From that lot probably only Quina, Kabasele and Ferreira. But instead they were just shunted off to the sister club. But it’s a bad indictment on recruitment and sales over the past few seasons that a dozen players leave for free and it’s hard to argue many of them were worth money.
In fairness, I'm not sure it's fair to include Foster in this, possibly Sissoko (and Kalu ) too, since they were old when they came in and not brought in for the future. Previously I'd have thought we'd just give Pussetto and Ferreira (and possibly Okoye) to Udinese for cost price but that ain't happening now, would like to see the exact fee Quina has gone for (don't imagine it's broken the bank, but hopefully it's more than 'nomimal', and Koné it's fair to say might still come good
Beat me to that list. I said somewhere else on here the other day, there was a talk a few years ago where the head of research at Liverpool claimed 50% of big transfers end up in failure. Good recruitment in football is hard. The big clubs with loads of money make mistakes. The "well run" clubs make mistakes. The small clubs make mistakes. If you make less mistakes than the others that gives you an edge. I personally don't think we've made many more mistakes than other clubs our size and level and have probably bought in more in transfer fees than other clubs our size. We've made some expensive mistakes (Sarr/Gray) that's somewhat negated by the low cost punts that have made us good amounts of money (Doucoure, Lukeabakio, JP, Richarlison) with lots in between. We were also close to potentially gaining that edge if we factor in the "ifs". If GD hadn't got injured, would we have stayed up? If we stayed up how would Cucho/Estupinan/Suarez have developed at the club? Would we have spent that money well? Obviously all impossible to answer but interesting to think how close we could've been to things potentially being very different. Pussetto was a failure no doubt, but he'd just had a good season for Udinese (4 goals + 4 assists in 2182 mins) and was worth the risk for the Pozzos to see whether he could translate that to the PL - if he could then his value could easily have doubled. Sadly that didn't happen but was probably worth the punt considering he'd just had a great season in a top 5 league.
I accept well run clubs make mistakes. But we've flopped on virtually every big deal we've made. We've not made many, but when we have they have been mostly disasters. The top two are Sarr and Gray. On balance we probably are close to even in transfer trading. But that's not good enough for a club like Watford. We have to be making big profits in the market in order to grow. It's the only way we are going to be sustainable. The owner has shown me over the past 4 years he cannot be trusted to make good choices. He surrounds himself with debatable characters and low achievers. His arrogance is his biggest personality flaw and gets in the way of everything we do. I just hope Watford survive him without going to the wall because all the signs are there that the future is bleak.
You can argue your POV in a discussion... Can you show your workings as to how we are below average? I would love to be above average, and have Brighton's rich owner, or win the treble like Man City. If we swapped out ownership and recruitment for 90% of clubs in the UK, you'd have similar complaints. If (big if) we're debt free at the end of the season, what part of the gutter does that put us in, comparitively? Swimming in the sewage with West Brom, or looking down at them? Do you really think it's that easy? Why doesn't everyone just do it? This I agree with. Fortunately it'll be a long time before we make any big signings again. We'll be almost exclusively shopping in the £5m and below market from now, which on balance, is what we've shown to be fairly good at.
I am not sure that minutes played is necessarily the greatest metric to judge success. By that measure, just being on the pitch for 46 minutes a match makes a player a success. GT's mantra was the rule of thirds... A third of signings will work out; a third will be so-so and will contribute something, and a third will not go well. He said the key was to ensure that the most expensive signings did not end up in the latter category. Our transfer model has always been difficult to assess because it is so opaque. Undisclosed fees, no information on wages, no detail about how much we've covered in wages for players after they've left us. It's also true that the successes cover for the failures in the eyes of supporters.
Actually, I'll clarify that last point... Perhaps it's the other way round. The first wave of signings were all, apparently, 'free' transfers. No doubt a premium was paid in wages and other fees, but still. Does the success of Abdi, Vydra and the other loans / frees cancels out the flops such as Geijo, Mujangi Bia, Beleck etc? Does the success of Capoue (surely pound for pound one of the best value signings at approx £6m) cover for Berghuis and Behrami? Does the success of Ighalo (undisclosed) cancel out the 'flop' of Gray?
I'll show my workings we're below average if you show me your workings showing why we are average. Basically life is too short for that nonsense. You say we're average which I accept, I say we're below average which you must accept also, as these are opinions. We wont be debt free. How can we be? People have bought that tag hook, line and sinker. We'd have paid off external debt. Basically what we owe Macquarie Bank, but we'll still owe them the money which we took out on future payments. We'll still have the massive debt to the owner, which was over £70m in the last accounts I saw and he's taking a nice healthy percentage on. No, we wont be debt free at all. We'll (maybe) have the debt under control and serviceable, but that's about as good as it gets. We'll have very little in the way of saleable assets. Only Asprilla (if he doesn't go in this window) and Louza will generate good money. So, from here on in, money is going to be extremely tight, unless somehow we get promoted again. Even this season you can see how quickly our reputation has been stripped away. Anyone tipping Watford for promotion is viewed as being a bit nuts (whereas last season it was where the smart money was), we're losing out on targets to Stoke and Birmingham etc. We are being devalued right before our very eyes. So yes, from where we were in 2019, we're now in the gutter, figuratively speaking.
Here's the top 50 clubs in England sorted by transfer expenditure and their transfer records from 12/13 to present day I don't think we've done too bad in all honesty.. Every club in the top 30 has made an overall loss on transfers.
We did sign all those initial players on frees but when we got promoted there was a note in the accounts that we paid Udinese a few million in mysterious sounding "solidarity payments". Was still well below the market value of the players we got though. Given my username I'll jokingly take issue with you calling Steve Leo Beleck a flop but... Behrami???! He was great!
So we’re place 19th in spend and have made a loss overall, and you think that’s not too bad? Hmmm, I have a different take. With that expenditure I’d argue we should be still in the Prem. I’m surprised we’ve made a loss overall as I thought we’d be more breakeven than that, so we’re actually worse than I thought at trading. But I suspect you’ve used the league to show a lot of clubs make a loss. Well that’s their problem not ours. We should be bucking that trend. Just noticed Man City U21’s and U18’s are in there. That’s just bonkers.
Yes, because we've made less of a loss than any of the teams above us and less of a loss than a lot of teams below us. Agree, football is broken.
Turns out we're both wrong! We're above average. Well we'll see about the debt, but unless you've seen the accounts for next year, all we have to go on are the statements of the people who would actually know. As basic as our situation is now, there are plenty of clubs who would like to join us in our 'gutter'. We had our time in the sun, now we're a standard Championship club, with pretty standard owners. Adjust expectations, you'll be less annoyed.
Agree with this in isolation. My issue with the Pussetto transfer was more along the lines that we were in the thick of a relegation battle and only made one first team signing which was Pussetto. That £7.5m (or whatever it was) on a defender could've kept us up. Not his fault obviously just a bizarre use of limited funds. Then we repeated the trick the following PL season when again we had a chance to stay up but dashed our small budget on Okoye, Kalu, Kayembe and Samir, none of whom seemed anything like PL standard.
That kind of illustrates my point. Behrami played 40+8 games in two seasons (so less than the 50% of minutes required to be judged a success under the criteria Reids pointed out). He also cost somewhere between £2.5m and £3m (depending on source). Fat end of £3m to play barely 20 games a season... yes, he was a competent performer and made a positive impact but it sort of highlights that our assessment of players is largely subjective (in the absence of a detailed set of criteria that really makes sense). Capoue cost just a bit more than twice that (in transfer fee) but played 181 games over five-and-a-bit seasons.
Definitely, we're far from perfect and have often bought in wrong positions compared to what we need. But again we're not the only team making those mistakes.
Nope. I’m not going to meekly adjust expectations. Where does that watering down end? When we’re in the Conference? Asking to be a vibrant progressive club is what we, as a fanbase, should be demanding. Any owner should be judged against those standards, and if he is unable to deliver, let the next guy have a go.
Wow - over 2 pages of the same old drivel about us supposedly wasting money while actually talking about another player that was just a Pozzo-to-Pozzo transfer. I wondered for a while if the £16mil Kamara transfer would finally wake people up to the fact that they shouldn't pay much attention to the fees for such signings, but my hope was clearly misplaced in light of such determined foolishness.
For someone who's supposedly not biting, you sure seem to be getting wound up. But nice attempt from you to try and deflect from the completely sincere, valid point I made of your having overlooked that Pussetto was a meaningless Pozzo-to-Pozzo transfer, mind.
Well then sorry, you're going to continue to be upset as we compete with other average Championship clubs for signings. If our natural level was Conference then you'd maybe have a point, but seeing as our stature and history is pretty much exactly where we currently are, that doesn't make any sense. What does that vague statement mean? Vibrant progressive club? You're just unhappy we've signed duds over the years, and are ignoring the facts put in front of you that it's the same case for every other club. What's a vibrant progressive signing? Asprilla? Kone? Porteuos? Or is a vibrant progressive signing a signing that guarantees profit and success? Does that exist?
Scale of debt followed by drastic reduction in costs of late says otherwise. As does having our fingers trapped metaphorically in Macquarie's safe.
You can lower your expectations and be content with that....that's entirely up to you. But it's not a stance I can accept. What is our natural position in the football world? It's wherever our owner takes us. Over the past 8 years you could say our natural position was Premier League. Only 4 years ago our ambition was to be "the best of the rest". Before GT entered the fray our natural position was Fourth Division. I just don't subscribe to we are a mid-table Championship club and that's our place. It's extremely limiting to think like that. God, it would depress the hell out of me if I didn't think we could go up and stay up. Why can't we? There's a place for the Watford's in the EPL. I wonder what Brentford supporters would say. They are probably naturally League One. But they have ambition and the intelligence to achieve more. If you're a fan with little ambition for the club, so be it, but I've got different aspirations and hopes for the club.
As I say, if you want to delude yourself and think that we have a divine right to be a Premier League club, and all it takes is the right owner (presumably the 75 clubs that aren't established PL outfits all have the wrong owner...) then that's up to you. But as mentioned, you'll continue to be disappointed, and further annoyed. You still haven't clarified what your...ambitions are? Who are the guaranteed wins we're supposed to be signing? How do you propose we take our above average player trading to the elite level, and why are every other club not currently doing it?
Not really - I'm well aware that we could have done with one or two decent signings who weren't dross like Pussetto to help us stay up that January. But the point is it's not as if we likely used money on Pussetto which we could have instead used to purchase useful players outside the Pozzo network.
Divine right? Who said that apart from you just now. Read what I'm saying. I'm talking about having the ambition to want more and to strive for that. Not to meekly accept we are a struggling Champ club (or whatever you think we are). It's not delusion to expect Premier League football. Were we all deluded from 2014-19? It was a reality. You have to be smart and really dedicated to innovation. My ambitions would be as follows. Cat One academy. If I was owner, this is the first thing I would do, above all else. Invest in youth and accept a few stars will be pinched along the way, but being a Cat One academy ensures you get a better deal when you lose players to bigger clubs. You will find an influx of good decent players coming through. Why Gino never values this is beyond me. You get a certain amount of loyalty and identity when you bring your own players in from the academy......and the fans love it seeing "one of their own" on the pitch. Once parents see Watford as a serious developer of young players, with a pathway into first team football, they will trust us with their kids. We could really benefit from this type of investment and get some real talent that currently we're not able to attract. Invest in the best talent spotters money can buy. Seriously. I would go big on this. A lot of my money would be spent on getting the best leaders possible. Top EPL budgets on salaries to get these people in. Once that's all done, you will see a production line of good young players coming through. Pozzo has had ELEVEN years to get this right. All that Prem money coming in, but he just didn't invest it in longevity. Get the leaders and academy right and the rest should take care of itself in the medium to long term. It's not rocket science. Brighton and Brentford are doing it because they are very smart operators. But it's not an exclusive club. It's open for anyone to join.
You'll have to explain how it "says otherwise". I don't see how what you mention is relevant to the issue. Inter-club Pozzo money shuffling is inter-club Pozzo money shuffling. We can sometimes send money one way, they can sometimes send money back; as the parties see fit.
