Andre Gray

Discussion in 'Former Players Archive' started by hornmeister, Aug 13, 2017.

  1. poakley

    poakley Academy Graduate

    I did start at £5m but then I couldn't have given Dja Djedje a mention so it had to be dropped to £3m for my own entertainment.

    The top sentence is bang on, we put in so much effort to effectively just about stand still
     
  2. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    This season though has completely destroyed that argument tbh - not much to spend, and pretty much all of it spent on crap.
     
    Burnsy likes this.
  3. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Yet again - Penaranda was Pozzo-to-Pozzo.

    He was really only signed for £700k.
     
  4. foxywfc

    foxywfc Reservist

    All this **** transfer business needs its own thread. Pozzo has the biggest legal human trafficking ring in the world.


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  5. poakley

    poakley Academy Graduate

    Wasn’t it more in order to secure his work permit?
     
  6. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Seemed like absolute desperation this season, just buying all sorts a lot cheap crap and hoping it was good. Mind you we did that in our first season in the PL with players like Zarate and Ibarbo, but luckily we had some decent hits like Prodl, Behrami and Capoue.
     
  7. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    But at least that season we had more leeway as we had more to spend, we were always going to be up against it this season considering even with the flurry of signings in January (a very mixed bag they were!) we still didn't spend anywhere near as much as 15/16
     
  8. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Well clearly we didn't spend enough then, because he wasn't able to come here for years after that!
     
  9. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I haven’t looked but I doubt we’ve spent much less this season than that season. All these £2/3m turds soon add up, and that’s before you consider crap like Rose and Nkoulou who’ve contributed zero and the £12m we siphon off to Agents/Mogi
     
  10. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    I know this is said a lot but how do you think this actually works? We definitely paid Udinese a significant chunk of money for Peñaranda that and we got a useless asset in return. That money left our account and went into theirs. So where is the £9.5m paid back to us by Udinese to make it effectively a free transfer like you're suggesting? Although the clubs share back office functions and player trading networks, I've never seen any suggestion that their finances are one big pool.
     
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  11. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    They aren’t.
     
  12. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yup exactly. I think there was a school of thought back in the early Pozzo days that what was good for Udinese (or Granada) was good for us. Which on a superficial level makes some sense. But facing cold hard facts, ever since we first went up to the PL and stayed up we've been the cash cow and the flow has largely been outbound. That wasn't necessarily intolerable until the neglect of our playing side killed the golden goose and left Pozzo playing catch up, something he's proven over the past 3 years to be massively ill-equipped to do.
     
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  13. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    Yet again - this isn’t true.
     
  14. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    How does that disprove the idea that the money goes in to the same Pozzo pool? When you say that they're just taking more of the money from us right now to put in to that pool.

    How do you know this?
     
  15. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    In fairness, you're the one saying that it is all the same pool, the onus is on you to explain how it is.

    Not being snarky, I just don't think I've seen any evidence to support the idea that the Pozzos view the two clubs as businesses that are so interlinked it's one pot of money but I'm open to persuasion...
     
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  16. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Well the 'pool' is Udinese as far as I can see. There's no central pot that I know of. I don't think any substantial funds go to a holding company or whatever...
     
  17. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I wonder what will happen with Gerri as an example if he is sold for £20m to one of the bigger Italian teams. Did Udinese pay us for him, and will we see any of his transfer fee back?
     
  18. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Why? The onus is on both sides.

    The truth is though that no one really knows, as it's impossible for us to see the Pozzo family's full range of assets, companies and accounts.

    I'd just be very surprised if our owners don't consider Watford as one part of their wider family business empire of which Udinese is another part. I'd imagine that their overarching goal would be to maximise their total earnings across the business, and that might involve reducing assets and earnings in one part of their wider business to increase it elsewhere.

    The Pozzos will no way be looking at Penaranda and thinking they lost £9mil on him or whatever - they'll be considering the success of him in the context of the £700k it cost for them to bring him in to the family fold from outside.

    They're two businesses owned by the same family - assuming that their wealth will ultimately be kept in the family then it is obvious that the businesses are intrinsically interlinked by nature of their ownership being shared.

    Aren't some of our loans to one of Pozzos' other companies (I'm not sure if that counts as a "holding company" but it's still another one which is part of their wider business and which could have interests elsewhere).

    But Udinese have given us money back for the likes of Deulofeu, Pereyra, Success etc.

    I don't think it's realistic to expect that the flows will always be 100% balanced between the two clubs as everything is constantly changing and ongoing.

    It may be that it is in the interests of the Pozzo family's finances that most of their profits or gains get realised in Italy? I also wouldn't breezily dismiss the notion as UEA has above already that what is good for the Pozzos isn't possibly also good for us - ultimately it's still preferable for us if the Pozzo family are in a comfortable and liquid financial position than otherwise; the more the Pozzo family may be in the crap financially the less likely they are to invest in the club and the more likely they are to asset strip.
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2022
  19. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    The reality is Gino’s incompetence at running Watford directly benefits Udinese and makes them more competitive though, whether it’s deliberate or not.
     
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  20. Heidar

    Heidar Squad Player

    Maybe it is best that we stick to free transfers and loans.

    Bit like moving back in with the parents after realising you've driven yourself into debt with nothing to show for it.
     
  21. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    In fairness to them, I don't think they deliberately strengthened Udinese with Geri, because everyone was understandably wary about his injury, he went there almost as a last resort quite late in the window. They're just bumbling fools who happen to have a number of side aims which are more important than Watford to them, but I don't think they want us to fail
     
  22. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Doesn’t matter as it extracts money from us into another Pozzo pocket never to return Just like the Pussetto fiasco.
     
  23. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Our ownership structure is Watford FC - Hornets Investment Ltd (UK) - Hornets Investment SA (Luxembourg). Udinese aren't even in the same group of companies.

    Yes, the same family own the two clubs and are happy to move players around and share scouting, medical, ground staff etc. But I don't think there's any evidence that they treat it as one big financial melting pot. If anything, it would make more business sense to keep them independent - if for example, you ran up a load of debt on one club and it ended up going pear shaped, it wouldn't affect the other one.

    Peñaranda cost Watford £9.5m, he wasn't a free transfer just because he came from Udinese.
     
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  24. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    You don't know that though.

    Also, maybe even without the paper+player shuffling they'd have just found other ways to extract the money they wanted.
     
  25. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Sure they could be different companies, and as you say it could make financial sense for them to be run as different companies.

    But if the same family owns all those different companies then that's still ultimately what's most important as they can control what happens between them and they'd want to maximise the family earnings across the sum of the different companies.

    If your father buys a house for £100k then sells it to you for £500k (maybe because there's tax advantages for doing so, who knows), knowing that the money could be potentially transferred back if necessary in future and you'd likely inherit the £500k you paid anyway in future, you wouldn't really consider it as if you'd outright lost £400k or whatever.

    Overall the family still only spent £100k for the house, even though the money and the property was temporarily shuffled between its members.
     
  26. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    Well we know our accounts. If you are willing to believe they’ll suddenly shovel cash our way now then that’s up to you. Duxbury said there were times last season where he didn’t know if we’d be able to carry on and that still wasn’t enough reason to get the £7m Pussetto money back.
     
  27. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    The other thing about the discussion missing from peoples' considerations is that the fee paid between the Pozzo clubs is pretty much arbitrary. That it was £9mil for Penaranda and say £7mil for Ighalo is in large part up to the whims of how much money they may wish to move at a particular time in a particular direction.

    In that respect it might as well have been that we sent Udinese £2mil for Penaranda and £14mil for Ighalo, the outcome is near enough the same but the Pozzos just chose those particular fees at those moments in time - that those fees are somehow attached to one particular player or another is practically irrelevant.
     
  28. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    If Watford go bust they can cut us lose and Udinese are ring fenced.
     
  29. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    The only thing that matters is the net of what they extract from us to them. And as you say they can pick a number.
     
  30. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    2 family members own 2 houses in 2 countries. One rises 50%. One falls 50% resulting in significant negative equity. If they don’t see the losing market rebounding are they better off borrowing against the profit to clear the negative equity or letting the lender swallow the loss?
     
  31. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    They made him what he is and deserve every penny.
     
  32. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    He’s finally gone!
     
  33. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    But you know he will score v us next season !
     
  34. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Will cup his ear to the Rookery too then do a celebration that's an re-enactment of him breaking COVID rules.
     
  35. Sort of OK

    Sort of OK Reservist

    Halle...*******...lujah!
     

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