Why do people pretend the Success and Penaranda purchases cost us nothing, when they plainly did and continue to do so? It might have gone to another Pozzo owned entity, and thus didn't leave "the family", but the money that could otherwise have been spent on players to benefit us still left our books. Gino has a relationship with Mogi Bayat - a guy has just got out of prison due to his role in an enormous fraud / max fixing scandal in Belgium. Our dealings with him have resulted in us spending money on Oulare, Ndong, Kums etc who have done absolutely for us. I think the less time anyone spends thinking about our dealings with him the better.
And their fee’s were also reported as multi-million pound deals. It’s only rumour that has it down as some money laundering scheme by the Pozzo’s. Both clubs have to publish their accounts and not fall foul of financial misconduct.
My point was not to look back and criticise the transfers with the benefit of hindsight - it wasjust to say that you can't just add up all the ones that worked out and saying we made x amount of profit, while conveniently ignoring the ones that we made a loss on.
And yet we are still up to our eyeballs in debt under this model. You’ve listed the successes so where is the balancing figure? We had the 4th lowest wage bill pretty consistently after all.
Agreed I find if you leap to the conclusion without explaining the "why bit" then some people continue to think black is white Brexit is a great example!
I have no problem with speculate to accumulate but it isn’t as simple as just “borrowing against future revenue”. Look at the account notes and you’ll see the extent of our borrowing. Probably one for finance thread though.
That might be the case for most clubs in the top two divisions who either have billionaire owners or are run by fans but it's not the case for us. I don't believe Gino has any significant other business interests (it's certainly never been mentioned) - he makes his money through football which makes him relatively unique as an owner. The club has to work in a way that makes him money, as well as keeping the club going. Gino's primary focus will always be on what enriches him personally. Sometimes that will coincide with what's good for the club as a whole, other times it might not.
The next accounts will be made up to 30/6/20 and so won't show the impact of relegation but will show the updated debtors and creditors position that we had prior to the first drop in revenues. It will show what creditors were due to be paid inside the following 12 months and after. I doubt they will be available for another 5 months or so (30/6/19 accounts were issued in Feb 2020).
The failures were many, so many that you really do have to question the leadership at the club and ask, why did so many things go wrong? Was there a change in the person who was making crucial decisions at the top? For me it started during the back end of the 18/19 season. After that semi final is a good place to begin, however, I did notice an alarming slump in how we were defending just before that, in the Fulham home match, where we won 4-1. The result papered over the cracks, but Fulham tore through us that evening and should have scored 4 themselves. So the defensive frailties, which has always been a problem, suddenly became a big concern around that time. Teams were getting through us far too easy. The final 5 games were a disaster really in terms of performance. Southampton (h ), where Long scored after 7 seconds, but we managed to get an undeserved equaliser in the 90th minute, a horrible home defeat to Wolves then thrashings at Chelsea and at home to West Ham. Finally that embarrassment at Wembley. I get the board decided to give Javi a chance to turn it around, but we were so undercooked against Real Sociedad in a pre-season friendly, that I was really concerned we'd be taken apart by Brighton, which ultimately happened. RS should have thrashed us but by fluke we won 2-1. Had we lost 7-0, which could have happened, maybe people would have sat up and taken notice. But this pre-season win did us no favours whatsoever. Roll on to Brighton and they destroyed us 0-3. A narrow defeat at Everton, but then another horror show at home to West Ham and the trigger had to be pulled. So no issue with the dismissal, because Javi had not worked them hard enough in pre-season. At this point, I'd have backed the owners. What they did next was unfathomable. I believe they thought they had someone lined up to bring in immediately, as per Duxbury's announcement that the appointment was "imminent". That didn't happen though, so their guy must have pulled out at the last minute. This put them in a situation, and they just panicked. They looked through their Filofax and chose Flores. It was a disaster waiting to happen. There were reasons why he was dismissed before, so why did they think that the passing of time would cure everything? They also needed new defenders and they didn't act. The 2019 summer window was when they should have been searching, as a high priority, for at least two Premier League calibre central defenders. They signed Dawson!! They took their eye off the ball by chasing Sarr all summer, playing games with Rennes over a few million pounds, but had to stump up what they were asking for in the end, or walk away with nothing. Watford lost that game of poker. So, all eggs in one basket by signing Sarr. Come the winter, and it was very clear the direction we had taken. We were in relegation mode, but still no remedial action was taken in the winter transfer window. The only player we signed was Pussetto, a right winger squad player!! Insane judgement. By now Pearson and Shakespeare had replaced Flores, and although I considered that to be a positive move, the club didn't do anything in the transfer window to help them. So it was a lack of leadership at the top, no clear direction, poor judgement on managerial appointments and a list of crucially poor decisions. Put all this into the melting pot along with VAR stitch ups and a couple of managers trying to derail us.....Bruce, Pep and Arteta, with their attitude towards team selections against us and our relegation rivals, it was far too much to withstand. Outside events conspired against us, but let's not kid ourselves here, we only have ourselves to blame for the relegation. So now we're left with counting the devastating cost our self-inflicted wounds have given us. They have to get it right in this window. For my mind, they've sold poorly, in terms of incoming transfer fees, however, if they keep Sarr, Capoue and Hughes, they would have done well. Having said that, they would have been lucky to have kept Capoue and Sarr as they would have let them both go if they could have found a buyer for the price they felt was right. We were never going to get in replacements of their calibre, so if we had sold them, whoever we signed, would be a lesser player almost certainly. This window is more about retaining players rather than signing them. Having said that, Troost-Ekong and Ngakia look like being good additions, who we'll be able to take along with us if we get promoted. Jury is out on whether we've turned the corner. Right now, we look decent enough on the first choice XI, but we've trimmed probably too far. In the fact we have no available recognised left back, we'd be in trouble if Foster gets injured for along spell, and our central strikers don't look like they have too many goals in them. We're going to have to be very solid, injury free, and play on the edge in terms of making no mistakes. As we saw at Reading, we go a goal down and the game is lost. This is looking like it will be a tightrope season, where we will have to score the first goal in order to win or draw games. I don't get the feeling we'll be able to blitz sides, but we'll know a lot more after the 16th October.
Uff you can never find a Penaranda when you need one. In my opinion a very good summary by HB by the way. We made the fatal mistake of standing still, which you simply cannot do in the PL. We saw Stoke do it a few seasons back, and Brom as well. Going from comfortable mid table well-established clubs that nobody tips for relegation to then having an absolute shitshow of a campaign, hiring and firing managers, recruiting badly etc. Before you know it, your season has descended into chaos and you lose all sight of the sensible logical thinking that got you established in the PL in the first place. I didn’t think we’d ever succumb to that (I thought if we went down it would be like with Muff last season, a campaign hit by bad injuries etc) but we did and now becomes such a crucial time in the history of the club. Do we get it right and redeem ourselves, or sink into mid table mediocrity? So far I think we can say we probably have a better defence now than we did last season. An inexperienced but promising midfield, with the hope of Hughes and Capoue coming back to make it a very decent one. But question marks up front and a worry that we won’t score enough to be genuine contenders. Oh and a very decent Head Coach, who I think will get the last drop out of whatever squad he’s left with come deadline day. I also think the January window will be very important this season, and we will need to tackle it much better than last year. We will hopefully find ourselves in a position where we are doing well but one or two quality signings where they are most needed will give us a real impetus.
It will also show the impact of sacking two management teams and reduced premier league merit money due to league position. Sarr will depreciate by 1 year as well. On the plus side a year of debt commitments will have been paid so you’d hope they might come down a bit.
This forum does make me smile. Go back 5 years. Forum: "This Success looks really good, would love to see him at Watford!" 5 years later: Forum: "FFS Gino, you're useless. What a waste of money!!" AP: Forum: "This kid looks the business, top top clubs are in for him, he's really shone in the U18 competition! Great signing!" Years later: Forum: "FFS Gino, what a waste of cash!!! Useless, he doesn't know what he's doing!!" Some are hits, some are misses. You win some, you lose some.
Sacking Javi after 4 games was madness, we either should have sacked him after the cup final (which in hindsight probably would have been the right choice even if it would have left us open to more criticism than we'd ever received before), or given him a chance to turn things around. That said, what chance did any manager have with the jumbled up thinking behind the scenes? There was no thinking about how to build a team in terms of our transfers (ignoring the defence for so long and bringing in Sarr who didn't fit into Javi's style of play), and of course Giraldi was always lurking in the background too. I think to an extent, we are trying to rectify those errors, we seem to be giving Ivic more control, and I generally like our incomings, although we've been hamstrung by a relative lack of money coming in (we were unlucky in the sense that there wasn't a lot of money swirling around in Spain and Italy ready to take our wantaways). We're down to 23 players outside of our own U21 players, some of whom are injured for the forseeable, some of whom are only to be used in emergencies, and since we did at least get the wage bill down on deadline day, I expect to see a few bargain basement and loan deals. Bring in a solid left-back and a backup winger, while only selling Dawson to West Ham (which would bring us down to 24, so I guess we'd see another randomer come in?), and that would be a good window IMO, anything else, and Ivic has a job on his hands to squeeze the best out of the squad
I dont think people are debating that. You seem to be missing the point people are trying to make so maybe an example is helpful - If you gave an investor say £300 to invest equally in 3 companies. One did brilliantly and trebled in value, however two of them went bust and you lost your investment. You would not be raving about the £200 profit made on the first, because ultimately you have lost £200 on the other two and have ended up with nothing. People love to praise the deals that work out, but the second one fails, its always the same arguments -"it was just moving money from one pozzo account to another and didn't cost us anything", "its just part of dealing with Mogi Bayat and next time we will get Kevin De Bruyne for a bag of skips similar to how Mendes got Neves to Wolves". The club also played a part in the failures of the likes of Penranda -while it isn't all the clubs fault and he deserves criticism for how he has acted, but as I have said many times, we do not give these young guys a good environment to succeed. He was doing well in Spain and had he stayed there for a few months he would have been able to come over to us after he had completed 2 years of residence and obtained a passport. In a moment of absolutely shambolic decision making we loaned him to Udinese, where he barely played football, and his 2 year residency was cancelled. This meant he had to spend 2 further years on loan at various teams in Spain with very little supervision / pastoral care from the club.
You are aware that does happen right? Dragon's Den as an example. They don't talk about the losses, they talk about Levi Roots and Reggae Reggae sauce. VC's invest in start ups in hope one kicks off and makes it big - a lot fail but the one who kicks it off is largely profitable. Obviously doesn't work out to your perfect scenario above of breakeven, but it happens. Could also argue they have made more than they lost. Hard one to prove either way without the deals to review. The places they loan people to can be questioned sure, but this is equally down to the player applying himself. People on here are talking about 'integrating' players who possibly didn't have work permits. If these guys went on loan and performed they wouldn't be in this conversation. Luis had a good season and was sold for a good profit, as was Lukebakio. Some work, some don't. This is also different to a waste of money. People are pointing out the amount we paid for Success, however were happy as hell when we signed him, and now with hindsight use it as a tool to blame Gino. I'm not a Gino fan boy by any means. I think Gray was a massive waste of cash, I'm not happy with the state of the accounts, though i've never worked in football finance so this could be near the norm. There's a lot of deals which can be questioned - some point out the 5 year deals to old players - that's valid, but using Penaranda and Success as an example of a waste of money is frankly narrow minded as a majority were excited about these guys and thought they'd kick on.
That’s as maybe, but, the only way he can really make any money out of us is as a premier league club. As a championship club we’d just cost him money. So generally his and our interests should always be aligned. Last season was a catalogue of mistakes and bad decisions that ultimately lead to our relegation, but in terms of ‘the model’ it doesn’t make any sense to sign players that will not directly benefit Watford in one way or another.
Same principle on financial trading, stocks, forex etc. You don’t just place one trade and hope for the best, you place four or five and hope one comes off.
Agree with your general point regarding the mismanagement of his development, but I’m not sure that last part is quite right. After his failed Udinese loan, he only spent a season at Malaga before joining up with us. By all accounts, that Malaga season was a failure in large part because of his poor attitude/injury issues. I know he came back to us the following pre-season and was delayed from appearing due to a hold-up with the final processing of his Spanish passport, but he definitely didn’t spend 2 further years in the Spanish wilderness because of the Udinese loan.
Dragons Den is designed to be entertainment for people who don't understand or have any interest in finance. When reporting on an investment portfolio, they report on the performance as a whole, not just the performance of one of the investments because ultimately that is what matters. We do not know the actual amounts made / lost as you say, I just think it is wholly disingenuous to say that the Pozzo model is a success because of Richarlison while turning a blind eye to Success and Penaranda. I do not disagree with that - a huge amount of the blame goes both ways. I just think the club are negligent with their investments/assets. Penaranda and Success did look to be talented, but both clearly have absolutely massive attitude / immaturity problems. Those are as important as their talent, which is why the likes of Ravel Morrison is currently playing for Ado Den Haag and not Real Madrid. Scouting is not just about assessing the talent and potential of a player, it should look at the character of a player. Time and time again, we fail to do that, and the fact that these two were at a Pozzo owned club and we still failed to do it before investing heavily only makes it worse.
It's a two way street. Yes we overpaid for Success and Penaranda and yes the money came out of our accounts, but the relationship also meant that we got the following for small or nominal fees (certainly lower than market value, at least) and were able to sell for profit. Anya: Sold for £4m Fabbrini: Sold for £2m Abdi: Sold for £3.5m Pudil: Sold for £2m Ighalo: £21m Vydra: £8m Nyom: £4m Forestieri: £4m Agbo: £2m Estupinan: £15m Foulquier: £2m Plus the likes of Angella, Battocchio, Paredes who we got through the system, did a job, but weren't able to get a fee for them. The values come from transfermarkt so may be a little off but it's roughly £60-70m of player sales from players who have arrived for free/low fees from Udinese/Granada thanks to our relationships. There's been a few ****-ups/duds like Pussetto, Penaranda and Success, but overall I think it's definitely been a beneficial partnership for us. That's before mentioning the impact some of those players made on the field for the club, which is value in itself. Hopefully Perica and Troost-Ekong can add themselves to the list. Our recruitment outside of the Udinese/Granada network is another discussion, but I think our hit/miss rate is roughly average comparing to other clubs. For every Joao Pedro there's an Oulare, for every Ngakia there's a Dja-Djedje.
He was at Malaga for 18 months - He went for 6 months after Udinese wanted rid of him and was then renewed fur a further season. He moved to Granada in the summer of 2015, so if he had stayed there (or at any other club in Spain) he would have been eligible to play for Watford from the summer of 2017. As a result of what we did, he was only eligible to play for us from January 2019 It wasn't just about the extra time though, he was settled and was an important player at Granada. We moved him to Italy for absolutely no reason where he played 155 minutes.
This bit makes no sense. Whatever our thoughts when they arrived, unless any of us personally paid for them or scouted them, we had no say in it. Those who did and got it wrong deserve criticism.
Absolutely - I do believe that over the course of the 10 years it has done more good than harm. However, as with a lot of things at the club, a lot of that good was done in the first 5-6 years and the recent stuff (Pussetto, Penaranda, Success) has been less good. What I don't understand is what went so wrong 2-3 years ago.
Yes, that’s right in regard to Malaga. I’d forgotten about that extra 6 months. That said, I think it was reported at the time he’d come back to Watford the summer of the Udinese loan because we’d hoped to secure a work permit for him. Clearly he didn’t get it and we ended up sending him to Udinese. Simply extending at Granada CF wasn’t necessarily an option because ownership had changed hands by that point, but yeah, I’m quite surprised they didn’t find him a loan in Spain once his work permit was denied. Minor details are irrelevant really though because his development has been completely mismanaged.
That's fair. I suppose it probably coincided with the point that we overtook Udinese in quality. Their back-ups were no longer good enough to improve our starting XI. Thankfully Gino solved that problem by securing our relegation ASAP
Omfg, I can't believe you're still banging on about the supposed "losses" on Penaranda and Success. I'll repeat it for you again to see if it actually sinks in this time: The Pozzos only bought Penaranda for €770k The Pozzos only bought Success for €400k If the Pozzos have say a fund of £100mil which they've sidelined for football investments, it makes little difference in reality overall whether it's in Udinese, Watford, or held by them elsewhere, as long as they move their money around in as efficient a manner as possible. If you own two houses with four cars and two boats split between them, and you move one car from one of the houses to the other house in exchange for a boat, you still have two houses, two boats, and four cars. Now will you find something else to talk about?!
I think with the first part it varies heavily on the poster - Glass half full or Glass half empty? People point at Richarlison like he's the only success story. He isn't. Technically Richarlison, Lukebakio, Suarez, Estupinian and Doucoure have all gone for profit in recent times, and there's more on the books who could. With Success, it actually reminds me of the Suarez debate in reverse. At the time Isaac had pace, strength, had some tricks and could beat a man, he was highly rated - do we think Granada fans at the time were happy with the fee? Probably not. If you ask them now they'll probably laugh at what they got for him. We might do the same with Luis and Pervis in the future - but equally they might kick on. Scouting character is difficult in youngsters, as it's hard to know how someone will mature. If a player is young, performing on the pitch and being widely touted to go on to big things, they'll naturally be engaged and this could hide their true character. Others go from crap money in football terms, to decent money and this can change people. They have got a bit better though as it appears Pedro and Sarr have better attitudes, but time will tell. I actually think the Pozzo's miss a 3rd club like Granada for player development. Both Serie A and the Premiership are difficult leagues for youngsters to shine in, and Spain is a bit different and is a good platform for players. I think the amount of players on their books is too much for 2 clubs as well, and having a 3rd team could help with monitoring youngsters and ensuring they're getting adequate game time. The model is far from perfect, but still comes up trumps occasionally.
I think under EFL rules they must be published 5 months after y/e so early December-much different to PL rules
I keep talking about it because people like you totally fail to understand - I support Watford and not the larger Pozzo group of clubs. If you can explain to me how us paying circa £20m for two players you have just yourself said to actually be worth circa £1m is of benefit to Watford Football Club I am all ears. Watford Football Club had a certain amount of money to spend by way of TV money, and we needed players in certain positions. We spent a not insignificant amount of that money on two players who did absolutely nothing for us. We have continued to pay their wages for 5 years (and will do for another 3 years) and in that time they will continue to do nothing for us. If you can convince yourself that that is not a loss, then I am just wasting my time on you.
What are you going to criticise them for though? Investing in a player who at the time was showing a lot of promise, was touted for big things and looked excited but didn't kick on for whatever reason? Is that wrong? At the time it was seen as good intent and a bit of ambition to get these players in, but now it's wrong? Happy to agree they could have done more to help develop players, but for the fee paid for the player at the time I don't see where the argument is. If we spent 15m right now on Barcelona's Fati what would the reaction be? I presume everyone would be excited. Roll forward 3 years and say he's lived up to his name and has the physique of Troy and done nothing - Would you call it wrong?
We made mistakes in singing them. That is forgivable. What is unforgivable is compounding it by signing them to new 5 year deals despite all the evidence suggesting they were more deserving of contract termination.
You idiot! That 20m allowed Udinese to buy players! It benefits the group! The group is everything! You idiot! Meanwhile it's evident that we have to rely on free transfers and loans for Watford FC whilst anybody that can be sold for a sizeable fee must be sold to balance the books, but the GROUP is fine. It's all about the GROUP!!!
I don't agree with what I'm about to say - but trying to think of the other side for debate purposes - I can only assume that they still have a little hope that they will perform somewhere other than hotel rooms, and the plan is ultimately to loan them out to cover a majority of the wage, in hope they hit a purple patch and could attract a good bid.
