My guess is they expected to be able to sell both Sarr & Dennis. Having kept Sarr cash was tighter than expected (hence the Kamara deal) and if it had gone to the final day, I doubt they would have spent £5m on Bayo. However it may be that Edwards genuinely wasn't looking for a RWB given team formation will need to be different with Sarr staying or felt he had enough with Ngakia/Gaspar/Kamara ?
Hause did seem pretty composed on the ball in his short cameo, although he's not exactly known as a ball-playing defender! Think there'd definitely have been a more positive vibe around here had we sold Sarr (which almost everyone assumed would happen from the moment we were relegated) and JP (which I'm sure most people on here would have assumed when the Newcastle stories heated up) and got in a RWB, a midfielder and Archer, although it's impossible to say whether we'd be better placed for promotion such is the quality of those two (not that I'm giving Pozzo too much credit as I'm not sure the interest in those two was as hot as we thought!). That said, it clearly wasn't an either or situation as we found the money for Bayo and for Gaspar's probably not insignificant wages!
Well, the last two games have shown us that playing 4-2-3-1 to get Sarr in his preferred formation isn't a silver bullet, and that he can perform to an extent at CF
I think we'll call you "Dad" from now on as you talk the most (grown up) sense on here.. I think our trouble is we consistently think of our nice spell in the Prem and how we need to get back there... And Far too little concern that we are a small club in real terms, who could very easily slide into being just another Portsmouth / Sunderland type club....
I don’t know. You have become incredibly sensible and rational and level headed recently which in addition to your ITK tidbits now makes you essential reading .
This forum is now like a beach in late September. You can remember the laughs and the excitement of summer, but you know in your heart there will just be a few determined chaps patrolling the shoreline until Xmas.
I didn't mean it was a choice put to him at the start of pre-season....Pozzbury clearly thought it (ahem) 'acceptable' to spend £5 mill of the £45 mill they expected to get from Dennis & Sarr on Bayo...RE no doubt said he wanted a 'strong, mobile CF' who could act as a focal point for the attack; Bayat offered them Bayo & they went for it to show they were 'backing' the coach (along with whatever obscure side benefits may have accrued who knows where). I think what RE really had in mind was someone like Davis, but at the start of the window it looked more likely he'd go to Florist, so he wasn't really an option. As the window progressed, Kiko left & they took the decision to effectively swap him with Gaspar....this seems to have led to ManUre deciding they didn't want Laird to have the sort of loan spell Garner had with us, so they seemed to decide against loaning him to us. I'd have preferred to have had Laird instead of Gaspar, but could it be we would still have gone through with both signings had ManUre been willing? Once they'd backed out, we were maybe faced with spending money on a RWB at which point it seems that could only happen once Sarr was sold. Once the Sarr to Villa deal fell through, the Kamara Shuffle shouts at high volume how strapped we are for cashflow, and there was little time left to do much about things. No-one else seemed willing to offer what Villa had offered for him, and at least Pozzbury stuck to their guns about for how much AND how late in the window they were willing to sell them. By then, I think it became clear there would be no more incomings unless someone offered £25+ million for Sarr. At that time, RE was faced with the facts of a situation that meant he would keep both Sarr & JP but get no 'flying RWB'. I don't think anyone at the club envisaged keeping 2 of the 'magic 3' at the start of the window, so clearly the 'hypothetical question' I posed was the result of the surprising (non)-events of the window, not anything discussed in July. Judging by his comments (no matter any assumptions that he is being 'politique'), he may have come to the conclusion it's a preferable outcome. (That doesn't mean he 'wanted' Bayo specifically, of course).
I share your annoyance re: the Bayo fee....if they wanted to show RE they were backing him by buying a 'strong mobile CF', fair enough, but what we paid for him was way too much. My concern is we needed more than the Kamara money to be able to afford a loan of the calibre RE considered worthwhile.
That's not the case though given there were a fair few other RWBs available either on loan or on a free.
AL's article on the right back situation this summer is hilarious. Signed Gaspar because he was free even though he in no way has the attributes we need. Could have signed Laird, we said no. Could have signed Sterling, we didn't bother making a decision. In summary we waited all summer for Ngakia to leave, didn't do deals because Ngakia hadn't left, now we're going to give the impression that we wanted to keep Ngakia all along.
I'm not sure how much of what AL writes is trustworthy, but his article reads as if we originally wanted Ngakia to be backup to Kiko, but then when we swapped Kiko for Gaspar we decided we wanted rid of Ngakia and to bring in another option to compete with Gaspar (maybe as a more offensive option). But then Ngakia got injured and so we couldn't flog him, and now instead of the original intention of Ngakia being backup or sold, he seems to likely find himself first choice with Gaspar underwhelming.
More like we would have recognised 3 options for one RB/RWB spot would be overkill, and that Gaspar would fill the more defensive minded option of the two (with what they hoped would be more quality than Ngakia), meaning there'd be room instead for another option - in the same way that we have Kamara and Sema 2 as alternative options for LB/LWB.
Maybe. But that strategy has resulted in 2 poor RB options. Better to bite the bullet and write one off and bring in a better option. Ngakia hasn’t been valued here in 2 years. Why would he suddenly improve now? The really poor decision was signing Gaspar. But Pozzo is as Pozzo does.
I'm not even going to mention Bayo or the M word, because that topic has been done to death, but our finances were supposedly fine enough to sign Gaspar permanently for presumably a not insignificant amount in wages, while turning our noses up at a youngster from United who almost certainly would have been cheaper? It just does not add up...
It sounded like they were willing to "bite the bullet" and write Ngakia off, but a combination of a lack of takers and then his injury prevented it. Gaspar does indeed seem a poor signing and decision. It's hard to tell if he would have even been an improvement on Ngakia.
To be fair, I think Gaspar wouldn't be a bad signing if we wanted a more defensive full-back, but Ngakia hasn't let us down in the Championship in that regard, and also has a lot more athleticism about him, even if his end product going forward is lacking
Which is fine - until you remember that Leventhal writes more regarding his opinion now than anything more tangible.
I think the issue is that 3 at the back needs Kamara at RWB. Gaspar hasn't the legs. (Ngakia maybe....) However 4 at the back requires Kamara at LB. So one injury to HK and neither system works. If we couldn't sign an RWB we should have ot another LB at least.
I'm not much of a poster but I have had some thoughts that might go here and so here they are. I've gone on a bit, for which I apologise. My issue with our transfers, not only but especially in this window, is that there are some that seem sensible and others that never, at any point, seem to make any sense at all. I find this schizophrenia confusing, and I don't like it. It is almost as if some transfers are designed to improve our team and others primarily serve another purpose. This feeling has been sufficiently widespread to inspire some conspiracy theories, and it has not helped that several of these transfers have involved a particular agent. I believe that some of the truth about the club's relationship with him will become public in the next few days, which might help. Last season's squad had two great issues, other than being quite rubbish. One was that there was no leadership on the pitch, and the other was that there was not much of a connection between fans and players. I felt that both issues were known and acknowledged, and expected that we would make several signings from around the Football League that would help with the second issue, and a couple whose character could also help with the first. My greatest disappointment, beyond the fact that we knew we needed a right wing-back in May but never got round to signing one while finding the time and the budget to snap up Rey Manaj, is that we have not done that. Our sensible signings are all on loan, and as a fan I find it hard to invest emotionally in a loan player. Our stupid signings are all stupid signings, and as a fan I find it hard to invest emotionally in stupid signings. So I don't feel much more connection with this lot than the last lot. Meanwhile leadership, such as it is, is largely coming from a 20-year-old Brazilian. We're not in a terrible place. We have kept some good players and brought in some good players, and could have a successful season. But I think the window has not been a success overall, and across the summer my faith in the club's leadership has been further corrupted. I hope that is the only corruption going on at the club, but I guess time will tell.
All I know is that a national newspaper has someone working on the story and that they are close to publication.
Good post. On your point about finding it hard to invest emotionally in a loan player, I have historically agreed with this. However we have to remember that to a young footballer (and they're all young to me!) a season-long loan seems a long time to them and they will fully consider themselves a Watford player for that length of time. At the same time clubs generally, and WFC in particular, have embraced the idea of loans more and more over the years to the extent that they consider them no different to a permanent transfer, except in terms of assets. In fact the Watford hierarchy tell us not to get too attached to a player , whether loaned or permanent, because they are always likely to leave soon so I think we have to treat both of them in the same way, as much as I dislike the idea.
