What are the key assets Bond's supporters feel make him a good keeper...and what faults do his detractors think don't?
Bond is not ready to be our number 1 or number 2 keeper at Premier League level. That is an unfair level of expectation to place on such a young keeper. Signing Arlauskis was 100% the right thing to do. If Bond doesn't want to sign a contract because of that then they need to cash in on him with 1 year left and load the sale up with as many future fee clauses as possible. To do anything else is to **** money down the drain, especially with a player they rate highly enough to offer a new contract to. Unless you hold the opinion that Bond is currently good enough to be our number 2, there's no criticism to be had here. I fail to see how a keeper who wasn't our number 1 in the Championship could possibly be expected to fill in for Gomes in the event of a long term injury, however.
More like one of the only eligible English goalkeepers around in the upper leagues. He couldn't get further than the England U21 bench. Even Scott Loach and Chris Day got more U21 caps than he did. I'm sure we could have afforded to turn the money down. But then what?
The thing is.....Bond is highly rated in the game. One of England's brightest goal keeping prospects. He should have been offered one of those nice long 5 year deals well before now. This situation has now come to a head and Bond finds himself as a number 3. Maybe they thought he would stay no matter what and that's why they didn't think it was necessary to tie him down earlier. Unless the club did not really rate him.....then I find it strange that they let him get to his final year of contract. Normally with their highly regarded prospects the club protects itself with long term deals. They did not feel it was necessary in this case...and they may well regret that.
It's us older fans who get nervous..as we remember the Cup Semi of 1987. My recurring nightmare now is both G and A get injured pre season and we go to Everton with RG in goal!! Seriously though, the importance of having a good number two was harshly shown to us at the start of our first season in the PL when Alec got injured, I think in the Isle of Man pre-season and we were a defensive shambles in our first match at home to Wimbledon.
good shot stopper and reflex, faults, doesn't command his box, communication is poor to non existent, doesn't know when to come for crosses and is frequently caught in no mans land and distribution could be better, seems to have the same problems as another England U21 keeper we had, same coach?
Ok let me sulk over it for 2 weeks...I'll let you know if it helps him come back. For crying out loud, look to the future...stop looking back.
Perhaps Bond just doesn't fit into Quique's preferred ormation. If that's the case, then we can have no arguments IMHO.
Being the England U21s third choice keeper does not make somebody a future star. The club felt he wasn't good enough to be a Premier League backup, probably correctly, so signed Arlauskis for that job. I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to argue by saying that we didn't need the 250k. What is the alternative that you're proposing? Are you suggesting we should have kept Bond on for another year sitting on the bench and then lost him for nothing next summer? In what way does that benefit the club or Bond? Please explain because I'm bemused.
Yeah 'cause my opinion of being disappointed to see Bond go means I want our new keeper to make mistakes. :dismay:
I have fully explained.....especially in the part you quoted me on. The contract should have been sorted long before now, but the situation was allowed to reach a point where Bond thought it best he left. It's my opinion that that should not have happened. You can agree or disagree with that, but it's not too hard to understand.
Even if he had run his contract down we would still have been entitled to compo as he would have been under 24
But that hasn't explained what you think we should have done with him? Convince him to sign a long contract with the promise of either repeated loans or playing for our reserves. Perhaps we tried and he, understandably, refused? Footballers, despite popular opinion, aren't just commodities that clubs can keep by throwing contracts at them. They're real people with real concerns about how to make the most of a career that will invariably end in their 30s. I can understand Bond wanting to leave to play regular football, I'm happy for him, and it would have been incredibly selfish of the club to stand in his way or make promises that they could never keep.
It'd be one thing if we told Bond he was free to leave, but we offered him a new contract which he turned down, all we can do in that situation is sell for as good a fee as possible
I have explained. Not sure why you don't get it. By the time Arlauskis signed, the die was cast. It was too late then. Had he already signed a 5 year deal last season, then there would not have been an issue about selling him now. He would have been under contract and would have gone on loan to Reading....or some other Championship club and would have played first team football with a potential carrot of first team Premier League football in 3 years time (if we stay up of course). The way Bond saw it, was that he had no future at Watford. This was his mind-set when he was offered the new contract. Even then it was a close call for him to go, but the number 3 demotion was just that little push too far.
I reckon there's a bit of an inevitability to this saga. We all know how reluctant most top flight teams are to develop home grown talent through academies rather than taking the easier route of spending a bit of TV money on proven, foreign playing assets. There's a long lead in time with youngsters and many will fall by the wayside at some point along the trail and will need to be written off as a financial loss at that point. There is the perennial question of should he remain at the club with very little topflight game time or be a serial loanee to lower division clubs. And the problem is exacerbated with keepers because they will generally only mature into top flight players at a much later age. OK, I know there are a few exceptions with regard to young keepers - de Gea and Courtois spring to mind - but they really are an exception to the rule. So when we were in the Championship Bond was good enough to be our No.2 and did make a few appearances last season where he acquitted himself reasonably well. But now we're in the EPL, and planning on staying there, things are different. We need a tried and tested No.2 keeper. Bond knows this and that he probably won't make it as a regular EPL keeper for six years or so if at all. So better to make a clean break now then and go somewhere else where he can challenge for a regular first team spot as good as and as young as he is now. That's life folks. I wish the lad every success.
Put it this way. Should Watford be tying down their best young talents or allowing their contracts to run down and be forced to sell them? How happy would people be if we signed someone like Jack Butland for £250k.....or even Jonathan Bond (had he not been already ours) from another club, this evening.
If you offered me the carrot of premier league football in 3 years just after i'd signed a 5 year contract, i'd be feeling bloody mugged off. Before you sign a contract, you seek assurances about your place in the team. Normally if they aren't kept the club will let you leave with no arguments. So we'd either have to lie outright to him, or do what we did and sign an arguably better #2, lay it all out on the table about your intentions. Obviously then we decided to cash in rather than letting him sit here do very little until his contract expires. I do feel that the fee being bandied around is a bit on the low side but i'm sure there's details we don't know. It was either lie outright to him or cash in. I'm glad we've cashed in rather than letting him rot in the reserves or out on loan each season (like what Chelsea do with all their youngsters, which sickens me) Good to see you've been in contact with him, wish him well from me.
I don't get it because you're not actually making a proper argument for what the Pozzos could have done better. Your entire point seems to revolve around writing your own narrative and pretending to know what Bond is thinking. You have no idea what we offered him, or when he made his mind up that he wanted to leave. You say that signing Arlauskis was the last straw, but if your plan was just to ship him out on loan for the next three years, what difference would that make? He's been at the club since he was 17. Perhaps he just wants a change? Perhaps he wants to the security of playing for the club he's contracted to? He's totally entitled to seek those things. This is a situation where the clubs needs and the players needs have moved in two different directions. The best thing to do in that situation is the accept the circumstances and move on. Unfortunately the sense of deja-vu is very strong here and I know you won't find it that easy to get over.
Goal keepers are a little different from outfield players. They mature far later, so they have a lot more time to establish a career. He could have gone to, say Reading, on loan, where he would have had 1st team football for a season. In fact you could argue that being on loan to a Championship club would have been a better option as we could have enforced him playing first team football as part of the deal. To know you were the number 2, then the club in affect demote you to number 3, is a lot to accept. ....and yes....I do know him.
Ok....to put it bluntly....so you finally understand. They should have offered him a 5 year deal last season. Then none of this would have occurred.
Ah all right then. I'll give my good mate Scott a ring and tell him to get you in as the new contract negotiator.
