Rob Edwards Sacked

I actually can't believe it

 

Nah, this now goes beyond whether or not getting rid of Edwards and getting in Bilic is 'the right call'. Edwards didn't show anything in three months to suggest he was going to do anything more than try to copy pretty football off the telly with technically inferior players but the point of a football club is that it stands for something that we, as supporters, can identify with and believe in.

A sense of purpose, decency, honesty, communication are all values that should be associated with Watford Football Club. Yes, we can be grateful for improving the stadium, naming the stands, commissioning the statues but at a certain point it all just starts to look like cashing in on OUR history and heritage to cover THEIR backsides.

Imagine working for Pozzo and Duxbury. Poorly equipped, undermined, briefed against and then sacked.

Again, it's fine to be ruthless if it works and the product on the pitch is worth watching. It's fine to be ruthless if you stand for SOMETHING. But the past three years – a parade of disgruntled mercenaries, nobodies and has-beens strolling through the motions on the pitch in our colours – does not reflect WFC, it reflects precisely and brutally the paucity of talent, the ethos and values of the bosses – by whom I mean Pozzo and Duxbury.

Promotion with this shambolic lack of substance is worth about as much as an empty vase.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as saying 'Sack the Board'. There is not a board accountable to anyone, there's a fiefdom. Caeser in a bathrobe, naked underneath.

 

Bilic.

Meh.

Another knee jerk appointment of someone who was once decent somewhere.

 

Its the law of averages: appoint 5 random managers and one will do ok.

 

I would like this comment but I just feel likes are thrown around too easily these days, like confetti. When I was a lad, you had to work hard for a like, really put your heart and soul into it, do hard, backbreaking work for hours under a burning sun just to have a chance of getting a like but now likes seem to be dished out willy nilly. These Millenials act like there's an unlimited supply of likes that's never gonna run out. So entitled, they don't know they're born. My grandfather was a great man, fought in WW2 but in his whole life he never once got a like. It just doesn't seem right.

 

Gino was at the Udinese Inter game on Sept 18th. I wonder if all this was hatched then. The delay would have been caused by lining up Bilic.

 

I can try to help you see whats going to happen , go back a couple or three seasons observe how quality signings in defence have been rare , No decent defence means conceding lots of goals ,losing games ,firing head coaches rinse and repeat!
until this chain is broken we are stuck in groundhog day!

 

Pre season: amazing team spirit, refreshing new manager we will back to the hilt, new culture, lessons learned.

Winter is coming: manager is sh1t, some players unhappy, blameless hierarchy taking swift and decisive action. Manager who under performed without the players he needed is replaced by an out of work manager with a poor recent record/retired.

Spring cleaner: 2nd manager didn't match our ambition, some overpaid, underperforming players really hate him, we felt it was in everyone's interest to part company. New manager has a decent right back from the get go, gets us promoted and is then sacked.

Rinse and repeat.

 

Thats the thing I dont think in this instance that he was lying and even if he was just trying to pacify the fans, he was right in what he said. We cant keep going the way we have been, burning through managers with the squad continuing to deteriorate and the club evermore detached from the fan base.

Disastrous? Thats a stretch in fairness. I would like to know by what metric RE's 10 game reign could be classed as disastrous? We were 1 point off the playoffs and 6 off 2nd spot with 36 games to play including 2 against the team in 2nd. Its not like we were trying to chase down Liverpool or City.

We got to the point of Duxberry choosing the manager because the guy who picked the last 7 or 8 proved himself repeatedly to be totally incompetent at it

 

The football was awful. We were outplayed in all but one game. Yes,outplayed.
Edwards wasn't help by a terrible defence and no strikers. We have 4/5 players that are decent, but the rest are not good enough for the Championship
We looked mediocre at best and promotion was a out of the question.
I also think Gino has had a major telling off from his Father.
We may never find out what went on between that turd DoF, Edwards and Gino. Something has been said and it is Gino that owns the club.
Fans will not demonstrate, we are too soft for that and still in love with our rise from the lower divisions. There will be very faint booing and that will be it. Nothing more.
It is painful to see the club viewed so poorly, but many media outlets and fans are right. This one really stinks, even though the football was very poor, you throw in the reappointment of that useless DoF and you have a dog sh*t of a club.
Bilic, in my opinion, will not do much. Onto the next manager l guess.

 

Yep, just one week's notice. Smart pozzo business men

For about 8 months.....

 

I have to say that the Watford fans are fickle though. Pozzo knows this. 2 wins in Billic's first 4 games and they'll all be singing 'here's to you Pozzo family again.' Until we lose 3 on the spin, fail in the playoffs and the anger resurfaces again for a week or so.

 

So there are two sides to this situation, both have the same background of a terrible season last year, spin and waffle of a new era in the summer and the usual Bayat rubbish coming through the doors.

One is that people are angry that Edwards was not given time and was not backed properly in the transfer market and undermined by Giaretta.

The other is that Edwards was not up to it and what on earth were the club doing by appointing him in the first place.

Whichever you subscribe to, it has managed to unite the fan base in disgust and anger.

 

Which means we need a competent CEO and a competent DoF. Right now we have neither.

I called Rob's appointment disastrous cos he lasted 11 games, we played sh1t football and scored and conceeded the same number of goals against lower league opposition. Thats why I view his appointment as a disaster. We picked a type of manager instead of a manager who could get the job done.

Regarding the pathway from the academy to the 1st team, Scott said he wanted every young person in watford to believe they had a chance of playing in the 1st team, it was utter horsesh1t bordering on the hallucinogenic. He also said before last season we'd sign young hungry players and then he signed Rose, Kucka, Tufan, King, Kalu etc you couldnt make this sh1t up. At best the guy is a habitual liar. At best......

 

I don’t like Duxbury. Everyone knows this. And I won’t defend him for what he’s done over the years. His downfall has been a long time coming IMO - but Gino is the ultimate problem in all this.

Duxbury wasn’t the one who signed Rose, Kucka, Tufan, King or Kalu. Very little of the recruitment goes through him.

There’s a reason when we sign these players, they all say ‘I travelled down, spoke to the owner…’ etc etc.

It’s easier to be angry at people when you apportion their mistakes and faults correctly.

 

Exactly. Duxberry is just the pus. Gino is the abcess.

 

‘Twas ever thus. We’d like to think that the anger at the club right now is nothing to do with what happens on the pitch, but in truth it’s EVERYTHING to do with what happens on the pitch.

 

I get it though. It's death by a thousand cuts:

First we let the tens of mercenary loans/ swaps go, because they're likable players and we enjoy our Saturday routine.
Then we let the constant sacking and terrible hiring go, because our shape doesn't look good and we know we can play better.
Then we let forged bank letters and clear dodgyness go, because the club have redeveloped the East Stand.
Now we're letting some weird link with an agent who has links to money laundering go, despite paying him millions to not fill the gaps in our squad, as a few players are decent.

If you've accepted all of the above, why wouldn't you just accept the lying and further dismantling of our club and its reputation? Also see Brexit: everyone made their bed ages ago, and will lie in it, despite every metric showing a clear path to financial and reputational decline.

It's brave to make changes, but it is far braver to admit that you were wrong. What the Pozzos, their hires and their business links are doing is wrong, and even though we are just trying to support our club, we are, and have been wrong to subsidise it.

 

Gracia could use this oon his CV, frame a copy and hang up on his wall. 66 games! What an achievement!

 

The writing seemed on the wall somehow when Xisco appeared at the Blackburn game and that was on September 13th.

Maybe Xisco was already being lined up as one possible replacement, or he'd been asked for his opinion on how Edwards had got the team playing? Clearly part of the delay was in getting the replacement sorted prior to making the sacking, regardless of whether Xisco or Bilic was the preferred option.

Either way from that point it seemingly would have required more of an upturn in results than he managed for Edwards to hold on.

 

I appreciate it's huge. Grab a coffee, sit down, and take all the time you need to come to terms.

 

I'm neither angry nor disgusted; no need to be so melodramatic.

 

Spaniards seem to do better than most in the Pozzo madhouse

 

If u include Dyche, the average life expectancy for an English manager under the Pozzos is less than 13 games!!!!!

 

7/10 but not quite good enough for a like.

 

Why do you have to subscribe to either and not both? I and many others are hugely critical of the owners and their constant BS whilst also recognising that things weren't working on the pitch.

 

King had an "OK" game at Everton too

 

Ivic....22 games ? Really ?

 

Xisco has been lined up as the Bilic replacement. "Failing to plan is planning to fail".

 

You can certainly subscribe to both.