Valerien Ismael - Manager

Seems that he's given an interview to the Times about why he chose us but it's behind the paywall. Anyone able to summarise? Thanks in advance!

 

I think we know why he chose us. Desperation & a mortgage.

 

This has been copied from WD18 Twitter feed.

Valérien Ismaël on Gino Pozzo: "I spoke with a lot of owners and that was the first time when the feeling was we were on the same page when we talk about football. It was his passion and his knowledge about the football, his club, his team."
Valérien Ismaël on Gino Pozzo: "He's at the training ground, I see him, and that's something different, but something very good because of the daily communication with him."
Valérien Ismaël: "We will do some business in the transfer market and add the players we need to play with that intensity. It will be a balance. It won't be completely what we saw at Barnsley."

 

Translation: we'll get the dire style of football without the play off place to show for it.

 

Not according to Henry Winter, who wrote the article. - "Watford want success. I want success. We expect to compete, to be involved in the promotion race. We can build momentum. We want to have hungry players to compete in the Championship." Valérien Ismaël interview."

 

Seems that about 5 years too late we've realised that player mentality is an important part of whether to sign someone. Who knew that footballers were human beings with different attitudes and levels of commitment.

 

We WILL be heavily involved in the promotion race. Many of the promotion contenders will have to play us in the last 2 months of the season. It may be a tough game for them too until we have the points to guarantee safety.

 

Surely that’s just more according to Valerien Ismael, given it’s entirely a direct quote.

 

With regards to player characteristics, it took a long time for the penny to drop and our squad has been watered down in quality systematically over the past 4 years as a result.

My take is that Gino went away from traditional scouting in around 2019, and this is when Bayat got involved with the club. 2019 is the very start of our decline. So it's clear to me it was a tactical failing at the very top which has caused this dramatic decline in the club's fortunes. Gino thought he knew best and considered palling up with an agent would get him cheap deals. He never thought of player characteristics. He thought, this guy has some pedigree, played in a high European league and will do. It was a case of, "Mogi, we need a left back, who have you got?". This is why it's all gone so horribly wrong. What concerns me is that Gino has taken us to near destruction before realising he needs to change things.

What I also find concerning in the interview, is Ismael never once mentions Ben Manga. The only person he's ever referenced in all his interviews is Gino himself. Bayat still appears to be on the scene and Giaretta is apparently being offered a new contract. So, has anything really changed? We shall see, but I'm currently not quite as optimistic as I was a few weeks ago.

 

Completely agree. The thing that makes it worse is that Bayat was flogging us absolute cack - most of them didn't have the ability, let alone the mindset.

 

He doesn’t speak about Manga in the quoted part, but clearly spoke about Manga’s role to Winter as Manga is referenced in the first paragraph.

 

And this is it to a tee.

I guarantee someone with more time than me could spend a few minutes trawling back over past interviews with new head coaches and find they've all said versions of the same thing and probably once or twice literally the same thing. No one's going to come out and say "I want to a load of spineless losers as the backbone of my squad".

 

Surely this time it has to be different? Otherwise what's the point of hiring Manga and all the staff that came with him?

 

Exactly. I'm sure they will be backed come hell or high water.

 

Duxbury is a nobody though - Manga actually has some pedigree and track record of success in football, so should in theory be less easy for Pozzo to completely ignore and overrule as was the case with Duxbury's calls.

 

Danny Rose still available

 

The idea he needs to adjust to our "possession-based" style is daft and I hope he doesn't really think it.

We had no discernible way of playing this season - it only resembled something possession-based because teams a) overestimated us and b) knew they could sit off and wait for us to crumble.

 

Great post. I always get the impression our team makes loads of passes in our own half (which ups the possession stats) because they won’t take the responsibility of an ambitious forward pass to try and create something.

 

And because a lot of the time when they looked up, they just had the twin traffic cones of Davis and Sarr looking back at them whilst marked. There was a total lack of movement from most of our forwards (in fairness that's been a problem for years, all the way back to Deeney just camping around the centre circle looking for wrestling matches).

 

Gone by Christmas 2023.
His track record is poor and the Pozzo pad of unsigned P45's is at the ready.
Unless we make wholesale squad changes, he is doomed.
The current squad is not good enough for the Championship and if the rumours of the squad doing minimal pre-season training are true, then we have zero hope.
I would release most of the squad. They don't want to work hard and as a collective they have given up. Time for the majority of them to go.
The training had been a major issue for a number of seasons - why?
The pre-season before JG was sacked, they just played 5 a side and went home.
Ranieri spent less than two hours at London Colney each time he was actually there, before returning to London for lunch. He probably thought that Colney was a suburb of London like Hampstead or Belsize Park.
Why are our players so unfit? Who is in charge of fitness and who monitors the levels of fitness?
Ismael loves Vertical/Kick and Rush football, he'll need a miracle to play that style of football with current squad of dog turds.

 

Those rumours being ones you just made up?

You make some points here that are valid opinions and then you just sprinkle it with things you have just made up. Baffling.

 

Awful news in that article.
We will be in League 2 by next season, hope I'm wrong.
IV is a poor manager, and Barnsley fans protested him most weeks I'm told.
If rumours are true about Louza's free transfer to Udinese then we are done.
Hodgson has been lined up when Ismael is sacked in September. Hope I'm wrong.

#PostLikeLaClueless

 

Don't forget relegation favourites just not with the bookies

 

9/10. Great effort.

Only thing missing is reference to rumors found on a Nigerian/French/Belgian football forum.

 

The Barnsley fans voted with their feet...no wonder the stadium was totally empty all season. The fans returned once Ismael had moved on.

Super post btw. Really mirrored structure tone and content so nicely.

 

Do you mean minimal work done in previous pre-seasons? We have to live in hope that Ismael will be given some players that are willing to do the fitness training he will hopefully implement.
The squad has not been at the required level in that respect for too long.

 

Had me going. Completely. Assumed it was from LaC. Saw it was you and thought you'd lost it. Until I read the last line.

 

You're being rather generous there.

 

I do like to be generous but yes, “opinions” being the operative word. I disagreed with almost all of it, don’t get me wrong. But what truly sets the post apart is the manufacture of new rumours.

 

Neither of them are reflective so far less use than a traffic cone.