Was obvious really. When you lose your spot in a relegation-battling team to a known battle-shirker like Masina…there’s nowhere left to go.
Good decision from the hierarchy, in fairness to them. I think it was just about worth the risk signing him, but better to cut our losses now.
I wasn't overly pleased when we signed him, but he won me over while he was here, up until Ranieri joined. After that point his performances went dramatically downhill. It's a shame, as technically he's excellent, but maybe he's legs couldn't carry him around the pitch any more. A Premier League wingback is a very demanding role physically.
Who is going to pick up his contract this window? We will be stuck with another wage consumer who can’t contribute.
The thing is it’s not just about the financial cost here, I mean he must have been on about £50k per week, so that’s £2.6m down the drain, assuming we can actually just write off his second year as well. His signing meant we essentially had to rely on Masina, who we all know isn’t good enough. So it’s basically like we never bothered strengthening at leftback and just simultaneously flushed £2.6m down the drain as well. So we wasted £2.6m, and missed out on buying an actual improvement on Masina and who would’ve got us more points, not less which may have helped us avoid relegation.
Not mad at the club, it was a good signing on paper, they weren't to know. Trying to be sensitive to his mental health issues but the sceptic in me is really quite p*ssed off. To not even get in shape and just pick up 40/50k a week is an insult to fans. And I knooooow these issues are complicated and maybe it's a slump he's physically not able to pull himself out of but I just feel he should take a break if so before costing another club tonnes of money and not being fit for purpose.
Was it really a good signing on paper though? Fell out of favour at Spurs, went to Newcastle, got overweight and never played. Mentioned having mental health issues and had previously been quoted as saying he can’t wait to get out of football. Was then overweight when we signed him. Isn’t the reality of how it turned out actually exactly what it looked like on paper?
Said at the time that it would be a crap signing (as did half the forum) and no surprise that it has ended up that way. I can't believe when he showed up for his medical, etc and was considerably overweight that we decided to go through with it.
…and decided on the unveiling photo where he looked massive holding up a shirt he clearly couldn’t fit into.
I think for a club like ours, a former England international with Champions League (?) experience who's only just turned 31 could be a good signing. You're banking on him being mentally in it but if they did ask him and he said he's fine, not sure what else you can do there. Medical wise it is alarming he passed but again, if he was just overweight you'd assume he could work it off, how you find out whether he has any interest in actually working it off is a different matter.
I kind of view it as the opposite, we could only sign a former England international and champions league player because of all the alarming problems he had. The reality is he was no longer an England international or a champions league player, and for very good reason. I personally think it was a terrible signing on paper that had a small chance of coming good, rather than the other way round.
Farewell, soon, Broadway Danny Rose - like Woody Allen you were quite good once but now whenever your name is mentioned we just cough and look at our shoes whilst being politely silent.
Maybe he has agreed a mutual termination as he realises he is not in the right frame of mind to play at this level anymore. I am completely guessing though. I didn't think his weekly wage was quite so big either
That would be the honourable thing to do. £60k a week according to this completely unverified source - https://www.spotrac.com/epl/watford/payroll/2022/ Be surprised if it was less than 40k to be honest.
Would’ve thought we’d be paying up the remainder of this year, but not the following year. He’s losing a years guaranteed salary but has the opportunity to sign up with some other mug club now to make that back. Same sort of thing as Welbeck, apart from the fact he still had the desire to play, even if his body still lets him down now and then.
Still talented enough to have an impact against the lower teams, but against the better teams of this division (even Arsenal, who barely come into that category anymore), he looked woefully out of his depth. The problem is, the Premier League has a lot of good teams, I'm sure he could do a job in the Championship (not playing every game obviously lol), but he'd have to take a massive wage cut
As I said when we initially linked, he wasn’t even particularly good at his peak 5 years ago. Fans and owners blinded by his undeserved England caps and the fact he played for one of the big boys. Utter toilet now he’s out of shape and got no motivation. Another signing that ended up an absolute disaster by the people who don’t do bad business.
Be hilarious if we are paying him 60k a week whilst simultaneously having fans claiming we can’t afford to do better than some of the low-tier targets we are linked with.
I wonder who gave the Daily Mail their story last week? https://theathletic.com/3054405/202...roads-after-only-six-months/?source=emp_share
Massive disruptive c unt. What an awful human being. I hope something terrible happens to him. A transfer to those ****s up the road should do it.
Crazy to have not some sort of weight/fitness criteria in his contract such that we could simply terminate the tubby little **** if he just sat on his bum eating burgers. Presume he can now decide to sit and take the cash for the next 18 months if he doesn't care about his footy career (which seems to be the case).
Yes, it’s totally on us if we didn’t have any fitness related metrics built into his contract. I’m not quite sure what it is with Gino and these type of players, I don’t quite understand how he looks at Rose at Newcastle and thinks to himself, we’ll be the club to turn this player around, it will somehow be different with Watford…. It’s not like we’ve got some fantastic track record of doing it and we offer a particularly conducive environment for it with our turnover of managers, and the way we treat players as commodities to be shipped around. He was never going to change just because he joined Watford, far from it, if he was going to change and turn his career around he needed incentives built into his contract to make it happen. People saying he had something to prove is just plain nonsense, he showed he stopped worrying about that at spurs and then Newcastle, so why would Watford be so special? Apparently when Neil Ruddock joined palace it was written into his contract that he had to remain under 99.8kg or forfeit 10% of his wages: https://www.otbsports.com/soccer/di...ruddock-and-his-infamous-weight-clause-288652 So it’s hardly unheard of for such things to happen.
Certainly makes a lot of sense. That piece came out and then Rose is told he’s free to leave a week later….
