Valerien Ismael - Manager

I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and neither do you, so we can’t hold them to account. Could just be Bayat’s fault and the rest of blameless?

Joking aside why would Duxbury have any input whatsoever in terms of who we buy. If he does it is completely bonkers.

 

I think we must've missed out on at least a couple of targets ahead of him. They'd promised fans a new striker at the fans meeting so had to sign someone, no matter their quality (or lack of it)

 

I think landing on Igahlo and Vydra (and also by luck having Deeney) at a similar time was a pure fluke. Since then, with a couple of rare exceptions, we seemingly go out of our way to find the worst possible strikers we can, and then try to pay the most we can for them. Our striker recruitment is truly appalling, especially when the majority of our fanbase can consistently pinpoint better, cheaper options in every window.

 

Out and out strikers (as in signed to play through the middle rather than behind a front man/predominantly out wide) signed since 14/15...

Oulare
Okaka
Gray
Stuparevic
Welbeck
Perica
King
Dennis
Bayo
Manaj
Assombalonga
Rajovic

A roll call of rubbish!

 

. We don't know which of those individuals should take the bulk of the blame but we know as a unit they have screwed up.

If a CEO doesn't have ANY input into transfer strategy and budget what on earth does he do for his £900k/pa. Just sit at his desk playing minesweeper, wordle, and posting on football forums like.......like no-one I know . I doubt Dux scouted him, assessed him and made the final call that he was "the guy", but a real CEO must have some involvement in budgets and where money is spent ? As you know I genuinely have no idea what he does for his salary if football matters are covered by DoF/Manager, finance by the FD, etc.

 

Duxbury is the CEO/Chairman, so basically runs Watford FC. He manages the day-to-day and carries out the instructions of the owner, who sets the budget. Duxbury then has to manage the club from within the budget set. That's my take on his involvement. Of course he's massively overpaid for a potentially soon to be League One club. I remember seeing a chart a few years ago, placing him as the 12th highest paid CEO in English football, and his salary has not been reduced since those times. I'm guessing he's still around that position, so being paid as much as a mid-table Premier League club's CEO.

 

I don’t think a CEO’s salary should be directly relative to club position. A CEO’s job status should be relative, relegations have to be considered bad performance as a CEO.

I can’t stand the man but given how many managers we sack, how often Gino wasn’t present, the fact we have the Women’s team under the umbrella, the positive work on the training ground and the stadium. Also, given there’s not a “team” it’s just him & Gino really at that level whereas some clubs may have bigger leadership teams. It’s really not that crazy of a stat for him to be 12th.

 

Admittedly he was very good for a long time, but it's damning that Troy, signed in 2011, stayed as first choice for more or less a whole decade

 

He was initially paid about £250k/pa when we were in the Championship. This grew year on year after promotion to almost £1m and wasn't reduced after first relegation. Given where we are now financially, can't see any justification for continuing to pay our CEO that much (caveat: may have been reduced now but won't find out until relevant accounts out) as our income has reduced so drastically and we're cutting costs all over the place.

The club are keen that players have relegation reducing clauses in their contracts (sensibly) so should look at CEO salary through the same lens.

 

That's only if his boss wants that though. We have no idea what targets he’s set for Duxbury, if any. Perhaps he reaches every single one. We have the ‘biggest shirt sponsorship in our history’ this season don’t we? Season tickets sold without an overall reduction in numbers along with a ‘waiting list’. New shirts and gear selling well. Sponsorships from decent brands all around the stadium. Away ticket reciprocation with many teams in the division. Always packed refreshment areas in the stadium.

That’s probably more his role than deciding if Rajovic is any good or watching scouting videos.

 

I genuinely can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, post works either way!

Agree that he shouldn't be involved in judging players and he was typically slippery on this at the forum when his previous words were quoted back at him (i.e. that at one point he had said he was a key decision maker in whether to sign a player or not, then in another interview he said he was nothing to do with that side of the business).

He was asked 'so which is correct?' and gave a slimy laugh and said they're both correct followed by some other waffle.

 

He’s a slimy character all round, no good vibes from him whatsoever. But given how tight Pozzo is and given he decides who’s paid what, he clearly feels Duxbury is worth it. I would imagine there’s been a reduction though given the general cost cutting across the whole club.

 

His discipline is exactly what this club needs. Put the players on notice, give them responsibility.

I am beginning to like Val.

 

It looks like we couldn't play the way he wanted us to play without us being too open, but he's shuffled things around and it's been working pretty well for us of late

 

I think he maybe overestimated the level of our squad, whereas he should've been looking at us as another Barnsley, where we'd need to be stronger than the sum of our parts

 

It's probably not skill he overestimated, I'd say it's mentality. I reckon he believed players like Louza would really get stuck in and players like Kone and TDB would find a level of consistency they've never (or at least not yet) been able to show. I think he's getting there in figuring it out, though his interview last week suggests he's still prepared to give some players longer to prove themselves.

 

Think it's fair to say we all expected more from Louza, I like Koné, and he's playing well at the moment, but considering he was in Canada less than a year ago and has been a pro for less than 2 years, it seems ambitious to have expected him to be consistent (same goes for TDB who has had an extremely stop-start career thus far)

 

I’d take Okaka and Dennis now in a heartbeat

 

The man to whom this thread is dedicated wouldn't!

 

I think this is fair on Kone and he does look like he's making some progress this season. But the issue (not his fault) is the transfer fee. What did we see to think it was a good idea to dash £8m on him so he can learn on the job and some day be good enough to start in a mid table Championship team? I think it's highly likely he'll never move for such a high transfer fee again in his career...

 

You never know, bang average Prem players go for those fees quite often, but we signed 2 kids, a green wing-back (who ironically would have fit Edwards's system well), along with 2 squad options who were clearly past it/not fit, with little in the middle. At least this time around Martins and Koné seem to be adapting, but it was always unlikely they'd help fire us to promotion last season which is what the brief was...

 

I liked Welbeck and thought he looked relatively dangerous every time he came on - he just never played for whatever reason. He would have been a better choice than Deeney/Gray that season, at least - seems to be reasonable at Brighton. Dennis' numbers were also good, but as a footballer he was **** and riding his luck, and it was inevitable he'd fade away.

 

Absolutely stinking, clear weak point in recruitment. Wanted to compare to the most similar club to us in terms of journey and budget, here's Norwich's list, since 14/15

Lafferty
Grabban
Cameron Jerome
Nelson Oliveira
Denis Srbeny
Tristan Adams
Pukki
Mason Bloomfield
Josip Drmic
Hugill
Sebastian Soto
Josh Sargent
Ashley Barnes

About £30m spent, probably fair to say only Jerome and Pukki stand out as big successes, although I don't follow them closely enough to know if any others have done well. I know they're big fans of Sargent, for some reason.

 

He always reminds me of Beaker,from the Muppets.
Sargent,that is.

 

Very rarely in recent years have we improved during a season towards building team play. If Val can do that, play offs or not, that will be tremendously rewarding and a breath of fresh air.

 

Our list managed a paltry 55 goals between them, theirs 187. Even if you remove Pukki from it, they're on 100 (and they were in less need of a striker as they had him for five years).

Edit: when I said since 14/15, I meant looking at strikers we'd signed after that season, i.e. who we'd brought in post first promotion. Think you might have included some people in the Norwich list from that season. Can't be bothered to recalculate the numbers!

 

Ah gotcha. Yeah taking away their 14/15 signings would bring them down to 47 goals plus Pukki.

 

Of those, only Okaka, Gray, Welbeck and Dennis made sense at the time in context of the squad needs. And of those only Dennis was prolific. Bayo, for his faults, is starting to prove his worth as well I'd say but will always been a caveat with the Bayat connection.

 

Satisfied with the explanation, he says TDB would have been on the bench yesterday anyway (which I think most of us would have agreed with anyway), but starters drop to the bench and subs drop out of the squad. I also like that Louza was dropped, I'd been calling for it (not that I'd have picked that exact squad, but hey, it worked!), now let's see if he gets straight back, and if he does, will the penny drop?

 

Could be worse! West Ham fans for instance- they sign super expensive rubbish and always end up back with Antonio up front.

 

this could be because he knows that he's getting no new ones to replace them.

 

Or he knows the replacements will be even poorer.

 

I'd give a left bollock to have someone of the calibre of Antonio up front tbf!