Slaven Bilic - New (for Now) Watford Manager

In 2015 after promotion we signed 13 players in the summer + Ake on loan , 7 of which made up the starting 11 for the majority of the season.

In 2021, we signed 12 in the summer + Etebo on loan (who I feel would have played a big part if it wasn't for his bad injury early on) , only 4 became mainstays in the team (Sissoko, Kucka, King, Dennis), 5 if you count Louza, who only really showed his quality in the 2nd half of the season, Rose/Fletcher sh1te and the rest young players (Pollock, Angelini, Baah, Morris, Mebude).

In terms of numbers we've never been shy, so I wouldn't worry about that, hopefully this new fella steers us towards more quality additions rather that youthful punts like last year.

 

The rebuild in 2015 cost almost nothing. To replace 7 of the 11 in 2021 and 2023 would cost money we just don’t have. The quality we brought in as we all saw was not good enough to survive in the prem.

 

When you say nothing, do you mean 82 million Euro before wages?

 

Seems to me that the reality is that as you spend more time in the Premier League as a smaller club, you end up having to spend increasingly more on wages/signings to add to the squad over time, and at some point that catches up to you.

The trick doesn't seem to be surviving with a decent up-and-coming motivated squad that got promoted (plenty of clubs have managed that recently), it's transitioning to a long term sustainable recruitment model. Being in the top league means players will expect higher wages, or they won't sign and will go elsewhere.

Of the smaller clubs, Palace have probably done the best job of consistently avoiding gravity, but they're almost always flirting with relegation every season and I'm sure they'll go down eventually.

 

???????

 

No.

 

well that is what it was. Berghuis’s and Oulares don’t come cheap you know.

 

Using the ex rate at the time, €82m was about £17m wasn't it ?
I was only thinking of the additions to the first XI rather than the peripheral buys. I mean you wouldn't get a Jurado for south of £50m these days ! Getting Britos, Prodl, Capoue, Behrami for relatively little, I doubt we could repeat. We pretty much upgraded every position bar the front 2 and GK for not a lot. Clearly what they tried to do last season but their funds these days barely improved the starting XI.

 

Best investment was the £2m loan for Ibarbo imo.

 

Legend.

 

Palace have only looked in serious danger of relegation one season (2016/17). Other seasons they’ve had bad starts but recovered enough to finish midtable, or been comfortable throughout.

But yes, a club their size can never guarantee their place in the Prem, key players decline/leave/retire and can be hard to replace and they’re usually only one bad/inadequate transfer window or poor managerial appointment from relegation. Fulham, a club with a similar history (their spell in the top flight was slightly better as they reached 7th and got to a UEFA Cup final) eventually crashed out of the Prem after an unexpectedly long 13 years. Brighton are still really punching above their weight and one wonders how long effectively their stadium will keep them there. Or you can be cursed by a harsh fixture list, for instance Charlton when they went down with us were given a nightmare start and IIRC lost seven of their eight opening games, and I think that delivered a blow to their confidence from which they never fully recovered, otherwise I think they’d have stayed up for at least one more season even post-Curbishley.

 

It’s my belief that all medium-sized clubs that make it to the PL will be there for a longer or shorter period, but inevitably then have a bad season and be relegated. There’s really nothing wrong with that except for the financial jeopardy that follows because of the huge gap in rewards between the two leagues, which really needs addressing somehow. The only clubs that are exempt from that are the really big ones who regularly compete in Europe, with all that rewards that brings. That just leaves a small grey area of clubs who seem to be just that too big to go down but never compete with the top ones and results in the likes of Leeds hoping they can be like Everton.

 

Saw him and Gervinho up top for Roma on a number of occasions and they were unbelievable but then you did have Totti playing inch perfect passes into space for them.

 

I dread to think what the squad would look like if we went up. Manga can find as many players as he likes, it's Pozzo who still has the final say. With Bayat offering him cheap sh!te in his other ear I can guess what option he'll go for.

 

Mariappa on a free?

 

Upgrade.

 

I'm sure he will be happy in a month or so. Nice payoff and a new job somewhere.

 

Oh dear, whenever I see reports of teams having a bug going around the squad in the week prior to a game they without fail seem to lose the match.

 

Some teams have to make up a bug after going down 4-0 to their local rivals...

 

Julien recruited for cone duty will not end well.

 

I wonder why that is

 

It's that time in the calendar.

 

If only our chants were more Gregorian.

 

Yes, a while since we’ve had a Greg to cheer on.

 

Or Ian.

 

Really?

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/BroadcastMoose/status/1608958884454047744

Good interview here. You can hear the frustration in Bilic’s voice. He can’t stand most of our players the same way we can’t. Absolute gutless fairies the lot of them. Really hope he isn’t sacked. We have got to stop pandering to our players every time a manager gives them the hairdryer treatment and asks them for commitment, fight and passion.

I’m glad Bilic also put Sarr on blast in this interview.

 

How are we going to shift the likes of Kabasele, WTE, Gaspar Kalu, Bayo and Kayembe though? Nobody will match their contracts even on a free so we are stuck until they expire. And I still don’t put it past pozzo extending Cleverly and Cathcart and so the cycle will continue.

By the summer half our fan base will have convinced themselves that the above are “solid championship options”.

 

Exactly. This whole ‘squad needs gutting’ thing is noble. But it completely relies on there being a large group of mugs willing to rectify us of our mistakes by giving our crap players good contracts - and paying us for the pleasure of doing so.

 

Manga: "Christian, Will, Mario, Samuel, Vakoun, Edo, do you know how beautiful Sofia is at this time of year?"

 

There clearly seems to be a malaise affecting the squad this season, but what’s caused it? It can no longer be a relegation handover, as last season ended seven and half months ago and our fate was decided weeks before that. Could it be that many of the players aren’t motivated to really pull their weight as they know they’ll only finish in the play-offs at best and then they’ll have to negotiate three likely gruelling extra games only to be humiliated up there again next season, and/or some of them aren’t likely to be key players then? We all know this squad is a shadow of the 2020/21 one, but surely it’s capable of performing better than they did at Blackpool and Swansea and in both Millwall games.