Both us and Udinese are in decline and dropping lower year on year, Udinese survived by 1 goal last season, we keep selling players for profit, we made a record a record championship profit, but where is the investment in either,? what do either club have to show for it aside from an ever decreasing league position?
As I'm sure you're very well aware, as is entirely clear from the direct substance of my comment, it's based entirely on the poster concerned. I also think you're taking a turn down one of your disingenuous roads if you're about to try and pretend that even a comment phrased in the way you just quoted is the same as directly addressing people with the kind of manner so astonishingly disrespectful that it would probably lead to regular physical altercations for him in the real world, as Mr Rous does on a near hourly basis.
I think, as ever, nothing is as black and white as you seem to take it, and the absolute utter entire lack of credit you are prepared to extend to any other poster for any further intelligence or nuance of any kind behind just one single comment is a reflection on you rather than said poster (including if it's me, of course!).
If you have say £500 put aside to pay for your rent, that does not mean you have £500 to spend on something else like a holiday. The money Pozzo put asides to "siphon off" out the club will likely be put in to a bucket labelled something like "money I want to siphon off out the club via Bayat"; that will likely be a different budget to "money to spend on recruting players externally not involving Bayat or Udinese and which I therefore may never see again". There may perhaps be a bit of overlap between the budgets if helpful. But spending £5mil to on a transfer which utilises Bayat does not mean that it's money Pozzo will have budgeted to spend on a non-Bayat player.
How am I the one making this issue black and white? Your comment here: ....was the one which displayed the lack of "nuance". If you were capable of the nuanced thinking that it is not as simple or black and white as Udinese's finances being entirely separate from ours and "purely' to their benefit, then you surely would not have made the above post which claims this simplistic and mistaken view.
This is quite amazing even for you, so basically even though we spent £5m on Bayo, we didn’t actually have that money, and if we hadn’t have siphoned it off to Bayat we probably would’ve siphoned it off elsewhere? Righty-o, so that’s… ermmm, all ok then?
For us to survive at any level player trading is a must as it is for most clubs. Have we got things wrong? Yes of course we have but I believe for us to survive we need to look at players that will make us money. It's a fine balance between that and making sure the first team has what it needs. It's hugely frustrating because the money we have spent on the first team has been spent poorly We got in to debt because we spent money on first team players that were not the right players for us. We as a club should never spend £30m on one player, way too much of a risk but that player was bought for the first team. Same with Andre Gray, bought for the first team, just not the right player for the money
I'm not saying it's ok, but in such a case people are complaining about the wrong thing. I don't know what Pozzo is doing with the money he probably siphons off via Bayat, beyond it likely initially going to Luxembourg. Maybe it is just him paying himself out the club? Maybe it's money that he reinvests in to other ventures which earn a high return and means he is less reliant in future on us for his revenue generation? There are possibilities that are good and not so good for us. But the simple point is money which you have put aside for one activity, does not mean that you have that money to use a second time on something else. You can't spend the money twice. So when someone complains about spending £5mil on a Bayat striker, it doesn't mean we could have otherwise spent the £5mil on a player who had nothing to do with Bayat. Pozzo will be sending money via Bayat for reasons that are different to mere buying a player for Watford, and the budgets for the two won't be exactly the same.
Imagine the same scenario but with less funding over the last 5 years or so !! The Pozzos just aren't rich enough to sucessfully run a Serie A and promotion chasing champ club. They used to have this ace up their sleeve in their network for finding developing and selling talent, benefitting coffers and both clubs. Now everyone else does it, but with greater funds behind them and we make duff euro signings mainly through Bayat. It was really great up to 2019. Now we are just another Preston. I'm happy for them to continue to pick up great talent from SA like Pedro, Asprilla and this guy £800k Kiki Dee or whatever, to sell and top up their finances as long as they don't then plurge the profits on Bayo, Raj and Danny ****ing Rose !
Just pointing out the double-standards, that's all. Some posters hate LR, I get it, and hence are more combative towards his posts than others of a similar vein that follow a POV they agree with.
But again, this is slightly disingenuous - it's not about 'hating' him, I absolutely don't 'hate' him; I do occasionally respond to his constant genuine direct rudeness and pomposity and find it astonishing and unnecessary, though. As I said in my previous reply to you, also, I reject that those other posts are 'of a similar vein', unless your definition of vein has a crowbar taken to it for the purposes of your argument. And when we are talking about 'combative towards his posts', we are talking about (certainly in this, and my, case) when he directly responds/quotes in the manner that he does to posts I/someone has made. It is, again, a different form of engagement.
Last published accounts are all very odd on this point and I can't work them out. We owe Udinese £19m and this went up by £7m the season we sold them Masina and Kamara for about £20m and got Kamara back on loan and loaned Martins. Anyone with better financial knowledge able to explain this?
Yes I was just pointing out that same form of engagement from different posters below - one elicits a combative response, one doesn't. they don't seem much different to me that's all - we've made our points, let's move on. "Someone else who still after all these years is unable to wrap their head around the fact that what is financially beneficial to Udinese is also financially beneficial to us." and "Seriously though, we are still here, 12 years later with people not understanding the difference between Pozzo player trading Inc. And Watford fc."
What we have to show for it are good memories, better club infrastructure and club debt. Is it our club debt or is it Gino's debt though? it’s all very confusing, and I guess ultimately depends on the point one is trying to make. (I actually see it as our club debt personally) I think what we have to show from it all is pretty good (providing we don’t fold). I don’t think it’s realistic for clubs like ours to sustain high performance forever and inevitably there will be periods of decline. I think it’s was GT who said “better to give risen and fallen, then never have risen at all.”
A very succinct description of how poisonous and dangerous to the future of WFC Pozzo actually is, then?
The owner of a football club wanting to either earn some money from the club and/or use its revenue as leverage for use elsewhere will be pretty standard practice - not sure that necessarily warrants classification as "poisonous and dangerous". Unless you have something like Saudi sport-washers as owners there won't be many funding their clubs purely out of benevolence.
Most owners certainly want to make money, most don’t, that I’m aware of, none siphon income off via an agent, as highlighted by our spend on agent fees being disproportionately high, and close to that of the big 6 when in PL. For a club of our size it couldn’t be more abnormal. it’s really not anywhere normal, you repeatedly insisting it is won’t change that.
So we have virtually no money to spend, but we’re spending money to loan someone to Udinese while our squad remains threadbare? It’s just good husbandry.
I was banging on about that, in the finance thread I think, a while back. We tried to go through all the players to us/to them over the past few years etc... and failed to come up with any reasonable explanation as to why we owe them at all let alone why it increased by £7m last year. And it doesn't appear to be in the player lines although it doesn't specifically say it isn't, very keen to see what this looks like this year. Something fishy I think.
The method may be abnormal - I'm not privy to what methods exactly other owners use when taking money out their clubs - but at least you recognise that the overarching gesture is normal. If the ends are the same (the owners taking money out the clubs), then it barely matters what the method of doing so is. For starters though it certainly is normal for Premier League clubs to use agents to avoid taxes on transfers: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65097761 That we may be one of those doing it or similar really isn't such a stretch. Nor is the idea that both ourselves, and some of the other many such clubs that utilise such practises, might also use the same agents for other arrangements that may be financially advantageous.
Never come close to making this balance in my head. Is there a bonkers solidarity fee we owe them each season for “scouting services” or some such ?
Going from memory here as I am not a previous post finder kind of fellow but think this was suggested, however, Reids had come across this at one of his employers and thought scouting fees had to be reported individually by each club. About the only other thing could be the foreign academies or something (if that is separate to scouting and sure looks a lot of money for that), otherwise, like you, I could only think of a franchise fee or something similar which would be alarming!
I am not well versed in the club's accounts or all the types of taxes they may need to pay, but hypothetically could paying "debt" fees to Udinese each year reduce the money we have to pay in tax on our total revenue (eg profit from player sales)?
It's in terms of employees working for multiple clubs under the same ownership. So for instance Nani couldn't work for both Watford + Udinese, with Watford picking up the entirety of his wages, they'd have to be split equally between the teams.
I'm no accountant but I understand what you mean, simply paying interest or legitimate debt repayments would reduce profit and so tax. However this went up £7m last year (well 2 years ago now really as last accounts) from £12m prior year, I've no idea how long the £12m took to accrue, and we have losses in previous years so that would be some masterclass in financial planning to put that in place so far in advance to offset against the random year we make some player profits. Given where we are I don't feel I can believe this is a long term masterplan, at least not for WFC taxes benefit. That said if we have paid it all back in the next accounts and offset the corporation tax then fair play and good spot. I'll have a £1 with anybody who wants it though that it will not be the case. I wonder if the Udinese accounts have a similar debt to us? They tend to make money on player sales more so than us and use our players while (given the increased debt) we seemingly pay them to do so, Ferreira etc...... Anybody got access to companieshouse.it? Maybe I'm being a bit cynical and an actual accountant could see through it?
We have huge brought forward losses to offset against any future profits. It is unlikely Watford will pay corporation tax for a decade at least. No tax planning required.
Well, if we keep up this track record of record-breaking championship club profits, we’ll be tax paying in no time
I would love to see some statistics on how many players that clubs buy are unsuccessful. No club gets it right every time. We may be worse than most but I have no idea. Some people seem better at spotting players than others but they don't stay at a club for ever. Over the years I have seen a number of duds at Watford. Equally I have seen duds that come good. The problem is that for any but the wealthiest clubs the cost of getting it wrong is much higher.
He potentially isn’t going to want to play in the Championship or worse after a season in Serie A is he?
