Maduka Okoye

Another truly excellent signing.

Praise be to Pozzo.

 

A truly disastrous signing and another costly mistake by Pozzo.

 

Good loan for Baah at least

 

https://gianlucadimarzio.com/it/calciomercato-trattative-news-oggi-23-agosto-2023


Imminent loan announcement to Udinese to warm their bench instead.

 

Another switch where a player goes to Udinese. We spend a fortune to sign him then he goes over there. No idea on fee but I doubt it’s anything like the £6m we signed him for.

The entire Pozzo operation stinks. It’s so obvious to me what they are doing.

…..and didn’t they say at a recent forum they still believe in him and he’s going to be a future number one? More lies from the hierarchy.

 

Loan fee is £16m.

 

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/23743532.okoye-latest-leave-watford-join-udinese/

Permanent it is.

 

We will recoup most of what we paid. Any fee at all is a miracle.

 

If it is a few million then that’s fair enough. The guy is total droppings, so if the club hasn’t been stitched up on the deal then I’m delighted by the news.

 

Another young keeper's career grinds to a halt after signing for Watford FC. I suspect he'll be back in Rotterdam in the near future, all the best to him.

 

Signing made sense at the time, if a little late. Nigeria's number 1, great season at Sparta, team of the season in Holland, and at such a young age. Shame it hasn't worked out, but 23 is still very early days for a GK, I'm sure he'll probably have a decent career.

Surprising and very welcome news that we're not making a massive loss on him.

 

Very odd how he went from being such a great success at Rotterdam to being so dreadful here ? He genuinely looked a good, if expensive, prospect when we bought him.

 

Whilst I agree with the latter half of this, it really, really didn't make sense to spend £6m of our very limited budget on a player we then loaned straight back out whilst we were in a relegation battle but still had a chance of staying up.

 

Our January transfer windows have generally been awful these past years.

Instead of looking at what the club actually needs right now, we seem to continue with the ownership’s misguided and utterly self-centred policy of buying players for investments.

So when we are first staring at relegation from the PL, we bring in Pussetto. Fast forward two seasons, same scenario and we bring in this guy. And quelle surprise, both transfers fail. In two ways. They neither help us stay up, nor are they of much value for re-sale down the line. Hopeless.

I’ve come to dread Januarys.

 

Guess everyone loses here. We throw money away again due to Pozzo ineptitude. Udinese get forced to buy a broken player to add to their huge squad. And are also forced to cover half our loss.

 

I’d not be surprised if we see him soon for Udinese. He’s a decent keeper and could flourish there. He was just the wrong signing for us at the wrong time.

I’m probably being naive here lol but if we are allowed to spend even half the fee we are allegedly receiving, that could be £2 million or so for some summer investment. Should pay for the Danish guy at least.

I know it’s been argued over before but I think we paid around £4.5 million for him, not the £6 million that’s often touted around?

 

Didn’t Giaretta assure the fans forum attendees just a couple of weeks ago that he was sticking around and they saw him as future number 1? lol

 

That's why I said a little late. It's the type of signing we should have made 6 months previously, or more. I personally don't think it was a case of 'we have £6m to spend, let's spend it on a GK we won't use yet, rather than recruit for what we need now'. I think it was just poor decision making, and a misjudgement on the strength of the squad.

 

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/23648137.trio-watford-players-look-set-loan-transfer/

Watford Observor last month called it an initial fee of €3.5m which is about £3m.

https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/23743532.okoye-latest-leave-watford-join-udinese/

They then believe the fee is €5m or £4.3m

 

Yes, around £4.5m is what I would have expected it to have been after their original quote. Just mind boggling how this club is run. How the hell Udinese have kept going for so long with them in charge is mind blowing, although Giampaolo was different class I'm suspecting. But Udinese cannot continue to do this themselves, taking our crap. That's Masina, Kamara, Quina, Kabasele and now Okoye for around £27m. Their owner is even more nuts than ours

 

Indeed. Bachmann turned 23 the summer we signed him (2017), and he didn't make his debut for us until Jan 2020, aged 25.

 

It may have made sense for us to sign a goalie, we definitely needed an upgrade on Bachmann and Foster, but even putting aside the fact that he didn't come immediately, it was an utter waste to sign Okoye as, no matter how good he is at shot-stopping, he was hopeless from crosses

 

Always feels a bit dodgy when we receive a fee from Udinese, they could have chosen to spend £16m if the Pozzos had wanted to, but I am fairly content to receive most of the money back I guess

 

Something has happened on a Thursday! This is the start of a new era .....

Maybe better, maybe worse.

 

“Look dear, Gino’s bought another one”

 

Sick and tired of it hanging on you?

 

In the post parlacci mumbling I was told about this deal but sworn to secrecy.

 

If we spend £4m out on new signings I'll be both surprised and happy

 

Sorry, I didn’t understand your reply.

 

If Gino went out to buy a sandwich he’d come back with a bag of wheat and a pig in the hope that one day it will turn into a ham roll. But what happens is the pig eats all the wheat and produces sh1te everywhere. He never gets the ham roll after all.

 

Someone posted something interesting recently to show that the money spent on transfers was massively dwarfed by the money from sales. I think it might have you been who posted this but apologies if I've got this wrong. The point originally being made was where has all money gone and there's something rotten in the state of Watford.

But the other conclusion from the figures could be that the club is maybe not too bad at player purchases if it has such a healthy trading profit. Okoye and others are indeed appalling failures. But there's a risk with any purchase and no club gets it right 100% of the time. I quite like the risk taking as occasionally it throws up a Pedro, Richarlison, Estupinan, Asprilla.