Maybe I don’t trust Pozzo to sign a decent centre back. Maybe I don’t trust him to hire a head coach who will fit the ethos of the club and have a lasting impact. But I sure as **** trust him to absolutely hammer anyone who tries to swindle us over a contract dispute.
Surely once a signing is made, it’s lodged officially with FIFA? We (according to Leventhal) did that. So either Marseille have paid us... Or whatever paperwork we submitted was found to be not valid (but how would FIFA verify it?)... Or Marseille have just announced the signing of someone who plays for someone else? (But surely they would have lodged the same paperwork as us?) The one thing that is bizarre is the photo of him holding our shirt is pretty basic, looks like it’s done in someone’s kitchen! And with some sort of transfer ‘fixer’ we employ?! I hope this isn’t one of Gino’s dodgy mates again. Although personally I think this whole thing smacks of a player who has been approached by a bigger club after signing for us. Quite how he can just say the contract is voided is beyond me. Surely he must have had pretty strong advise that he can get away with it, otherwise he and Marseille are being incredibly brazen.
You have to admire the lack of f*cks given by Marseille here with their hacking style video. This sort of embarrassing **** doesn't happen to other clubs. Just us.
According to L’Equipe, we sent a strongly worded correspondence to clubs reportedly in talks with the player after we ‘signed’ him telling them to prepare for a lawsuit should they sign him. However, Marseille went through the contract signed with us and believe it contains far too many irregularities for them not to consider him a free transfer. Surely this all boils down to FIFA? If the paperwork he signed with us has been ratified by them, I don’t see how Marseille have room for manoeuvre. But how and why would they have announced him today without getting their own ratification? Something somewhere doesn’t hold true. And given the nature of the photos shown in regards to us, they look pretty slap-dash. Regardless, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to be here. If we are somehow in the right on this matter, I’d be going after Marseille for announcing another clubs player. Or demanding they pay what we want for him. Although it’s widely rumoured they are in financial trouble themselves.
Surely the club has to make some statement about this now, given his arrival was trumpeted on the website at the end of April like this: https://www.watfordfc.com/news/club/official-hornets-sign-gueye
Watford FC don't publish bad news. Every defeat is quickly buried under a heap of Joao Pedro bullsh*t or a hurried new contract for a 33 year old.
Any club can announce anything. Especially as a hardball tactic. It doesn't need FIFA to sign off on a press release after all. Whether they're wise to announce it is a different question. But if nothing else, it kills a line of questioning which starts with, "If you were so sure you were within your rights to sign him, why didn't you announce it like you would any first team signing?"
Pretty embarrassing. Perhaps they will carry on the story. Next few months he's acclimatising, then he's injured for 6 months.....
Hope we waste 4 years pursuing Marseilles, waste millions, refuse to settle and then when we realise that we can never break even, just say it was a matter of principle.
Let's face it, if he's looked at our results and league table or spoken to the bus load of future stars who's careers have rotted away on our books, he'd run a mile.
Speaks volumes about how lethargic to our shadiness and cult-like our support has become that there isn't more anger about this transfer. An absolute travesty from top to bottom with potential scandal everywhere all laid at the doorstep of one man. Fans should be up in arms, instead they are too busy posting 'Fake Taxi' memes and praising that we have a stadium to be bothered. And for some reason it's Gueye's fault, not the fault of anyone attached to the club and the way this was all handled.
According to The Mirror (?) we did indeed register him as our player yesterday hours before Marseille announced him. The Mirror both claim we "sold him", but will also "claim compensation" - I don't think it can be both. https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/watford-sell-pape-gueye-marseille-22287414
Well after all the fanfare let's hope we do get something. Probably depends on if he actually signed a contract? Or it was one of those "verbal agreements"
I'd be extremely disappointed if the club take their usual stance and stay quiet about this. He was announced on the official site as our player, now he's signed for Marseille. They have to communicate what happened here, or, quite rightly, people will start losing faith in how the club is being run. You cannot make an official announcement, then hope people forget about it if the player doesn't actually sign. It doesn't work like that. I used to think (about all transfers), I'll really only believe this player has signed for us when the club announce it on their official site. Now you cannot even believe that anymore.
Do you know all the facts? Somebody is culpable but without knowing the ins and outs we don't know who.
Regardless of who’s to blame, the clubs silence doesn’t look good does it? The Marseille thing has rumbled on for a few days now - if we were sure he was our player, you’d get a statement out straight away.
You have to admire Marseille though - not only have they seemingly announced another clubs player, the unveiling video has been done around a ‘hacking’ theme. Nobodies telling me that’s not done on purpose!
What do those asking for one realistically expect from a statement though? If one comes it's probably going to say three things - the club notes the announcement made by OM yesterday, the matter is now in the hands of its legal advisors and it has make no further comment to make at this time. Pointless.
Agreed. It's shambolic, Embarrassing. Players and agents must be thinking they can take us for a ride without any consequence.
The thing that’s troubling about this from our side, is who is the guy with Gueye in the photos holding out shirt? It’s claimed he’s some sort of ‘fixer’ - is he a club employee? If not, under what grounds can he get a player to sign for us if he’s not working for us? Considering Le Havre is just over the bloody channel, why wasn’t Giraldi or even Gino on hand doing this? He’s a multi-million pound asset. It also seems that the player was put off by the idea of going to Udinese. They are now a languishing Serie A club, they’ve had no meaningful use to us other than to offload dross like Sema, Zeegelaar and Okaka in recent years. Cut out buying such crap in the first place and there’s no need for the tie-up. If the club is serious about ‘raising our image’ then being twinned with Udinese no longer does us any favours.
It's not pointless. The club has to give some credibility back, acknowledging officially that he's no longer our player. They have put themselves in this corner by making the official announcement a few weeks ago. Had they said nothing officially about the signing, then that's a different matter, but they did. Fans will start losing trust in the club if they stay silent over this. Personally, I now believe the official announcement was tactical, to put pressure on the player and ward off other clubs from going for him, but it didn't work, and now we look like chumps or clueless operators who don't know what they are doing. The fans deserve to know exactly what has gone on, even if it's along the lines you've stated, something official has to be said about it.
But surely even a statement like that gives fans (and others) the knowledge that the club firmly believe they are in the right and are pursuing it. If Liverpool today announced Werner, do you think Chelsea would deem it pointless to say something publicly regarding their stance? Plus, the club showed they aren’t scared of giving background or detail when issuing such statements when they made the one regarding Everton and Silva. So it may say more than the 3 things you claim.
So Watford put out a statement "acknowledging officially that he's no longer our player" and right there any legal action is dead on arrival. The whole basis of any claim is surely that he is our player? (Or at least his registration is ours).
