Yeah, he's in another league. You, I, Burnsy, GD and Nath at least try to maintain a little credibility, but then we've got a Podcast to promote.
I see our bestest supporter has piped up with a rallying call. Interesting that when he was slagging off Walter Mazzarri tweeting a ‘f*ck off Walter’ flag, going on about Andre Gray (or whichever player he didn’t approve of this week) or his little band singing ‘how sh*t must you be’ chants about the team, he didn’t consider these rules. How people miss the hypocrisy is beyond me. I guess if you bite the hand that feeds you, he just becomes another supporter and not one who gets prime position tickets every week and invited to the end of season dinner.
To be honest I always just find the suggestion that supporters have any real influence over these kinds of matters at all laughable. It hardly matters in the slightest what Roy and his mateys are doing up in the Rookery or, indeed, on Twitter. Fight amongst yourselves as much as you like - it's the only thing you can do, because the 1881 certainly won't be fighting the club's way out of anything that exists in the real world. Whether we get relegated or not will have nothing to do with them. Never entirely sure what random appeals to civic ownership have to do with this either, really. Meaningless.
I can't ****ing wait until the 1881 organise the next semi final ticket allocation. Then I'll tell you exactly what they're all about, (could be a while in all fairness).
Breaking - Culshaw has openly criticised the way the club is being run today over contracts for certain players. Perhaps he’s not been given instructions but at this stage it’s not clear. The responses to his criticism have been littered with ‘yeah but what about our previous owners’, ‘saved us from administration’ and ‘new stand’ comments. No indication of a statute of limitations over these almost decade old events. More as we get it or hear more on the BWO Pod in 30 minutes. Meanwhile buy a £50 gilet with our logo on it!
The Twitter responses on that are gold. The phrases “loan fees”, “good backup” “loan fees” “low wage low risk” and more “loan fees” scattered like confetti despite all the players mentioned sitting around the club doing precisely nothing all earning between 20k and 60k per week, some on 4 or 5 year deals. I hope Twitter isn’t representative of our fanbase. Anyway good to see Mr Culshaw asking questions.
Just had a look over the 150 debutants in the Pozzo era and it is a very sorry list indeed. The hit rate from these 150 is so low it sums up the Pozzo era. Lack of investment, freebies, past their prime sick notes, its all there clear to see. The most glaring observation is how many graduates we have had make a debut only for them to be released. It's almost a full house.
Certainly the latter part and defenders or wide players because we brought them when the manager at the time didn’t use them .
Yet all these crap players have got us promoted twice, got to an FA Cup final and played in the Premier League for 6 seasons. It's crazy.
Very funny, but it was probably the 5% hit rate that got us promoted etc. Unfortunately, as we've seen, the approach is not sustainable because it relies far to heavily on playing the percentages and hoping that enough diamonds are buried in the **** to see you through. We've struck gold with Abdi, Ighalo, Doucoure etc. Coming good for us and making up for Iriney, Carillo and all the other guff I don't care to remember, so we got away with it. It's possibly fine as a player trading business model, as one Doucoure or Richarlison covers dozens of Goslings and Cathcarts financially, but as a team, it means we have a squad littered with players not fit for purpose and eventually, if our luck us out, the duds all or mostly remains duds, instead of turning into absolute bargain stars.
You're preaching to the choir when it comes to the frustrations of player trading, and we do sign a lot of players who are not quite up to it.....but that's the nature of the beast. I think fans, in general, have to accept this is the deal with an owner like the Pozzo's. They are not wealthy in football terms, and being in the Premier League is way above their means in all reality. Unless you have a very wealthy owner, and I'm talking billionaire, you're not going to stay in the Premier League for long. It's no coincidence 3 of the bottom 4 clubs are run by the poorest owners. The Premier League is a billionaires playground. I'm not sure what else they can do. The only way we can operate is to buy players who fall between the cracks. Players who were good but are now past their best or kids with potential. Occasionally we manage to sign a player, who is decent, but for whatever reason they are just not fancied. Those deals often turn out well for us. Geri, Bobby P and Dennis all fall into that category. But that's it, we will never be able to sign a player who is on the up and has already proved himself. We'll never be able to sign a player who is the real deal, as the market is fierce and we're just little Watford. I think we have enough in the budget to sign one biggish reputational player per season. This season that was Sissoko. That seems to be our limit though. So, when I get frustrated by transfers and who we sign, I always think back to the days of BBB. For me, that wins every argument going. The Pozzo's are good for us as a club but part of the deal is the silence, the secrecy, the crap signings, the managerial turnover etc. We're no longer a sleepy, run-of-the-mill Championship club, who are constantly battling relegation, as we were. We're in the Premier League, probably wont survive this season, but I would put good money on us going straight back up again next season. This is probably as good as it gets, so we might as well accept it, get behind it all and enjoy it for what it is.
Yet we've been pretty successful, in fact not far short of the most successful spell in our history. Incredible as apparently they've got everything wrong according to your post
This is the reality. Any season that we spend in the Premier League from here on in will be a painful struggle. The money that the larger clubs have is obscene. Top sport is becoming a megalomaniacs' big **** competition and clubs like ours are trying to compete by taking short cuts and looking for bargains. Trouble is, there are numerous medium to small sized clubs trying to do likewise. We simply cannot rely on the administrators of the sport to provide a more even playing pitch. The non application of the Financial Fair Play rules have clearly demonstrated that. When the Pozzos came in initially we took advantage of certain loose rules regarding loans between clubs and it gave us a boost. We also had access to a worldwide scouting system. These advantages have waned significantly. I personally think it is inevitable that the bigger clubs will get their wish of a super league that will appeal to the worldwide fan base of these clubs. The domestic leagues will become more competitive (although less lucrative) and the bigger clubs will focus on the super league, by either dropping out of the domestic leagues or playing second string teams. I would not welcome that development, but it is the only way I see it going based on the crass deluge of wealth coming into the sport from very questionable sources. I will abandon this season if we do not get decent result in the next three games. If we do get the results, I will regain hope that it is conceivable that we get to spend another year in the shadows of these odious giants. Illogical, I know, but that is the bizarre nature of being a fan of a non billionaire backed football team. I do not blame the Pozzos for the current situation, although they have made mistakes. It is the warped structure of the money corrupted professional football world that is at fault.
Be of good cheer, Going Down; think calmly of good things, such as the summer sun shining on the rippling grass of the broad sunlit Cassiobury Park, fluffy puppies, the sound of the wind across the River Gade. Try to ignore the devilry and stupidity of others and do not be drawn into the temptations of envy. His seats are probably as hard and plastic as yours' in the Rookery Stand.
That's true of most clubs, though. Sir Alex Ferguson, touted at one of the best British managers (if not THE best) of all time, had a list of flops as long as his successes, if not more so. I don't follow most other clubs sufficiently to keep track of hits versus misses, but I'd be willing to bet we're not that far outside of the mean when it comes down to it. We just notice and keep track of our flops more because we naturally pay more attention to our own squad. Cognitive bias is very real, especially when emotion is brought into it.
I am not sure you're correct. Few clubs of our stature would have the sheer volume of comings and goings that we do and would buy in a more targeted way. Our numbers game would surely put us above average in terms of misses. It also depends if you count players like Estupinan and Suarez as successes, which I certainly wouldn't.
Looking at other teams you'll be quite surprised how many missed there are from all sides. Estupinan and Suarez is difficult as had we stayed up they may have been important players for us but as it was we made a tidy sum instead which we will always have to do to balance the books as best as possible. Looking at 19/20 season Everton spent £150m on players, none of which have been any good. Brighton who people think are pretty well run spent £65m on six players, 2 of which, Trossard and Webster have done well but the rest not so great. Leicester spent £96m on eight players. Youri Tielemans has been pretty good and James Justin seemed to be decent before a bad injury. The rest have either disappeared or have been poor.
This is the list Adam Webster £22,500,000 Leandro Trossard £18,000,000 Taylor Richards £2,500,000 Matthew Clarke £5,000,000 Neal Maupay £20,000,000 Romaric Yapi Undisclosed Lewis Freestone Free
Maupay has scored nearly 1 in 3? Bit hit and miss at times and I’m sure in time they will look for better - but I’d say he’s been just about worth what they paid for him. I’d say the bulk of that £65m was spent well.
The bulk is on two players who have done well. Maupay has been ok but for £20m and the chances Brighton create he should do a lot better and most Brighton fans seem to agree. The original point was that we have a lot of misses and I was just mentioning that other teams have the same issue. Out of 7 signings 2 have been good and one we may disagree on. The other 4 are misses
Yes you are right we have been successful, but I was merely suggesting that the sheer amount of players incoming I believe we should/could have a better rate of success. We have had some absolute gems play for us there's no doubt about it but the amount of crap far outweighs the good. Its a scattergun approach that I'm not a fan of and I also disagree with the treatment of academy players. I think the Pozzo approach would benefit a B Team structure rather than a youth academy.
