Give Gino A Break?

It was a good article but I can't say I have experienced or seen the same outpouring of negativity towards everyone at the club as recent seasons. We are going nowhere fast but does anyone expect anything different? In recent years the fanbase was toxic, the squad and management even worse but I feel like people are resigned to mid-table at very best this year.

 

Hopefully we can get back to being a mid-table ish champ side, running an operating loss and covering it with the sale of our best player every season or two.

 

When we have had 6 prem seasons in the last 10 years or so, it's understandable that fans aren't happy with the prospect of mid table champ status. Back in 2012 that was all we were realistically hoping for each season.

 

On the money invested in said scheme, will they inform those investors where the money goes? And give any kind of proof?

 

Well you'd hope so but as you said this club, our club is becoming more rotten on a daily basis.
Ok they didn't achieve the total amount but 4m is 4m and they'd better show some respect to those who invested.

 

It's an excellent article and worth a read. The silence from Pozzo and Duxbury is deafening currently

 

Gives a complete pass to Duxbury though, in fact it's actually quite defensive of him and sticks all the blame on Pozzo.

 

Gino is never going to be a communicator, it would be great if he was and Duxbury was a communicator but the Edwards situation changed that. Andrew French's article is worrying mainly because Andrew clearly cares about Watford and isn't given to outrageous comments just to get a headline. He doesnt normally report things unless there is some truth in there and he has often been one of the voices of reason.
We as fans can do little about what's going on. We have to get behind Tom and support our club and team. That doesn't make me a happy clapper but it does our team no good to be constantly sniping. Tom Cleverly said he was looking for high quality loans using his connections and those moves do tend to happen late after premier clubs have made their moves. We wanted a better debt situation, we wanted players that cared and we wanted an end to the constant churn of managers. For the most part I can give them a tick for most of those. There are some good watford people around the club and thats what we need. We need investment with a couple of vital positions to be filled.
What we have not had as fans is something or somebody to get excited about. Expensive players have come and gone but haven't seemed to care. I am ok with giving the kids a chance I remember when a young Billy Jennings and John Farley changed a similar situation round. But we desparately need a spark so I am happy to Give Gino a Break but he and the recruitment team need to deliver.

 

He's certainly having a nice break in Austria with his Udinese bum chums at the moment.

 

Er, excuse me, I'll have you know we can type furiously on our keyboard about the state of the club (whilst at the same time buying our season tickets, selling out the first home and away game and buying the new kits for £60)

 

Of course he could be trying to wrestle us some players. (Please not Davis)

 

That's what we do

 

I'd advise against that when trying to leave a clifftop car park!

 

Sorry we didn't make the £17.5m, so your "slap up three course meal with the manager" is now a 'KFC with one of the ball boys'

 

I’ve seen a lot of people say about being happy to be a mid-table champ team (no issue with that)

My concern is that aside from our history, what makes anyone believe we are set up to be that from here on?

If all teams spend what they earn then attendance’s will come into play, do ours have us around 30-35th in the country?

If we were to get relegated, are we ‘big’ enough to be a side to almost certainly come back up within a few seasons?

Genuine questions.

 

Hope we go down

 

I don’t think we are necessarily big enough. To an extent we have been punching above our weight and lower championship/league 1 is probably our level based on size and attendances. I suspect it’s less based on attendances and size these days and more about owner which benefited us 10 years ago and is now definitely against us. The only optimistic thing I can think of is that we have better infrastructure than most teams in league 1.

No i don’t think we would be big enough to certainly come back up and certainly not if there is a reluctance to invest is some players even if it is to accumulate.

 

Good grief - I see some of our fans are now hatching a new excuse for Pozzo that we are actually a 3rd tier club punching above our weight despite the fact we’ve been in the top 2 leagues for 43 of the last 45 years or whatever it is.

Our fanbase makes me weep.

 

GT always said we were a top 30 56 club

 

We could have followed Brighton, 'Muff and Brentford.
We decided to follow Stoke, Pompey, Charlton.

 

To be fair, it’s unlikely all those three clubs (Brighton, Bmuff and Brentford) will be in the Premier League in ten years time. Of the clubs in the Premier League in August 2014, 35% are no longer members. Only one of the seven is Stoke.

 

To be fair I think one person suggested it, so not sure that it is reasonable to conclude from that the whole fanbase makes you weep. It was also in direct response to an initial comment about where we are in the attendances rankings and specifically not historical rankings but don’t let context bother you.

 

It will be “be careful what you wish for” edition 6. I know our fans.

 

Before 1881 we weren’t even 3rd tier. It’s all progress.
Before 79/80 we’d only had 3(?) seasons in the top 2 leagues in all our history and they were all in the previous decade. 79/80 felt like a huge step.
Championship feels the right level for us now.

 

From surviving four straight seasons in the Premier League without spending a single matchday in the bottom three, an FA Cup final and a semi-final, to this in the space of five years. Yes, we all knew Premier League survival was above our natural level, which is why I was so determined to enjoy every bit of it.

To see us back in a worse state than when the Pozzos took over is gloomy. The club is on the hook to a sharkish Australian “bank”, moving money from here to there to stay afloat, getting out the begging bowl again - albeit a fancier one than a plastic bucket - and only coming up with a quarter of the target amount. There is a complete absence of any communication from the top of the club.

Press releases for the kits go on about nods to our history and heritage, a tacit acknowledgement that the present isn’t up to much.

The marquee signings so far are an untested lad who didn’t break through at Celtic playing in a division where 2/3 of the teams would struggle in the English Championship and the return of a midfielder who looked shot at the end of his last spell here two years ago (admittedly playing at a higher level).

It’s starting to look like the numerous gaps in the squad will be filled with PL loanees.

The sense of everything returning to square one is completed by seeing Jonathan Bond in goal again.

Might as well sign Carl ****inson again. He’s at Congleton Town, won’t cost much.

 

But if all our fans were like you, you’d have no one to feel superior to. Nightmare. Be careful what you wish for (7).

 

As I’m sure all our parents used to tell us endlessly as children, if you’re going to do something then do it properly.

For the life of me I can’t work out Pozzo’s strategy (or lack of).

When he first arrived, he seemed determined to succeed. On a mission. Always striving to improve us. And it worked. We fans were happy, and as our owner he made money because of our success.

Fast forward to now and we seem the total opposite. There’s barely any investment in the squad, we give the impression of having little or no ambition, and the silence is deafening (it’s always been so from Pozzo but at least back then others spoke to us supporters).

What are his motives now for being our owner? If he’s not going to run us properly, why bother?

 

I think there was a certain inevitability that we would settle back in the champ and the period of adjustment was always going to be painful when you go from being a c£125m business to a c£25m business in the space of 3 seasons.
If we were here after spending years in league one we’d be overjoyed at even having an ageing World Cup winner in our squad.
When posters were moaning about little in the prem I kept saying, enjoy it, in 10 years time we will look back on this as a golden era.

 

Not sure what you refer to by “moaning” in premier league, but savants such as myself were onto Pozzo before the cup final season. Outrageous “other operating expenses”, Bayat becoming a growing influence, extension of contracts for Britos and Prodl, refusal to invest in defenders as opposed to attacking midfield trading projects.

All the signs were there and everything has played out as I predicted. I did have us down for administration this season at some point, but think they have headed that off at least in the short term unless there are some uglies under the bed.

Meanwhile Brentford and Palace continue to thrive while the deeply unpleasant Pozzo has reduced us to fetid rubble.

Amazingly to some of our fans, outstanding visionaries like myself remain the bad guys.

 

You're not the bad guys. It just seemed that some posters found they couldn't even enjoy those 4 seasons where we weren't in the bottom 3 at any point. If they can't enjoy it then, when will they ever enjoy. Nothing is perfect. If that £28m had been spent elsewhere then maybe we would have stayed in the prem a few more seasons. It was never going to last forever, as it didn't for Norwich, Burnley, and won't for Brentford & Bmouth at some point.

 

I would think they have so much dirt on each other, ditching would make life uncomfortable for either of them.