Wasteful of course does not only have to be used as an adjective in the financial sense. It can also be used about things such as opportunities. I don’t have enough intimate knowledge to know how much, if anything, we paid our sister club for his services, so my use of the word really refers to the fact that he was a transfer that took up a place in the squad that now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back as wasteful. On the more general topic of transfers, we have been wasteful with money, but I accept the excellent point made by @reids that we aren’t alone in this. I’ve always believed that as a club, we’ve tended to recruit better on a shoestring budget (I remember the days of Lewington where one summer we were only allowed one new signing and we used it very wisely) but we’ve usually been wasteful when we’ve had lots of money to splash (Ellington, Gray, I even remember once Warnock criticising the amount we paid for McAnuff). Again I accept we aren’t the only club operating this way, but if I crash my car it’s of scant consolation really to know that 4 other drivers had the same misfortune today too.
Is the cost of running a Cat One Academy offset by the slightly higher payments we receive when clubs inevitably continue to take our players? Why have smart operators Brentford chosen to bin their academy off, if they are so smart? I'd be surprised if we don't have one of the biggest scouting systems in the division already tbh, especially when partnered with Udinese's setup. But the competition is tougher now. Clubs with much bigger budgets and more appeal now have the same setups. I'll ask again, if it's as simple as you seem to think, why aren't the other 75 clubs who are in the same boat or below us doing it?
Wasn't this the Watford model pre Pozzos. Harefield academy + investment in key additions required to improve the side?
Some people seem to take football way too seriously. I go to enjoy games and not really that fussed whether it's in the Prem or Champ. Haven't enjoyed it for years. Based on first two games, I now am.
The thing is with Brighton is they £400m in debt but it’s all to Bloom who apparently doesn’t want it back. They’re not quite as well run as it’s made out
Well selling Caicedo for £115m helps with that. This is the path they are now on. They can afford the debt because of the squad they are developing and sustained EPL revenues. They can cover those costs if they need to. If we were run correctly, that could have been us.
It was to a degree, but on a modest scale. We weren’t paying top salaries to attract the best in the business. We were getting by because that’s all we could do at the time. When we were established in the Prem, this was the time to invest in the structures. We’d done the hard part. Not only getting to the Prem, but staying there. You have to inwardly invest at that point, but we just didn’t do that. We went for a vanity signing in Sarr.
Wow. Came on this thread with great anticipation that all the activity can only mean one thing: The great Pussetto is coming home. Is it happening guys, anyone know? We definitely need someone to keep an eye on the goal line now Dan plays higher up the pitch.
We do get a better deal, but it's not much of a difference. You get £3000 in compensation for each year a player has been at the club from 9-11 years old. At 12-16 years old the Category system kicks in and you get between £12,500 and £40,000 per year dependent on the category of the selling club (12.5k for Cat 3, 25k for Cat 2, 40k for Cat 1) So the maximum in basic price for a 16 year old going to a Cat 1 academy from each of these Categories is the following: Cat 3 to Cat 1: £59,000 Cat 2 to Cat 1: £109,000 Cat 1 to Cat 1: £169,000 So we get a whopping £60k in base fees more by being a Cat 1 club. I don't know the difference in how much the club needs to spend to go from a Cat 2 to being a Cat 1 club but I'd wager it's much more than that in a yearly fee, which is probably why we've not made that a priority.
But we can spend that extra £60k on the salary of the best scout in the world, who for some reason is unemployed and wants to work for a Championship club with limited funds! Show some bloody ambition!
Thanks for the research Reids. But it's not really about the compensation, it's about a statement of intent. What we're all about. For a club like Watford it should be fundamental that we are in a Cat One academy. I do not buy it that we cannot afford it. Derby County and Reading are both Cat One in League One. The list of Category One Academies are:- Arsenal, Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Blackburn, Burnley, Brighton, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Derby County, Everton, Fulham, Leeds United, Leicester City, Liverpool, Newcastle United, Manchester City, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Norwich City, Nottingham Forest, Reading, Southampton, Stoke City, Sunderland, Tottenham, West Brom, West Ham and Wolves. Those in bold are from our league or below. 10 Championship clubs and 2 League One. It's a nonsense to suggest we cannot afford it.
It's not whether we can afford it or not (because as you said - we can!) it's whether or not that increase in running costs provide value for money and a tangible benefit compared to what we're currently doing. Since my last post I've found out when Brentford closed their academy (cat 2) they were paying £1.5m a year. Cat 2 apparently costs a minimum of £2.5m a year (with some clubs apparently paying £5m a year). Is it worth a minimum of a million quid a year to "signal intent" with few other benefits provided? Could we better use that money elsewhere - like buying a youngster who's already broken through at L2/NL level? Would it be better of having 3 years of signalling intent or buying Asprilla (who cost 3m)? As much as I value the academy system and would love us to see academy players in our first team, I think our academy will sadly always be limited due to our catchment area, we face huge competition for youngsters with a large amount of clubs in London - sadly with a lot of those being top top teams. Even if we became a club that had a reputation of giving academy players a clear pathway through to the first team I personally think we'd still lose a significant of players before they're ready to breakthrough.
This maybe all true, but we don't know unless we give it a go. It's a relatively small cost to upgrade from Cat Two to Cat One. I get what you're saying, spend the money on the Asprilla's. But in reality, how often do we do this? We usually squander it on Navarro's and Kalu types. I think the prestige would be great and give the impression our club is on the up. Look at the catchment. There is the obvious pull of Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs....maybe West Ham, but apart from Palace, there are no other academies in our region. I think we'd do well getting talent who think Watford would be a better route for first team football, knowing they'll be getting just as good a football education as they would at the elite clubs. Gino wanted to do it a different way, but has failed. We should pay more attention to our heritage, rather than the lip service Duxbury constantly bleats about every time he speaks. Watford's DNA and heritage, certainly under the GT flag SD loves to wave, is the development of youth. Put your money where your mouth is, I say to the board.
Even then it's probably more worthwhile being spent on first team duds. Sadly the odds of a 16 year old academy player going on and making a first team league appearance for their club are so low! QPR, Brentford (they've had to reopen their academy due to PL rules but are cat 4) Fulham, Millwall, + the teams in L1/2 like Orient, Charlton, Wimbledon, Barnet. It's a highly competitive region and there's a big battle each year for youngsters, even if we can pay more than the L1/2 teams they could still get deals done early. And it's not even just London clubs - this just popped up on my LinkedIn! My heart agrees with you (and everything else you've said!) but sadly I think the reality is different.
Agreed. But even with the competitive location we're operating in we are obviously still quite good at finding and developing young talent, as evidenced by the fact we keep losing them for peanuts at 16 years old to the likes of City, United and Arsenal! The system has been designed and set up by big clubs for big clubs. The only hope we really have is someone that is a slightly later bloomer like Andrews coming through. We were never going to play Galvez, Amass, Sancho, Shaq Forde's brother in the first team at 14/15/16 so the path to the first team is a red herring for those top rated young talents. Whether our Academy was level 1 or 2 would make no difference, they can still be picked off just as easily for a meagre fee.
A billionaire owner helps but is not essential. The Pozzo’s could have achieved what Brighton are doing now from the position they placed us in in 2019. But they blew it and I believe that opportunity has now gone for this ownership. Simple as that really.
It's pretty essential when wanting a £400m loan that doesn't need to be paid back, which is the discussion above was about...
Also, a mate of mine is family friends with one of our brightest academy prospects. I won't name him as I think it's unfair, but he has absolutely no interest in playing for Watford. He has had tentative interest from Arsenal/Spurs and he's desperate to leave. He essentially thinks he's better than the club and has no emotional attachment to us. For pretty much all of them we're just a stepping stone, with maybe the exception of the rare player like Grieves who is a born and raised Watford fan.
And who was also planning to leave at the end of the season. If he hadn’t picked up an injury he probably wouldn’t still be here
No it’s not. I know the discussion as I was having it. You’ve just interjected. You can have a £400m loan outstanding if your playing staff is worth more than that. You can quite easily build up to that figure, without being a billionaire to cover it. We had a £200m debt at one point and the Pozzo’s aren’t billionaires.
To get that kind of playing staff you need to put the club in jeopardy with a £400m debt. We don’t have an owner rich enough to do what they’re doing
Listen, we don’t have to follow an identical path. Just because their owner is due £400m, doesn’t mean we’d have a £400m debt if we stayed in the Premier League. In fact we didn’t, we had around half that. It makes no sense to me, that we’d have a £400m owner debt too. I’ve not even checked if that’s correct, but I’m taking your word in good faith. My point was, in 2019 we were ideally placed to kick on with the owner we have. It didn’t mean we had to suddenly ask Gino for a £400m loan. Instead of putting money into a Cat One academy, hire the best technical football people, get the best talent scouts and really surround yourself with the brightest staff available, they spent £30m on a vanity signing that we didn’t need.
It was never going to last forever with the lowest salary bill and budget in the league. A few bad decisions and just like WBA, Swansea, Stoke etc our run was over. Sarr was a huge financial mistake. We are where we are.
