Scott Duxbury Interview - Ftre

I don’t disagree with any of that, but it is always possible that they asked some or all of those questions you mention, Scott politely declined to reply, and they simply edited that out so as not to disrupt the flow of the podcast.

 

Who at the club can see it? Which of them have told you this?

 

As with all data, correlation and causation are not the same thing.

 

I mean...Boro was pretty drab, but I think that was a Warnock special, L*ton was the worst display of the season (with Lazaar at left back), and Brentford we were on the piss. Norwich we were great, possibly our best performance of the season, and Troy was in the stands for that. An overwhelmingly negative influence on the pitch, and possibly off it too, but I don't think his mere presence in the stadium was enough to almost wreck us lol

 

How many Scottish players have ever been sold for £20m?

 

One of the problems with Deeney is that he cant be 'merely present', he has a bull in a china shop personality. He takes up a lot of space and reduces the impact of other, better leaders in the squad.

 

And now it is being reported that we have bid £12M for a brazilian kid, which goes against everything this teat said in the interview. Just ***** lol at anyone believing any of the sewerage that spews out of his mouth (not that I've wasted my time listening to the interview of course).

 

Three points:

1) You are making things up that I didn’t say. Selling Sarr and Pedro?
2) Hughes and Chalobah aren’t currently lucrative assets because they only have one year left on their deals.
3) We were not prepared for relegation. If we had not bounced back our financial situation would have been catastrophic.

 

We also took him as someone who had played some 1st team football somewhere else, to someone who played none for us.

 

I don't think so, he specifically cited Richarlison as an example directly afterwards. But maybe he was just giving a recent example, he's hardly going to know any of the youth players pre-Pozzo time!

 

No it doesn't go against everything Scott said. He said we would target young, hungry players with the potential to develop further, who weren't already the finished article. Which is exactly the bucket that Danilo falls into, much like Richarlison.

 

You are making some good points on the thread - but I can't understand why you are making out we are fine financially when we all know we very probably aren't? Regaining Premier League status hasn't just made everything okay on the balance sheet, as much as we would like to hope thats true.

What we do know is that the owner has us leveraged up to the eyeballs unless something significant has happened in the last 12 months - given the back drop of the pandemic, I'd put the chances of that happening as less than 1%. Important reminder here that the owner had done this PRE-COVID. In that intervening time, we have been told they took out another loan borrowed against last season's parachute payment - so we will need to start repayments on that. They will also very likely have to pay the wage deferrals the players took after the first PL restart. I doubt thats an insignificant sum either. Both these alongside the huge operating losses they have undoubtedly suffered too.

We are one of only a handful of clubs who are yet to issue their accounts - why? I doubt it's because everything is rosy.

Promotion back to the PL has saved us undoubtedly in the short term - and probably left us in a position where we can start taking educated gambles financially again. But no better than that whatsoever. Premier League membership alone won't save us financially as many clubs have gone down the pan whilst still being members of the PL.

I also think you overstate the 'assets against liabilities' argument. Sure we have some assets worth good money...but we probably still owe money on them too. And looking at the squad, if you went through it in the cold light of day, you'd be through the decent assets pretty quick really then you look at things like contractual status and money still owed on them. Probably wouldn't take long before you get to 'looking at the stadium/training ground' - and if that were to happen, then finances definitely aren't okay.

And I suspect a lot of the above is what has helped Duxbury form their new 'outlook' on what we are about as a club and the blueprint forward. Buzzwords like 'DNA' are just easy clothes to dress it up in.

 

oh that's ok then.

 

That's Duxbury's point, isn't it? That we can never assume we're comfortable in the PL, start spunking loads of money on contracts we can't afford if it all goes wrong.

It does mean accepting that we'll be a bit of a yo-yo club, but you know what? That's fine. Despite what big-6 ******* think, theres nothing wrong with going up and down. As a club we've spent far, far more time outside of the top division than we've had in it. We're a small club from a small satellite town of London. We're massively punching above our weight as it is.

Again, as Dusbury mentions, just in the last ten years we've had more memorable moments than some clubs have in a lifetime. Embrace it.

 

No one is debating much of that.

But I’m not sure it is his point as you say - he’s not saying he ‘accepts’ we are a yo-yo club. Just that he thinks it’s inevitable at some point that we will suffer relegation again. He has been far more vocal that he believes we are a Premier League club hasn’t he? Premier League clubs don’t yo-yo.

I don’t take exception to much of what he has said - or the points you’ve made. I just won’t fall over myself praising the clubs supposed change of approach - as I don’t really believe they’ve had some sort of epiphany or lightbulb moment.

I admit it doesn’t help that I don’t trust Duxbury a great deal.

 

I'll repeat this yet again - Success and Penaranda were picked up by the Pozzos for peanuts.

They are as much a part of our "transfer DNA" as signings as Sierralta and the other bargains from South America and elsewhere which you cite, except for the loans being made permanent and the Pozzos shuffling around some of their funds to go with it but without actually making an outlay. They haven't fulfilled their promise, but not all such signings will and the Pozzos won't have made a big loss on them.

 

Doubt he's hungry. They have buffet restaurants in Brazil where you pay a few Reais for a massive plate of meat and beans. He will be stuffed.

 

Due to covid restrictions injured players mix a lot less with the 1st team bubble and Troy didnt travel to the 5 away games during our amazing Troyless run of form. Troy had much less influence on the dressing room during the key weeks after his injury when new leaders emerged, the team spirit was transformed and our performances went from dog$hit to fantastic. These are facts, not opinions.

 

It’s a tricky one because they were picked up for peanuts initially, but technically cost Watford £20m and have contributed precisely **** all to us. It’s ok if you view the two clubs as whole and just a bit of book balancing, but if you look at it just from the Watford perspective then it’s £20m for nothing.

 

He just said Doucoure weirdly. Didn’t say Gray

 

Well that’s good and bad.

Good that we didn’t refuse any offers on Gray.
Bad that we didn’t get any offers on Gray.
He’s here forever.

 

It is just a bit of book balancing.

If the Pozzos thought Watford needed those funds back from elsewhere then it wouldn't be that much of a deal to shift.

Say you own two houses, and have two cars at each house. Then for whatever reason you need to use three cars at the first house for a while, or it would save in taxes to do so - it isn't as if the second house has permanently lost a car, if required it could just be moved back again in future.

 

All very well in theory but let’s look at the reality.

Udinese extracted £7m from us on Pussetto. And 9 months later we are forced to take an external bridging loan to cover a transfer instalment owed to us from Udinese on Pereyra because we are struggling with liquidity.

So Udinese get a bundle of cash. And we get an external financing cost.

 

Two things stand out to me –

First, no one is mentioning Suarez and Estupinan as part of the lessons learned. Two players who were expected to be in the core for years to come but who refused to play in the Championship. While on one hand you cannot blame them, given they went to top flight clubs, I suspect the club regards that as part of the character issue when it is thinking about young, hungry players who want to be part of the club.

Second, interesting to see how people react to the comments about young and hungry players, as if that means buying cheap players or not being ambitious or preparing to “do a Norwich”. Some of our smartest buys and best players have fitted into that category – particularly depending upon how you categorise “young”. Richarlison. Deulofeu (whom he speaks very positively of). Hughes. Joao Pedro. Sarr. Doucoure. Chalobah. Bachmann. Sierralta. And so on.

They’re not saying we’re going to buy bad players (obviously). They’re saying we want a young, up-and-coming squad that wants to be here. That's really the heart of the Pozzo model and what served them so well for years. But it's quite a change from the aging squad we had for a while that many of us criticised. Or a squad with some young players who were of questionable character, didn't want to be here or didn't want to put in the work (Penaranda? Success? Sinclair? Suarez? Estupinan?)

I’m plenty critical of the club at times, but sometimes I also think they just can’t win with some supporters. Too old, too young. Too arrogant, too humble. Too focused on modest operations, too out of touch with being a family, town club. Sounds like COVID, relegation and promotion have at least given them a reminder of our identity and trajectory.

 

Similar to the money we received ftom Udinese for Pereyra and Del boy to balance our books

 

No offence intended, but I think trying to evaluate or judge the business dealings and financial arrangements between Watford and Udinese is pretty pointless. There's almost certainly far more going on than we could or will ever know - and I trust the family that runs the clubs to know how to manage their assets and debts. They do it for a living, we watch from the sidelines with a fraction of the full picture.

 

If relegation and fan criticism has led to a rethink and a reboot, ditching the 'Watford global brand' to focus on Watford as a community club and recruiting talented hungry young players instead of players who think they are better than they really are and that they are too good for Watford then I'm glad we got relegated. Pozzbury were turning us into something no real Watford fan wants us to be. If Scot is telling the truth, they have come back from the brink and have decided upon a model that we can all be proud of. If it's true, it's definitely something to celebrate.

 

Off the pitch, sure, but when the players are playing, really? Do you actually think the players were so distracted by Deeney's presence that they played ****? We were pretty **** away from home all season, including before Deeney came back to fitness, so I really don't think he made much of a difference in the stands

 

Maybe just because it might have been cheaper for us to take out the loan than to do it from the Udinese side?

 

But then the natural conclusion of that line of thought is we shouldn't bother. I don't think that's healthy. We're Watford fans, not Udinese fans or Pozzo fans. I trust Pozzo not to do anything which compromises his family's interests and accept that most of the time their interests align with ours and so all is well in the world. I'd think it naive to assume that's always the case though and given Udinese is their club in more than one sense I think whatever scrutiny we can bring to bear on dealings between the two clubs - which ultimately appear in the financial accounts and on Companies Houses records - is worth it. If on a partial snapshot something looks dodgy or like it is against the best interests of Watford, ask them to explain why it isn't rather than just roll over and assume it's fine.

 

I wouldn't accuse them of funneling all the Watford cash to Udinese, I think Pussetto was a one-time thing when Udinese needed a bit of cash, but I think it's interesting how Udinese accused the Pozzos of doing the reverse! I don't know how much Pereyra or Deulofeu went to them for, but I don't think it was the initial plan to shift the both of them there, I think that just came about because they wanted out and nobody else would take them (see also: carthorses like Zeegelaar, players like Okaka, Behrami, Prodl who didn't have the legs for English football, and others like Sema who weren't good enough for our Prem team, I dare say Udinese were delighted to get all of them!)

I do think you can accuse them of spreading themselves too thinly at times though, do they have the financial muscle to be able to fund top flight teams effectively? We got into all of this external debt which other clubs like Villa and Bournemouth could manage more effectively with their richer owners

 

That seems to suggest WFC can get a loan at an acceptable rate more easily than Udinese can....it’s not to my liking, but this is the way the Pozzos have run things since they bought us.

 

The All England Lawn Tennis Club.

 

I think we have basically paid his wages for a year while he got fit for Brighton.

 

They said on Talk Sport the other day he’s on £100k P/W at Brighton, so at least we were supposedly only paying him £70k P/W when fit.

The reality was he was back in training before lockdown, so by the time lockdown ended he was as fit as anyone of our players (and if you believe Troy’s own account of how sick he was from Covid, plus his fabled knee injury, probably significantly more so than him).

It’s our own fault if we then decided not to utilise him.