I think a lot of people want premier league for premier league sake without stopping to realise it’s really no fun being 19th, getting spanked by Norwich and nearly breaking the PL record for consecutive failures to keep a clean sheet. It’s not even like last season was any fun either, each subsequent relegation will just result in another desperate scrabble around to get promoted and 2/3 managers to achieve it, so we can desperately try and finish 17th via the process of another 3/4 managers. All the while we’ve got no discernible style of play, it’s always just a means to an end, football for footballs sake completely forgetting why we actually exist as a football club in the first place.
Last season would have been a ton of fun, if we were allowed to watch it as god intended. Imagine being in the stadium for the win against Luton? Or the late winners against Stoke, Coventry, Cardiff? And the win at Norwich? And celebrating promotion in the sun against Millwall. Would have been a gloriously fun season. If the next stage in the Pozzo rollercoaster is transitioning to a few years of being a Norwich-style yo-yo club then to be honest I don't hate it. As long as our long-term future is secure and we enjoy more of the wonderful moments we've had over the past decade then bring it on.
There was a time when I first ventured onto the forum here (around the time Everton were trying to poach Silva) when I was quite interested about how you all eulogised about your owners and the way they were running the club. Have to admit to not keeping abreast of the changing winds on this subject, so spotting this thread made me raise my eyebrows slightly. So I guess my general question is - what changed? I don't see a huge change in the hire em/fire em approach, so presumably something else has changed. Has the recruitment got worse? Have they lost interest? Did the managerial approach just finally catch up with them?
This is an enormous question and subject that has been the topic of literally hundreds of pages of debate on here, by this point, so I will restrain myself and you won't get a full answer - the fundamental answer to your question, though, is 'all of the above, except lost interest'. For me, and those who share my viewpoint, as succinctly as possible - over the last 3-5 years, Gino Pozzo and his very small decision-making hierarchy have gone from operating effectively and intelligently to compete with a smaller than average budget, to increasingly (now to the point of majority) being incapable of making those intelligent decisions, and instead making baffling and clearly unintelligent decisions, particularly when it comes to recruitment - both of playing and coaching staff. We no longer have a clear direction or ethos, as we seemed to until about 2018, and now as a club seem to operate in a purely reactive sense. This has caught up with us, and then some. With a club of our financial means, we would need to be making 75% plus of all our decisions correctly and having them come off successfully. As it stands, that ratio seems to have dropped to somewhere between 25% and 50%, so nowhere near the level required to outperform our limited budget. We are therefore the poor relations of the Prem, who are also a basket case. Obviously, that then becomes the worst of all worlds. It's also become far more apparent with each passing year just how much of an insane blind spot the defence, and defensive recruitment, is for Gino. Despite the fact that he's had one whacking great example smash him square in the face of what happens when you continually purposefully neglect it (relegation) he's decided the best way forward is to repeat the exact same mistakes again, with what looks increasingly likely to be the exact same result (relegation). Basically - once upon a time, we didn't need 'stability' in the way other clubs do (or claim to) - the model worked. But the model has slowly and gradually broken down, with very little efforts at repair made, and now that lack of stability is no longer being compensated for. We do need it, and it is nowhere to be found.
Fair point. They were happy to not invest in it, however. This means it has fallen way behind most of our on-field rivals.
You mention not seeing a huge change in the ‘hire em/fire em’ approach, but the reality is it was never actually that bad at all, this is why we used to get wound up by that reputation because for a long while it wasn’t really any different to a club like Everton: QSF - Full season Mazzari - Full season Silva (we all know what my happened with him) replaced with Gracia for remainder of the season Gracia - full season it’s from season 5 and now season 6 that we really earned our reputation for the hire em/fire em approach, and indeed have rightly become a laughing stock, we’ve had: Season 5: Gracia/QSF/Pearson/Then Mullins for two games Season 6: Munoz/Ranieri/Hodgson/? As well as the sheer number of coaches you can also see a pattern of moving from more considered appointments, to far more random and desperate ones like Pearson, Ranieri and more recently dragging a 74 year old out of retirement. This change in relative ‘stability’ with head coaches over the past couple of PL seasons can probably be at least partly attributed to a drastic downturn in the decision making process when it comes to recruitment, meaning they’re increasingly turning to the short, sharp shock of a new manager to arrest the inevitability more and more frequent bad patches. As far as recruitment is concerned this season is a perfect study of just what a disaster it has been. - Money was obviously tight, but we spent the bulk of our cash (£9m) on a player who barely played under our first two managers, just to keep a dodgy agent happy. - We also spent another £6m on a keeper who we won’t have until next season. - Meanwhile our existing keeper options are so bad, one particularly so, which has contributed to a failure to keep a clean sheet all season. The assumption was our owner didn’t really see the problem, much to all of our frustration, then about two hours before the window shuts he makes an enquiry for Dean Henderson. Utterly pointless and frustrating on all counts. - Going back to the lack of clean sheets, Craig Cathcart is still a regular starter which is criminal for any supposed PL team, alongside WTE, a player who must be the worst defender in PL history and who makes at least one catastrophic unforced error per game. In an attempt to remedy this our owner bids £7m for Nat Phillips. What actually happens is Phillips ends up at a championship club on loan, whilst the only CB we add is one we already own from Udinese who makes his own catastrophic error on his debut. Meanwhile we fail to fill either of our domestic loan spots, an easy way to solve any problems in your squad (I believe Everton have both filled hence why the Ali deal had to be permanent) - Eveyone knew the CB issue would be problem from day one apart from the owner, in another attempt to remedy it he picks up Nkoulu in October as a free agent, he plays two games then gets injured and has been out ever since, may well be cut from the squad. Quite why he wasn’t signed in the summer for free god only knows, instead he’s chucked straight in after having no club for months and is inevitably injured. We sign a visibly overweight Danny Rose, give him a two year deal, he plays a few games whilst never getting any fitter. Disappears from the team and never plays again, now he’s going to be released. We’re forced to spend a couple of million in this window to rectify it because our other woeful LB is at afcon. - Lose Will Hughes to palace because he thinks the club is a joke - Give Chalobah away for free in a fit of pique because he won’t sign a new deal - Replace him with a useless fat Turk, and 34 year old on loan who can’t last 60 minutes, the latter we inexplicably gave a year extension to so we’ll have him in the championship next season at 35. - Finally we’re about four players over the squad limit, these four players were signed in the summer or previous window, but they’re so bad we couldn’t loan them out or give them away, so we’re going to have to leave them out on full pay. Bear in mind our owner had a reputation amongst some of our fans for making loads of money for the club by loaning players out (a myth) well now we’ll be paying the salaries of four players while they do nothing. Im sure I’ve missed loads but you probably get the picture by now.
You sound like a man afraid to leave his partner even though you’re deeply unhappy. Have some confidence in yourself man and stop being pathetic! The world awaits us!
The thing I find really strange is that to a large portion of our fans, Gino is some God like figure who has literally never made a bad decision. Everything bad that happens is due to circumstances out of his control, our club size/money etc. You get the same people constantly popping up to defend him, apparently they don’t agree with everything he does, but conveniently they never say exactly what they don’t agree with, and they always just happen to be defending him on the latest particular issue. Isn’t this just a bit strange? I mean we’re not talking about Einstein or Mother Theresa here, we’re talking about the owner of a provincial football club currently sitting second bottom of the league. Yet he never makes bad decisions, he’s basically perfect and gets everything right every time, but it’s just the odds are stacked against him, what with us being a small club. It’s never that he just made the wrong call, pure and simple, it’s because our circumstances left him no choice but to make that particular decision, and that is inexplicably and miraculously somehow always the case with every single decision he makes. It’s odd because although I don’t own a football club, I’m a human being and have made many bad decisions in my life, decisions I can’t blame on anything or anybody else, it seems however Gino Pozzo is the exception to this.
Yes it’s very very strange, although I wouldn’t say it’s a large proportion of the fanbase, just a vocal section. As you say there are some who open with “I don’t agree with everything Gino does”, but for reasons unknown the only posts they make are staunch defences of inexplicable Pozzo decision making. Just an odd section of the fanbase I guess. <prepares to be told to go and support Man City>
TBH I thought some of the games were utterly depressing and dull particularly under Ivic where we seemed to actively play for a draw or score 1 and sit back. Probably didn’t help like you say we weren’t there though . But even this season we have had a few highlights. The main difference is we could defend last season or at least go away with mistakes whereas we don’t this. Keeping so many clean sheets potentially lead to a false sense of security in some ways for this season ? However we did get promoted and that was the main target but don’t look like building on that this time unfortunately like in 2015. But still time to turn it around !
It all changed the season we went down and a lot of the changes stunk of short term quick solution appointments which never worked out and has bled into the current season. It went from an idea to firefighting very quickly. It can be rectified if we brought a manager in with a set way of playing and giving them time however I can't see that happening anytime soon.
Seems to be the same sort of situation with this season and that : - Sack a manager early ( can be debated if that was a right or wrong move ) -Appoint a manager who has worked in England and across Europe hoping he can sort us out. - Then send an sos to an old school British manager Will Roy last the season if results don’t pick up ? Like the guys say early on not all the managers were sacked and in fact most stayed a year or so unless they fell ill or were a care taker. Mind you the media always laugh at our management policy then spend the rest of the time putting pressure on other managers after a few games suggesting they ought to be in danger and sacked themselves. So are very hypercritical!
So when do we get to the point we hold up hand-made banners of "GINO OUT" at games? Although to be fair, I think most (but not all) Watford fans' are too "nice" to take it that far. Only bringing this up as it's something you see at other clubs.
I do think the biggest clanger of all this season was keeping Munoz on, they had the ideal blueprint with the QSF first season but for some reason ignored it. I understand the desire for some continuity, but I just don’t see any basis for expecting it to work. Can anybody say now what type of coach Munoz was/is? Attacking? Defending? What is his style of play? Favoured formation? Teams that come up and stick with largely the same squad and coach and do well generally have a very specific system which is perhaps new, or PL teams aren’t used to. Perfect examples are Leeds and Sheffield Utd, they obviously got found out in their following season to varying degrees, but nobody could argue they didn’t have a distinctive playing style that initially caught teams out. The other method is do what Frank has done and completely change styles to compete. Munoz didn’t have any sort of defined style of play or hadn’t even shown the ability to adapt to the opposition. I honestly don’t think he was kept on for continuity, more Pozzo confirmation bias, believing he made the right call in hiring him and winning promotion so he must be the right man, even though all evidence should’ve been suggesting to him otherwise.
RE- not keeping Xisco on. I wonder if sacking him after promotion may have disincentivized prospective Head Coaches when we are in the Championship? Of course I'm not claiming this was in Poxbury's thoughts at the time, as it would have demonstrated an element of forward planning.
Not sure if current finances allow it, but I’d be interested in a longer term multi season approach to rebuilding if we go down and give the new manager after Roy time to build something.
Possibly, but I think it would be a pretty backward thought process to impact your premier league prospects worrying about the following season a league lower.
That's an awful lot to process, but I think I get the gist. So essentially, I could probably summarise it by saying that 5 years or so ago, your recruitment was good and you were benefitting from the Pozzo network of clubs and their extensive scouting/recruitment. For whatever reason, the recruitment has got gradually worse and now seems haphazard and without a plan and you're left with an unbalanced squad with glaring deficiencies in it? On top of that, you're changing managers so frequently that it's impossible to have a plan to sign players to fit any one style or system as they change so often? A lot of that feels very familiar
I doubt it. Whatever way you square it, we’d be immediate favourites to come back up so I imagine a fair few coaches would jump at the opportunity to manage a team that would win more than it loses (in theory).
I think this is a very harsh idea. Gino and Scott got promotion done. They navigated the club through the deepest crisis in living memory in COVID. They helped the NHS and hosted the biggest vaccine rollout in history. They implemented learnings from the Andre Gray report. I think Watford fans want to see is for the owners to get on with the things that matter to them. Dealing with the cost of being in the Premier League crisis, the building of a new stadium and, I would say Mr Speaker, if it was down to the bedwetters, we would still be in the Championship and the best football club COVID recovery in the world!
Sorry, that was an awful lot of information, but that’s pretty much spot on yeah. We’re eerily similar to your club, just without the money.
Yeah. Just a thought. Of course the logical decision for Poxbury would have been to appoint a Head Coach who was good enough to continue into this season.
Agreed. The most Poxbury deserve is a gentle tutting and slight shake of the head. Anything else is just far too toxic.
Love this. Fans of Watford are tired of BWs doing Watford down. The Pozzbury Stability have introduced a world class, cardless entry system, a covid passport, clipboard check to safeguard attendees and have overseen bloody noses against some of the league's big boys. This constant questioning of their motives and actions is not what the fans want. We want to let our leadership get on with the business of steering the WFC ship through the Premier League Relegation seas and want to see Captain Roy get on with the business of picking a team to take us down, so that the Pozzos can do what they do best, get WFC promoted without spending a single penny. hear hear.
The Pozzos have made lots of bad decisions, that much is obvious. But there's a good chance that any new owner would likely be worse. I don't think it's too late for them to turn things round (in the long-term, I think relegation beckons this season), but there needs to be a plan. Firstly I'd recruit a couple of specialists - and give them power. A set-piece coach being first - we get through a lot of managers, that's a given. With each manager brings differing set-piece styles that has a vast difference over the course of a season - in 19/20 we got relegated by a single point with 4 set-piece goals scored, the 19th worst record in the league - being ever so slightly better at set-pieces would've saved us. Xisco's staff were slightly better at them and we hit the league average in the Championship - it's not unfeasible to think that if we'd carried on that record into the Championship that we might've had 4 points fewer and ended up in the playoffs rather than automatics. This season looks to be a repeat of 19/20 - we have 4 set-piece goals but the league average is 6 so we're underperforming again - if we go down it's possible that hitting the league average might have saved us - but Roy and his staff have an awful set-piece record. This will essentially take the "randomness" of each managers set-piece record away from them and gives control to someone - I've done research that shows that any club hiring a set-piece specialist basically guarantees (at a minimum) of hitting the league average for set-piece stats each season (although Man Utd might ruin that this season!). Of course managers might not like the fact that this is taken away from them (the same way we do recruitment) - but it makes perfect sense from a footballing perspective. A loan manager - we don't loan players out well at all. Take Quina for instance, has been described as lazy but a few managers now - so we loan him out the one of the highest-pressing teams in the league, doesn't sound like that's gonna be a match made in heaven - which will mean lack of game time once again and a hit in the players value. A loan manager finds a club that will suit our player (although the downside is the interest will have work both ways which is where I imagine we're struggling!). This will cost barely anything in terms of expenditure (max £25k a year) - more and more PL teams have these now and would suit our model well. There's some good articles on the role here - https://trainingground.guru/articles/remote-development-how-liverpool-manage-their-loans More L1+2 punts/free transfers for PL youngsters. If we go down, we'll have some young talents potentially ready to fill in and make up for the likely firesale - Baah, Pollock, Phillips, Ngakia all in contention to play a part in trying to get us back up. No guarantee they'll be ready next season but forms part of a larger longer term plan. More needed please - although good that we've started chucking the academy into the deep end getting them loans as soon as possible There's more but I'm hungry and want lunch so gonna finish this here for now!
I thought the Pozzos were football people when they took over. The dad might be but Gino is looking more and more like a dodgy businessman who doesn't have a clue about football at all.
Do you know if clubs routinely employ sports psychologists? This is something it seems like we may benefit from...
I'm quite happy to move to new owners, I'm just wondering where they are coming from and what the future with them will be. I've said it loads of times that I'm concerned by the mistakes we are making and what is currently happening and I don't think the sun shines out of Gino's ar5e but I'm also concerned what will happen with different owners. In my time I've seen good and bad owners come through the door. Elton and Gino have done very well as proved by the success during the period they were here. Elton helped by the magic of GT. Elton made mistakes like getting Bassett. I've also seen The Petchey years and obviously Bassini and it's these two that concern me. What's to say we don't get another like these two? This is my problem with it. I can see loads saying let's get rid of Gino but then what?
