Will be a big player for us next season. Actually would be amazed if he doesn’t end up back at Luton.
What is even more remarkable is the amount of fans who have bemoaned Gray being **** rather than directing their anger at the board for giving him that deal. If anybody offered me a contract worth that amount I'd sign it in blood.
Gray may have been a massive flop for us with a dodgy past and who angered everyone over his lockdown antics, but I can't really knock him too much for what he's done on the pitch, he was always a limited striker who we spent way more on than we should have done. I harbour much more resentment to players like Isaac Success and dare I say this season's shadow of Ismaila Sarr who really ought to have done much better
Still quite a good Championship striker in fairness, it's ******* written that he's gonna score against us for them isn't it
It’s just shows the owners are pretty clueless when it comes to transfers and it’s just a numbers game, you’ll get some Capoues but unfortunately you’ll get some Grays as well. Them spending more money almost seems to make it even more of a gamble not less.
What's the biggest signing we've made that's been an unquestionable success? Probably Deulofeu, but even he couldn't save us from the drop
Yeah probably, Richarlison and Doucore were good value too. We seem to do best bang for buck wise spending between £5-£10m, anything beyond that unfortunately doesn’t get correspondingly better.
Even Richarlison massively tailed off after a fine start (more to do with the fact he hadn't had a break in ages than anything, but still). Doucoure was a big deal for us at the time, but the fee was 'only' £6m wasn't it? We've done best out of up and comers and players from big clubs who have lost their way a bit, Gray was just an average striker who had hit a hot streak...
The most important thing for us has always been, and remains, having a squad greater than the sum of its parts. Any of our success over the years has been fundamentally built on hard work rather than having a 'superstar'. This season is a case in point - the only ones who have really given any sustained effort are the likes of Cleverley, Cathcart, Masina, Gosling, Kabasele...not good enough but a strong work ethic. They've been massively let down by supposedly talented players such as Dennis, Sarr, King who could not care less if they tried and it shows in their performances. That concoction has served up the worst season in our history and our worst ever PL points return. The 99' promotion team would run through brick walls for eachother, yet some of the names mentioned above couldn't be bothered to turn up for training some days. Our rebuild should be stripping away the big names and the egos and getting a proper work ethic back.
Sorry, my wording wasn't particularly clear, what's the most expensive deal we've done which has been an unquestionable success? (Capoue would no doubt still be up there but at £6m we've done a fair few deals more expensive than him)
Fair enough - although I’d say price is relative to the time the deal was made? Capoue was very expensive for us when the deal was done. Record signing at the time! And we haven’t actually made many more deals for more money still!
Obviously the likes of Dennis, Sarr and King won't be anywhere near the squad next season, but I think you're being a bit too generous to some of the older players who have not been good enough. It'll be useful to keep one or two of them, but the rebuild will also need as many of them to clear off as we can as I bet their wages aren't insignificant, and they'll only be blocking younger and fresher players from the first team next season
The easiest time to waste money is when you actually have any to waste. After relegation from the PL under Aidy, we were comparatively better off than when he arrived so we duly wasted it on Ellington. We’d never have bought Gray had we been a Championship club. We did because at the time we were relatively flush with cash as a PL club. Ditto Sarr to some extent too. And some of our other wasteful excesses such as Success, Penaranda etc. I think there’s a strong argument to be made that historically we’ve always dealt better in the transfer market when having relatively little to spend and thus have to invest much more carefully and wisely. And when we’ve actually had quite a bit of money to spend by our standards, we’ve traditionally gone crazy and wasted it on fees and accompanying wages.
Not sure how accurate Transfermarkt is, but jeez, that's bad, you'd have to say the only ones who are even in the same league as Capoue are Geri and Doucoure, everyone else is a mixed bag at best
I get what you're saying, but I think we signed Sarr because we knew we were in a lot of debt, and the Pozzos thought the quickest way to relieve that was to sign a £30m player and to make him into a £70m player. Only thing was they were too arrogant to believe relegation was out of the question...
You may have missed my point - I agree we shouldn't be carrying the players that aren't good enough in the same way we shouldn't carry players who won't put the effort in. Major overhaul required.
I think if you told them there are free to leave and we won’t ask a fee, there’d be takers at Championship level and probably in places like MLS perhaps. I think the problem in shifting them is that we make them feel wanted, play them much and any club that would have a passing interest know Gino would ask for a fee. Which is why these players only ever move on when their deals end or go to Udinese etc. we leverage ourselves up with silly contracts etc. it’s a fundamentally bad way to squad build. Yet it’s promoted as being Gino’s biggest strength. It’s bizarre.
Those top 3 are hands down the worst transfers known to the human race. Plus Peneranda (could next year be his year, finally....nope!) in the top 10. As anti pozzo as I am down to Hughes they actually stack up pretty well. If I can be bothered, I'll go and amuse myself / wind myself up, by looking how many 5-10m signings we've made that have been utter garbage
Hughes was a good player for us, yet we still managed to turn a player on the fringes of the England team who we bought for £8m into a player nowhere near the England team who we sold for £4m. Then you’ve got the likes of Cleverley who cost the same and we’ve got tied to a nice long contract who has absolutely no resale value. Mismanagement of that level takes some doing
The signing of Cleverly for £8m is fine by me. It's the contract extension that is the lunacy. Equally with Hughes it's a great transfer initially, and we definitely got value out of him - I thought we sold him for closer to £10m as well? However, again, you're bang on in that we've squandered the potential of the investment as he could have easily gone for £12-£15m.
Will Hughes on the fringes of the England team when we bought him? He'd never played a Prem game in his life! I don't know how much we bought him for, but I'm pretty sure we sold him for about £6m
Curiosity got the better of me. Top of the sh1t pops for Watford transfers under £10m over £3m by the Pozzo's 8: Adalberto Peneranda - £9.5m 12: Sven Kum - £8.1m 13: Daryl Janmaat - £8m (this would of been ok is he wasn't made of glass) 15: Javier Jurado - £7.7m 16: Ignacio Pussetto - £7.6m 17: Nordin Amrabat - £7.5m 20: Obbi Oulare - £6.75m 22: Steven Berghuis - £5.85m (him going on to Ajax only underlines the **** up here) 26: Mario Suarez - £4.7m 28: Samir - £4.5m 32: Edo Kayembe - £4.2m 36: Younes Kaboul - £3.6m 37: Pontus Dahlberg - £3.5m 38: Brice Dja Djedje - £3.2m Roughly £85m of pure, solid gold, guff. Kabasele (£6.25m), Okaka (£5.4m) and Dawson (£5.4m) could quite easily be added to that list if you wanted to to bring it to a round £100m Honourable mention for Nathan Ellington at #31.
Thing with the Pozzo's is, and don't get me wrong I really want to find things to be mad at but with these how much money is really exchanging hands? Did Anderlecht really get £8m of Watford funds when he never ever played for us? Pussetto? Did we really pay £4.5m for Samir? Like literally did it leave our account? I get figures are reported and maybe have to be "listed" on a transfer sheet or whatever but I'd find it alarming if some of those were actually paid out. Works vice-versa too, Deulofeu and Pereyra outgoings, did Watford the company / business get any money in the bank from the moving of those assets? The shared Pozzo pool of funds is worryingly opaque.
It's pretty much beyond doubt Pozzo's transfer nous has completely failed him in the last 3 years but if we take Transfermarkt's numbers as gospel, they show we recouped £23.5m on those players (plus Suarez went to China when clubs there were still paying a decent wedge, but has a ? as his fee) and 5 of them are still on our books. I'd rather we just signed capable players in the first place and it's a limited defence at best but it's not all dead money. There's still a market for our cast offs. Plus for me £3m is too low as a threshold. Around that fee a player can pretty much pay it back in one go - eg. Kaboul scored the winner at Arsenal. Epic moment. Well worth £3.6m even if he was otherwise a dud. I'd draw the line at about £6m. Anything north of that and the players need to go on to contribute significantly.
I’d say it’s a balancing act ‘You took Pereyra, you get Samir/Sierralta’ etc that they balance over time. But what I would say is that if the amount is on the official transfer paperwork and in the accounts etc, then it must be paid. But how and when it’s paid, who knows. But I doubt a club can claim they paid/received a transfer fee and it not get paid, regardless of murky ownership etc.
The biggest evidence for this is that we borrow from third party lenders against future transfer instalments from Udinese. There's no way in hell we'd be able to borrow money secured against contrived/imaginary transfer dealings.
Then it's just simply laughable stuff. Pereyra & Deulofeu combined probably could've fetched us £30million, is that fair? I bet the figure from Udinese is probably £10-15m.
I think the fees have been quoted somewhere and it’s around £22m for both? The painful thing is they gave us more for Pereyra than Deulofeu.
