You’re brought in as a consultant with the opportunity to tell Gino & co whatever you like, so long as it’s constructive to the football clubs future either in the short term and staying up, or planning for the future - Within reason, no oligarchs or human rights abusers here. Im curious, what would people and especially those who are unhappy currently (myself included), how would you recommend the club recovers from the numerous issues currently at the club?
Could write an absolute essay on this but briefly, short term immediate future: 1) Identify a play style for the club - This should be set and never really change too much, allowing for small adaptations. Are we a high-pressing, high-energy attacking club that favours wingers? Are we a patient, possession-based club? Are we an ugly, horrible to play against, type team? 2) Get in a manager who matches chosen philosophy - Under 55, give him 2 seasons (4 transfer windows). 3) Bring in a Director of Football / Technical Director - Whatever the hell it's called, bring in a proper footballing man who sits beneath Gino & Duxbury (hopefully a different CEO) and just above the Head Coach / alongside him. His main priority and focus are Watford, not the Pozzo network. He looks after football operations, works alongside a revamped recruitment team, and 3.5) identifies players based on our set philosophy. I would say increase screening, conduct further research on their mindset and injury history etc. We seem to recruit too many losers / depressed / troubled / sex addicts / party animal nutjobs. It would be good to have a team who whilst different in nationalities, languages, share some traits, goals or intrinsic motivation. 4) Improve succession planning - A list of 20 managers with the same philosophy, identify potential replacements for outgoings. Why are we, for example losing three strikers in one window and then signing two right-wingers and no strikers, it's a bizarre strategy? Throw **** at the wall and see what sticks long enough to form an 11, no more of that. I'm bored, plenty more but that would be my immediate thoughts.
Score more goals than the opposition. If you do that, all other problems disappear. Very simple really.
Do we actually want more communication? We hear from Duxbury twice a season and the actions don’t match the words. I’m sure what he says is cleared with the boss so what difference does it make who says it? What needs to happen is more people holding those words to account. But you’re highly unlikely to get anyone other than the chosen few asking the soft questions.
Is much said in the programme- think Duxbury writes in it but suspect it’s all positive PR stuff ? As for question. Less player power and more support for the manager rather than have him looking over his shoulder so much might help ?
- Spend time finding an rising star manager and back him. - Buy players based on the needs of the team right now - not just future prospects - 1 year contracts for players over 30 - invest in the academy to replicate other teams success of churning out talent such as Ajax - utilise the English football pyramid more with transfers, League 2 is better quality that Belgian Prem FFS. - learn from past mistakes and success.
Sack pragmatic Hodgson and hire Gung-ho Bielsa. Sack Bielsa and hire and up and coming young manager. Sack young manager and hire an experienced guy. Sack experienced guy and hire someone who once won a cup. That should take care of the next 12 months. Can't really look any further than that really.
Get rid of the OAP currently sat in the dugout who thinks telling fans to "do one" for booing his awful subs in a game for a start. Sack "yes man" Duxbury and bring in a CEO who cares about our future, and has already learned from previous mistakes and can move us forward. Suggest young but affordable replacements for the dead wood in our squad over the Summer. Shift out Cleverley, Sema, Kucka, Masina, Cathcart, Gosling and Elliot - within a respective time frame over the Summer. Invest a lot more into our youth system and setup with an ideal of blooding the good prospects like Hungo and TDB through to the first team. Stop buying bargin basement players who are past it both in age and ability. Get a young manager who wants to work with the squad and understands our limits and ambitions.
Sack Duxbury. Sack Giaretta. Make a 5 year sustainable plan for the club that includes backing a progressive Head Coach. Recruit a new Chairman, Technical Director (who reports to the manager and vice versa, not to Gino himself) and Head Coach by actually interviewing prospective candidates that fit within the sustainable plan. Don’t just offer jobs or contracts without due process or without them too fitting the sustainable plan. Or just because they happen to be family friends. For gods sake - make people interview for jobs! Delete Mogi Bayat’s phone number. Take a less hands-on approach and let the Head Coach and Technical Director work in tandem with minimal input from the owner. Give Diego Martinez whatever he wants. Or Knutsen. Or Liam Manning failing that. Don’t press the panic button if we miss out on promotion - let the Head Coach build. (I think we’d stand a good chance of getting any of those coaches if the above things were done)
Does that include the fans - we know some will have a massive panic attack if we aren't 10 points clear by October or something? Certainly won't accept not going back up given the walling and gashing after the odd defeat last season. Will there be the old "Piss the league" stuff again..
Not disagreeing that we need more youngsters coming through but anyone of the standard of Ajax will be poached before they get anywhere near the first team as we have seen. I guess there are players in League Two better than some of the talent that has come through Belgium football over the years? The teams might not be great but they do produce some pretty useful players. Suppose we aren't looking in that bracket though.
To be honest, I think many fans are going to have to make a choice between building something lasting and exciting in the long term - against promotion at all costs. We could still achieve promotion in the first season whilst undertaking that kind of project. But I think fans will need to be patient and accept that if we look ropey at times, that there is a bigger picture at hand and it should not just mean sacking the coach. But the caveat is that we have to see what the coach and club are trying to implement. The problem is we have never undertaken that kind of plan.
Nonetheless, every other premier league team produces at least one player of an average quality and several have plenty. It's a myth that we couldn't produce anybody of premier league standard without them being poached. Every single other club does it. Pozzo simply isn't interested. He'd rather use our premier league income to fire money at his agent buddies, than build anything meaningful. The use of our 6 or 7 years of premier league revenue has been a disgrace.
Sell all the players Sell Vicarage Road to a property developer Buy a luxury motor yacht Sail around the world
Yes I agree we could at least some some on the bench or in the squad as cover. Even for experience and give them hope. I presume Baah won't be involved at any stage. Just it seems anyone half decent gets poached.
1. We don’t just buy ‘future prospects’. We have bought players for the immediate needs of the team. They just haven’t been very good. 2. Ajax is an extreme aim. We’d all like investment in the academy and to see our own players come through. But we are a town in Hertfordshire with zero pedigree of success on the pitch. Ajax are Holland’s biggest club and by far and away the biggest club in Amsterdam and one of the biggest in Europe. Let’s have a more realistic aim like Middlesbrough or Southampton.
Yes - I guess we have come so used to seeing managers come and go and that people just call out and know the sacking will come anyway at some point. It does seem easier for our owners to blame the manager and pay them off than greatly improve the quality of the squad. We all know the likes of Cleverley and Cathcart will probably be first choice in the Championship.
Plenty of others have first team players they have developed though. Leicester, Palace, Norwich, Burnley, Leeds, Southampton, Villa. Yes you have to invest money in the academy set up, but given the amount of money Pozzo wazzes up the wall I'm sure we could cut back elsewhere. He just isn't interested - prefers his favored agent dealings.
Why did nobody poach James Ward Prowse? Any answers? Jude Bellingham survived long enough to make his club a lot of money. Let’s look at some uglier examples from teams as historically **** as us: Nathan Collins at Stoke James Maddison at Coventry Chris Mepham and Tyrick Mitchell at Brentford Mason Holgate and John Stones for Barnsley Lloyd Kelly at Bristol City Matty Cash for Forest (born in Slough!) Eze at QPR Ben Godfrey at Norwich Plenty of talent out there as a club if we cared, to not have developed even one of the Prem rejects into capable Champ players is a massive shame. TDB might do it, Ngakia is gash.
Yes, it's very simple really - look at Southampton on a map, it's the biggest club in a 60 mile radius. PS Ward-Prowse is actually from Portsmouth and his family are even Pompey fans - I bet their club's fans are annoyed that he joined next door Saints instead at the age of 8; they might even consider that Saints effectively "poached" Ward-Prowse from them.
"Just keep doing what you're doing. We are still above where we should be as a small club in the football pyramid. This run of bad luck can't last forever".
Sport in general must be incredibly tedious for you just expecting everyone to perform within a tiny little box of pre-alloted expectation.
Makes sense. Man City can afford to send a scout to Herts for Sancho but drew the line at the extra fare to get him to the South Coast.
Eze was actually released by Arsenal at 13, then signed for Millwall who bizarrely released him at 18. Godfrey was signed by Norwich at the age of 18 from York. Collins is Irish and was signed by Stoke at 15. Cash was signed by Forest at 17 after he'd been at Bisham Football Academy (near Slough) - that one's a bit strange and begs the question why say Reading, Brentford or us didn't pick him. Maddison, Stones and Kelly are all from the same city as the club whose academy they came through. Holgate is from Doncaster which is next door to Barnsley. As per some of the above examples, generally the smaller clubs who have had players develop all the way through their academy system have largely done so due to geographical factors with the players being from the same cities as the club and therefore it likely being convenient for them. However, Watford doesn't have much of an advantage in this area as there are so many other academies nearby. Combined with the few good players we are able to initially get through the door still getting nicked it's really an uphill battle.
I mean I just knew that you would take it literally given it's what you believe I think, whilst others would see it as a tongue-in-cheek post.
Sancho was rightly regarded as one of the best few players in his age group in the entire country and scouts would have known about him from the England youth teams.which he starred for from U16s. It is true I guess that Ward-Prowse was also in the England youth teams from U17, but maybe he just didn't move all the way across the country at that age? It might have been less of an issue for Sancho as he was already living away from home at Harefield when with us and he's generally seemed a player willing to venture far to advance his career (as his subsequent move to Dortmund also showed). He was clearly a player who clubs would have offered a lot to attract him as well, even at that age. Sancho also left us before we'd finally managed to achieve promotion to the PL. Southampton also gave Ward-Prowse his first team debut at the age of 16 just after he got his first England youth-team call-up, perhaps to help ward off other clubs? We've never even had a player potentially good enough to play with the first-team stay with us long enough to even make it to their 16th birthday.