Live right now on the Athletic you can speak with AL and the mugs off the podcast Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Some guy started complaining about the ridiculous contract extensions we hand out to aging players and the guys hosting have just completely ignored it.
I used to listen to FTRE regularly, and do think their match analysis is pretty decent at points however since they’ve linked up with The Athletic they’ve been a lot more ‘pally’ when talking about the club. They seem frightened to have a negative opinion, other than one of them (I can’t remember his name) who goes on the odd rant that just seems quite contrived/forced to me.
This last 'caller' is another of the worst kind of simpleton - 'the treatment of WTE has been appalling, we should be ashamed'. A) What treatment? B) Fans are entitled to express their displeasure with a player who consistently makes terrible, embarrassing, unacceptable mistakes that cost us game in, game out. Now, that's not to defend personal abuse - I don't condone it, and I would never do it. But there is a big difference between that, and crowd responses to players/things that happen in games. Claiming that the supporters have some form of blame because they react to things that players do is just pathetic, and so disingenuous it's mental - utter trawling for congratulation from those in charge and nothing else. Being able to take WTE out of the firing line when his brain and confidence is completely gone is also another reason why it would have made sense to recruit intelligently defensively at all, and, indeed, not go into the season with a half-empty squad list (so that we could craftily have space to pick up any free agents floating about at a later date, of course). The failure to do that has even less to do with the supporters.
‘Rookery Mike’ A guy who was an apologist and full-on COG until the podcast got people telling them it wasn’t balanced. Then he ‘decided’ to be the softest BW known to man and continues to be so. A desperate power grab against the upcoming Pod’s.
All three of them have a vested financial interest in keeping the club onside. The two kids get asked to appear on the Hive to shill stuff and this makes them feel special #watfordfc. Also, zero challenge to any of them by way of opposing view - all the other ones are just carbon copies of each other. Here’s a link to my merch, please like and subscribe. Fleece the supporter base as much as possible. The need for a BW pod continues to grow.
I've never listened to this and never will. Was anything useful mentioned aside for Henderson? Another defender? The bloke from Bordeaux? A defensive midfielder/holding midfielder/a 6 or an 8 or whatever it is.
To be fair I don’t think that was Leventhal’s fault. I was hoping to ask a question along those lines (which ultimately is the main thing Leventhal does have some inside track on relative to the rest of us) but everyone just used the ‘live’ aspect of the podcast to share general opinions/complaints. I think if asked Leventhal would have offered some vague if ever so slightly insightful transfer update on all of those things (see, eg, Henderson) but instead it was a lot of “why did Cleverley get a new contract/why do our fans boo so much” etc. You can ask that/raise that on the forum and have the same conversation. Which is a long way of saying what HB1 just said. Some people enjoyed that forum but I’d have preferred something to be more information based than opinion based.
Did anyone else understand Leventhal's point when he was asked why we kept extending ageing players contracts? He gave a really weird reply about how the club likes to keep these extensions close to their chest because there is so much information out there these days and it's much easier to scout players. I presume he was texting or thinking about his dinner when the question came in and thought he was answering a completely different question.
I think Leventhal made the Dean Henderson rumour up personally. Beyond that, I’ve just listened - what a load of crap. Stupid questions, stock answers and Leventhal will be picking more splinters out of his rear end this morning for all his fence-sitting.
Liked cos it’s spot on, although I don’t think anyone on here thinks they talk bollox, especially me.
I listen to FTRE regularly and was one of the people who "called in" and spoke, albeit very briefly. Think I'm one of the few who enjoy the pod, although I'm with some of you on the frustrations it brings!
I don't condone abusing players, but to be honest most the stuff I saw about WTE was pretty accurate and to the point. Its a platform to vent frustrations. What's baffling is that such weak minded players are drawn to it expecting anything other than abuse when things turn sour. Sort yourself out on the pitch lad, and stop reading what people say about you. Be like Cathcart. He's been at the club 6 years and is probably blissfully unaware of what a useless ***** people think he is
Tried to cancel my subscription and got 70% off instead. No calls, just a straight up plea to retain.
I think it’s being sold/acquired and the amount of active subscribers is pretty big in these situations.
Yeah, the New York Times group have just acquired it for £500m or something - can't say the guys who founded it haven't pulled off exactly what they planned...
Mmm, it was 100% peak-Leventhal wind-down, inspired by the patented on-pitch Watford wind-down™️ - he had no answer to the question, so just led it round in a circle until the natural intonation of his voice reached the point where someone else would naturally come in based on conversational cues. The content of what he did say was basically 'Well, sometimes people in football do things they don't publicly announce, so we can presume everything we hope is and that should be happening behind the scenes is indeed happening, for a good reason, that we are just never told (before then somehow going wrong, almost every single time, through no fault of the owners)'.
AL has reported the fees for Kayembe being £1.5m, and initial fee of £1.7m for Kamara and Samir was free. Say what you like about the Pozzo's being spend thrift. That's stunning business. Newcastle spent £25m on Chris Dead Wood!!
Well, good value if we stay up. If not, we’ll be looking at resale value as the barometer. As always.
So far so good. I just hope this means they have funds ready to bring more in. Still need to shift some out too.
Kayembe, Kamara, Samir, Dennis, Sissoko and King for a combined cost of £10m-ish is incredible work, fair play.
To be fair, Leventhal said the ‘initial’ payment for Kamara was £1.7m. That’s suggests that’s just the first instalment? So still could be £5m as reported elsewhere?
For me, fees are so convoluted in football that they're honestly not really worth discussing at face value. I sincerely doubt we paid 6m for Okoye, for example.
