Ranieri has said he will be out until March/April. Maybe not worth a place in the squad given the number of games he’ll miss.
He needed an operation for whatever muscle injury he got. So presumably it’s not worked and needs to be repeated?
We'll probably keep him here so he can get treatment still. We'll be stuck with Nkoulou and Rose wasting thousands of pounds a week despite not being in our 25 man squad.
Time to cut our losses and release him if we can, it's a shame he is yet another of the many injury prone players we seem to collect. I'm beginning to wonder if this suck it and see policy of signing players with some sort of baggage that the Pozzo's seem to operate is a good idea? Having said that, it has brought us a fair few decent players I suppose, Dennis being the latest?
Only reason we can’t compete though is because we are smaller than some championship teams. It’s not because Pozzo constantly makes bad decisions and flushes money down the toilet.
Indeed. Pozzo should only buy the cheap punts that are guaranteed to be a success, avoid signing players he knows will get season ending injuries after a couple of games, and then just supplement that with 2 or 3 CDs at £10m a pop. Simple really. Given bank notes are now largely plastic, flushing them is also foolish and to be discouraged.
Well here are some ideas to start with (which seem obvious): 1) don’t waste signing on fee plus wages on Fletcher, a player who has struggled to make an impact in the championship. 2) sign the free agent in the summer, give him a pre season to reduce likelihood of serious injury 3) don’t spent £9m on a prospect midfielder from your agent mate who rarely plays 4) don’t give Kabasele and Cathcart daft contract extensions. I won’t put the vast amount of cash wasted on Rose in there because that probably falls within the acceptable remit of a punt which just didn’t come off.
1/I’m sure Fletch cost relatively little and didn’t prevent other signings. He may be a key player next season. 2/ maybe the free agent wouldn’t come in the summer as he was hoping to join another team ? He seems a quality player to have been available as a free agent as many noted on here before we signed him. 3/ maybe he was seen as a key first team player and the assessment was flawed ? 4/ not sure who we would be playing in CD at present without Cathcart ? Should they have foreseen just how injury prone Kabs would have become after signing the contract ? I don’t know. I think the idea of using experienced guys on the books as back up and replacing them over time with new first teamers isn’t a bad model. As we know Gino tends not to spend on defenders preferring to invest in midfielders and forwards. When he last invested in a CD with a good track record he couldn’t displace existing defenders. A poor position to be in wrt to the defence but I can see why they thought the forwards and midfield replacements were the priority in the summer given how well the defence had performed last season. You can’t replace 10 of the 11 with a limited budget.
The priority probably should have been defenders I guess but then you also had to replace Deeney and Gray up front. Sometimes easy to say in hindsight they could have done this and that however. Was surprised we spent so much on one player though.
1) He's a free agent striker signing for a premier league club, so it's still going to be £20k per week + signing on fee. 5 year contract. So about £6m over the deal. Considering you always tell us how potless we are (I agree), it would seem sensible not to waste that money. If Fletcher is a key player next season we may as well give up on future premier league aspirations (which might be what happens under Pozzo to be fair given the volume of waste). 2) Perhaps. An equally possible scenario is Pozzo wanted to penny pinch on the defence and only acted when he had no choice after early performances. Who knows. You'll give Pozzo the benefit of the doubt and I won't of course. 3) Yes possibly. If Mogi Bayat wasn't involved I'd be more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. My personal view is that Louza might be good in time and even turn a profit but it was a disastrous prioritisation of funds this summer given the issues elsewhere. 4) I don't have an issue with phasing out the older players. What I have a massive problem with is the length of the extensions. Cathcart still had 2 years to go when they tied him up till the end of 2023 season. Kabasele was 29 years old and not pulling up trees when we bizarrely decided to tie him down until he was 33 years old. It's utter madness and reduces our flexibility. Make players earn their extensions by giving shorter deals. If someone steps in and takes a 30 year old Kabasele or a 32 year old Cathcart because they are on short deals, then frankly who cares. Just find an equally poor, old replacement.
5) Buy the Dutch GK in the summer of 2021 when you could have had him immediately for just over €1m rather than buying him for €6m and not getting him for another 6 months.
Your answer here to point 1 is a massive, massive reach to justify it. And I think you’re probably aware of that.
So why do you think they signed him ? "Because they're ****ing idiots" or "Because they just wanted to annoy the forum" are not valid answers . Ps I thought you were working in the US now - is it midnight or are you back ?
I genuinely think they felt they needed numbers up front if they let Deeney and Gray leave - and they wanted someone who they could put into cup games so they could rest/not risk injury to our key attackers. I don’t believe they think he’s ever going to be a ‘key player’ and I certainly don’t think they were making a signing in the summer of 2021 with the idea of him playing in the Championship for us in 2022/2023. It’s just not a signing any other PL club would make. We are back for January - we came back as a family for Xmas and NY so our parents could spend it with the grandchildren and it’s also my brothers wedding in a few weeks so just having an extended trip back really.
I imagine thought process was they had a passing interest historically and he was now free so they might be able to spin a small profit on him. Usual redirection of our meagre funds at the detriment of our first team.
I think there are many arguments/discussions on the merits of every player we sign. Louza, Tufan, Kucka etc but Fletcher just makes no sense whatsoever. I just cannot work out how we decided to sign him. I would rather of played an under 23 player. I'm pro Pozzo but the lack of defenders in the summer and Fletcher does make me wonder what the thought process is
With Fletcher I firmly think he was signed as an insurance if we get relegated. A solid Championship striker for free. Probably makes sense. It's not impossible to think we may improve him, and if not, he can be loaned to Championship clubs to make some money. The Pozzo's do a lot of these freebie transfers to loan these players out. It's just another way to make some regular income.
I'm sure the first sentence is probably correct but doubt it somehow meant we couldn't afford to add a defender.
We are going to pay millions to Fletcher over his 5 year deal. The idea that loan fees for a player of his standard cover that is very far fetched.
Well unless the player is on amazing salary, the club you loan to often pick up the entire wage and pay a loan fee into the bargain. Can't see why that's so far fetched at all and it must work as this is what the Pozzo's do all the time. If this didn't make sense and was a loss leader the Pozzo's would have gone bust years ago.
The clubs we lend do really don’t “often” pay a loan fee. Our accounts for 2020 had total loan fees and other income of 254k. It’s buttons. Even on 15k per week and I think it will be more we will be paying Fletcher 800k per year and he we have committed to 5 years with him. The 6 months of pay he has had so far has already almost doubled total loan fee income from 2020.
I'd be happy having those buttons in my bank account. If we loan a player out, we do not pay the salary and we get a fee of some description. I see why they do it. The problem is when you sign a player who is not good enough for the first team, but no one else wants even on loan, as in the case of Rose and Tufan. Fletcher I have no issue with why the club signed him.
Again we don’t get a fee in many cases. And Fletcher’s wages so far this year are already more than 2020 total loan fee income. May as well agree to disagree as you will just reply with “we will get a loan fee”.
Fletcher has never been an important player for any clubs he’s ever played at. He’s barely scored any goals even at Championship level. It’s the same as a player like Rose, the club thinking that out of all clubs, they can somehow wave a magic wand turn a player into something they aren’t. It’s generally managers that bring the best out of players (if it’s even there to start with) but most Watford players will go through at least 5/6 managers during the course of their time with us, so it’s a bizarre view that we can somehow magically turn these duds around, where other far more stable clubs have failed.
I'm saying more in general about why the Pozzo's do this. They sign a lot of players and loan a hell of a lot out. They love owning players and will make money on moving them around. If they didn't, as I said before, they'd have gone bust years ago.
This literally makes no sense, and is one of the worst comebacks I've ever seen someone attempt. Genuinely, you are abysmal at arguing/retorts, but you regularly act as though you are one of the Algonquin Round Table. It's baffling.
