It does massively. Fans don’t generally get excited for signing of youth players no because 90% of them will never play for the first team. This lad is highly rated and considered ready for first team football, so it’s a huge difference
His point is that only a tiny fraction of our fans excited about him will have seen him play, so it's just blind hope irrespective of what coaches think of his prospects. The fact we are so impoverished that we are putting him straight into the first team squad probably makes it worse and just shows how far we have fallen.
I don’t think anyone can argue or disagree how far we’ve fallen. However at some point people are just gonna have to accept it and if you can’t get happy or excited over anything that might be a positive then that’s your perogative. am I happy about where we are? No but am I just going to moan and whine at every signing we make? No accept it, move on, doesn’t meant you have to be happy about the position of the club
Let’s be honest though, most Watford fans will only watch Watford, England (in major tournaments) and Premier League highlights on Match of the Day. If we only got excited about signing players we watched, the summers would be very boring.
Nothing to get particularly excited about, absolutely no track record in senior football so it's a massive punt. Could be brilliant, could just be another "highly rated" youth player that we've beaten off all sorts of competition to sign who turns out to stink the place out. It's a "shrug the shoulders and wait and see" type signing.
He’s just turned 19, relax. Some people on here need to go crack one out or visit a brothel or something lol cheer up
Yep agreed. Was jesting. Will presumably get chances to play with us and develop which has to be the way forward. Good idea re. the brothel though
There's a bit of a glass ceiling for youngsters at Celtic at the moment, so the 5th tier (which considering, not unlike England, the lack of financial regulation at that level is probably pretty similar to the 4th tier) is as high as he can go without being loaned out. I don't know if he'll be expected to challenge for a first team spot immediately, but I don't see any reason he can't make the step up
With @Goldenorn and @Burnsy being very ITK. ITK Tim and Ming need the seriously up their game. I suspect Moog has forgotten the passwords for those accounts.
He will definitely be in and around the first team but realistically I think the 2 spots he would be looking to play in will be filled by Chak and Asprilla. More often than not we’ll probably see him off the bench especially for the first half of the season or so.
So on the one hand you're criticising those excited about him (while never having seen him play) as exhibiting "blind hope". Yet on the other hand you're so dismissive of him (while also presumably never having seen him play) that you consider bringing him in to the first team squad must be a demonstration of how "impoverished" we are and "how far we have fallen". That must therefore be filed under "blind pessimism", based on your own supposed logic.
We are signing a good young prospect. I think for once, that's what should be discussed here. It's not really a thread about a player (perhaps like Bond, Sissoko threads could be) where both sides of the coin need to start talking about Pozzo etc etc. Can we not just be excited that a good young prospect is joining Watford? Could come to nothing, could be worth £50m in the future. But it's more exciting that a lot of deals we have done over the last few years.
Another thing is that there are reasons to get excited about him even without having seen him play - for instance that Celtic wanted to keep him and their fans are bitter about him leaving, and that we beat a pretty well run Serie A club in Bologna to sign him. But beyond that - there are clips of him playing online where people can still see a bit of what he's like as a player (and I think he looks a promising player in them).
Odd interpretation of what I said. Who said I’m morning about Vata? 250k sounds like a no brainer. The point being made was simply that nobody had seen him play to justify the excitement around the signing! Guess I’ll just let people justify their own posts from now on.
Just because it doesn’t get you excited doesn’t mean others won’t be excited about it. I think people have given valid reasons to get excited, what would be your reasons to say he’s not worth be excited over out of interest?
Really? I was told I wasn’t serious about football for not knowing Healy was dynamite from watching French second division!!!
Punt. Highly rated youth player. Could be dynamite. Probably won’t be but worth taking a chance. Doesn’t change my opinion about next season prospects one iota. Shrug.
I'm excited about signing a highly rated youth player. It's probably the main type of signing I can get excited about as we're unlikely to sign a really great established pro these days. Potential is exciting imo.
Think my scepticism comes from our highly rated teenage punts (especially attackers) from youth/lesser leagues all being invariably crap in the past. All of the following were given the "highly rated" tag and look where they're playing now... Ryan Cassidy - Tolka Rovers, 3rd tier Ireland Djibril Fandje Toure - MFK Vyskov, Czech 2nd tier Filip Stuparevic - Motherwell(!) via 3rd tier Serbia, 2nd tier UAE, Slovenian top tier Aly Malle - Romanian top tier Tiago Cukur - Umraniyespor, Turkish 2nd tier That's not to say I'm writing off Vata, just think people get sucked in a bit by youngsters with no real senior experience being touted as hot prospects. Would like nothing more than for this post to be dredged up in three years time when we sell him for a fortune!
I did. You literally posted: "The fact we are so impoverished that we are putting him straight into the first team squad probably makes it worse and just shows how far we have fallen" Or is Jumbo the latest thin-skinned bedwetter to add me to their ignore list?! Lol.
Were they really though? The circumstances with the signing of all those players aside from Cukur was still quite a bit different from this one - they were all signed from complete no-mark nowheresville clubs except for Cukur coming from AZ. Even then did we nick him from AZ or did they let him go? And despite him never having played for us and signing on a free we still managed to sell him for €250k rising to €1,5mil (which it likely didn't reach, mind), so it wasn't a huge failure. You better bet I've made a mental note of this comment!
You’re probably safe and he will quietly be released. By then that odd mildly dangerous character that quotes everyone will have other stuff to trawl through in his spare time.
What about Pedro, Richarlison, Asprilla, Estupinian? It's inevitable that loads of these highly rated youths will fall into mediocrity but we only need one or two to succeed and its all worth it. The more highly rated youths we get the more likely we are to get a good one. I'm not sure we've done that badly.
Richarlison and Pedro sold for roughly £85M. Yes they were seasons apart but it was still great business and a good return on two (well ok one) player who was playing at a level below his ability and he didn't mind. Pedro was a slow starter but once he was in the side he was fantastic and produced moments of magic. Asprilla is not quite on his level but he has the ability to be. I really hope we can continue to keep hold of him because even if he does move away next Summer, one more year at this level will do him the world of good. I never really missed Richarlison when he left, he was good at first but it was clear his "ego" was bigger than the club and the 45/50 million we got for him was worth it. If we can continue to encourage good young prospects into the club and they get results, it opens the door for many more to choose us in the future. Sure, it's very unlikely any will stay full time or get extensions, but it will move us forward as a club as well, and considering we have been trending backwards for the past five years, this is a sign of a welcome change.
Pedro and Richardson don't fall into the same punt category, we spent big money on them and they were already scoring goals in Brazil's top flight for one of its top teams. Spent a few million on Asprilla too I believe and he was already playing senior football in the Colombian league. They're a completely different type of signing to Vata. Estupinan was cheaper but had still played 40 games in the Ecuadorian top flight and was signed by Udinese anyway before his registration was transferred to us.
Sadly I fear most Watford players might be punts these days. It's not like the halcyon days of old when we were a true community club and the players really cared. Most footballers are punts these days, I mean look at that Ronaldo chappy, now he's a massive punt if ever I saw one.
This is where we are now as a club and personally I’d much rather we were out there taking punts on players like this than not bothering . If we keep doing that then some of them will work out .
I write this with no knowledge of the player other than what I’ve seen online, but I’m impressed by his highlights reel and the comments from Celtic supporters, and the opinions of other people who think it’s a bit of a coup. So I’m pleased he’s seemingly chosen to come to us. I think an important factor to consider in the ongoing debate about us signing prospects is this…are they joining an environment that will encourage them to grow and develop? I don’t think this has always been the case, what with our constant changes of coach and revolving door transfer policy. You can’t imagine at times in the past that many young players have chosen us and found the club to provide the most stable and sensible environment. However, I’d like to think that won’t be the case this year. With TC having a background of working with our younger players, I really hope things will be a lot calmer and settled off the pitch, that youth gets a fair chance, and younger players such as Vata will find Watford an environment in which they are encouraged, supported and will therefore flourish. If that’s the case, this could turn out to be a very decent signing. Looking forward to seeing him grow with us. Give him some time, some patience and some encouragement and let’s see!
Yeah I think it's possible to believe he's both a perfectly good signing, probably reflective of the level we're now at, while also wondering why some (or here or more likely elsewhere) seem to be getting quite so excited / hyped up. But then I don't find a lot about modern football as exciting as I did, say, 10 years ago, so maybe it's just me
I’m quite happy with this signing if it comes off, mainly because it’s a small fee on young potential. For a squad player it’s not a big outlay - don’t get me wrong, it’s not Scott Fitzgerald cheap (he came from Northwood Town, he only cost a pound) but much rather this than laying out big bucks on the likes of Kalu and then trying to recoup your costs with no performances to justify the fee!
