Ben Manga

What a complete shambles they just seem to be throwing money away everywhere, except on a DCM or CB

 

He's either crap at his job or he's quickly realised he has absolutely no say and Pozzo does what he wants. Either way I'm sure he's delighted with his decision to leave Germany and come to this hellhole.

 

What difference does it make? If the club can't afford to pick up his salary we'll just sell or loan another player to Udinese again for an absurd fee to make up the difference.

 

Or as he was given a long-term contract, he’s thought he can’t do everything he wants to achieve in his first window.

 

It’s just all the lies and deceit I’m sick of. They treat fans like we’re all idiots. Yes some are, and will lap up everything the club tells them, but a lot of people can see right through it. You can’t fool all the people all the time.

 

Well any fans who expect the clubs will be run 100% separately would be idiots.

And the owners would also be idiots if they ran the clubs 100% separately without any sharing of resources and making use of the benefits of economies of scale etc. - but clearly they don't run the clubs 100% independent of each other.

Even before Manga joined I thought it was generally accepted that the Pozzos had a scouting network which fed in to both clubs, for instance.

 

I'd assume his aim is to keep Watford in the Championship though? It's hardly a stretch to say that we could easily go down this season once we get into the injuries and head coach changes.

 

The problem is, you're not their target audience.

The ones who never learn a thing. Who herald each new dawn as a real fresh start, despite a thousand failures already. The ones who actually believe it when the manager says 'I specifically asked for a load of crappy players or Mogi tat.'

They're the target audience and will still be.

 

Yes….and the other part of that famous quote is……you can fool some of the people all of the time……which I guess are their target audience. The Wendover’s of this world.

 

Trust the process, most of us agreed it would take 3 or 4 windows for him to sort the squad out.

 

....or when he's sacked he'll get a nice pay-off.

 

I see Ismael has rejected the chance to sign 3 or 4 players this week. The Twitter argument now is that they must have been Bayat crap, not that Manga has served up Ismael some sh1te in the last week of the window. If Manga does control recruitment as he seems to think, why is he offering players to the head coach that are completely unsuitable?

 

I posted this on another thread, but is also worth highlighting here what was said by Ben Manga in the summer.

 

We have a significant amount of idiots in the fanbase. Perfect club for the likes of Pozzo and Duxbury.

 

He's achieved one of the three objectives for the approach at least.

 

All the players he recommended were probably

The “wrong fit “
“Too much money “
“Didn’t want to come .

 

He can’t. We’re broke (allegedly)

 

He asked to leave Frankfurt so he could ‘take a new path’ and then joined us less than a month later, so we presumably approached him (rather than him applying for the role?) Would be bizarre but not surprising to do that, double his salary and then just not back him. He supposedly shaped Frankfurt’s scouting network over a period of years, so maybe that’s more his remit than purely buying players in the here and now. If he ends up leaving in the near future then it will be utter farce yet again from the club.

 

Gino Pozzo employing Ben Manga to be in charge of recruitment is probably the most pointless business decision made since Wernham Hogg's David Brent brought in Rowan to run a training day for his staff and then took control of it himself.

Almost a shame Manga didn't enquire about Mason Greenwood, as Pozzo could have just said "I think there's been a rape up there" in order to 'win'.

 

"Get the Zeegalaar"

 

Didnt Manga say he has a five year plan recently? Whether he will a. be allowed to implement his plan (and not mislead in joining us) and b. actually end up being here for that long remains to be seen.

 

Sounds like one of our many managers - with great long term plans but don't last 6 months.

 

Not quite, although the 'everything is going just fine' brigade have interpreted it as him saying that it'll take five years to get back into the Premier League:

At Watford FC, I am the sports manager who pursues a clear goal: promotion to the Premier League. This is a challenge that we will tackle together as a team. We deliberately signed a five-year contract to achieve our goals. The Premier League is the biggest league in the world, it is a personal incentive to lead a club there as a sports manager.

 

Failed to get rid of Kalu, a player the head coach doesn't want to use. Surely can't have been that difficult to shift him on loan somewhere.

 

Hard finding somewhere with the homely feel he's always valued but also a warden on site 24/7 and those orange pull cord alarms in every room.

 

So two windows in and these are the players Manga has brought in (excluding Koné and Martins as those deals seemed teed up before he officially joined).

Araujo
Ferreira
Assombalonga
Porteous
Hoedt
Ince
Livermore
Chakvetadze
Lewis
Healey
Rajovic

Interesting that two of the signings most people would say are amongst the better ones are probably Bayat suggestions (Hoedt and Chakvetadze). The player we spent the most on has been sent to Udinese.

Jury still out on Manga in my opinion.

 

Saudi transfer window remains open for another two weeks. We can dream

 

Ultimately who is responsible for a failure to score given our lion's share of possession plus many attempts at goal ? . Managers have been moved on because we haven't won and the team looked shocking however we look a decent side without a cutting edge. Who should take the rap for an inadequate strike force?. In my view we could have Pep as boss, Klopp as his number 2 and Arteta and Poch as coaches but if the strikers can't hit a barn door then results won't change

 

Waste of a wage from what I can see.

 

How dare you! I have it on good authority that he spent extensive time scouting Matheus Martins - who was playing for some no-name club last season - and he looks like a great pick-up!

 

Patience, there are still a few da-

Erm, ah….

 

We can still pick up out of contract players, still time for Manga to pull an Nkoulou out of the bag.

 

Apparently he is out of contract again !

 

If we sign him up now he’ll be ready to play by November, and we’ll get at least a game out of him until before fireworks night.