About as likely as Nath being positive, @a19tgg and @lowerrous not arguing or @Jumbolina not mentioned Leventhal and exchange rates!!!
If that happens I would march down to the Watford shop, buy the most expensive Ken Sema endorsed cap and proceed to eat it.
He's now just posted a video of himself training (on his own) at the Watford training ground. It looks like he really is back with us!!
This guy is the replacement for Sarr AND Dennis. Finally we can sell them and get this window started, if you listen carefully you can hear Mogi scribbling down more names for Rob's list.
I've kinda forgotten about this guy, so just looked the history of him. Can't believe we actually signed him from Granada for £9.5m!! Ouch......another masterstroke. Last season he was poor, although blighted by injuries. He was playing for UD Las Palmas in the Spanish second division. He made 18 appearances but only 5 starts. Scored 2 goals and 1 assist. No stranger to a yellow card either, picking up 7 yellows. Safe to say, if we're really thinking of using him we really are scraping the barrel. Hopefully he's just getting fit before we can loan him to a club even further down the food chain.
In fairness he had all the talent and I think it was at an Under 20 World cup where he was excellent. He was certainly very highly rated .Judging by the photo's he posts he likes the good life too much
But he was a party boy. He always had that about him. Doesn't have the drive and will to succeed. A wasted talent, but Watford should never be investing in players of that character, certainly not to the tune of £9.5m. It was always likely to fail. This is where Watford, as a football club, constantly fail. We do not recruit smartly enough. Sure, every club can show a failed signing, and Watford can also point to some very good signings in the past, but these are few and far between. Watford are signing far too many duds for a club of Watford's size. They need to get better at this, and this is all down to the Sporting Director. We need to employ better people at this level. Nani, I thought was pretty decent, but Giraldi was patchy at best and Giaretta has been a disaster for the most part. Gino has to look at who is the best Sporting Director out there, within Watford's grasp, and employ him, pay him the big backs and see shrewd intelligent players being signed. No more Kalu's, Pussetto's, Penaranda's. We've never needed them, so why spend money on them? Buy players for Watford's team as the primary reason, not just to collect players who might make some money a little down the line, but we never see them. This may not be a popular opinion, but I've seen Duxbury up his game this season. His side of the operation has definitely improved. The sporting side remains the same though. Gino, who I believe has lost interest and is not investing anymore, has to change his tactics. Get rid of Giaretta and go in a new direction. It will pay dividends further down the road. Invest in the academy, upgrade to Cat One. It's no-brainer stuff if you've truly got ambition and want to develop your own club. I see strides are being made in this direction, but not enough yet. But fundamentally, the intelligence of recruitment has to improve, but you need people who are "best in class" in order to trust their judgement when signing new players. New signings have to be an upgrade to first team with good personal characteristics. I wouldn't trust Giaretta to chose what is the best sandwich in the canteen.
Plus the probable loss on wages vs loan fees. My post was obviously tongue in cheek but he has clearly been a disasterous acquisition for us, along with Issac Success. The fees may have been inflated but they were both genuinely exciting prospects when they joined us. Difficult to tell how much of their failure was down to how they were managed and how much was down to their personalities.
Both examples of our scouting identifying great potential, but not assessing the character of the player. Neither seemed to have the correct application to achieve their potential, they should both of made a minimum of good championship players.
Yeah - in this case I think the original fees were ballpark reasonable given their potential. So disappointing both failed so badly.
TBF they were already Pozzo players and doing really well in la Liga but headed downhill as soon as they left Spain. Only came to us due to the pending sale of Granada presumably ?
What a shame to see the way it panned out for Penaranda. He had to be one of the more exciting prospects we had on our books, we even loaned him out year-on-year in order to gain him a work permit to play for us. He performed so well in the U20’s world cup years ago, and he was without a doubt the star man in that tournament. Since finally gaining a permit to play in the UK, he never seemed to have been given a chance, but i’m sure there’s good reason for it. Pedro’s turned out to be the player we all thought Penaranda would be.. For every cloud n all that.
I'll say it again, why didn't we just loan him back out to Granada so he could get the Spanish passport? Dunno if it would have made the difference getting him over here quicker rather than loaning him here there and everywhere as the bloke is clearly an eejit, but it surely wouldn't have harmed his development!
Such a shame but everyone has a different route and unfortunately for Bertie and us,his seems to have been diverted irrevocably. What a waste of ability.
I don't think it would have mattered. It seems like the money ruined him and the money was always going to be there regardless of when he moved. Ultimately he just didn't have the mentality to succeed. A real shame, because it seems clear he had the potential.
Perhaps, although he was on to a good thing at Granada, why even allow him to be bored sitting on various benches around Europe?
