I support the team regardless and couldn't care less what league we're in - likewise I wouldn't call players rancid, at least they want to play. Can still feel the owners are making hideous mistakes and making us a laughing stock. Most in English football ******* hate us these days, and it is not because they are jealous of our success. I have no issues with selling everyone (luckily I suppose), starting again and becoming a handy mid table team like my first 20 years as a season ticket holder. I also am thankful for the Pozzo's and want them to stick around. My issues are: 1) Doing all this whilst telling Ivic he has to get promoted or he's gone - we haven't got a hope in hell and he's a great coach. 2) The constant complacency with which they seem to be treating actual league games at the start of the season, you know, after a season where we didn't win any of the first 11 and got relegated by a point. If they had sorted the Sarr deal sooner (for context we were haggling over the smallest figures for 3/4 weeks), and integrated him even two months before they did we would have stayed up comfortably. Or even just paid the bonuses to our players they were due so there wasn't a small mutiny going into the start of a season. 3) The fact we own a large number of very talented players that are being paid to sit at home whilst we have to go to the youth team to give our new coach players to use.
I’d argue Sarr was in hindsight a bad buy. It made no sense buying a winger when the grinning idiot played 4222. Then we bring is QSF who played 442 or 352. If we’d spent the money on centre backs and full backs we’d likely have survived. So agree the management have made some really stupid decisions not just last year but from the moment we were promoted. Why was that team ripped apart and QSF bought in? Its been one long slow train wreck to be honest. But it’s never been dull.
Watford have been relegated from the Premier League to the Championship and as a result have had to sell some of their better players. This has never happened before in the history of football and Watford fans are right to be surprised, angry and confused. They expected to see Sarr and Deulofeu tearing down the wings, scoring 4 every game and winning the league without suffering defeat. This is now unlikely. Prediction Sheff Wed 16-3 Watford Sinclair x3 for Watford
Recruiting players without the coach's input has time and time again shown itself to be catastrophically bad. Just looking at our last two record signings: Gray cost £18m and wasn't wanted by Silva and had no place in his system. Sarr cost £30m and wasn't wanted by Gracia and had no place in his system. We sign wingers for managers who play without them. We sign strikers who can only play in a two, for managers who play lone striker systems. Pozzos get a lot of wholly undeserved praise for their recruitment, when from my perspective it seems to be utterly useless and a major contributing factor to the mess we are in. It doesn't matter they identified Estupinan and picked him up for penuts and flipped him for a profit, if he never played for us, and we were relegated because our squad was full of ***** like Dawsom, Kiko and Masina who were signed to be starting 11 players for us.
you never know, if we sell Sarr before Saturday that will be £75mill recovered and we might just be allowed to keep Suarez. Of course we’ve seen almost nothing of him and he could turn out to be awful.
What do we think is the plan for Sarr and Suarez? Not play them at all until the transfer window closes in case the big big comes along?
If the Pozzos have made £13m or whatever on Estupian, then that is £13m less that we'll have to find from somewhere else. You can't make a player play for you if he wants to be elsewhere. Disappointing, but they should keep doing deals that help bankroll the club, like Lukebakio, even if we never see them play.
My point is that selling these talented want-aways is just covering for some of the other utterly dreadful business the club does. There is no point spending £30m on a player who doesn't fit in your system, no matter how good he is. At some point we also have to ask why these talented young players like Lukebakio, Estupinan, Berghuis, Cucho, Pape Gueye all want to run a mile from the club. They are all leaving the club and going on to better things, while the only ones of these players still about are Success and Penaranda and that is because they haven't done well enough to attract interest. Let us not forget Doucoure nearly ended up part of our pathetic loan farm, and no doubt JP would also have been if we had stayed up. I don't know what they hope to achieve through it, but all it has generated is a lot of dissatisfied players who could have contributed far more to the club that a lot of the dross that has spent time here over recent years.
Berghuis is pretty much doing the same thing in Dutch football as he was when we bought him and nobody seems interested. Estupinan has never been part of this club and we are now in the Championship. Lukebakio was treated badly by the club Cucho has never said he is leaving and cant play for us anyway Papa Gueye - God knows what happened there How many have gone on to better things?
I’d certainly take a draw now. I’d give Percy another go, and hopefully Quina and Chalobah are less rubbish than normal
Berghuis is a dutch international and considered one of the best players in the division. We spent a season playing Capoue as our creative player because we shipped him out on loan. Refuse to believe he couldn't have contributed. The fact that Estupinan spent 4 years on our books and has never been part of this club is in itself a shambles. He is now off to a better club than ours. Gueye off to a better club. Cucho off to a better club. Lukebakio is a regular starter for a top flight club and is scoring goals / getting assists. All of them have gone on to better things than us.
Berghuis plays in the dutch league which is not great. Why do you think he's still there? Estupinan - was he waiting for a work permit? Last season was his first good season at the top level Cucho has not left Papa Gueye - nobody knows what happened there Lukebakio as I said was treated badly
Berghuis has been linked with moves elsewhere but maybe he is just happy being the best player at the club he loves and doesn't want to experience rotting on the bench again. Agree the league is weak, but he has been scoring for fun there and has performed on a similar level to players in the PL. Estupinan - we don't know whether he had a passport or not as far as I know. True, but he had shown a lot of promise the season before, albeit in the second tier. Papa Gueye - His lawyer has said the club basically tried to fib him into a signing into the contract - told him the wage was per week, but it was per month and didn't say it meant he would be going to Udinese. We obviously have no proof of this, but you would think if there was no truth in it the court would have him in court already for slander and would be a lot more bullish on their case against Marseille. I just think there is a picture here that the players do not look after these players, Penaranda very much included, where we just farm them out on loan for years until it suits them.
I’m a happy clapper with a bad dose of reality Would love to see us put out a strong side including Sarr and believe we could put out a squad that would walk all over SW if so think we could win 3-1 I think however there is a good chance we will play a similar squad to last weekend and will then be a tight game 1-0 either way I will continue to trust in Pozzo till the end of the transfer window (no matter how naive that is) final prediction Watford 3-1 Pedro to score, Sarr off the bench to score and Quina for the third
The Hive afterwards. Emma gurns for the camera 'Well Jay plenty of positives to take out of that then..... '. Bemused look on Demerit's face. If we do not get a grip in midfield considering the worrying form of Quina (I let him off because he is a kid with barely a handful of matches under his belt thanks to the ineptitude of several managers) and concern over Chalobah's efforts then Cleverly won't be able to stitch it together. Pedro, Sema and company will hardly get a sniff and we will be hanging on for dear life. They the Owls have a point to prove. And played for Holland as well in the interim.
Ah Berghuis the one that got away. I’ve never witnessed a player so far out of his depth on his debut, he looked like a random bloke off the street had been invited to join a game.
Quique had a way with players. Disliked anyone with flair on the wing. Probably because he was skinned by many when playing full back. He sure was a nob. His failure to use Sarr was shocking. Ditto with Berghuis.
Incorrect. Every relegated club immediately sends their best player on holiday, knowing he will miss the start of the season and then, not only slaps a for sale sign on half of the squad, but isolates all those saleable players and makes them unavailable for selection as they try to offload them. Tale as old as time.
I sort of get where you are coming from. But if it’s a major contributing factor to the mess we are in do you think it had anything to do with our success and rise to the premiership, cup final etc? Or is that just coincidence and can be explained luck and other factors?
I am not entirely sure I can explain it. It used to feel like we were quite well run, and we built a brilliant squad for that promption season which the Pozzo's deserve credit for, but I don't think we have had a good window since the summer Silva arrived. The last two summer windows have been catastrophically bad; a fact that was papered over by Gracia doing an outstanding job of coaching the squad. We have had the worst defence in the league since that first season, but the last centre back we bought who you could genuinely say was an improvement on what we had was was 5 years ago with Britos and Prodl.
That's clearly nonsense from his lawyer. Gueye's original agent would have handled the negotiations, been able to review the contract, and instrumental in signing the pre-contractual paperwork. If the terms of that contract weren't acceptable he shouldn't have signed it. If Gueye wasn't happy with the terms in the contract he signed then that's between him and his (old) agent, and nothing to do with the club. This situation is about nothing more than the new agent not getting paid for the work of the old one, and Gueye wanting more money (and a place at a Champions League club). I don't blame him for preferring a move to OM, but it's pretty obvious which side is at fault here and it's not WFC.
Not to mention the genius January window when we were springing for safety and brought in the much needed Pussetto. Geniuses.
All clubs do it with players that will never play for them. Rochdale announced Messi last week and we announced Estupinan and Suarez.
And it is clear that is no fault of Rochdale FC. Agents using their wand to invalidate watertight contracts again.
He says that his agent told him what Watford wanted him to know. The contract was in English so he couldn't understand it, but his agent told him it was okay. I dont know if all of what he says is true but the reality is if it was black and white, and there was not something fishy about the pre contract, we would already have Marseille in court. But the whole thing is just kind symptomatic of the poor management of the club. How was a sitaution like that ever allowed to develop. I have never even heard of it happening before, but it doesn't surprise me one bit it happens to us.
