There's more chance of Andre Gray learning to kick a ball properly than Sonny getting a go in the first team.
Which I think is a fundamental issue at the club to be honest. If we do get the odd gem, we need to push them quickly. But sadly, I agree with your point.
Olise looked class last season, and very entertaining to watch. £8M seems cheap to me even in these times. If we had a chance I feel we should have taken it. Hope they have someone else of this style in mind then because it's a type of player we don't have.
What's good for Watford is good for them, so I'd say they probably do. And the majority of the last 9 years backs that up, too.
I'd say there is overlap, but their interests are not the same as Watford being as successful as they could be. The Pozzo's primary interest is player trading. Watford is merely a staging post. Sometimes that means we get good players to play for us, but it's incidental to their main goal.
Of course they do given we are an investment so they obviously don't want to lose money on us. Trouble is I think they are probably just treading water cashwise at present and are coming to accept they can't fund what is required to guarantee prem status. As I've said before I feared for our future without promotion given the impact of relegation and unforseeable impact of covid coinciding. I genuinely doubt we will be able to strengthen sufficiently to stay up this season but do believe the funds from promotion may have saved us from a financial armageddon.
But a huge part of that method is maintaining Udinese and Watford's place in the top league. Which they've (mostly) done successfully for years and years.
Right, so there's some crossover, but if there's a clash between Watford pushing beyond 15th or winning a cup, vs selling a player or doing some other deal, we all know what wins.
Well we got to a cup final, came close to Europe. Then what happened? We refused to cash in on Doucoure, got relegated, and put the club in danger. Maybe they should stick to their philosophy.
If Sonny was looking good enough to play in the prem in the near future, one of the prem big boys would have taken him from us.
Our wage bill will always be near the bottom of the prem table as will our transfer fund. Unless we have richer owners, any runs to the cup final or close to Europe will sit as isolated massive over-achievements. You need to support a bigger club or pray we get acquired by an Arab Prince or Asian conglomerate.
Not really. Our owners only care about club success as far as it furthers their player trading business. Which other clubs have such an ownership? If we finish 17th every season and provide a shop window for certain players, that's all Watford FC is to our owners. Of course they might lack the clout to take us further, but they lack the desire and the interest too.
All clubs that are not rich rely on player trading, nothing has changed with any of the owners we've had and won't unless we get taken over by a person with bottomless pit. In 5 years in the Premier League we finished above 17th three times, got to a cup final and were in the hunt for a European place. The better the club are the better for them so I don't think you can say they are not interested or lack desire. What they probably realise is that we can't compete financially with pretty much every other club in this league so there is no point taking financial risks again. Not sure what you expect from them
Either you're being obtuse or you genuinely cannot see that the Pozzo way of operating a network of trafficked footballers for profit is unusual, at least in the UK. Other clubs our size do not sign dozens of players who they have no intention of ever playing, just to accumulate them like some sort of livestock. That is Pozzo's interest. Watford is a part of that but the ven diagram does not fully overlap. See also our recent one sided transactions with Udinese for times that Watford's interests and Gino's have not aligned.
Everyone wants their businesses or businesses to make them money. There's a big difference between that and genuinely having Watford's best interests at heart.
I'm not sure I can agree with that assessment. We've reached an FA Cup Final in their tenure, only the second time in our history. We've pushed for a top half finish multiple times (let down by the players in the final games of the season). They didn't sell Doucoure when they had the opportunity, looking to push on (which I think that ultimately cost us). If anything I think our relegation was the result of overambition that prevented reinvestment in the squad. Doucoure could have funded a decent striker and a couple of younger defenders, which would have been more than enough to avoid relegation. Heck, a decent striker alone was all we really needed...
Yes but most haven't. None of them would have expected to at the start of the season and all would have classed it as ".. isolated massive over-achievement".
Most actions that are good for WFC will be good for the investors. You think they should be spending more money ? Who knows how their family business has fared through Covid and how cash rich the family is today ? They will still make bad decisions for sure, but they won't be because they aren't interested in the performance of their investment.
Does it work for us? I would say as we are about to start our 6th season in the Premier League, that yes it does. I think a lot of clubs do things in a similar vein but we just don’t hear about it
Born and grew up in England, so while I'm sure playing for a legendary ex-player might be attractive, would it be any more attractive than any other English born lad? I think other factors might have been at play, such as staying in London, playing for an established PL club for (probably) decent wages so I'm not sure we'd have had a chance even if we could afford him In any case, he's half Nigerian and is on the radar of their national team, if he came to us, you just know the lads would convince him to play for them and we'd lose him for a month!
Pretty much every player says playing under x manager was one of the reasons they joined, they’re hardly likely to say it was the bigger contract or I just didn’t want to move home. Viera will possibly be gone even before Munoz is fired anyway.
Yeah, can you imagine a player signing for a club and saying: 'I've signed for this club even though I think the manager is total bobbins! I'm putting up with it because I love the facilities.'
Not sure this is too different from how other clubs operate. There is no such thing as a guaranteed success.
