. 4 of them played and one on the bench. Over the past 2/3 years central defenders have been allowed to leave without being replaced. Since our first season in the Premier League, we've let go players like Kaboul, Britos, Hoban & Prodl. We've only signed Dawson in this time. So we're three central defenders down on previous numbers.

    Why, if we decided to release Prodl and not signed Gibson, didn't we recall Wilmott? That decision baffles me. There is no rational reason for being so short on numbers.

    Janmaat & Kiko are out injured, so we've had to use a makeshift option in Mapps. So he's no longer a CB option. Dawson was injured for Saturday, so what will we do if either Kabs or Cathcart take a knock? Masina can probably step-up as an emergency cover option, but he's being used on the left.

    Most of our defenders are old are well over 30. That in itself means they will not be able to play after week. Only younger players can realistically do this without picking up some type of injury.

    It's unforgivable that we are in a position where we are so short on numbers, let along quality options.
     
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  7. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    The Pozzos have become used to getting away with spending the bare minimum to retain their status in Serie A over the years. They may well be motivated to do the same here. However the standard is much much higher and I fear they have cut it too fine this season due to the relatively comfortable survival last season.
     
  8. Carpster

    Carpster Squad Player

    Most of our defenders are 30 or younger. Holebas and Mapps are 35 and 33 are the minority. Wilmot is not ready for Premier league football. He is far to easily bullied still. So keeping him the championship was the right decision.
    Are you trying to tell me that a player of 30+ cannot play week in week out? Because I will real off a hefty list for you.
    Everybody knows it's an area that needed strengthening. But it wasn't and we as supporters have to deal with it. End of story.
     
  9. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    We don't have the numbers. Actual bodies. Older players take longer to recover from injuries and are more likely to get injured because of years of wear and tear.

    Some players who are 30 or older are robust, but with older players, the risk of them breaking down is far greater.

    On Saturday we only had 5 players in the matchday sqaud and we played 4 of them. It will only take a couple of injuries and we're in real trouble. We should have deeper cover, and now we're running an unnecessary risk. It's perfectly correct to question why have we been put in this position.

    You say it was the best decision not to recall Wilmott, but I think he'd be a better option than Spencer-Adams, who may be called upon. Janmaat, Dawson and Kiko are injured. That's not bad luck. Two of those injuries have been lengthy already.
     
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  10. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    Confused.

    I posted something very similar when the window closed - in response you told me I needed to 'chillax' and defended the club saying they tried. Now you're being critical of the same thing!
     
  11. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    You were freaking all day though. Posting every half an hour how bad the club were. It was all very kneejerk. My comments are more considered after some quiet reflection.

    My point of criticism is only in saying we should have recalled Wilmott, just because we're stretched on numbers.

    Hope that's answers your confusion.
     
  12. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    Some posted on twitter earlier how much money the Pozzo's have spent in the past 5 years in the cases of Watford and Udinese respectively.

    Watford - £273m
    Udinese - £145m

    How much of those amounts was spent on CB's?

    Watford - £13m
    Udinese - £12m

    In that period of time, we have the second worst amount of goals conceded in the PL. Udinese have the worst in Serie A.
     
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  13. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    I can post as regularly as I want, as do others.

    It's hypocritical, whether you've taken time to consider it or not. You don't know me so you don't know what consideration goes into my posts or thoughts. My opinions about the matter now are exactly the same, maybe even worse given Saturday - I've given that just as much consideration as yourself I'm sure. Nothing 'knee-jerk' about it.

    As I said in my post, I have far more serious things happening in my life to be 'freaking out' about Watford.
     
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  14. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    I just answered your post in an honest way. No need to get quite so upset. Maybe my perception has hit a nerve, but I meant no offense by it.
     
  15. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Very un-Italian like to have such poor defences !
     
  16. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    You’re right about lack of spending on defenders, although I think we’ve known that since the earliest Pozzo days.

    Just wanted to comment on the stat though, as I’ve seen it quoted elsewhere before too. Isn’t it meaningless? I imagine if you compared goals conceded per game, and therefore included the teams who haven’t played 5 consecutive seasons in the PL, we’d look pretty average and no where near the worst. As it is, I bet most of the teams that have done 5 consecutive seasons are the big boys who we can’t compete with so we’d always come off badly in a comparison.
     
  17. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    I'd be surprised if we haven't conceded the most goals in the past 5 seasons in the Premier League. Very surprised actually. We average 1.7 goals per game, which is a shocking stat and is amazing for a team that's not been relegated...….yet.
     
  18. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Pretty sure Bournemouth are the only team with a worse record.
     
  19. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    According to this we’re actually third worst:

    https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/pre...son_id_von=2015&saison_id_bis=2019&yt0=Send++

    Bournemouth (303) and West Ham (281) see of our 280 conceded.

    But if you do it goals conceded per game played there are plenty more worse.
     
  20. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    You are correct. Bournemouth have been much worse. They've conceded 23 more goals than Watford over the last 5 seasons.

    I was thinking from our 30th game onwards from the first season. Our defence was brilliant before that. We'd only conceded 30 goals in 29 games. The other 9 games we conceded 20 goals and from that point on we've conceded goals at an alarming rate.
     
  21. wfcSinatra

    wfcSinatra Predictor Choker 14/15

    You say that but it's more the type of player we seem to keep buying / playing that is a concern:

    Britos (30/31?) when he arrived
    Kaboul now 34 and less said about his signing the better
    Prodl who was just let go because he can't stay fit - 32
    Janmaat with well documented injury problems - 30
    Cathcart plays regularly no injury problems but on the decline - 31 in 2 days
    Kabasele who is bound to be suspended for 3/4 games a season - 30 in three weeks
    Femenia - Fairly reliable but has missed chunks in all three seasons - Just turned 29
    Mariappa - Rarely ever injured but not good enough quality wise - 33
    Holebas - In good shape but 35
    Masina - 26 good age good physical condition

    Isn't that alarming?
     
  22. wfcSinatra

    wfcSinatra Predictor Choker 14/15

    Also, you have to consider their style though and goals scored from it. It's only this season their approach has hurt them.

    We've had the incredibly boring QSF for around 45 games and still rank very low. Plus we've had two brilliant DM's in Capoue & Doucoure plus an excellent keeper in Foster whilst Bournemouth have had some real rubbish goalies.

    More to it than the stats, Pozzo's don't priorities defenders because they don't traditionally have high resale values, I don't think that can be argued with one bit to be honest.
     
  23. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

  24. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    This proves what a great job the Pozzo's have done and how their 'buy young sell high' model is working like clockwork.

    Anyone who slags them off will be referred to this post as I can't be arsed to keep telling you how they never put a foot wrong, especially with our defence.
     
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  25. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    The Kabasele one is scary - mainly because he’s the type of player you feel is about 3 or 4 years younger than he actually is. Also alarming that it’s been reported he’s signed a new long term deal as per The Athletic/Leventhal. Another 4 yr deal for a 30yr old defender?
     
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  26. NathWFC

    NathWFC First Team

    Kabasele is actually 28, currently.
     
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  27. Carpster

    Carpster Squad Player

    I didn't say it doesn't alarm me. I like everyone else wanted to strengthen that area. I was stating that most of our defenders were 30 or under, correcting hornetboy1.
    This thread is like flogging a dead horse, we didn't add to that area apart from Perkins for the U23. We just need to get on with it because it ain't going to change the fact by bitching about it.
     
  28. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Nothing said on this forum is going to change anything of course. However, Pozzo will follow the same approach to defenders in the summer just as he has done the last 3 or 4 windows. If we do stay up I’d image he will become even more complacent if that is possible.
     
  29. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    This is an interesting set of numbers. Obviously, we knew that the defence hasn't had too much spent on it, but I think it's a little higher than £13m.

    From memory we spent Dawson £5.5m, Wilmott £1.5m, Kabasele £6m, Marriappa £3m & Kaboul £3.5m, so that makes it £19.5m, but is still a tiny amount. It's clear the club don't like spending money on this area.

    I get the club's point though, to a degree. You can get decent players on free transfers. Prodl, Britos and Cathcart have proved good value for free transfers, but there is value in spending money on a good young CB. Nathan Ake is a case in point. We could have signed him for £20m and now he's worth around £70m. So they missed the boat on that one. I'm sure there have been others. We could have been in for Maguire when he was at Hull. Look how much that would have made for us.

    Watford's recruitment team have been slow to identify CB's as a valuable money-making commodity. They've seen CB's as a necessity to furnish the team with, but not as players who they can turn a profit on.

    Other clubs, similar to our standing, have done very well in identifying good central defenders. Burnley signed Ben Mee signed from City for a nominal fee, Kevin Long signed from Cork City for £315k and James Tarkovski signed from Brentford for £3.6m. Before them they signed Michael Keene from Man Utd for £2.3m and sold to Everton for £25.5m.

    It's a similar story at Brighton. Lewis Dunk came through the academy, Shane Duffy was signed from Blackburn for £4.5m, Dan Burn £3m from Wigan.

    You can see, for a modest outlay they signed good young players who have either gone on to become established first team players (better than our players) and virtually all are worth a lot more money now, than when they were signed.

    We don't tend to do this, and have missed out on big opportunities in the past. Let's hope Ben Wilmott will buck the trend, and there could be hope for Spencer-Adams. Maybe we have a few youngsters out on loan who we don't know too much about, so there maybe some in the pipeline, but to date, our story does not stack up too well against our competitors.
     
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  30. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    Christ! Mariappa didn’t cost us £3m did he?! I though he was free when his Palace deal expired?!
     
  31. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    You're correct. We got him on a free. His other two transfer fees were around £3m, which somehow got stuck in my head. You can take off £3 from the £19.5m total CB spend. I think we've split the difference between your £13m and my £19.5m....lol
     
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  32. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    When you consider that Brighton spent nearly £10m more on just one CB in the summer than we’ve spent over 5 seasons...not hard to see where the issues lie in recruitment.
    I don’t think many of us are even asking that we spend an equal amount on defenders as we do on other areas - player trading is a big part of what we do and those positions generally fetch more money. But the gulf between the areas should not be so vast.

    Yes Sarr was a great buy - and out of the ordinary for us at £40m. But it’s frightening when you think he alone cost well over double our cumulative spent on CB’s since being back in the PL
     
  33. wfcSinatra

    wfcSinatra Predictor Choker 14/15

    So I guess the five-year contract for Prodl was based on the fact when he's not good enough for us anymore, he can just go to Udinese.

    Lol.
     
  34. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    To be fair, as a football fan, that makes me massively rate the Pozzos. To have the courage to continue to not invest in the defence and avoid relegation year shows that they know exactly where to invest to stay up.

    As a Watford fan who doesn't want to settle for relegation escaping mediocracy however, I'm rather displeased.
     
  35. Relegation Certs

    Relegation Certs Squad Player

    Italian owners and we have a defence that isnt packed to the rafters with sensational italian defenders. And the only one we do have isnt a proper one.

    We're an absolute laughing stock.
     
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