They seem to be playing 3-5-2 (and possibly will be for the forseeable until Deulofeu is fit, whenever that is) with Pereyra playing in a midfield 3, but I guess Pereyra will be warming the bench a lot once Deulofeu comes back
Ignore the first part of this @lowerrous - I didn't mean to send it as its wrong but for some reason it posted in my response. I typed it out but thought I better check first...but obviously forgot to delete it!
Christ, what a muppet. I remember that it was a shock to pretty much everyone that Penaranda was denied a work permit at the time - even the sports pages of national newspapers said it was a surprise - the fee was unlikely to have been the problem though. How is it that my pointing out the significant flaws in one of the sticks you keep trying to keep beating the Pozzos with, the same thing as my supposedly having an "agenda that the Pozzos never get anything wrong"?! How is that my agenda? I've criticised the Pozzos plenty on various issues, but in this instance it just doesn't make sense to.
I don't believe them tbh. It was like HH. He wasn't rated at Fulham but that day he came back and scored, standing in the net screaming, was one of the most moments ever.
No not serious, just been sarcastic but didn’t make my point very well. It seems some are annoyed when we pay over the odds to Udinese, even though it’s the same group. So they’d rather the money stays on Watford’s balance sheet, even though in reality it doesn’t really matter. Then when we sell players like Pervis etc, they’re also annoyed, even though they generated a profit directly for Watford. Why is it such and issue for us to transfer Money off to another entity in the same group, if people are also annoyed about profits being generated in the reverse way?
I'll make it as clear as I can for you. I want Watford money to buy Watford players for Watford's team. On balance, I would prefer Udinese went bankrupt and didn't exist, or at least that they weren't linked by a common owner. I don't mind the odd speculative player being bought and loaned out but not to the point of obsession where it drastically affects our squad, as it currently does.
I have already answered this in previous posts. The fact that you disagree with that is fine, but I'm not gonna repeat myself in different wording. It's just Boring for the whole forum.
I'm bored of arguing with you about the granular detail of thing because we are going round in circles. This idea that I am supposed to be happy when they siphon money from Watford to transfer it to other entities because it all stays within the group (and that it may or may not benefit us in the future) just doesn't fly with me. That £20m could have been used to buy us important players at that point in time. I couldn't care any less that in the future it might get us a cut price deal on some more dross from Udinese like Sierralta. There is talk about how wonderful this model is, and how their model is the sole reason Watford and Granada were in the top flight, but now they have sold Granada and they are playing in Europe, we are in the second tier and Udinese have acquired three of our valuable players on loan.
I’m not sure Grenada are the best examples to give, their owners own more clubs than the Pozzos with very mixed results.
On a separate note, why couldn't we get the work permits sorted for Penaranda and Cucho? Both with good seasons under their belts in the top flight in Spain, Cucho with a Colombia cap, yet Richarlison gets one having only played in Brazil. Is the prestige of Brazil all there is to it, or could we have made a better case to bring Penaranda and Cucho here?
My point was not necessarily that they are good owners, rather that there are others capable of doing what the pozzos did.
Richarlison and JP had played in a continental competition which is additional points on the work permit objective criteria. Wages / transfer fee also a factor. One cap doesnt do much, needs to be a certain number of games. I am dubious about the Cucho one to be honest, tin foil hat theory is we used it as an excuse to loan him
Granada achieved that through a rich owner bankrolling them, and are now facing an uncertain future after he is allegedly desperate to sell and might pull funding. The problem with hanging your hat on a rich owner bankrolling you is they might decide to walk away at any moment.
How do you know that it meant we couldn't still spend that £20mil elsewhere? That money might not have had anything to do with the amount the Pozzos would have put aside for our overall transfer budget. The Pozzos also might not have been able to spend £20mil in buying players from other clubs anyway (which isn't the same thing as moving the money from one of their clubs to another). Perhaps they'd set aside a transfer budget of £30mil or whatever for Watford that summer, and that £20mil was a separate figure which was never intended to have been spent by Watford on transfers anyway, but was convenient to move to their other club at that specific moment in time. They did not lose the money. it is still under their control to do with as they see fit. They also did not overpay for those two players.
Didn't they just break their transfer record for Suarez? seems an odd move for someone desperate to sell and pulling funding. More than happy to be wrong on this - suspect they are trying to pull out some cash as with all Chinese owners due to the govt. policy. But my point was not that they were good, nor that they were bad, it is just that there are alternatives to the Pozzo model and the idea that it is the best possible way for our club to be successful just isn't correct.
That money came from the TV money that came from us being a PL club. The fact they might consider spending it on us or or Udinese or on Granda is exactly my issue. This is the point you seem totally incapable of grasping so as said - I am done.
Thanks for that, I didn't know about those rules. Theoretically, would it have been easier for us to get Cucho or Penaranda a work permit had they stayed in South America playing for a Libertadores or Sudamericana team do you know? (Unlikely that someone would pluck a teenager from Colombia or Venezuela and throw him straight in the Premier League/Championship I know!) Would be a shame if Cucho never plays for us, he and Joao Pedro are the only ones of our South Americans who actually seemed to acknowledge us during their time away from the club. Doubt he ever comes here now, mentally preparing myself to make every excuse in the book for us selling him for £5m, with £1m coming up front
http://www.insideworldfootball.com/...-jiang-goes-missing-action-leaving-pile-debt/ The fact that a rich owner can bankroll a club has never been in contention. It's also not something you can develop as a business plan. Given that it's a total crap shoot, I don't think it's really worth discussing as an alternative way to run the club. It's not a something you can plan for, and I don't really think it's a way of business to aspire to either.
Used to live in China and have a passing interest in the geopolitics of the country, I'm aware of the government supposedly wanting the billionaires to pull out of European clubs, but I don't know how imminently they want it. There's always a political reason for investing in clubs (for example the Chinese have been linked with lots of planned projects in the north and midlands, Villa's training ground is/was (?) along the planned HS2 route), I don't see what reason a Chinese billionaire, or indeed a billionaire from anywhere, would have in investing in a small Hertfordshire club. The Burnley model has worked well for them, winning the Championship title, qualifying for Europe and beginning to establish themselves as an established Prem club, although it seems to be unravelling now. I've said on here a few times that I really like Brentford's model, not sure of the finer details there, but they've had a lot of success, though I suppose, like we've seen with the Pozzos, the Prem is a tough old league if they get there...
We're also not exactly a prime candidate for a takeover by a billionaire neither, a lot of the historically big clubs who have been stuck in this division for yonks would surely have a lot more 'potential' than us...
Let's not re-write history, we thought he was going to be a good player, wasn't he the youngest goal scorer in la liga? He won't be the first player to fail after a bright future. I disagree the scouting network can be blamed for not knowing his personality, he was at Granada at least a year before he came to us, same as Success so the coaches got plenty of chances to look. I think we were warned by Sherlock right back in 2012 we would have to get used to a high turnover of players. I think we can all agree the first team squad did not get adequate investment in the right areas last summer, but prior to that I believe we were all pretty happy
Agree with your general points but the summer before that was incredibly poor. We desperately needed both a striker and a centre back, and we ended up with neither. The fact Javi did such an outstanding job covered up what a mess that transfer window was..
Not my suggestion, nor my preference. I was merely remarking that there are other ways to run a football club than the Pozzo way that can be successful. You just wonder with how much Udinese have regressed whether the model is outdated and is just not as effective as those used by Brentford and Wolves.
I was so buzzing with Chalobah, Hughes and Richarlison. I had doubts about Gray, but I thought they must know what they are doing (little did I know).
Really thought we could make a push for Europe that season, we did some seriously good business, and the league was very open that season, the quality below the 'Big 6' was so poor (cough cough Everton!). Could we have if Chalobah not got injured and Silva not got his head turned? I mean Silva has since gone on to prove himself a very flawed manager, although we did go on to make a mighty good go of it the next season without both Richarlison and Chalobah...
I wonder how much of Udinese's decline was just natural for a historically average Italian club, or indeed whether focusing on us put the final nail in the coffin of them being competitive at European level. I think once the Pozzos spotted those Premier League megabucks, they kind of put all their eggs in our basket and ignored them, but maybe they could have stayed at that level if all of these good young South American youngsters never got owned by us, and were able to actually play and get settled in the slightly more forgiving Serie A or La Liga? (Wolves are a historically big Midlands club with billionaire owners and close links to one of the most prominent agents in world football, there must be some moments where they scratch their heads at the fees floating around for very unproven players, but on the whole, they are very lucky football-wise. Not a model that can be replicated though!)
Even Silva’s summer was begging for a LB and a CB. And we got Wague and Zeegelaar. Yes there were exciting signings as well, granted. But the key positions that needed dealing with that summer were still filled with dross.