Bayo and Okoye were both available in early 2022 for £850,000 or €1million each. It the power of the agent against the weakness of our club.
Odd that we were prepared to sell Okoye for less than 1/5th of what we paid, mere days after having signed him. The rare 'reverse Bayat' manoeuvre.
24/25 is when the PL money runs out and we will be a small town club with a massive debt, a shi£ academy, virtually no income, a very dodgy owner, a main agent suspected of money laundering and a CEO who is a habitual liar, knows nothing about football and has created a toxic culture of failure within the club. The few good players we have will leave, even now 4 of our first choice 11 are owned by other clubs.
GT would take one look at this lot and the hierarchy and in firm but polite words tell them I'm sorry most of you are not good enough for where I want to go and start his own rebuild. I was in London all day yesterday. Extremely hard to get around. But having read the comments it's obvious RE for all his weaknesses has been undermined. The squad depth is paper thin. You need two players in each position. We don't have that. One injury and one moderately talented player is replaced by dross. You cannot hope to change games in that fashion if you're behind or trying to see out a game. Maybe that is why RE is reluctant at times to make changes. It's also why we suffer making substitutions the level of our play such as it is drops off. And because it's a small squad in terms of real quality he can't rotate effectively. It will not help with those strains and injuries especially with the age of the squad overall. The shambles is all a result of multiple misguided decisions. As I've said before we should be where Brentford are. Yes they have an owner who is wealthy but also has sense and a DOF who has experience of football as a player, coach and scout. But also is keen on the psychology of football and bringing in winners. How the club has not managed to get into the modern age of analysis is staggering. Something is seriously wrong behind the scenes. Our recruitment is consistently awful despite there being a large pool of players globally to choose from only one region seems effective at producing results. Our tactics, set pieces which should be dictated by analysis and data is and has been consistently dreadful over recent seasons. Football is more than ever a 'science'. GT recognized this in the day long before the age of mass computing and real time data. The use of set pieces, fitness and the high press was exemplary. I just wonder what goes on inside London Colney and that also includes our medical side and fitness preparation. How is it one club of a similar size, support is making more than a fist of it at the top level and one is on the precipice. I think we can lay the blame at the person in charge of the entire operation. Bad leadership, bad decisions are all coming home to roost.
So unpopular these days, but to get a tune out of this lot we have to define ourselves as route one and dispense with the pointless passing. I'd say 40% of our play this season has been nervy triangles between the centre halves and Bachmann. Scrap that and tell them that if you get the ball you go long.
This underlines just how ridiculous it was to for these players to be playing in the EPL. You are basically saying they are technically inferior to several/ possibly most Championship teams. I reckon the majority of us would swap this silly tactic for more direct football if it got results.
Yeah it's a damming indictment of the state of this squad really. The drain of technical quality in the last 3 years has been depressing to watch
A late change of formation saw Baa play with Jane and IBB with Daniela as second pair in the quarter final of the national 50s knock out, Hazelwood v Wimbledon. Jane and Baa beat Siobhan ( a recent 55s world champion) and partner 4&1. Daniela and Basset saved five match points in the championship tie break to win 11-9. Jane and Baa won a comfortable 1&0 against the stalk like Susie,who couldn't remember the score,shouted "out" at every opportunity and called us all "girls"! Her partner Cheryl,who collapsed in the latter stages of the second set and never recovered,was more normal but didn't look 50. Moment of the day was in the remaining match at 3-0 Hazelwood,when Daniela asked IBB if it was ok to stop as she had a county match on Sunday? I said "of course but next time can we do it before I've served for fifteen minutes in the last game?!" We were then subjected to the Spuds game as we had tea,on full volume. Martin tells me there's still no plan. I'm intrigued to see what will transpire when SEJ returns.
Seems to me yesterday was not a hopeless performance and if we play like that every week we'll win a good number of them. But coming off the back of such other uninspiring performances like WBA, Birmingham, QPR, Rotherham and Preston, plus MK Dons in the cup, it's typical we found another way to screw it up and confidence is flagging. Edwards needs to fix it fast.
I know this is probably jumping the gun a little, but it does have me worried. If we fail to go up this or next season like @Moosegasm said, are we suggesting the Aministrators move in? We will end up with a big debt and could get to the point of players not being paid etc. I would hate it to get to that point, but we are already on that road. I look at Bury and what happened to them (fair play to the fans' though they have re-structured the club and are at least relevant again at the bottom of the football ladder), it's pretty damning that we currently have a squad that doesn't even operate like a team half the time and stil makes simple mistakes that we do even with the experience of some of the playing staff.
I reckon about 4 or 5 Sunderland players get into our starting line up. More good work from the recruitment masters Pozzo and Bayat.
You are right. We are on a similar path to that of Derby County. Unless we can promotion within the time of parachute payments we face the prospect of administration.
Certainly their subs were much more affective than ours have been all season ! If we are still mid table come January can see Pedro and Sarr going if the finances dictated it .
It looks like the Kamara money will be used to cover operating costs this year having not received a fee for JP or Sarr. That suggests that even with parachute payments the club is unable to pay off the external debt. Scott has spoken about wanting to pay off the external debt within 2 years, he was of course........lying. From 24/25 onwards there will be no possibility of paying off the debt unless we get promoted. We'll be using a significant chunk of our income servicing the debt and will have a league 1 budget to try and stay in the champo. Thank u Scott and Gino, u useless snake oil selling charlatans!! Probably the only silver lining is that Duxbury will leave as we won't be able to afford his salary.
Missed the first 20 mins At some points we looked really good and then some **** would **** it all up with a stupid pass and they would attack and look threatening, we really should not have lost it. I believed that we had a goodish squad and certainly enough to bounce back without too many issues, however harsh reality is we should bounce back but unless something changes really quick, we won't. problems I can see are: 1) We are trying to play like Man City in a league that will just kick the **** out of us, we are nowhere near aggressive enough and are just being bullied match after match. 2) some of our players have real potential (JP / Sarr / Asprilla / Davis), some of our players are ok at the level (Bachman, Kayembe, Kamara, Choudry, Sema), and some just look out classed or like lazy bastards. Although Choudry has look alright up to now, both him and Kamara (yes, he is on the wrong side, but is that an excuse for a **** pass), have been terrible for the last few games, giving balls away with crap under played passes. Our captain choice for the last few weeks has been odd (Cathcart / Kabaselle), give it to JP at least he seems to care. Davis looks like he will give it a go for us. 3) Dressing room still sounds like it is ****. 4)Everybody (including myself) has made such a thing of sacking managers that we are probably now to scare to let RE go. He does somethings I like, like attacking substitutions (bringing on Bayo so we had 4/5 attacking players on the pitch), but not sure he has improved the skill of our players or their fitness or their desire to play. If he can't cut it, he needs to go regardless of our track record with managers. I know a lot of people will say that he hasn't been given the right players but with JP / SARR / Davis / Asprilla / Sema on the pitch the ball shouldn't be in our half! and we lost yesterday because Choudry / Kamara / Hause / Kayembe kept making under hit passes - which has to be about practice and training.
All teams do this passing around the back because as you say they see the top teams do that . So many get caught out ! We are better on the front foot and going at teams.
Someone who doesn't bother to go to games, slagging off those who do go and support the club. If you are that bothered and the Saps arent doing your bidding, maybe get off the internet, come to VR and you can start the revolution, Comrade.
A message to all those frustrated with the way things are at Vicarage Road at the moment - do yourselves a favour and go to watch Wealdstone v Southend next weekend. Good football, good atmosphere. Good beer
Udinese are on the absolute cusp of beating Inter, having playing extremely well and matched them throughout the game - Geri was of course involved in the goal production.
It's pretty damn clear Gino doesn't give a toss about Watford anymore. Look at all the talent Udinese has now. Yes I know some our ex-players but they are a damn sight better than we are as a well run club. It makes me feel like we are the little brother watching over the wall at our big brother having all the fun while we sit in the play park without any friends. If you get the symbolism.
Great post! On Pedro, like you I noticed his off the ball work rate and attention to defensive duties but too often he does seem like the best player in the school team who has to dribble past a few players to just to prove it. Surely, a coach should be saying to him "your first touch is sublime, so use it, look up and pass the ball or shoot. The time to dribble is where it hurts the opposition, near the opposition goal!"
I think it's more a damning indictment of Serie A that a team playing a 31 year-old Bobby Pereyra at RWB, and a post-crocked Deulofeu is currently top of the table. They can't have that much talent when Issac Success is still making regular sub appearances for them.
I posted something similar a few days ago, and I'm a bit surprised to already have to do so again to today - but we're going to struggle to build something after next season with Sarr and JP gone, little cash to reinvest, and being a less attractive proposition for PL loan players and other top football league players no longer being one of the few favourites for promotion. If Edwards is struggling to piece together a promotion winning team with the squad he has now, how will he do it with the likes of JP, Sarr, Hause, Davis, Kamara and Choudhury all gone next season to likely be replaced by inferior players?!
Except we were robbed by the officials with the "offside" calls which weren't vs QPR and Blackburn. With the QPR one that would have given us another point given how late it was, and with the Blackburn one we very much had momentum and could have even gone on to win, or at least draw. So those two games are already 2 or 4 more points which we could have had back - which is enough to override your point in my opinion.
Whilst I agree those were terrible decisions from the officials, I'm not sure it would have mattered against Blackburn, as we never got any momentum from taking the lead this season and arguably we even played worse everytime we took the lead. Against QPR, fair enough, but then again we could have also conceded at least one more goal prior to that. I just think that overall, we currently have more points than we deserve considering our performances.
And the QPR call was probably right unfortunately if not frustrating . Plus we scored a goal that could have been disallowed for a foul by Pedro tbh .
