So now we're a Premier league club once more, there seems every chance we'll make some really big, classy signings during the summer. In all your time of supporting Watford, who do you consider to be our biggest 'wow' signing..ie, the one that when you heard it announced you were like 'wow is this for real?' I think for me it was probably when, as a League One club under GT, we signed Ronnie Rosenthal! Yours?
Good call. That was the season after relegation from the Prem under GT wasn't it? We signed him and Baardsen. Would have been great had we been able to sign him during the PL season!
When there were two fans forums recently (one in East Anglia and one in the city) didn't someone post on here that there are a number of high quality signings already lined up if we were to go up? Now we are up and the next even more crazy TV deal kicks off from 2016/17 I imagine that the Pozzos will ensure at all costs that we stay up.
Yep, that double signing of him and Baardsen was a true "wow" moment. Ok, Baardsen didn't work out that well, but Nielsen was brilliant. Filippo Galli was another one. Might have been getting on a bit, but to see someone with his record playing at our club was incredible. The fact he was still good made it even better!
They said under GZ that if we went up they'd make absolutely sure we had enough good players to stay up. I've no doubt that still applies.
Not much love for Ronnie so far but worth remembering he was the first foreign player to move to England for a fee of over a million pounds..he played 97 times for Liverpool and was part of their squad when they won the title for the last time. He then moved to Spurs where he played 88 times, including a cup tie at Southampton where he scored a hatrick. And then, amazingly, he dropped down to the Second Division (League One now) and helped us win our last ever league title..until Saturday!!
Tha's a good call. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we were really struggling for goals that season. Falco had a terrific scoring record, nearly 100 goals in 236 games, but wasn't always a first-team regular, so we snapped him up for about £300,000. I seem to remember we had a bid turned down for Terry Gibson that season too. They could have been quite a pairing up top.
Not a player, but the announcement of Vialli as manager was off the scale. They even had the press conference live on sky tv & radio 5. It was our Bournemouth moment.
I can just about remember Alan Nielsen as a teenager, was a class above. Didn't realise be started at Bayern Munich!
Some great calls here i e Falco,Sims,Nielsen,Ronnie ( and his 'J' reg Merc! ),Cliff, but I'll go for Pat Rice.
and turned out to be one of the worst & most damaging mangers we've ever had. Back then I don't think anybody saw that coming.
Gerry Armstrong was a massive mark of intent at the time, for a club that had never played in the first division; and I'm pretty sure it was a club record signing by some margin, possibly even a non tip flight record at £250,000.
Yeah it was. I remember it had been rumoured a month or so before. It seemed to come to nothing and went quiet. Then, on a Saturday morning, I was in my newsagents and the back page of The Sun said 'WATFORD GET VIALLI', and there was some silly angle that the Chairman's wife's homemade pasta had secured the deal. I was so excited, and then I watched Football Focus and they asked Mark Lawrenson about it and he said words to the effect of 'it's a coup for Watford but is it actually a good appointment, will he understand the division etc?' And that seemed to sum it up really. It was a situation where we seemed to appoint him because we COULD rather than because we SHOULD!
Yes!! Tbh the equivalent of Pat Rice wouldn't be a bad signing for the start of our latest adventure for the PL! Didn't Rice score in our first ever match in the top flight?
Just from recent memory it must have been Albert Riera. Alex Merkel was another, as was Fabbrini being an Italian international and still young. Probably others years ago but I can't be arsed to think.
Fat Everton keeper Neville Southall caught his cross-shot & stepped back over the goal line with the ball. I think. t'woz a long time ago.
At the London one Duxbury said something along the lines of 'You wouldn't believe the talent willing to come here once we are in the Premiere." He also said that a lot of discussions were already started, and intimated that some deals were all but done. After the meeting there was a discussion on here about why we would take players that weren't prepared to play for us in the Championship, contered by thoughts that this may have represented either a sideways or downward move for some of the players, also that it may have required a financial transaction that was beyond the group without PL revenue. We shall see...
