Parlaci Gino

Although to be fair to Duxbury he probably thinks that's a stall on Lyme Regis beach selling clams, mussels etc.

 

Expectations were always going to be set too high. Anyone expecting them to accept that they shouldn’t have done business with Bayat and that there was something more to the relationship, they were wrong to buy Sarr, wrong to sack Edwards etc was overly-optimistic.
The main positives I took away were that 3rd party debt is being and has been reduced, and the acceptance that we are a champ team for now and aren’t going to bet the ranch on some mistaken crusade that this is just a blip and we will soon be back in the prem where we belong !

 

So he didn’t have the exact numbers to hand ? Plenty of things to criticise the regime for but getting the exact number of wins in a run spot on in a Q&A session isn’t a big issue to me. It’s not as though the error undermined the decision he took. Happy to disagree though.

 

Difficult to know exactly how it went having not been there but from the transcript it seems overall questions were answered but not necessarily in the detail we would have liked.

There was some acceptance that mistakes have been made . The problem from Gino /Scott’s perspective seems to have been players that weren’t the right fit and didn’t want to be there. I am open to the possibility that this could be the case as opposed to the frequent hiring and firing which we all
Believe has contributed to this . There was no acceptance of this though .

There seems to be a belief that they now have a manager with the correct style ( actively seeking posession) and a set of players that want to be here . Let’s see if that is the case .

On the financial side I’m very sceptical that the debt is suddenly going to all be repaid , within the timescales suggested unless it is all being transferred to Gino’s company . This has now been openly stated and there shouldn’t be any surprises in the next 10 days so we would expect to see the debt on the next set of accounts reflect that or we can all call them into account.

Gino did show up and answer questions though . Some on here are convinced he wouldn’t . I think that however arrogant he may be he genuinely believes what he is saying and that this is the correct path for the club.

 

That went about as much as I expected. I had hoped for a bit more of a contrite reaction from Pozzo and Duxberry is how they've appointed and recruited players in recent years, and at least on the player front they did actually admit to this re: leaders and refreshment of the older squad. It's no surprise that Sarr doesn't want to be here, regardless of how much fault is his or ours.

However it was disappointing to hear they didn't think they got any head coach appointments wrong because of a lack of time given to some of them either, though did in a roundabout way say that they should have looked at appointment more closely before signing them by saying they had more time to scout options and sound them out properly and chose Valerian following this. It was concerning that they seem to buy what they think the Head Coach should play, rather than who they need. I have no concern with giving them suitable options to pursue in a lot of situations, but they should also be allowed to have a say for a player they want as well.

Finances made a lot of sense for me. We consolidated a lot during the last 2 years of the various debts into only one or two major lenders. When we went down in Covid, we had a lot of smaller debts to various lenders AFAIK which was resulting in higher interest payments which was cleared and remodelled into more centralised and more favourable interest rates. The remaining debt, as per Duxberry, is owner debt thereafter and the sales of Pedro, Sarr etc will clear that off as per yesterday evening which is something I had suspected would be the case but it's good to have it formally noted. The player sales like Kamara etc were what we already pieced together.

I can't say I'm fully satisfied by what I heard. There's a lot of arrogance that's still very apparent and we feared as much that they feel they fundamentally have made every decision right re: head coaches and methodology as well as the Bayat connection but it's better that they've admitted they need to improve the scouting related to coach needs and also take a greater emphasis on character reference as well. I'm not overly different to my feelings before after the QnA but if they actually restart "At Your Place" again, I think that will do a lot to help get a connection back with the club and team.

 

If the person who owns the club, and who is directly responsible for both hiring and firing the manager who the results relate to, and whose job hangs on such information isn’t expected to know them, in your opinion who is?

 

Someone alluded to the fact that people around Pozzo must be sh1t at their jobs if the model is so perfect but the team is so crap, but the message didn't land.

 

“It‘a time to stop questioning things” and “if somebody tells you it’s sunny outside you have to believe them” are things that actually came out of your mouth. All because Giaretta humoured you for five minutes. Embarrassing.

 

Bizarre question.
If someone asked him Silva's record in the last 10 games before he was fired do you think he should know off the top of his head ? If he isn't expected to know that, then is there someone else who should know ?
He was out by a couple in a stat he quoted - I think it's something like winning one of his last 11, so what - it doesn't undermine the decision they took, rightly or wrongly. That's what matters. Plenty of other things to criticise them for, this fixation on getting this stat wrong is bizarre to my mind....

 

It matters because Pozzo chose to quote numbers because the impression given when you cite facts is that it strengthens the argument being made.

He didn’t have to use numbers. He could have spoken in general terms and made exactly the same point but he didn’t.

People in positions of power do this all the time and as a society we let them get away with it to the point that the facts - and therefore the truth - begin to matter less.

A politician makes a claim that turns out to be not quite true and a lot of people go “oh s/he was only out by a bit, why are we getting hung up on this.”

It’s completely up to every individual whether or not this matters to them. If you want to accept the owner being a bit slap dash with the trivial facts it’s harder to demand he’s accurate with the ones that do matter. It’s all just indicative of a mindset and, given that the supporters expected openness, transparency and accuracy it’s not a great start if he clatters straight into one of the lowest bars set in front of him.

I’m not trying to change your mind. Your view is perfectly valid and I accept many people won’t be bothered but, having read what was said last night, it’s just one example of a broad stroke brush off. Quite instructive in its own way.

 

The manager is no autonomy on picking the team, training schedules or even tactics so why does he take all the slack? Why don't the people behind the manager ever get blamed?

 

I thought he said they had made mistakes

 

Yes I’d agree with you if the correct number would give a different impression or had led to a different outcome. 1/13, 1/11… meh, I don’t think it changes anything.
I agree this wouldn’t have been an issue had he just said “roughly” or “something like” before quoting his stat.
Anyway, let’s move on. Plenty more to debate.

 

"I don’t think that any of the coaches that we had, that done a good job once, was the perfect fit."
"Many of the coaches we probably don’t want them to stay any longer because it was not a good fit for us."

We've tried every possible type of manager at this point Gino. What the **** are you actually looking for?

 

I agree with the general point you’re making. But, if a pundit or a newspaper article said Watford had lost 10 of the last 13 and we hadn’t, or someone on the radio said it, supporters would say “no we haven’t” and the record would (or should) be corrected.

This is the owner, talking about his club and his decisions. It may feel trivial but we should demand better. Basic accuracy from the owner is really not too much to ask.

But you’re right, plenty more to focus on.

 

It’s a bizarre question to expect the person hiring and firing someone based on certain metrics to know those metrics?

If you were a line manager and you had to fire someone for poor attendance, but you didn’t know their attendance figures I’d imagine you’d find yourself in an employment tribunal fairly quickly.

But I’ll ask the bizarre question again, if not the only person making decisions based on that information, who else?

 

Not really, he said they’d made mistakes but then went on to say everything they did was correct and he didn’t regret anything. All the managers were just bad fits.

If you can show me something specific he said was a mistake I’m all ears.

 

It was a dreadful run of form. Whether it's one win in 16 or 14 doesn't really make that much difference. This is also 4 years ago and maybe time has diluted his memory a little. Of all things to natter him for this one seems a little pointless

 

I just don’t expect him to carry a stat like that around in his head for a Q&A session. His mistake was not saying “something like…” before he quoted the stat. He’d obviously have had the 100% correct stats to hand back when he made the decision.

 

At the time, sure. But 4 years later?

I'm sort of between both camps on this one. Would fully expect him to have known the numbers at the time he was making the decision and I'm sure he did. Also think it wouldn't have done any harm for him to refresh his memory before spouting wrong ones last night. But as TUT, he's an 'about' or 'approximately' away from this never being picked up on.

 

But this wasn't a tribunal. For a tribunal you would do plenty of ground work to make sure all facts are correct. You wouldn't however lose a tribunal if you got their attendance figures slightly wrong as the whole point would be that the attendance was not acceptable.

 

I never said anything specific but that they admitted to making mistakes

 

Any truth in the rumour the speed bumps were put in to stop all the burger vans coming in for Troy?

 

From what I gather

• Gino turned up
• He answered questions but some don't like the answers
• He can't remember an exact run of form from 4 years ago
• Bayat is not going away. I presume he will if found guilty of the charges he faces
• They didn't like Edwards
• Inevitably they were some strange questions asked
• @a19tgg loves an argument
• Debt is only £29m, the rest is owed to Gino who doesn't want it back. I'm not convinced by this
• The hiring/firing of managers is likely to continue
• We are one good coach away from being Brighton
• There were no questions about Giaretta or did I miss them

Aside from the debt I'm not sure what else we found out that we didn't already know. Does anybody feel differently?

 

The points about Deulofeu were wrong and/or lacked context, though. Maybe a change of user name to The Qualified Truth is in order! Just joking.

Seriously, I see what you’re saying. Maybe my expectations were too high. I’d have liked a lot more rigour in terms of detail in their responses. Perhaps an unrealistic expectation but I was left with an impression that it was a smoothing over job.

fascinated to see how they pay down the debt without shedding significant assets. Very little in the way of detail there.

WFC’s attitude to debt is the same as me saying I’m not in debt except for my mortgage, credit card, car loan, and various HP agreements!

 

I’m also annoyed about lots of other things he said, that is possible you know, this is only an issue because his minions are needlessly going round defending him.

 

Lol absolutely amazing. So you’re happy because they said they made mistakes, but without actually saying what mistakes? And then when questioned about specific things that we as fans all perceive as fans to be mistakes, they said were not mistakes and they made the right calls, or blamed somebody else?

But they said they made mistakes, so it’s all fine then. Amazing.

 

add to that, no question was doctored and the tone of many of the questions verged on aggressive rather than passive

they were not given an easy ride by those that wanted to grill them but no time was given to the questioner to ask for clarification on the resulting waffle

On a total side note, this forum is fairly unique in the Watford stratosphere. Most fans are happy to go with the flow and still think pozzo is the best thing ever. This is gauged by listening to podcasts, that Facebook site and, more importantly, seeing the other fans in the flesh (not including you @Robert Peel)

 

It was 4 years ago! Do you honestly think he wouldn't have known the figures, if asked at the time?

What a weird thing to get so obsessed and aggressive about.