Yet more disastrous player trading from Gino Pozzo. Clearly his dad was excellent at it over the years with Udinese whereas Gino is getting worse every year. We've had Richarlison that has brought in a big profit and I'm struggling to think of anyone else. I wonder what his dad thinks about his son's business relationship with Mr Bayat?
Doucoure, Lukebakio, Ighalo, Suarez and Estupinan all spring to mind. Dennis is going to be another big one. But then they need to be balanced against the numerous signings that we've lost money on (generally lower value). Impossible to know for certain given so many undisclosed fees and the nature of the relationship between Udinese (and Granada beforehand) but would be fascinating to know how much profit we'd actually made on player trading over the Pozzo years.
It’s an interesting question. I’d say we’re probably at a net loss overall. There have been many signings around the £3/4m mark over the years who have been released or let go for peanuts. Of course Andre Gray lost us £18.5m, Janmaat released after signing for £7m. It will be a similar story with Cleverley too. Dawson signed for £5.5m then sold for £3m just 12 months later. The Pussetto and Success nonsense……..costing us around £20m then farmed back to Udinese. The list is quite extensive. I’d say there are far more misses than hits over the 10 years and the balance sheet will be showing a trading loss.
The underachieving bit is possible, but we will never look back and say he was in the top 10 of our PL players. To be that he would have had to have performed at his best in a Watford shirt, which he rarely ever has. One of the top 10 most frustrating possibly.
Given the state of the accounts, it has to be a loss. Maybe not from a "group" perspective, but from our own individual financial position. You could easily string together about 15/20 players that would offset the big gains you pointed out. And that's before you get to money wasted on small ticket crap like Navarro, Rose, Kayembe, Kalu, Dawson etc etc I'd also love to know the total incremental amount wazzed up the wall on contract extensions for declining players who hardly contribute after the extensions (Britos, Prodl, Janmaat, Kabasele, Cleverly, Sema etc)
Watford and Udinese are in different corporate groups. They can cut us loose if they want to. We know you consider it one big Pozzo pocket. Some of us don't and only care about our own club's position. Agree to disagree - we don't need to have the same debate over and over.
Very few clubs make money on player sales. They get older, and there values decrease once they go past their late twenties.
But the Pozzos most likely do, and therefore that's what they'll be basing the decisions on. It's pretty simple.
Agreed. At the cost of our own club. I’ll let you have the last word as I’m not going to waste Sunday afternoon walking you through why your housing analogy doesn’t work again.
Was thinking purely on a transfer fee basis (bit artificial I know given that wages far out strip transfer fees). Gut feeling is that it'll be a profit. Might try and work it out later using reported figures (with the obvious caveat we don't really know the true value of transfers where there are add ones, performance clauses etc).
Correct. What is Sarr's WDV? If we bought him for £35m 5 years ago and depreciated him straight line over a 5 year contract, he's on the books at £14m, and anything over that is a book profit.
Not sure that’s true, otherwise total transfer fees spent would decline year on year. Very few clubs can’t be not making any money while year on year more gets spent on transfers.
Think Mr 48 did it a few months back. Ended up at (from purely Watford perspective) current squad needing to be worth £180m to break even. Just quoting this from memory though.
That’s how is works. But I would hardly celebrate a book break even on Gray when his contract expired!
We don't just buy players to resell and make a profit down the line. A player like Janmaat was bought at his prime and then let go after getting a few years use from him. Deeney, Cleverley etc etc will all be sold at a loss because we had years of use from them and over time their value will of course drop as they age.
Yep, but there has been too many wasted purchases over the years. The Djedje types. Players who cost a few million, plus signing on fees and wages but add absolutely nothing. A club like Everton can absorb the crazy punts, but Watford really have to make the vast majority count. Even as recently as January we sign Kaku for around £4m. Total waste. He was not needed at the time and I cannot see how he’ll be used going forward, even in the championship. It’s this type of deal we need to stop doing.
Yep, would be good if they could only make the cheap good punts rather than a mix of good and bad. Buy one player for £20m and you are competing with a bunch of other clubs with better immediate prospects and packages. Buy 5 players for £4m and hope one of them ends up worth £20m+ is the route we seem to have chosen.
Only issue being we take 10 punts to get to a £20m chap. This is probably because we seemingly won’t sanction transfers unless our close agent network benefits so we cut out 98% of the world player pool and have to resort to crap like Kayembe and Kalu who can’t even get in a poor team.
Yes, who needed Kaku when we already had Kiko? It’s not as if he was a Kaka or a Koke. We might as well have signed Kiki.
One misplaced letter produces this. Great work. I miss Iggy. (I’m sure you can do something with that too?)
You might not like his output last season, but your comment is not serious or true, if so name me 10 players in our squad last year that are better footballers than him.
Sarr will have a better career than all of those bar Sissoko (who was a key cog of a WC winning side remember) and possibly JP/Dennis
