Protest

I'd suggest it would be about turning a well meaning wonderful family club into a seedy, shady, opaque, debt ridden club that has close ties to a person being investigated for money laundering. There may have been a few stops along the way (eg Mr Bassini), but I'm not sure why it would be hard for you to understand.

That said, Pozzo has turned my club into something I feel empty about so I can't be bothered to protest. I can barely motivate myself to go to games. Pozzo has already destroyed what I once loved.

You and you ilk are an enabler for which you should be eternally shamed.

 

don’t forget about the issuance of long term contracts to players that are ageing or just not good enough.

realistically I’m not into protesting but I would like clarity on why an individual is needlessly ******* money up a wall and creating a situation that could be devastating in the long term

but when I raise that concern many peoples response is “be careful what you wish for/punching above our weight/we got to a cup final” etc

all of that will be the dark distant past if we don’t stop wasting money as if we are a top half premier league club

 

“Seedy, shady, opaque…”… the exaggerated points you make above don’t upset me and most other fans in the way they seem to affect you. If you are going as far to say I “should be eternally shamed” for my views, I will go as far as to say you are a drama queen .

 

Maybe I am. But the end game will play out. 30 point deduction or administrators would be my bet if we don’t go up the next two years. You are an intelligent man. While I enjoy debating with you, your continual defence of Pozzo and poking fun at those who identify his poison I find very disappointing.

 

That’s the thing with cults though isn’t it, they tend to brainwash their members.

 

I’m not poking fun. I just genuinely don’t get why a few posters get so upset about the owners. I agree that finances look tight if we don’t go up. Not uncommon for many ex prem smaller clubs who have to cut costs so drastically. Bayat makes me nervous but many of his signings seem to work out. I wish we were a lovely warm cuddly club like we were under Elton/God but I think that was pretty unique and I doubt we will see it again.
Life has been pretty exciting under Pozzo, lots of ups and downs. Compare that to the 90s pre GT and then 2000-2011, vast periods of time where nothing good happened bar Aidy’s wonder-season. I’m very glad they bought us, and not just to save us from Baz.

 

Yep. 18k brainwashed fans will be there this week. Trance like. Except the 50 or so enlightened freedom fighters who will be protesting

 

Probably best to start with the vital signs of life - airway, breathing, circulation. That rules out the bulk of our home crowd.

 

Sorry, but how is TuT an enabler, and why should he be shamed? As far as I can see, you've both given money to the club this season (if TuT has attended a game), and you've both contributed the square root of zero in terms of a meaningful protest?

If we discount shouting into the wind on a forum and Twitter, surely you're both roughly the same level of enabling Pozzo's evil empire?

 

That's the thing, there is no consensus amongst the potential protesters based on what i've read on here.

Some protesters are bothered about the team position but others dont care about success and are happy as a mid championship team.

Some radicals want the club back that they think Pozzo stole from them although i think they lost that idealist notion of a club years ago and i blame Dave Bassett. some dont like the agent shenningans.

For others it seems to be about high moral principles and ethics. I personally find this the oddest rationale.

Finance concerns - this seems the most concerning but i dont understand it enough to really know what the exact level of danger is.

Others seem really angry that our fans clapped and waved flags at a cup final.

I reckon some agitators are simply in it for fun.

Others have bought into the w@nky mainstream largely ignorant media that we are a laughing stock due to manager turnover.

 

But we are a laughing stock. It’s not an invention of the media, it’s what people who don’t know much about our club think of when asking to define us. And being totally honest while I thought it was slightly uncalled for in the first few Pozzo years, it’s hit farcical levels since Gracia was binned.

 

Vast majority?

Of our last 18 signings, only 5 have been Bayat clients, or closely linked to him, from what I can see. May be one or two I've missed, is it just Louza, Kayembe, Dennis, Kalu, Bayo from the last 2 seasons?

 

The manager turnover was acceptable and worked when we changed them at the end of a season and the media criticism was then unfair, but is having 3/4 managers a season an invention of the w@nky mainstream largely ignorant media? Things like rehiring QSF and dragging a 74 year old fossil out of retirement to be our third manager of the season actually did happen.

 

It also worked when we sacked a manager after 2 games. And when we had 4 managers in a season and got promoted. And when we sacked Ivic despite being 5th.

All of the above could be fairly described as shambolic, laughable etc, but worked. Like it or not (tbh I'd prefer to see what a HC could do given 2/3+ years), that's the method. And much like transfers, some are hits and some are misses. Hodgson and QSF 2: Electric Boogaloo were undoubtedly huge misses.

 

Bayat was involved in the transfers of nine players to Vicarage Road between February 2021 and the end of January 2022. I question why we would do so much business with one agent (£12.2m in fees) and one who is currently under investigation in Belgium.

I’m guessing that his paw prints would be all over Baah, Sissoko, Okeye, Kamara, Dennis, Louza, Kalu, Kayembe and Samir in that time but that’s speculation

 

But you said one of your issues with it is: "we don’t have access to a wide pool of player, just those that the agent handles".

So I assumed you were only talking about players we signed, who Bayat actually handles? Are Baah, Samir and Kamara clients of Bayat? Wasn't sure about Sissoko and Okoye.

How much of the £12m was on Bayat clients?

Either way, certainly not the vast majority of our signings.

 

I think the vast majority of fans are, and have been for a while, concerned about the long term strategy of our owners.

the let’s take on a coach who has defensive values, then gets terminated for a coach who plays a more attacking formation..all the while recruiting a squad that doesn’t really suit either style. This adds to the mounting debt burden which we currently have on our books and I’m not sure I see the value in that debt

so for me I’d be asking for more transparency. What we actually got is a few podcast “celebrities” asking banal questions

 

Reread the paragraph. It was widely reported the number of Bayat signings in the time period above. It’s in the financial reports the level of fees Watford paid him. What I can’t find is who those 9 players were in that time period so speculated on their names.

 

The only non Bayat permenant transfers in this period were Pollock, Okoye and Asprilla. So yes vast majority

 

This post is spot on for me. Explains it all nicely

 

Sorry, I don't know what this table is referring to. Is every player next to Bayat's name, one of his clients? Or was he an intermediary? If the latter, then those players would still have been accessible to us without Bayat, no?

Besides, there are about 10 other names on that list where Bayat has seemingly had no involvement whatsoever?

 

ok I truly don’t see what you see. All of the transfers with his name against means he was involved and would have received a fee. Some of them would have been intermediaries but his name is still associated with the transfer. As I said there are only three names that Bayat had no involvement with. But you see what you want to see…

 

So Bayat got us Louza (best midfielder) , Kamara (best defender) & Dennis (our best attacker last season that we have just sold for a fortune to sit on the bench at Forrest)

Terrible agent

 

The high manager turnover is a fact. It irks me and I think we need more stability but is it enough to get really worked up about. The media obsessively focus on it because it gives them something to say whereas otherwise Watford aren't that interesting to them. None of them provided any insight into RE beyond that he was an articulate young likeable English manager. They never considered that our worse players were CBs so why was RE persisting in playing a formation that allowed 3 to play.

For me RE shouldn't have needed more time to see that 3 at the back was wrong and that there was no need to play players out of position. If he was missing the glaringly obvious and making tactical errors that's a big problem. Maybe he shouldn't have been appointed in the first place but that's not the media angle.

 

There's definitely something odd about the Bayat relationship and I get your desire for transparency and answers. But tobjectively if you add up what we paid on all those transfers versus value and fees received we probably have a net profit even with agent fees factored in.

 

Maybe I'm not putting across my point clearly, apologies if so.

What I'm saying is:

-You've said our use of Bayat limits our transfer options to players represented by him
-I've said the only players actually represented by him that we've signed permanently in the last couple of years are: Louza, Kayembe, Dennis, Kalu and perhaps one or two more I'm not aware of
-It's pretty clear we'd have access to transfers like Samir and Kucka, even without Bayat. Him being an intermediary makes no difference, in that sense.
-Whether we're wasting our money by using him as an intermediary in several transfers is a separate issue, and not the point I'm contesting

 

I give up conversing with you. You don’t listen even when presented with facts…

the facts are that the majority of our permanent transfers have involved Bayat. Proof is above

this limits our target pool.

How anybody can say that there is a net profit have better inside knowledge than me beating I. Mind the vast majority of transfers were non disclosed amounts

I have no idea on your logic about an intermediary. Why didn’t we buy the player direct from the agent then? What is the purpose of paying additional agent fees when including Bayat?

What is your view on our current financial position?

 

Exactly. So we hire and fire very quickly and geniuses like big ears get to laugh at us. Who really cares ? Which of our sacked managers should we have left in post longer than we did ? I’d suggest only Gracia ? Has it limited our potential recruitment pool ? Possibly a little but look at our last 6 or 7 appointments - Munoz is the only one with zero track record/CV and he was the biggest success. Worth protesting over ??

 

why wouldn’t you consider the overall profit or loss especially if concerned about the overall club finances? You keep talking about facts so why dismiss this? As Holmes said: “it is a capital offence my dear Watson, to theorise without all the facts”.

I guess the point about intermediary transfers is that although odd they don’t necessarily limit the target pool. If anything we probably have a wider target pool than many peer clubs due to our South American and Udinese connections.

I can get that you don’t like the agent angle cos it is odd and inexplicable but the vfm and limiting pool arguments are red herrings in my opinion

 

Can I just check that you genuinely think, if Mogi Bayat was in no way connected to the club, we'd have had no access to signing Samir? The Samir who plays for Udinese. The Udinese who is owned by our owner's dad.

If so, fair enough. You'd be wrong, obviously, but at least I'd understand where you've got the idea that Bayat's involvement limits our potential pool of new signings.

Do you not think it's more likely that:

-club identifies player (club identifies player, not Bayat)
-club approaches player/club
-club enters discussions with player/club, and (rightly or wrongly-not the current discussion) uses Bayat as an intermediary in negotiations

Now, you can certainly make the argument that Bayat isn't needed in the above process, and that he's getting more money out of the arrangement than he deserves. But the argument that his presence limits our pool to signings suggested by, or represented by him, doesn't hold water.

 

We got relegated on a record low points total for a Watford side in the PL, we got even less points than a side with Steve Kabba and Darius Henderson in it. ‘Best’ doesn’t really mean a lot does it? And we spent an eye watering amount on agent fees compared to other clubs to achieve that.

 

Sorry that was written in the early hours and spell check kicked in. I meant to say that I have no idea what the net profit or loss from Bayat transfers are, and I have no idea how anybody not connected with the club would know, as so many of them are undisclosed

my concern has, and always will be, the amount of wasted money from our owners poor business decisions..ones he seems to keep repeating. Long term player contracts, bizarre signings, head coach terminations etc. are all part of the reason why we were 170m+ in debt.

that debt, I guess, is sustainable with a return to the Prem. But three years in the Champ could see us heading the same way as Derby, Bolton and many many others

 

Having 7 different people manage the team across 2 different PL seasons, all of whom being wildly different styles of manager is nothing other than farcical and shows we are simply thrashing around in the dark without any clue about what we are doing.

How either of you can defend it and blame the media for not understanding it is just comical at this stage.