What use are players 'within the group?' This is exactly my problem. I am not interested in 'the group.' I am interested in Watford FC. If Watford FC now has a substandard playing squad and no funds to strengthen, how is it helpful to me to know that Udinese have strengthened with our cash, or that we might sign some other prospects to be trafficked across Europe who will never play for us? It's exactly 'the group' which is my problem. Watford FC on the pitch is of tertiary importance to our owners.
Woah, you've raised a bit of a strawman there. I'm not defending or promoting 'the group' in the post you just quoted (although it was typed in haste and so slightly mangled in the middle....apologies). You were annoyed £14.5m had been spirited away by Pozzo from our club. I'm simply pointing out it doesn't matter how or where they spent it - if you don't believe they're capable of identifying talent then the money is gone either way. The 'fault' is the failure to consistently identify decent and capable players for Watford. When we sign duds it doesn't keep me awake at night caring if the money went to Udinese (many examples), Club Brugge (Obi O) or Burnley (Gray). You seemed to be implying that if the £14.5m hadn't been siphoned to Udinese, it would still somehow be in the Watford coffers ready for us to spend now. But that's obviously nonsense as Pozzo would have just wasted it with another club instead.
I wasn't trying to deliberately raise a strawman. Perhaps I misunderstood. I think the key here is that your argument is that Pozzo could easily have spent the same money on Peneranda, say, from Zaragoza and we would still have a crap player and be 9.5m down. My point is that Peneranda was never a player that was identified and bought for Watford, but a wheeling, dealing 'group' deal which ended up here as part of our role in the whole network, as a staging post for those players who either it's decided need Premier League exposure, or because nobody else wants them. We should never have spent Watford money on him from anyone. The fact that Udinese have the money instead of Zaragoza is of little interest. We are still broke and with a crap player because Pozzo thought we could stand to do without the cash.
Sounds like someone who has to ask his valet for advice concerning an impending visit from Great Aunt Agatha.
That's results oriented thinking right there. By that logic, we shouldn't have signed the likes of Ighalo, Estupinan, Suarez or Lukebakio either. He was a highly rated young player. He hasn't fulfilled that promise, and he's far from the only youth player who hasn't delivered on early promise. The football world is littered with them.
No. That's Watford oriented thinking and yes, we shouldn't have signed most of those. Our squad is and has been filled with players who are not here for us, but because nobody else will have them. Whenever a player is good we move them on, when they are ****, we are stuck with them. If you're a fan of Gino's bank balance then maybe it's wll great, but for Watford FC it's a bucket of shyte.
Sending Bertie P to Sofia is the football equivalent of Factory records sending Happy Mondays to Barbados to record their 4th album. On a personal note I do appreciate the ease of acquiring beer and pizza for breakfast in Sofia and the way less attractive Bulgarian girls have completely mastered the concept of 'uglysexy' its a wonder to behold. It was also in Sofia that I discovered the word that most accurately describes my winter dress sense: 'Bulgarian'
That sounds like almost every other club in English football to me. The vast majority of clubs are selling clubs; it's even true of Premier League clubs. That's just the unfortunate reality.
I meant, we move them on without them ever playing for us. We don't recruit players according to our needs, we recruit purely for investment. I posted somewhere else about how we needed improvements in the same places, (defence and a striker) for 3 seasons and despite numerous signings coming through or being loaned around and about, haven't addressed either. Why should I care about Lukebakio, Suarez and Estupinan? None of them have made our side better. We have had shyte like Navarro and Success stinking up the place because they can't be loaned out. Our squad is packed with players who are of no use to us, but are here by default, because the Pozzos made a mistake in their trading and can't dispense with them.
There are a lot of players like that, maybe Estupinan and Suarez were bought solely with money in mind (which ultimately worked out as intended, just when they could theoretically have turned out useful for us), but I do think we intended to use Penaranda. The kid was a top talent when he was a teenager at Granada, you telling me that guy couldn't become a good player for us? It's just immaturity from him and mismanagement on the part of the Pozzos which have seen it turn awry
He could have been a top player, but I doubt we would ever sign him if we are looking to improve the WFC team, rather than keep a Pozzo asset in the network, with an eye for a future profit. Was he ever suited to English football, to our style of play, to our circumstances? 9.5m, I believe, for a player with 'potential' but literally all the hallmarks of CarlosKicaballery that would mean they would never be effective with a club like ours.
As far as I can remember we didn't sell a single 1st team player between Hogg in 2013 and Doucoure in 2020. Neither Richarlison nor Ighalo were in the 1st 11 in the games preceding their sale. The real problem was that we were relying on players like Doucoure, Deulofeu and Pereyra who didnt want to play for the club for more than a couple of seasons. Initially it looks great to have these type of players at the club, they are 3 of the most talented players ever to wear a Moose on their chest but bit by bit the fact that deep down they dont really give a $#1t and just want to move on to a bigger club asap has an increasingly negative effect on the dressing room and team spirit. They are all players who started last season thinking they should be at a bigger club than watford. This season we have players who could rise higher than those 3 like Sarr (if he stays) Garner Quina JP Hughes Wilmot and Ngakia, the difference is they want to fight for the shirt. I think Gino and Scott made an error of judgement. They were trying to hype the club and the brand to make it easier to sign top talent and selling them the club as a stepping stone. I think it makes more sense to sell the club as what it is. A small but perfectly formed community club on the edge of London with great facilities. Tell players that although we won't stand in their way if a top team comes in for them we do expect them to be willing to die for the shirt while they are here. It's pointless to repeat the cycle of failure we just went through again.
I don't think that's true at all. The club signed players to try and address deficiencies and they didn't work out. It happens to all clubs. We're not the only club stuck with players no one else wants; in fact, that's very much the status quo. Given that we had one of the lowest wage budgets in the Premier League and, now that we're relegated, we're still having to make drastic financial cuts, I'm not sure how much more debt you'd have wanted us to take on to try and improve areas. It was clear the club had upper limits on available spending and with those limits come limitations on who will sign for you. It's just not possible to repeatedly unearth budget gems season after season. No one is saying you should care about them. What they did do for the club, however, is raise a combined 50+ million that we otherwise wouldn't have had, possibly meaning we didn't have to shift other players you might not want to see leave. This is no different than the squads of the vast majority of other clubs. The only fans you don't see complaining about this are the likes of Man City fans, because the club can essentially afford to sign the new players they want without needing to offloading the old ones. Yes, we do have a fair number of players that don't like they're going to offer us much. So does virtually everyone else. Expecting transfer perfection is wholly unrealistic. Even Alex Ferguson, probably the most successful British manager in history, had a pretty terrible record with transfers. Eric Djemba-Djemba, anyone?
Another year wasted. How much will he learn from playing in the Bulgarian League ? This is no doubt linked to Giaretta. Perhaps a loan with a view to pinching Valentin Antov ?
I think you are giving far too much slack. Gray, for example, I put down as just bad business. He was signed to address a shortcoming, but was woefully scouted. Many others, I think are clear examples of players sourced for resale potential and not their worth to our team. Sure that should be a consideration when investing large sums, for our transfer dealings, it's usually the only consideration and that's what I hate about our owners. That's why we got relegated. That's why we are in the ****. That's why our squad is so imbalanced and full of crap.
That seems a pretty harsh assessment to me. Ighalo and Richarlison were 100% first team players. Out of form, perhaps, but they were in the squad and we would have expected to see them on the pitch over the course of the season. Part of the reason we didn't need to sell the likes of Doucoure was because we managed to make up the budgetary shortfall by selling players like Lukebakio. Our club just isn't big enough to compete without selling players. That's pretty much inarguable - just look at the Premier League's relative budgets. In all honesty, the biggest mistake of recent times was probably not selling Doucoure at his height and using that money to reinforce the squad in 3-4 other areas.
The problem is we can’t even begin to recruit players for our needs without raising cash somehow. If we’re a premier league club then that doesn’t give us any advantage over the other 19 clubs, they’re getting the same riches, but with wealthier owners and (usually) bigger match day revenue, shirt sales etc etc. Everyone is trying to strike the balance between spending all the money they have available and strengthening their squid enough so they can just about survive and continue the cycle again the next season. This is kind of pointless because you hate the model, so nothing is going to change the fact you hate the model, but it’s overly simplistic to say players should be bought with strengthening Watford in mind and with only that in mind. Going back to my first sentence, to recruit players with ‘Watford in mind’ we need money. The owners make money by throwing **** at the wall and seeing what sticks. The more **** they chuck at the wall the more money they can make. If they buy 5 promising youngsters from South America three might be rubbish one ok and one brilliant, but that’s enough to make up for the bad deals. If they buy 20, or 15, or 30 the same ratios apply, they make more money to ultimately buy Watford players, but at the same time those 20 or 15 or 5 players can’t all play for us. As I said, you hate the model so it’s kind of irrelevant, but the model is what it is, you can’t have one without the other.
I agree Gray's not up to it at Premier League level. I was unhappy with his signing from the start. Hopefully he can return some of that value this year, since the Championship is about his level. That doesn't change anything I wrote, though. Even the elite of managers get an awful lot of transfers wrong. I simply have my expectations set at that level, which is why I'm not wound up about the ones the club gets wrong. We were always going to go back down eventually. We're too small of a club for that not to be a possibility, because it only takes a string of bad events and we simply don't have the resources to course correct.
I meant Gray as an example of giving them the benefit of the doubt. Well meaning but badly executed. We obviously see things differently, but I like you as a poster, so I've no desire to get into one of those forum ding dongs with you.
'Tisn't a ding dong from my perspective. I think you've been perfectly reasonable in stating your opinion and there is certainly no offense taken from my side. It'd be a boring world if everyone agreed on everything!
There's nothing wrong with trading players as long as they are Watford players. The Pozzos seem to think that footballers are footballers as far as our squad is concerned. If we have players for every position then we are set, regardless of how crap many of them are. It's not black or white either. The Pozzos could have continued with their crazy ways but signed a decent centre back like we were crying out for and an alternative to Deeney, but they were smitten with hubris and gave us Dawson and Wellbeck, so they could go after Sarr, for their model. I hate the model. I hate that our club is tertiary in the priorities of the custodians of it. You will all agree with me sooner or later, l it's just a matter of when your patience finally runs out.
Ultimately the best way to make them money is for him to play for us and become a star, just like literally every other club on the planet outside of the clubs people actually want to play for. I'm sure he could have been a success in England had he had the brains and had we managed to get his documents sorted earlier, he's not lacking in physicality (though exactly what our 'style of play' is anyone's guess!)
The 'model' has helped fund and supply 6 successful seasons out of 8, without putting the club in immediate danger. How many clubs of our size and much bigger have been trying to achieve what we've achieved for the last 20 years? Ipswich, Forest etc. Bournemouth went on a similar journey to us with a different model, similar results (no Cup final!) and now were forced to sell 3 first team regulars to balance their books, raising £75m, and look unlikely to be making any big money signings to replace them. We've managed to raise almost £50m and only lost 1 first team regular, who hasn't played well for 18 months anyway.
But it’s just economies of scale. One football club can only start 11 players, it can only have what 24 (?) players in a squad, it can only support the wages of so many players. If they buy players only with Watford directly in mind they can only support a limited amount. People moan about Suarez and Estupinan but they could never have played for us without an EU passport first, so taking the directly Watford only attitude eliminates most players outside of the EU immediately. Where is the money then going to come from to buy these players and support their wages at Watford? What if they’re duds?
I've said what I've said. I accept you disagree but I hate the model and the way it results in our club being treated as an afterthought. If the Pozzos were capable of learning, they'd have found a middle ground, but they haven't. This window just shows me that we are going to be reaping the effects of their way of doing things for a long time to come.
Making out Bournemouth with their debt to their owner are in financial dire straits while we with our large external debt are in fine shape is a new one I must say. Our finances are dreadful. Forum never fails to deliver.
Ultimately they’re reliant on their owner continuing to want to bank roll them/not call the debt in though, are they not? Where might they be if they don’t get promotion this year? Will he continue to chuck money at it?
South American kid with thousands of pounds a week thrown at them, whats the worst that could happen? Maybe we are all wrong and Alberto has got it all right?
No they will sell assets to balance the books as they have done successfully this summer. Ultimately if we could have sold Deeney, Pereyra, Capoue, Welbeck then we also would have. Unfortunately no takers.
Imagine what we'd think about money wasted on poor recruitment if we were Man Utd fans.... Another level
It's pretty clear how good our business has been when many of our players on long contracts cannot persuade any other club to take that contract over. Yet we continue to hand out long contracts to players with no value at high risk to the club.
