"After initiating talks with several left sided centre backs, including Matt Clarke and Kortney Hause, Watford have decided against adding to their defence. It is thought the club have been impressed with the performances of Craig Cathcart and feel William Troost-Ekong is sufficient backup for that position in the team." - Adam Leventhal, 31st August 2022
"A loan deal for Clarke with an option to buy next summer initially looked all set to be done. The player had even completed his medical and reportedly met the squad at London Colney but then his representatives made a series of late demands that were unacceptable to the Watford hierarchy. The Athletic understands this included a request from Clarke himself not to have his agent, a childhood friend, cut out of the deal in favour of Mogi Bayat..."
I genuinely think we won't sign a left sided centre back. Edwards foolishly won his first game showing Pozzo that we can win games without one, so that'll be case closed in his eyes. He can get out of spending money on a centre back again.
I've heard we have cooled on this after our recruitment team began to do due diligence on the player's character.
Person A: Deeney, Rose and Tufan are fat Person B: Rose is literally fat Person A: Tufan is also literally fat Person C: Deeney is also literally fat Person A: That’s what I said Person C: Got ya! Er, what?
Weirdly I just bumped into Matt Clarke in the Moon Under Water having a relaxing, cool 10am pint. I noted that he was clutching a piece of paper but couldn't make out much that was written on it except the words 'loan with an option to buy' as well as a signature. I approached him and asked if he had just signed for Watford and cryptically he responded that 'he had in fact just signed for West Brom on loan with an option to buy' and that 'he was merely in Watford because Moons is his favourite pub in the country'. Make of that what you will, but I feel none the wiser.
I think we far too often assume that because a player is a good, is massively needed, homegrown and basically an obvious good buy to anyone with half a brain, that the people in charge of our recruitment can’t fail to be thinking the same thing. 99% of the time they won’t be, because he doesn’t play in Belgium.
I'm reluctant to, because the old jokes will resurface but...my source was the podcast Second Tier. They don't say what their source was.
I love how it describes a number of clubs as being "on alert" for Clarke, like pilots on a US Air Force base in West Germany at the height of the Cold War.
I always have a vision that when a club is described has having ‘joined the chase’, the player concerned is literally on the run, with officials of those clubs in hot pursuit.
Scenes when some nerd on here spots him driving up to the Hawthorns only to end up sitting in the home end
