But it has to be considered as a factor. He may well be our "friend" at the moment and is sending us some of his best, but there is no guarantee that will last and we are giving him the keys to the castle. A significant percentage of our players are represented by him, giving him immense influence over the club. If he wants to move on Dennis in the summer, what is to stop him getting Louza, Kayembe, Kalu etc to kick up a fuss to help force through a move? There is a reason he is despised in Belgium and hundreds of Nantes fans dug a grave a buried a coffin with Mogi's name on it.
I do agree with this generally but actually not that many players of ours are formally represented by him; instead he has used his connections to broker some of these deals and get a cut. I think only Kayembe and Louza are formally represented by him. So I think your concerns in the second paragraph are a bit off/overblown. But I agree with the general premise that it’s a dangerous game.
"major brainfart just about every other game" is already half as frequently as most out current CBS..
I’m told this guy is a major set piece threat. As we’ve not had one of those for about 20 years, I’m in. The Spirit Of Shittu is coming.
We’ve had attempts at rewriting Aagadu, between this guy and Kalu, surely we’ve got the names for a song that covers the whole squad?
Watching Shittu was like watching Frank Bruno try to play football. Having said that, his header at home vs Hull in the PO SF 1st leg should never have been disallowed and I think we'd have beaten them and got to the final if that had stood. He was a unit.
Directly from set pieces? I'd love to see the free kicks where he slides in headfirst and wallops the ball with his nut, sending it curling round the wall into the top corner.
As a result of the scale of Mogi's dodgy dealings, there is an obligation now in Belgium to declare the agents involved in a transfer. There was an investigation into historic transfers as well - the report of this is how we found out about his connection to Emmanuel Dennis despite not actually being listed as his agent. He was also involved in the Sarr deal. I think he puts in a certain amount of effort to obfuscate how involved in these deals he is to avoid the gaze of the Belgian authorities so I fear we will never actually properly know how many transfers of ours he is connected to. Its more the way things seem to be moving - in our previous 2 PL seasons we have spent £50m on players connected to him. Given the overall value of our playing squad, that is an astonishing amount of control over us.
I’m definitely concerned by that and think within a certain amount of time the rubber will hit the road with this strategy. However, I think Mogi is unlikely to have the level of influence you highlight over Sarr, Dennis - those players in whose deal he acted as an intermediary but whom he does not represent. My initial point wasn’t “oh great he’s a Mogi signing so he’ll be great for us and for the club in the long run” but rather that there was a meme on here for a while that any player signed through Mogi must be crap and only being signed because we’ve decided to sign crap players to help out Mogi when instead the issue with signing players through Mogi is more a long-term concern than something to do with the quality of those players.
Really a football agent should be acting in their players best interests, they work for the players not the clubs. If we do get first dibs on better players because we buy a load of tat from him then really that’s pretty bad. It means he’s potentially working against some of his players and not presenting the best deal/move to them. If none of the above is actually true then our relationship makes absolutely no sense. Either way something is wrong, which I guess is why he’s being investigated.
I think it has been a valid concern historically to be honest - we quite did a lot of business with him before we actually saw any benefit ( even then while the Sarr deal also saw us acquire a very good player, I am still not convinced it was £30m well spent). This is the first year we have really signed players from him that are actually of benefit to Watford rather than just Oulare, Kums, Lukebakio etc who were all flipped as part of his dodgy scheme.
I would say any player/deal we have signed that has even the most minuscule of his fingerprints on it, would be an immediate/short-term concern given he’s just been indicted yet again on fraud charges.
Maybe but we would have gone 1-0 up in a first leg home match we lost 0-2. Scandalous decision, watch slow mo shown from 35 secs to 45 secs, nothing wrong with a great headed goal. Classic Danny defending after 53 seconds though
Haha, surely you don’t think that’s all there should be to it? ‘Crack on dealing in contractual matters with the suspect in (multiple) fraud(s) - he’s not due in court until August after all.’ Jeffrey Epstein was only ever indicted in 2019 and never convicted - doesn’t mean I’d have happily let him look after my daughter.
Certainly not optimistic I just have lower expectations of what is achievable, see the big picture, and have greater faith in those who have full details, as opposed to us sitting on the outside and trying to understand.
I remember it, I was there. I have a vague memory that we didn’t even sell the home leg out though, as we’d been so horrifically bad in the lead up to finally limping into the play offs by the skin of our teeth. The score may not have been that big, but I have an overriding memory of being completely outclassed across both legs.
Yes we were in terrible form and doesn't bear thinking about how we'd have performed in the prem had we got there. But you the play offs are a different cup style competition where Aidy had previous, and our tails would have been up after taking a 1-0 lead. But que sera sera...
No. I don’t like it at all. I’ve been quite clear about that. But I don’t think this investigation and indictment will lead to a short term impact on us. Perhaps in several years time it will be resolved in some way and he might get a fine or even prison time but Mino Raiola is around still at the top of the game despite his tax fraud and temporary ban by the Italian FA a few years back. To be clear: My concern with Mogi is linked to the long-term conflict of interest, and the general shadiness of this bloke and not to the outcome of a multi-year investigation into over 30 football intermediaries in Belgium leading to disruption to or litigation against us (seeing as that is both unlikely at least in the short-term) or to the quality of the players he is bringing in (which seems ok generally and at times even good).
But do you not see that making deals now (short-term) with someone who could get convicted (medium/long-term) means that those deals we make now will naturally be looked at? I don’t think you need a degree in fraud investigation to look at the amount of business we do with him and come to the vague opinion that it stinks. A lot. So I don’t see how what we are doing with him now shouldn’t be of great concern. I’m frankly quite shocked how many people are happy just to look the other way about all this.
The allegations against Mogi are infinitely more serious than those against Raiola. This isn't just a bit of tax evasion - aside from the dodgy transfer dealings, he has been indicted for corruption (match fixing in the Belgian top flight), money laundering and connections to organised crime. The whole thing is so big it has its own wikipedia page. The other key player in the whole scheme along with Mogi has already been sentenced to 5 years, reduced down because he agreed to testify against Mogi and the rest of them. Short of a miracle or a trip to a country without extradition, he is likely going to be spending a decent amount of time behind bars. One of the transfers that blew this whole scheme open was the transfer of Onkeryu from Eupen to Everton - a player we were heavily linked with at the time and a club / agent we continue to do business with. We have spent 50m over the last 3 years on players represented by a guy in the knowledge he was involved in serious organised crime. Whether he gets us good players or not, it is going to come back to bite us.
