I would imagine so. The bar is so low that its impossible for him to be a worse option off the bench than big Ken
At least the club have finally realised that even if you're absolute shyt like us you can still scare teams with pace.
Not to jump to massive conclusions but he looks like Saint Maximin before he put a bit of consistency and final product into his game. Basically can go one of two ways with those attributes - ASM or Isaac Success.
Why, thanks! I was of course, being entirely serious when I said that watching one minute of a YouTube highlights video was enough to judge a player.
Seems like this one might be another Mogi special. (The linked tweet is a tweet from an angry Bordeaux fan implicating Mogi in Kalu’s move to Bordeaux). https://twitter.com/themarinearrow/status/1483550811707879428?s=21 Personally while I find Bayat an unsavoury figure, and is rather we used data than dodgy agents, his transfers have actually been more hit than miss (either from a footballing or financial perspective): Dennis, Lukebakio, Louza, Sarr (Bayat is on record saying he was involved in that one) - not just Oulare and Kums.
Chim chimeney chim chimeney chim chim charoo Who needs a functioning defencwe, midfield or goalkeeper when we've got Samuel Kalu
He has a hand in a significant number of deals - basically anything coming out of Belgium. My problem (setting aside the criminality) isn't necessarily that he sends us duds. It is that our transfer policy seems to be heavily dictated by him. Did we really need a £4m winger more than a defensive midfielder or centre back? Was Louza really the midfielder we needed? If we had bought what we wanted rather than what suited Mogi would we be in a better position as a club?
Much of that is fair. Obviously the club shouldn’t alter its priorities to suit Mogi but the club has always under-invested in the defence, it’s not clear that that underinvestment over the last couple of years is a function of their relationship with Mogi as opposed to a general view that investment in the defence is less worthwhile for some unknown reason to which only they are privy. Nevertheless, having a preferential relationship with an agent might work well until it doesn’t. You get access to some players you might not otherwise but at a certain point the rubber will hit the road and I hope the club gets that. Look at United and Raiola or Wolves and Mendes or Nantes and Mogi of course. Fair. Although he is pretty popular on here and it’s certainly not clear he is or will be a miss either. I think he’ll end up closer to Dennis/Sarr/Lukebakio than Oulare or Kums but yes that is still TBC.
I'm no fan of Bayat but I'd argue that we definitely need an upgrade on Sema and someone to compete with the other forwards. King, Sarr, Cucho and JP all blow hot and cold and even Dennis is dropping off a bit now. There's nothing to say this signing will stop us signing players in other positions either. I'm sure a lot of us thought we didn't have any money to spend and yet we've agreed deals totalling well over 10 million and rumoured to have bid another 7 million for Phillips. Who knows how much more the club are willing to spend!
We seem to be willing to spend whatever Mogi asks us to. I'm not saying an additional forward would not improve us. However I think that 4m spent in just about every other position on the field would improve us more. We have the best forward line of the bottom 4 clubs by some distance. Our midfield and defence however have Kucka, Cathcart, Masina, Kiko etc featuring on a regular basis
Unlike Maximin or Success, he can drop back to help defensively, as a result he has sometimes been played as a wingback. Sent from my TECNO P701 using Tapatalk
Maybe we have offers in but waiting for players and clubs to choose which suitor to join ? The buying club can’t dictate the timing of the move if other clubs are interested. There are only a few positions left not upgraded since promotion.
So basically he’s really crap then? As ASM is about as consistent as an IBS sufferers bowel movements.
And here you have it. The whole Pozzo problem. We don't have a first choice RB or GK or any DMF and we don't have 2 first team quality center backs, but we are out here picking up a 3rd or 4th choice competition for a wing position because he's been bought for Pozzo Player Trading Inc. Not Watford FC. As long as Gino is our owner, team success is incidental. A byproduct of the player trading business, rather than by design.
According to Athletic the first batch were cheaper than reported so don’t think we have spent over £10m yet unless Athletic are being economical over future instalments.
Let’s see. People regularly use this argument about centre backs and then scuttle off silently when Pozzo doesn’t invest in the position yet again. Seems to happen every transfer window. Let’s hope this time is different.
Year on year always seems to be the centre backs for which we have offers waiting in an orderly queue that then fall through. The wingers just seem to fly through the door! Coincidence of course
But we also just made a load of money out of Papa Gueye, I assume when you take off all the legal fees it’s a big fat profit. We seemingly work with only one agent now because all the rest hate us. We might not have the players necessary to stay up, but Marseille being banned from the transfer for a few years (currently under an appeal), that’s a massive success. If you come for the king, you’d best not miss. Gino Pozzo has done it again!
If we're left with Samir, Sierralta, Cathcart, Ekong and Kabasele as our fit CBs, then yeah I'll be annoyed. Same as every other year where we've completely ignored our inept defence. But based on a positive window so far, I'm happy to give them the next couple of weeks to attempt to fix the problem.
But his transfer fee presumably went towards future signings like JP, Sarr (I know, I know) etc so that's good for us, right?
If we had actually used him rather than persevering with Deeney up top, we might not have needed to spend £30m on Sarr and/or we might have had a more competitive forward line in the season we went down. Its all ifs and buts, but I cannot get my head around how he got absolutely no game time in a side regularly featuring Carrillo, Deeney and Gray given that he scored a hat-trick against Bayern a few months later. The Lukebakio deal was also incredibly dodgy. Mogi moved him from Anderlecht to a club owned by his brother and then immediately sold him on to Watford for significantly more money, presumably with him and his brother pocketing the difference. You have to wonder what cut of all these deals he normally takes.
Did it though? We will never know. If our player trading was so successful and the profits end up in our kitty, why are we so heavily in debt?
Because we don't pull off enough of the Lukebakio type moves? Arguably if they actually ran the player trading business full tilt we'd do very well out of it even if we only saw a small proportion of the players in a Watford shirt. But then we'd have to set aside the wailing every time the stars don't align and a Estupinan or Suarez never makes a first team appearance for us before moving on. Without checking back I'm as sure as I can be the Lukebakio dosh was reported in the WFC accounts for that year, so we've seen the benefit on paper at least.
I don’t have a problem with the player trading model, the issue is when it’s prioritised over premier league survival. No player is going to make you anywhere near what staying in the PL will make you, plus it’s not just about that, it’s the cost if relegation. Relegation puts you on a knife edge financially, plus you have to sell your best players so it’s like playing snakes and ladders and being brought right back to square one when you’re relegated. It’s not just losing £100m+ prize money, it’s losing everything you’ve gained up to that point. The playing squad should always be in as good a shape as it possibly can be, before tens of millions are diverted elsewhere but that is very rarely ever the case. Relegation seriously harms our ability to player trade anyway, so it’s not like you can do one without the other.
Don't necessarily disagree with you that he should have been given a chance, but to be honest it looks like we sold at the right time. Since his breakout year he's scored 6 goals in 46 apps, at a lower level than the PL. £20m was and is a great price
