Chris Wilder - Watford Head Coach #18

Am I the only one that thinks you get effort with Bacuna?

 

The players are 100% to blame for the lack of effort on the pitch is what I meant. The club being a **** show from top to bottom is on Pozzo and his circus.

 

It's hardly surprising our prima donnas are not going to respect some uncouth, uncultured, fat northerner who looks at deaths door clearly due to poor lifestyle choices. I would have no respect for such a shambolic figure either.

As ever the answer is simple. A stern, suave besuited Italian with buckets of the one thing all Brits lack: panache.

 

Should be fairly simple to fund, just borrow and secure the loans against the 2026/27 premier league tv money.

 

Harsh on David Niven but point taken!

 

Looks like Wilder has not had the desired impact. I like what he says and his honesty in his interviews, but we actually look worse now with him in charge.

No cheap new manager bounce. From his 4 games in charge, we still remain the only club to have lost to QPR since 17th December!!. We failed to beat the bottom club at home and we stank the place out against our bitter rivals. All we have got to show was the excellent first half against Birmingham, but even in that game we fell apart alarmingly in the second half. The 2-0 lead should have been wiped out within the first 7 minutes of that second half.

So, I doubt he’ll be our coach next season, not that I thought that would remotely happen anyway. He may not even see out this season if yesterday’s comments land badly with the hierarchy.

 

I'm happy for mods to edit it to "living Brits".

 

We got the new manager bounce in the first half against Birmingham, we got it slightly longer with Bilic as we got it for the whole game against Stoke.

 

Whilst I agree, I can’t help thinking that a big part of the problem is that we keep changing the manger and each time we do it, we look weaker - and it’s got very little to do with who we bring in. There is no continuity or a sense that we are building something. Do the players actually believe in anything they are being told, when they know that the manager won’t be around long. Whilst I agree they should work hard no matter what is happening around them and be mentally far stronger, they are also human and need to believe in the club and manger.

 

There’s really no point in Wilder staying to the bitter end of the season. He’s having no impact and he’s harming his CV. Reach a compromise and let one of the coaches eg Johnson cover til Manga gets his man in the summer.
Also no point in playing any of the players who won’t be here next season. Give Asprilla, Martins, Adebayo(?), and others a few games and see if they can at least play with a bit of passion and enthusiasm.

 

Yes, the main problem is not the coach. The group of players we currently have are unmanageable.

The biggest issue for me is the owner’s attitude towards the head coach. He thinks I provide you with talented players and you coach them. That just does not work anymore.

You need the head coach to have a greater input with the players he requires. Edwards was selected but his requirements for a right wingback were ignored. Bilic wanted a striker and midfielder but was ignored. This pattern goes back for years.

There was a time where Gino knew best, but the last 4 years have proved that is a bygone time.

Gino won’t change, or rather I don’t believe he’s capable. The only hope we have as a club is if he sells or he trusts someone like Manga and gives him total control over footballing decisions.

 

Zombie David Niven would get more out of the team than Wilder.

 

Yesterday’s result has got us all thinking and we, the fans, have no way of getting a definitive picture of the internal workings of the club. But there are a number of patently obvious facts:

- We are not an attractive investment for new owners because of our size (population, fan base etc.) and indebtedness. So looking for Pozzo to jump ship is possibly unrealistic.
- If you are a good up and coming young coach or a well established successful manager, why would you ever consider coming to us, other than a short term money grabbing exercise. The role within the club, the project and the recent history, would make most run a mile, which severely restricts our options.
- Many are commenting that we would be in better shape now if we had not got rid of Edwards. That is not true. He would still be dealing with the same **** in terms of interference, poor player attitude and rotten culture. He has proven himself to be a decent manager in the right environment.
- I suspect that Gino would like to get out, but the project needs an extremely wealthy fan with a passion for the club to buy him out and pay off debts, but Elton is 75/76 and wants to spend time with his family. Gino’s options are very limited.
- We are not as attractive a club for young talented players to come into as we once were. Other clubs have surpassed us in terms of scouting networks, profile and prospects.
- Our star shone brightly for a period and we “punched above our weight”, but we are now falling into the Blackpool, Ipswich, Hull, Wigan category of a former top dog now back to reality.

This may be an overly pessimistic outlook, but it seems the realistic future. I will still get over the UK with my sons to follow the club (we are traveling over for the Huddersfield game!!!) but the hope of dining at the top table is an unattainable goal, for the foreseeable. The rubbish that we are producing now must not be repeated for next season or we will be in League One before we know what is going on.

 

The problem is that the Watford FC ownership are facing a massive dilemma.
We are broke with massive debts. We face a possible points deduction and the threat of administration looms over us given our financial mess.
We have players that are very mediocre and have very little resale value. Ok, Sarr, Pedro, Louza and Porteous will fetch a fee, though Sarr and Louza will go for less than we paid for them.
The players we are left with are awful.
Time and time again we hear of " Watford players are too good for the Championship ", this is utter crap. The players are dreadful, not hungry for success, just treading water with their careers. Football mercenaries is the term that comes to mind
What can the Pozzo family do? The Watford ship is sinking fast and Gino is frantically trying to plug a massive hole. There isn't any money left to buy our way back to the back to the Premier league. Players talk to players, they will not join Watford it it current state.
Gino doesn't have in him to accept that we need to rebuild or hand over control on the football side. This option would be painful and we may suffer a further relegation before it gets any better.
The club needs a clearout, total clearout. It needs to come up with a plan for the future, not just the day by day chaos avoidance.
We need a coach who can rebuild, to bring on players who want to move up in their careers. Sadly, this is not the way Gino doesn't business.
The crap we see on the pitch has been coming for the past 4 years, many fans on this site could see it.
If a dinosaur of a manager like Wilder can see it, then we are in trouble. His words yesterday were correct and possibly only 50% of what he really feels.
We have enough points on the board to avoid relegation, but we are playing like relegation fodder.
Next season we will be relegation candidates if there isn't a major, major change in club policy/outlook, player attitude and management.
It is just a thought.

 

I'm looking forward to Chelsea sacking Potter, then him getting hired by Fulham after Silva gets nicked by Spurs. Then Fulham beating Chelsea 2-0 at Craven Cottage and lots of the Chelsea fans subsequently claiming they should have kept Potter and "stuck with the project".

 

The difference being that Chelsea can go get some of the best players in the world (they already have brought in some very promising youngsters rather than a random hodge podge bunch of players), and get some of the best managers in the business if they're stuck, we are soon to be up **** creek

 

That was indeed the case with much of the team over the last couple of seasons, but yesterday for example we started with:
Bachmann - 28 - still relatively young for a GK
Porteous - 24
Choudhury - 25
Ngakia - 22
Kone - 20
Louza - 23
JP - 21
Davis - 25

So that's the majority of the team not even fully at their peaks yet, let alone being "at the twilight of their careers".

The only one of our players that started yesterday who's at the twilight of his career is Cathcart.

Meanwhile our best and most committed player was arguably 29 year-old Sema.

I agree that the players knowing the manager could be changed at any minute won't be helping the situation, but the correlation you claim with regards to players supposedly being past it doesn't really seem to be the case at the moment.

I also think with the appointment of Manga, and the recent signings we've made, the club will be increasingly moving back to a focus on signing players earlier in to their careers who they can hopefully develop, eg Kone, Ferreira and Porteous.

 

Their collection of players look as much a random hodge podge for the PL as ours do for the Champ. As with us, on paper they appear to have compiled a strong squad for the division, but as a team they just don't click.

 

Our most successful managers under the Pozzos have mostly been Spaniards.

 

But they won't be in a position where they'll have to sell their most promising players to make ends meet, if anything, they can keep the good ones and sell their least promising players for a few bob if they run into trouble

 

The focus of my post was clearly more about the case for sticking with a young British manager who'd done well in his previous job but seems to be under-performing in the current one where there are bigger expectations, while often playing players in odd positions and struggling to create a functioning team (but who might hypothetically then do well again at a local rival who have less pressure but are already riding high).

It was also, again I thought fairly obviously, slightly tongue-in-cheek.

You seem to be arguing as if I was somehow putting forward a case that we're in as solid a financial situation as Chelsea!?

 

Then it is time for us to employ the Gladiator to chat with Gino Pozzo.

Maximus: The time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end.
[Bows head]
Maximus: Highness

 

I agree with the majority of your post Problem:
Davis is crap. He is not a goalscorer. He maybe young, but his play shows elements of errors that you cannot eradicate.
Bachmann has to go. I have said from the beginning that he is not good enough and my feelings remain.
Take the second Luton goal yesterday. Just watch as he thinks of coming out and then changes his mind. He should have bulldozed his way to punch the ball, it was 7 yds from his goal line. He doesn't want to come off his line. The opposition know it, our own players know it and this creates uncertainty.
Ngakia is never going to make it. Frightened of the ball coming to him.
nuff said.
Sarr, the problem with him is that l understand that he is a dim as a candle, possibly not even as bright as that. This hinders him.

How many good young players have we seen from all clubs and then seen very few make it.
Very rarely does a player go on in their career once he has been mediocre at 22/23/24. Yes , l am sure there some that move on.

 

When you die on a hill, you really die on that hill don’t you.

 

If he really means what he says, he'll sack most of them off and play the younger players between now and the end of the season.

Doubt he will though

 

Very easy to say all the right things, especially when it takes all the heat off yourself

 

Individually, I like most of the deals we did in January, but if anything, as Bilic pointed out, we are missing that battle-hardened Championship veteran a la Watson or Guedioura. Might Gaspar prove to have a positive impact on the younger lads? Perhaps, but he doesn't have the legs that those two had, and I don't even know if he can speak English

 

Then again, as soon as relegation was more or less confirmed last season, our ‘star players’ disappeared from the lineup. I’d expect nothing less this time around.

 

Difficult to do whilst smoking 2 fags and trying to light a 3rd…

 

We will be changing our name to 'Frank Lampard's Watford' when 'Lamps' is named as our new manager for next season. You heard it here first

 

For the first 7 games we would suddenly be the media darlings, then we sack him, and the media despise us more than ever.

 

Do you think he'd last seven games? He'll be in the WFC Hall of fame if he can hang around that long!