Who Stays, Who Goes, Who Needs Signing?

If we have spent £5m on a carabao cup keeper I shall blow my stack!

 

Realistically most of our decent players will either be sold or be shipped off to Udinese unless they want to fight it out in the Championship. I reckon Kamara and Samir will head off to Italy.

I'd still expect to see our old cloggers here next season, Cathcart, Kucka (still think he was a scraping-the-barrel singing), Clevs etc. If we do bring anyone in, I hope they have some Champ experience with some potential early to mid 20s rather than 30 somethings and fewer knee-jerk signings.

 

It beggars belief we spent decent money on a keeper who wouldn’t be playing for us this season. (more then we spent on Craig Dawson)

That fact needs to be pinned at the top of this forum lest any of the Gino sympathisers forget at any point.

This is a team that have less points than Aidy Boothroyd managed, but apparently football has moved on so that comparison doesn’t count, even though we could apparently afford to waste good money on players like this Keeper, Danny Rose, Kalu and Kayembe who don’t even play for the first team. And let’s not get started on Tufan.

 

Regarding Samir, I made this point several months back when we signed him, if he’s happy to move to England and drop down a division where he has to play 8 more games a season then it exposes exactly want a pointless move it was.

If he was going to be of any benefit to us whatsoever and any help in actually keeping us in the league then he needed to be good enough that he wouldn’t even contemplate dropping down to an inferior league. If it ends up that he’s a championship player next season then doesn’t that just say it all? He needed to be of the standard of players like Delefelou and Peyrera that we sent in the other direction, a player that was the standard of a top league only and wouldn’t stay with us if relegated.

 

If Forest get promotion surely Zinkernagel will be sold to them. I expect they would want to keep him in their squad. Why would we want him back having loaned him out last season? I cant see him wanting to stay if Forest make an offer.

Pollock, Dahlberg, Quina, Hungbo. Cant see any of them being part of a first team squad. Not that taken with Ngakia at Championship level. Dele-Bashiru not seen enough to make a judgement. Fletcher I can see being in the squad.

I think Kucha will be back to Italy as will Samir.

It’s the right time to sell Sarr. Any decent money for Dennis, Pedro and Hernandez should be taken. No guarantee that all or any will be up for an uncertain year in the Championship.

The core British first teamers like Cathcart, Cleverley, Foster, etc I expect will be negotiated out due to wages.

 

I said to some pals last night could we get 300m for Zinky Pinky?!

 

Buzzing for next season

Okoye
Femenia
Cathcart
Kabasele
Masina
Cleverley
Gosling
Kuca
Kalu
Sema
Flethcher


League One here we come!

 

Having loaned him out, I assumed Watford either consider him a Championship level player, or that he needed longer to adjust and develop in English football before being able to operate in the PL. I can't see why we wouldn't want him back for a Championship campaign, unless Forest think he can be an asset for them in the PL and make a big offer.

 

And here's the reason we are going down. Half of these have reguarally been part of our match day squads this year

We know what we need in the Championship

An experienced keeper
2 strong and pacey center backs
2 Strong and experienced CMs
2 Strikers who can hit 15 goals each and a team that can hit 70 goals
Lots of pace and lots of players over 6ft tall

Arguably we have Cucho who could hit 15 to 20
And that's about it !

At the moment we have 6 offensive players, none of which play in mid-field, in a squad of 25 or 26 which is a complete unbalance. We would need at least 10 offensive players in the squad.

I can't see us spending any money, but trying to rely on those who have relegation salary clauses, the journey men we already have and a cluster of youngsters that we have out on loan.

 

As bad as that team is, it would still comfortably finish mid-table in the Champ.

 

I also don't buy into not comparing to historical teams and leagues. Football has moved on in terms of technical ability, speed as well as both media fanfare and money. But, ultimately the league tables don't end up two differently over the past 25 years.

https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/premier-league/1999-00/table.html
https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/premier-league/2006-07/
https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/premier-league/2021-22/

All three of those years the Top 5 will have between 60-90 pts (ish). And the 99 and 06 Watford sides were very low in quality, particularly after Young left. I definitely think Liverpool and City are in a different class from a footballing level but broadly speaking the construct of the league is:

• 2-3 dominant sides
• 2-3 scrapping it out for 4th and Europa
• 1-2 hoping one of the top 4 wins the FA Cup so they can sneak into Europe

This is followed by 12+ clubs scrapping it out to stay in the league including the odd candidate have a better year (us in 2018, Burnley when they got into Europe) or a bigger club having a complete implosion ala Everton

 

To complete this circus lineup, who's on the bench?

 

Rob Elliot taking up 3 seats and any 4 U23s you wish to pick.

 

Lessons have been learned.

 

We have needed to upgrade our defence for 4 years and we've got WTE and Samir in for free from Udinese.

Lessons have been learned.

 

How dare you forget the mighty Nkoulou? The move was a no-brainer for him! Which is why we waited till November to sign him despite him being available since the summer. Lessons.

https://www.watfordfc.com/news/nkoulou-on-watford-move-it-was-a-no-brainer

 

I don't think anyone should be expecting any signings at centre back. We had the best defence in the league last season with players still here and potentially Samir added to that. I don't agree with it but I think our core centre back group will be Sierralta, Cathcart, Kabasele and whoever stays out of WTE and Samir. Pollock will probably be kept as backup, slowing his development nicely.

 

Of course. They will kick the 4 year old can further down the road. And then if we do come up (we won't) they'll stick with the same ****** set up that got us up, or at best augment with some of the same standard of cheap dross.

This club will never learn.

 

And of course should we be promoted and extend Cathcart’s contract, the COGs will have a new “entitled” chip to deploy when anyone questions why we won’t spend money on a centre back in preference of putting the money into Mogi Bayat’s pocket.

 

Correct.

 

Yeah, wanting us to do better than waste tens of millions on Tufan, Rose, Kayembe, Kalu, Fletcher etc. Is just childish.

We don't have billionaire owners, so expecting them to be cautious with what we do spend and prioritising our needs, is just nonsense.

 

I only mentioned 13 players to go from the 41 on the books. But I do think it will be a wholesale clear out and replacement job. So I do expect a lot of incoming deals.

 

It’s interesting. As many of you know I am on the more optimistic side of the fan base (though that’s all relative of course) but I think we’ll do hardly any business. We have a large squad of players most of whom are ok for the championship and I think we will try to squeeze everything out of those rather than orchestrating a big clear out. I suppose where I differ from the most ardent BWs is I think that we may end up forking out modest (but not insubstantial for the EFL) fees on one or two of the small number of incomings whereas others think we’ll be stuck with just the Lazaars and Goslings of the world.

 

We'll have pretty much the same squad now but with freebies and Udinese players filling the gaps left by Dennis, Sarr and whoever else is lucky enough to escape.

 

Success will be back won’t he?

Like some turd of an Ebay sale that costs more to ship than it was sold for.

But people he can play the deeney role - non scoring striker but gets a few assists so he’s good enough

 

Whether we do lots of business or not, either way it’s unlikely to be good business.

Gino has spent £0 on transfer fees whilst we’ve been a championship club, I wouldn’t be expecting that to change now.

 

I’d imagine we will take a couple of prem youngsters on loan and the success/failure of those loans will make or break our season. Last time we were relegated our loans were flops. Can’t afford that this time.

 

Walker
Welbourne
Williams
Eddy
Lees
Walley
Scullion
Garbett
Endean
Hale
Lewis

Physio
Pat Malloy.

Sell everyone else for South American zinc.

 

Was Walter lees better than Brian Garvey?
I can't remember.

 

That squad won’t get promotion to the top division