[SOLD] Nathaniel Chalobah

Nah, he just had a bad attitude.

 

Anya hasn't even looked like a professional footballer anywhere else. (Bar scoring against Germany lol)

 

Its the watford scotland conundrum. And why we should be looking to East Fife for our next forward.

 

I did not renew my annual subscription for the same reason. I think that he used to have a contact inside Watford (possibly Mariappa as someone on this forum suggested), who left the club at the end of last season. His knowledge now appears to come only from other journalists and internet sources - except when the club chose to pass on information.

It also annoyed me that I asked two or three simple questions (that received a number of likes), which Adam Leventhal said that he would investigate. I reminded him about the unanswered questions after several weeks: he told me not to fret and that he was still looking into them. He never did answer the questions.

 

That period where he was Scotland's best hope was bizarre, his career has just fizzled out. Without a club and now 33. Could do a job?

 

Right now it would just be nice if Gino and Scott could come out and be brutally honest about everything. There has to be a reason as to why look willing to get rid of Chalobah and replace him with a cheaper option. Must be having some sort of financial difficulties?

 

The journalists at The Athletic are all quite pally I think and often team up on pieces (see Leventhal/Andy Naylor...who does their Brighton coverage, doing a bit on Murray etc) - given each of these journo's have a foot inside the camp of the respective clubs they report on, could it be when Leventhal joined The Athletic that Watford rowed back on how much info they furnish him with, knowing it could be shared around with other journalists?

For instance, Watford probably didn't want anyone to know we enquired about Vydra - hence why Leventhal didn't get the info. But the Burnley journo did get it from his end, Leventhal was alerted to it and then. it was put out there....

OR - much more likely, he never really had much clue anyway and the fact the club have have increasingly shown they have no cohesive plan to work to, there's little info to follow....

 

Yes but not as a footballer. What Abdi doing these days?

 

Any hint of financial trouble made public would drive down any future transfer fee.

 

I suspect the reason for not doing so is that, if the full depth of the financial **** we are now in was revealed, not a single footballer anywhere would touch us with a ten foot barge pole. Even the really, really crap ones. And the ones we currently have would be queuing at the exit door to get out.

 

Have we considered that the last 5 years may be down to complete luck?

 

I mean, it's genuinely not completely out of the question, is it?

We were promoted because they chucked us a load of players from their other clubs that they didn't fancy over there and potentially by luck it came together and got us up, and as much as I can't stand him now a big part of our rise was Deeney who was already at the club before they came along.

The incompetence of the last few years once we couldn't rely on funnelling players in from Udinese to do the job is starting to tell me that there quite definitely could be an element of "fluke" to it all. The decisions Pozzo is making now are so baffling and so poor you have to question how could he have ever really know exactly what he was doing?

 

I honestly think it was mainly (or completely even) down to Papa Pozzo stepping back & letting his useless son run the show. Despite what our recent U23 recruitment policy might suggest, sons are not always as talented as their fathers

 

Exhibit A: £18m for Gray at £70,000 a week.

 

Well this is boring, has he gone yet?

 

And the bad thing is Udinese have since declined. When we don’t go up we’ll be progressively more and more ****ed financially each season, so shedding our better players but unable to replace them with equal or better ones from Udinese. Think of the quality of player that Udinese could actually spare us when the Pozzos took over and could still remain competitive themselves. Now they’re struggling to survive and that’s with us sending our better players across to them.

It’s really difficult to see a way where this ends well from here.

 

I suspect you're spot on.

 

It'll be so much worse too because of our attitude towards head coaches. The only way to rebuild without quality players is to get a coach that can bring in a style of play where the team is better than the sum of its parts and can integrate younger players.

But we won't give anyone any time so we'll just keep sacking them and trying a different type of coach with no attempt to introduce a Watford style of play. We won't be able to bring in continental punts as players or coaches either as they won't get work permits. And our reputation in England will go before us.

Which really makes this season **** or bust and we clearly don't even have the financial wiggle room to gamble.

 

Oh come on J.B it's not the clubs fault that Chalobah is slow and cant pass a ball with accuracy anymore than 5 yards, makes sense now. Dawson is having a purple patch for a well organised team I will give him that but there is no excuse for some of his defe doing last season. The club rightly has many critics but players being **** has to be down to the player Gino isn't out there kicking the ball for them.

 

Yeah exactly how I see it I have met many a blaggard and con artist in my time and Leventhal is definitely one. Stealing a living.

 

So ****, he's wanted by a top PL team.

 

Okay so Chalobah has been good this season? Let's be realistic he hasn't and the Leicester rumour is bemusing to everyone.

 

The club are at fault for creating an environment where players are allowed to drift and do the bare minimum, knowing that it's the head coach who will get the blame for it. This along with the constant churn of head coaches severely impacts the development of young players at a crucial period in the career where they need stability and consistency. Just look at Hughes and Success for other examples.

You say that Dawson is performing better in a well-organised set up as if that isn't a damning indictment of the club he has come from?

 

That's a fair point to be fair although I still feel that players need to take ownership for being poor they are professional footballers at the end of the day. To be honest the verdict is still out on Dawson in my eyes he could still prove me wrong. I think Chalobah is just not the player he was after his injuries and never will be no matter who he plays for.

 

You are kidding? I get why people are upset at the moment but that's just ridiculous. Since the Cup final I can get as they have done things poorly but 5 years in the PL, a semi final and a cup final is not to be sniffed at. Only beaten in our history by the GT years unless you want to call that luck as well.
So in answer to your opening question, yes it is

 

So now we’re most likely stuck with a player who will be gutted from missing out on a great move and wasn’t having that good a season to begin with

 

I know that Gino makes the decision but who should we have kept in the last 8 years that they have sacked? As fans we are always wanting a change. As soon as the manager has a bad run you hear all the normal things like "he's got to go" or "he's lost the dressing room". It's the same at every club. It sounds like I love what they are doing and believe me I don't but had we kept Gracia and gone down what do you think the fans would have said? We waited too long to sell Doucoure so what had we sold him in the summer of 2019 and gone down. I can't honestly explain the last 18 months but I do feel like it's a no win situation

 

SSN Leicester correspondent has just said Chalobah to Leicester isn’t happening and was never close...

‘Watford blocked the move at every turn’ were his exact words. So maybe it wasn’t as close as others made out?

 

SSN are never close to right about us.

 

We should've kept Jokanovic, Gracia, Pearson and Ivic in my opinion. I didn't want any of those removed, didn't join any clamour for them to be let go.

 

I fully believe if we kept Jokanovic we wouldn't have stayed up, for that time Flores was the right choice. We wouldn't have made the play offs with Ivic in my opinion he was clearly the wrong manager for us. The other two I agree with, although I am not convinced that sacking Javi was a bad choice we were terrible it was more the appointment of Flores that made that look like a poor decision.

 

For those saying Chalobah is *****, these are his numbers this season - the bar in the middle of each bar is the average number for his position in the Championship, so we can see that defensively he's very very decent, really high amount of interceptions and tackles. However he really doesn't like contributing to attack and commits a lottttttt of fouls, but as long as you have other midfielders in the team who do move the ball forwards he's a defensive monster.

 

I'd go at this slightly differently. I'd say that the club need to define the style that they want to play. This should come from the Sporting/Technical Director and cascade through the organisation. Managers and staff need to be hired who believe in that style, to teach and reinforce it, buy players that look like they will fit into it, etc.. While it's certainly desirable to keep managers longer than we do, each change of manager shouldn't obsolete half the player pool. If along the way, the club buys a few young, inexpensive players who don't necessarily fit in order to loan them, then sell them... fair enough. We will always need some cash from player sales in order to compensate for the small revenue from other areas.