Marco Silva Tapping Up Complaint

The Telegraph article posted at the beginning of this thread suggests we rejected 12m.

The article seems to have a sniff of a Watford PR leak to me:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...alks-watford-avoid-possible-points-deduction/

 

Yeah thanks. I thought Burnsy was referring to us turning down £8m more recently.

 

How dare such a mediocre little unit try to take our ex manager.

It’s like with an ex. You might have no interest in them anymore.

But you equally don’t want them to end up with an 18 stone, middle aged loser called Jared, who lives with their Mum and wears Star Wars underwear.

It reflects badly on us.

Gino, take the losers to the cleaners.

 

This seems to be a common perception fuelled by a top-six clubs oriented media. The Watfords and Brightons are in the EPL to make up the numbers and get regularly whipped. The average fan does not think about the integrity of a competition awash with money. We are a small non-descript club who have never won anything so are fair game. That is until someone comes along and tries to do it to their club!

 

You have to remember we are dealing with scousers. They have enough trouble following laws of the land let alone their football clubs following a few rules.

Their tiny pea shaped brains, which have evolved over millions of years into perfect tools for stealing stuff, aren’t able to comprehend the following short sequence of events as being against the rules:
1. Everton ask Gino if they can buy Silva
2. Everton and Silva ignore no and speak Anyway
3. Watford complain to PL and send cease and desist letter
4. Silva sulks, results go to pot
5. Silva sacked

 

Would this be an appropriate moment to post on the Everton forum 'calm down,calm down'?

 

Alright chaps?

Been a while

But you just knew this moment would come

 

You mean when Everton would top up the Watford bank balance by many many £millions? - yeah we knew it would come.

 

Please tell me you aren’t one of the seemingly many who think Everton have nothing to prove over this and have acted above board?

 

Seem like our board have been biding their time with this.

You will get Silva, we will get a big lump of cash and a no-guilt statement from your board apologising for the situation which will mean that you won't get officially sanctioned for tapping him up by the PL.

Everybody wins, except Moshiri's bottomless bank account I suppose.

Do you actually want Silva? I don't think he has the managerial record to back up a £12m fee - if reports are to be believed with the amount of compensation anyway

 

Marco Silva’s PL record.

Played 48
Won 16
Drawn 8
Lost 24

Lost exactly half of all his matches.

 

Of course not, we've most likely been very underhand about the whole thing. Still think the biggest villain in the whole thing is Silva himself though, to be honest. Everyone is dreaming if you think illegal approaches aren't commonplace in practically every transfer, but it's when you can prove it (e.g. VVD to Liverpool) that it becomes a problem. In this instance, we've almost certainly made an illegal approach, but I don't think that's too uncommon - the fact that Silva was willing to jump ship after a couple of months in the job at Watford was the bit which was unusual. That worries me about him more than anything. Think I said as much on here at the time.

We'll end up paying, but I doubt it'll be as much as we offered at the time

 

Meh, we can afford it. We owe you after you took Cleverley to be fair

 

Don't know. His record before he got to England is impressive. Think his record at Hull was also good, I don't think anyone in their right mind can hold that relegation against him

He was also good at Watford until we intervened - It would have been preferable for that not to have happened and us being able to make a judgement about him now after a full season there. Based on the on-pitch evidence, I *think* I'd take him. My concern about him is that he's now had 5 jobs (we would be his 6th) and next season would be his 8th in professional football as a manager if I've got my maths right. The other bit is how willing he was to dump Watford after a couple of months and jump ship to us - that speaks to his character IMO as it's practically unprecedented as far as I can remember

 

Tom Cleverley has been fantastic for us. Losing him to injury is a much bigger loss than losing Silva to his ego.

 

Strange one that, sounds like he was pretty naff for you guys but has done brilliantly since joining us, one of the first players on the team sheet - we're usually a bunch to fret over transfer fee's (Andre Gray for example) but everyone seems happy with what we paid for TC.

With regards to Silva, it's a gamble in my opinion, he could be great but there were huge alarm bells already ringing before Everton came in for him -your pursuit of Silva is odd considering there's plenty of options out there that could probably replicate Silva's style of Football but at much less of a risk (and probably less of a hit on the bank)

 

My father-in-law is a Watford season ticket holder and he also loves Cleverley

All I can tell you is that rarely has a player so united a fanbase in agreeing how bad he is as Cleverley's time at Everton - he was almost universally disliked. You paid us £8m for him, so in our eyes you've got £8m in credit

 

I kind of agree with our visitor. I’m sure there are a lot of illegal approaches that go on that we never hear about. I would be more concerned as an Everton fan about Silva than any compensation. 2 months in to the job and Everton have had an excellent start to the season but Arsenal or Chelsea’s new coaches have not and are sacked. They approach Mr Moshiri to ask to talk to Silva but he says no. What happens next?
In my opinion Silva is the bigger criminal in this as he was employed by us and went behind our backs.

 

Your concern should be that he can’t set up a team to defend. And that seems to be a big area of your issues this season just gone. Granted we have been poor at the back for years but he just ignored the fact. If he does that with you, he’ll be gone again by Christmas.

 

What we're doing slightly differently at the moment is rather than just appoint people who are flavour of the month, the new DoF is in charge of the appointment of the next manager and the next manager needs to be someone whose style will suit the majority of the players at the club and require minimum upheaval, as we can't buy 11 new players every summer - you need some form of continuity

Until a month or so ago, the assumption was that our next manager would be Fonseca from Shakhtar, but it appears our new Dof has discounted him and agrees that Silva would suit the bulk of our playing staff currently. The other one on the list appears to be Emery, but I would imagine he will have bigger and better offers than Everton, which is why Silva appears to be the frontrunner

 

Yep, I noted that, but the defensive issues he had at Watford were actually unusual for him - if you look at his record everywhere else, defensive shape and organisation appear to be what he focused on most. Guess his next move (whether that's us or not) will tell us more about that

 

Totally agree. Regardless of any vague question marks about his ability to manage a side, this is what concerns me the most. A lot of your fans, understandably, directed their anger at Everton about this situation but Silva's conduct was unprecedented. I've never seen an example where a manager tries to jump ship to another club after only a couple of months in. It's concerning

 

Of course it goes on all the time. The introduction of agents made sure of that. Few few transfer bids get accepted and then the player/manager turns down the offer these days - 99% of offers will be made knowing full well that the player or manager in question has already made it clear he will join ‘behind the scenes’.

It’s more the fact that for once, a club (us) has had the balls to stand up to it. We made it clear that there was no price we would accept and (allegedly) Moshiri has gone ploughing in anyway. Of course ‘tapping up’ goes on. But it’s likely done a lot of the time because the buyer knows that there is a price the seller is willing to accept. We seemingly made it clear that wasn’t the case here.

It seems to me that a lot of Everton fans (if that forum is anything to go by) are totally blinded by Moshiri’s wealth and don’t seem at all bothered by the fact he has no idea what he’s actually doing.

 

Absolutely, it's bound to happen all the time, however I would guess that the vast majority are very careful not to leave a paper trail. I suspect that Everton will pay a healthy wedge of compensation and the PL will give them a suspended points deduction penalty.

 

Yeah, I mean we were happy to have him from Hull, but then he didn't cost us anything. There were reservations too because IIRC he ended up only two points closer to 17th than when he took over, and they only needed a point from the last three games to survive but lost all of them heavily. He was good for us for about seven games - it will never be known whether that would have been maintained over an proper period of time. West Brom were sixth after seven games I think, so I doubt you can read much into his time here.

I resent him, but I understand why he would be wanted as a manager having a bit of PL experience (something I think is massively undervalued) and having won some trophies, albeit at some of the biggest clubs in rubbish leagues. I can't understand why he would be worth £12m, which is a huge investment for somebody who literally walks away at the first opportunity. Surely for £12m you can get a manager with a bit of a track record at a club that shows that he can build it up, build a squad, improve it, renew it etc.

The whole situation is just weird, but I'm happy we are disrupting his next career move and will get some cash out of it.

 

TC was and is loved at WFC which affects performance.
For some reason he wasn’t at Everton so presumably affected his performance?
Same for Andre Gray here.
Sometimes a player’s face doesn’t fit and it’s best for a career to move on. £8m not a bad fee for both parties, both happy.

But WFC will squeeze as much as possible from a billionaire owner who doesn’t seem to know how to run a football club.

 

Agreed, and we have far more distain for Silva than Everton.

However, Everton didn't move on when we said that we would not be selling under any circumstance.

No means no mate #metoo.

Silva was an idiot and tapping up obviously happens in football, but when a club is clear that a manger is not for sale, that is when you need to stop. Not plough on regardless. And that's what messed up our entire season.

 

We got Cleverley on a free, he was abysmal and we sold him for £8m about 18 months later. As you say, one of those occasions where it seems like everybody is a winner

Re not seeming to know how to run a football club - can understand this POV. Everton probably seemed, from the outside, as a relatively well-run club over the Kenwright era. The reality of that was that he bet on a good horse with Moyes and we had over a decade on on-pitch stability. That sometimes glosses over what's happening behind the scenes - we were in turmoil for much of Kenwright's reign - we were living hand-to-mouth, had numerous occasions where banks were pressuring us into selling players, failed ground moves, failed takeovers, gagging orders on ex-employees to stop the seriousness of our situation from becoming public record, etc etc (I could, quite literally, sit here for an hour typing about the many, many failures of Kenwright's tenure).

Under Moshiri's watch, we've bought land for a new ground move (initial plans recently unveiled), we've invested heavily in players, we've made changes to staff where under-performance has been seen (at more or less every level). From the outside, I can imagine the perception of this is of a billionaire who is doing things on a whim, but that's not really how we see it - the major mistake he made was the Koeman/Walsh appointments. First of all he appointed a new manager before a DoF was in place (it should always be the other way round as the DoF should be the one making decisions on that front) and secondly Walsh was a disaster of an appointment who had only ever been a head scout before. You'd hope he's learned from these mistakes - new DoF is someone with a strong track record in that role and it's that DoF who will be making the managerial decisions going forwards. I can't really criticise Moshiri too much other than the Koeman/Walsh debacle, other than that there's been a lot of progress off the pitch and he has invested heavily. He appoints the people who spend his money, so that's the bit he has to learn from.

Re Watford - you'll get some dough out of it. It will probably be cheaper for us to pay up than to go through the legal process of a case with The FA

 

I wouldn’t be as worried about the defensive aspect. I think you’ll get off to a great start with him in charge and you’ll play good football.

I’d be worried that you’re hiring a man who will jump ship the second a better job opportunity comes up. He will speak to your best players and try to convince them to move with him. When Silva’s head is elsewhere, it will all fall apart. You’ll be in freefall and having to start all over again shortly.

If you’re worried about relegation, I’d hire him. He will put points on the board quickly. If you are desperate for good football after months of BFS, again I’d hire him. But if you want a manager with a longer term plan, a certified plan B, season-long progression (i.e. a Europa league place) and to keep your best players beyond Christmas, he’s probably not your man.

 

I get that, but selfishly I'm not annoyed at Everton for that. If you want a player, you don't just stop trying because the selling club says no

In this particular instance, I get that it's annoying because nobody is a winner. You guys had your season derailed a bit, we had to put up with 6 months of Allardyce and Silva has been kicking his heels for 6 months

 

Don't disagree about any of that TBH

 

No question he’s progressing you off the pitch but you only have to look at clubs further down the leagues with shiny new stadiums to see its what happens on the pitch that matters and from the outside looking in, the investment he’s made on the playing side is sorely misplaced. But you are closer to it than us, so I’m inclined to believe what your saying as it makes sense.

But if this saga is indicative of how he treats any club that he deems not as big as his own, he’ll find it increasingly difficult to do business with clubs going forward.

 

But you are failing to see the difference. Losing one player doesn’t generally upset the whole club. See Coutinho/Barca/Liverpool. Aggressively pursuing a manager derails a whole club, it’s season and is about as underhand as it gets. It happens fairly rarely because most clubs understand there’s a sense of courtesy and decorum that goes into matters such as this. Everton seemingly think they are above that just because they are a slightly bigger club in modern terms and Moshiri thought because he has a big bank account he can circumnavigate the rules.

Saying other clubs do it over players isn’t a defence because it isn’t the same.