Give Gino A Break?

I feel there are two trains of thought over Gino. Some fans cannot get past 2019 and are still grateful for all the good things the club achieved under the Pozzo stewardship. If it was still April 2019, I doubt there would even be one dissenter in the ranks. There is no doubt the owner was good back then. We had money in the bank, massive revenue streams, good players, stadium improvements every year and even talk of relocating to a brand new venue. Those days were exciting and it looked like we really had our heads screwed on, making shrewd choices and it was easy to make excuses for the things we didn't like, because the good outweighed the bad.

But that's not the case now. The club are in a deep financial hole, the players are being downgraded year after year and as a result the club enters a downward spiral that looks like having no surrender. The bad things we turned a blind-eye to come racing to the surface and become more important, as these are pointers towards the character of the owner.

It comes to a point where you get past the "oh we were unlucky that year", "we've learnt our lessons", "we're going to try a different way"....when each one of those statements pass without actually having an impact on the direction the club is taking, then concerns are rightly raised. There comes a time when you have to ask yourself a question or two. Are the owner's intentions for the benefit of Watford Football Club or are they for the benefit of something/someone else? Is the owner able to reverse the current trend, does he have the ability to do this? If you think the answer to these questions is no, then you have to really call for the owner to go.

 

I don't think he's being "wholeheartedly supportive" of the owner. Many of his comments are accurate. I think Gino is trying to change, not doing it terribly well and with no funds available we are stuck with what we have.

 

Should change your name to 'The Devil's Advocate.'

 

Not sure why, but would be a good name for sure.

 

In this instance, trying to change just means doing things equally (if not more) badly in just a different way though.

 

Nobody has done more damage to Watford's status as a family club than your beloved Gino, it might be worth you remembering that.

 

agree with that but, if I look at the countless amount of money we’ve wasted on paying off coaches contracts, buying in sub standard/injured players and funding inadequate back room staff/agents, the cause of no funds being available stop with Gino

he has created great memories with some fantastic players 2012-19 but the last 4 years has wiped all that away…

 

Just regarding the ground, the SEJ stand that made it four sided cost £3.5m:

https://www.time-lapse-systems.co.uk/news/new-east-stand-at-vicarage-road-captured-by-our-cameras/

For comparison, the vicarage road stand cost £2.3m all the way back in 1992 when we were utterly potless. Likewise the Rookery was £1.6m back in 1994 and the GT stand cost £3m all the way back in 1986. We had to sell players to fund most of these.

So £3.5m nearly 20 years on since the last stand was built, is very, very, very cheap by comparison when inflation adjusted. It’s just over half a Bayo, or a couple of managers contracts being paid up.

Yes we’ve tarted the ground up visually in other areas, but considering we must’ve earned £700m+ in PL revenue since Pozzo took over, I’m not sure an improvement to the ground that relatively speaking, cost a fraction of the money we spent anyway when we had no cash at all, is much of a life raft to cling onto as far as what Gino has done for the club.

 

Not The Space Cowboy then? Maybe he’s a joker.

 

a smoker, a midnight toker ?

 

Well, some of his posts hint at it!

 

Do you seriously think that TUT, at this stage in the proceedings? I'm mildly surprised, to say the least, if so.

 

His actions this season so far suggest a mindset shift, though it's up for debate how much of that was forced by the financial situation we're in. The shedding of dead weight, the lack of extended deals for over the hill wasters, and the very public backing of a manager going through a poor run of form are all a sign of things being done slightly differently.

I'm sceptical as to just how committed Pozzo will be to this change of approach, the longer suffer through bad results, and the further we get away from any fanciful thoughts of a play-off place.

 

Yes stacks of changes this summer, selling the better players, paying down the huge 3rd party debt, sticking by the manager (so far!), accepting we are a champ club now, no Bayat deals.....
I'm not saying he's getting everything right, just that he has made changes.
Interesting that Gino gets so much stick but Duxbury seems to get off scot free (pun intended). He is the CEO. Not sure how he has survived the last 4 years. If you follow the line that Gino makes all the decisons, we clearly don't need a CEO anyway....

 

Pozzo is the owner. The buck stops there. We can't very well criticise him for scapegoating head coaches, or scouts, or technical directors etc over the years and then absolve him of responsibility and blame his CEO. It's still ultimately Pozzo's decision who he wants to run the club day-to-day. Pozzo may not be a director but he has majority control of both the company and its holding company. Everything that has happened over the past decade or so has happened on his watch – the good and the bad.

The line of goodwill credit has worn out for many supporters and needs to be replenished. As you say TUT, it appears that some small steps have been made to change course, but I'd suggest we're still very much in a period of 'wait and see'. It's not time for a rousing chorus of 'Here's to you Pozzo family' just yet!

 

What do you think a CEO does ? Yes the buck stops with the owner as it does with any company but the CEO is responsible for the successful delivery of a plan so is either redundant in our structure or he should be fired.
Not sure anyone is suggesting a rousing chorus of 'Here's to you Pozzo family' ?

 

Bit of a two-footed response there, TUT. I wasn't having a pop at you.

The CEO of Watford does whatever he does for £966,000 a year, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to say he avoids criticism. I've seen a fair bit both here and on social media.

Personally speaking I think the regime – owner and CEO – is tired and out of ideas. What they've done lately is all they can afford to do – a weak, watered down reset on a shoestring budget in the hope that enough people see it as some sort of humble realignment with our natural place in the order of things.

 

So BBB is TuT, then?

 

Sorry was jumping on a call at 4pm so typed and sent very quickly, didn't mean to come across as two-footed, more a slight shirt tug....

 

Damn....rumbled....

 

Give @The undeniable truth a break.

 

Successful delivery of what plan, I wonder?

 

Plenty of fans blame Duxbury… or Giaretta, or Giraldi back when he was here, but they’re the fans who want to avoid facing the reality that all of the key decisions that have led us to our current situation have come from Pozzo. Edwards was apparently Duxbury’s man, and yet he was overruled by Pozzo after 10 games. Whatever control Gino gives out to others is quickly reclaimed if he disagrees with the decisions that are made. Duxbury and Giaretta are just expensive admin and executive assistants to Gino.

 

...and rightly so, we are STILL reeling from THAT pre-season.
My point was that Dux is a very expensive admin asst if that's all he is.
You can fire a coach, you can fire a Director of Football (or whatever Giaretta's title is), and you can fire a CEO.
You can't fire an owner. He will go when he gets a good offer for his shares. The further we fall, the further away that would seem.

 

Not permanent ones but I'd be amazed if Chakvetadze wasn't one of his and he didn't get a little bit of dosh. Also begs the question why is he still being spotted next to Pozzo in the Directors' box if he's not still involved...

 

Perhaps they're "besties" ?

 

Did you not know that Meester Mogi is just like any other agent?

 

I just don't personally believe it's done for anything other than entirely cynical reasons and at far less than face value - as you say, purely in response to the parlous financial situation he and the wider Stability have landed us in.

I'm not entirely sure how much Duxbury gets away scot free to be honest; he's mentioned here very often, and any time any of us reference 'the Stability' he is included in that, but fundamentally, as incompetent and wage stealing as he is, we all know from basically all reporting and quotes to date across his reign from multiple sources that Gino always retains final say and sole decision-making power. The buck must therefore fundamentally stop with him more than anyone else; even his most incompetent consigliere. @The undeniable truth

 

But you were the one saying Duxbury gets off scot free (which I don’t think is entirely true) so if we all concentrated our displeasure at him and it got him sacked, do you think our fortunes would suddenly change?

 

I don't think our fortunes will dramatically change in the near future, we are back to being a lower/mid champ club. Not without new investment anyway.
My point was more about the futility in telling Gino it's time to go when he owns the club. Fans can get managers and DoFs sacked very easily by turning on the owner but it's not so easy to get the owner sacked ! In business if a company is failing the management team are replaced by the shareholders, not the shareholders themselves.
The key thing now is to stabilize at this level and not continue our downwards direction of travel.

 

How many?

 

Fewer.

 

If you think that self serving worm Duxbury has escaped my wrath you haven't been reading closely enough!

 

I think we can assume the Pozzo’s did not buy Watford to be a mid/low table championship side. It doesn’t work with their player trading model. Think we can also assume they had no choice but to pay down the external debt with money from player sales. I seem to remember a quote from SD that the debt was linked to player values.
What is interesting is that they have not provided any additional funding. Maybe they can’t, maybe running costs are still higher than income and they’re having to fund that, or maybe they’ve just given up. Daddy Pozzo must have watched juniors efforts over the past five years, as we have. It could well have convinced him it’s time to bail. So they either find a buyer, or we become a low champ, lge 1 club, working on a break even budget. Sound familiar?
To me it’s just a feeling of waste. We had every opportunity to establish ourselves in the Prem, but we threw it away.