Historically Bad Decisions

What do you think were the decisions over the last few years that contributed to us being left with the godawful team we are witnessing right now?

Not investing properly in defence and persisting with players like Cathcart is one that springs to mind.

 

We somehow started the 2021-22 season in the Prem with a weaker squad than the one we had in the Championship...

 

Poor use of transfer funds:
- not spending enough money on key positions
- spending ridiculous amounts of money on players who don’t fit the system

Lack of leadership from the upper ranks

Lack of recent investment

Zero consistency with management

The list is pretty endless really. Feeling a little bit hopeless about the whole thing.

 

Prioritising future, imaginary profits over immediate first team needs.

Knee jerk reactions that just result in us doing the opposite to what has most recently not worked, rather than putting any actual thought into it (hiring Edwards then firing him, backing Val for no real reason, hiring Manga then firing him)

A constant misguided belief that the squad is better than it is, which stems back to an arrogance from Gino.

And a bout a million other things some already mentioned.

 

Not realising the benefit in investing in defenders in the PL years.

Not being stronger when Silva didn’t publicly deny links to Everton.

Getting wrapped up in beating Liverpool and not lambasting Liverpool and the PL for VVD’s challenge on Deulofeu.

Sacking Edwards.

 

Supporting Watford?

 

Not sacking Gracia in the summer after the season end and cup final embarrassment shortly followed by signing Sarr for £40m for a team that didn’t play wingers.

That’s the downfall start point. Every single decision following was a panic reaction to those.

 

Almost every business and football decision made by Pozzo in the last five years.

Not communicating.

Taking survival for granted.

Persisting with Duxbury when all evidence suggested otherwise, especially on such an outrageous salary.

Mangy Buyout.

Mangy Buyout.

Mangy Buyout.

Revolving door of coaches.

No plan.

Continued page 94...

 

I would add to this the arrogant, narcissistic trumpeting of becoming ‘the best of the rest’ which led to a catastrophic loss of focus.
I mean the muppets even seemed to believe their own publicity.

 

Spending money badly is usually the main reason for a clubs decline and we're no different in that regard.

 

This was the main one. We had some cracking players. But we'd need to score 3 every game to have a chance of winning as we persisted with Kabasele Cathcart and Femenia at the back. To name a few....

 

Spending BIG money on cheap players!

 

#ImagineIf

 

Getting in bed with Mogi Bayat.

 

Gino taking over Watford.

 

We have, of course, sacked a lot of managers after a short time, including Silva, but arguably we gave some of them too much time. As you say, if Silva was going to spend months moping around, why not just can him immediately? Why give Gracia four games to prove himself when we clearly had doubts at the end of the previous season? Why give Xisco any benefit of the doubt when anyone on here could have told you he wasn't up to it? We got stick for getting rid of McKinlay and Jokanovic so soon, but at least the ownership took decisive action, and you can't deny that those decisions paid off handsomely

 

I think they sold Watford to Silva on the whole ‘stepping stone to a bigger club’ thing they did with players. Everton come along and the hierarchy don’t like it and everyone starts pulling against each other and Silva quite rightly points out that they are a bigger club. That and the fact that I think he couldn’t work in the environment we know now is the norm.

They should have either let Silva go or paid him more money and then dealt with it at the end of the season.

Whilst it all ‘worked out in the end’, it did set an important precedent for future manager recruitment and trust. As in, I don’t think any single manager was trusted again.

 

Not sure we need to go into the historical records. Just this season alone proves that the loonies are still in charge making crass decisions at every turn.

Bachmann captain and 5-year contract
Ngakia 4-year contract
Signing Healey
Signing Chak in the winter window
Extending Val’s contract
Employing then quickly sacking Manga, Costa and co
Continued relationship with Mogi

I’m sure there’s a lot more if I put my mind to it.

 

I can't say I like the guy, and perhaps we would have fallen down anyway even if he were fully motivated (we did play some good football, but I also seem to recall that a lot of screamers were going in for us at the time), but bloody hell I can understand his frustration at the time

 

We had no money and huge debts to start paying off. Pretty much all incomings were freebees or loans.

 

All of the reasons given above are good examples of the poor decisions taken by PozzoDux, but for me the really key bad one is the signing of Sarr. Spending so much money on a single unproven player was so out of step with the recruitment strategy up to that point, which was generally "good enough" for prem survival. The gamble staked on Sarr, following on the heels of Andre Gray, reduced the funds available for sensible recruitment to the squad, with the result that we have never been able to compete on the pitch since.

 

He’ll always be the ‘one that got away’. Loved the football then.

 

Well it takes a special type of stupid to run up such debts with Prem money coming, but in any case, there are better ways of using the money than what we did...

 

Everything's been downhill since

 

As discussed before pretty much all prem sides have to spend more that extra revenue they earn in order to try to stay in the prem. That’s why 2/3 make large losses. Surely you know this ? So there are clearly a lot of “special types of stupid” in the prem inc the likes of Brighton and Bmuff. It helps to have a very rich owner.

 

Failing to invest in modernising scouting / player evaluation, meaning our vast network has been out-flanked by other similar clubs.

Failing to invest in proper defenders, many years over but particularly going into 2019-2020.

Letting the clear lack of leadership from our 'captain' in 2019-2020 fester to the point that we sleepwalked into relegation while waiting for the "lightbulb moment".

Putting all the blame on head coach after head coach, without recognising the total failure by Pozzo to hire effectively and create a winning environment at the club.

Going into 2021-2022 with a squad that never really had a chance of staying in the Premier League.

Roy Hodgson. Just because.

Time after time, throwing money at Mogi Bayat.

While we arguably punched above our weight for several years in the Premier League, the bad decisions keep on coming from Pozzo. There's just no excuse anymore for the continued failures on his part.

 

The biggest single bad decision I think the club have made in recent years is not pushing the boat out to sign Ivan Toney when we definitely could have. It would have given the club a new talisman to replace the then useless Deeney and as such given us more chance of doing something when back in the PL (or at the very least making a huge profit on selling him).

Whle our fall from our 5 year stint in the PL wasn't helped by our decision to not invest more in defence or replace Gracia in the summer (or even appoint Pearson sooner), I think that bad luck played more of a part in it both with Deulofeu's injury and covid happening when it did (which derailed our decent form) - had either one of those two things not happened we would have just about survived. Maybe we would have then gone down the following season instead but there would have been a chance for renewed impetus.

 

Signing Sarr - absolutely nothing good came of it.

The lack of long term strategy baffles me. High levels of player trading and taking a few punts is fine if it’s in addition to a solid and stable core but we have just lurched from one direction to another. Hughes should be here and skipper, a Cathcart type should be a mainstay defender, a Deeney type should be mainstay striker etc.

 

The stupid did not start there, plus we seemed to spend what little we had in the summer we had into average 30+ players rather than players with scope to improve, genuinely, the only hit all season was Dennis...

 

On top of many, many other bad decisions I think the recruitment is the main reason for our fall.

We were too focussed on signing fancy players who might catch the eye and bring in a large profit for Pozzo, whilst simultaneously losing the solid, driven players which fought for the team when our backs were against the wall (think prime Deeney, Hughes, Behrami, Holebas). That meant when times got tough nobody picked up the squad, and instead they all just shyed away and wanted to be subbed off.

 

I think Hughes would have been straight out the door to a more stable club when we got relegated if he didn't have surgery, so him not signing a new contract perhaps wasn't surprising, but we didn't half make a balls out of replacing him!
Nothing against Cathcart, but him being a mainstay defender was the problem, he was very good in the early Prem years, but we needed to think about replacing him by about 2017. We did at least (ham-fistedly) try to replace Deeney, but it's a similar case with him, between 2019-21 he wasn't up to it (arguably before), but was still a regular starter when fit

 

Could we have? Did we have £5m to spend in 2020? Mind you, that is a symptom of all the issues listed already...