Pozzo Out

100%. My company has some vague wording in our commission structure along the lines of 'commission is uncapped, within reason' without that being defined. Ultimately they intend to pay us, but should one of us somehow bring in an absolute whale of a deal, then they reserve the right to somehow stop us actually getting rich off of it.

It's a complete disincentive.

 

Give Gino a break!

 

Yep. Sounds like how many of our fans think. That statue was genius from Pozzo to be fair. Outstanding value for money.

 

The way some of our fans talk Pozzo was out chiselling it by firelight in the dead of night every spare hour!

 

Would explain how unlike GT it looks.

 

Damning summary from Andrew French

 

Stormer of a headline.

 

Part II!

 

To reassure, I won't post any more than this or I'm sure Andrew will be about to clip me round the ear, but I feel like this part needs to be available to everyone:

 

I'll be honest, while I agree with Andrew I think he's a year late. Didn't we take out a loan against the final parachute payments the season before this, meaning any capital gain from our parachute payments effectively ended before this season started?

The ship has sailed, this summer can't change anything unless we get this mystery investor in. We've blown it, this is our reality now, don't expect any substantial transfers or exciting incomings. Watford FC are a lower Championship club at best, from here on in.

 

Its bizarre to think we have finished lower in the table than when we had the likes of Prince Buaben, Chris Iwelumo, Mark Yates playing for us. To think this squad has Asprilla, Hoedt, Kone, Sema the list goes on. The major problem this year has been the strike force. I hope Rajovic can improve next year as his goals have been useful but his general in game contributions are poor. And as for Bayo, he is a terrible excuse for a striker. If we improve here we are down and its hard to not see us going in any direction other than down. However, I do believe our summer activity depends on Udinese’s survival in Serie A and if they do go down, I think we might see a few returning faces so they can balance the books. I’d take Bobby and Kamara back and I wouldn’t be surpirised to see Keinan Davies return. They can just throw Kabasele and Isaac away, we don’t want them…

 

Pozzo is the 20th richest owners in the championship currently, so if this comes down purely to cash we will have been relegated by now. To be fair we have had some very good years on the pitch under the current owners, some of the best in our history. But it does feel like we will go down unless we get an injection of cash through new ownership.

 

Lack of cash is a far, far secondary issue to the wasting of the cash we do have

When you're wasting millions on dross with a 'friendly' agent, throwing 5 year deals at invalids and hiring and firing technical directors and management teams every 6 months the 'lack of deep pockets' excuse doesn't cut it

 

Yes partly agree with that. But it’s easy to point to the money badly spent but we have also made a pile of money on players like Pedro, Richarlison and will again on Asprilla. Brum went down today and there owners have about nine hundred times more than Gino. It’s not all about cash but it is definitely a factor

 

That first sentence really needs work. I had to read it three times to understand it.

 

We certainly didn't spend like a club with parachute payment money last summer, and didn't have a large wage bill this season partly from all the outgoings, so yes I'm not sure them ending this summer makes a huge difference compared to the last. We already spent last summer preparing and readjusting for being sustainable once the payments end.

 

Another poster for whom my comments clearly go in one ear and out the other.

The fee we spent on Bayat players is likely about as relevant and representative as the 16mil we received from Udinese for Kamara.

The fact that some people still believe that if we hadn't given money to Bayat that all of those funds would instead be spent on other players, as opposed to moved around by other methods, is baffling.

This is a reasonable criticism though.

 

If we're 'back to where we started' I suppose the question is why can't we go again and embark on a new chapter just as we did back in 2012.

Theoretically it's possible (although Udinese are now so much worse that the Udinese B route isn't going to work) but it's really the water under the bridge that makes this irreparable. We're never going to muster the fresh energy and enthusiasm as a club that we had back then - so it's going to take a hell of an effort from Cleverley or new investment to arrest the decline.

 

You are one of the minority of posters who actually speak sense. Probably why you get so much stick on here!

 

You have to admit though, it takes some kind of genius to construct a sentence with no commas that grammatically would make less sense with the insert of one after the word “topics”, yet would be easier to read.

 

In the championship it’s not really about money at all, though. You can flip the argument on its head and say why aren’t a club like Stoke doing better when they’re owned by Bet 365? The reason is FFP means you can’t spend silly money so excess wealth is irrelevant, just look at Derby and Reading. It’s a question of how well you spend the money you’re allowed to spend, and we spend it appallingly.

 

Also think we haven't made nearly enough on player sales considering the model is supposedly so reliant on player trading, you've got players like JP, Richarlison, Doucoure, Lukebakio and Estupinan who we've sold for 8 figs over the last 11 years, but I doubt that's exceptional for a club of our level, let alone when you consider how much of that we squandered on **** players and/or agents

 

Yes this. And there’s not much difference in squad quality across the league. Get the players organised and playing for the manager and you’re half way there. Not an area of recent strength for us

 

Bold of you to assume I have any idea what your 'comments' on this matter may or may not be

 

Agreed. Its difficult to extrapolate the results of player trading alone when so much of them are undisclosed. Then you have to factor in wages and agents fees.

One way of trying to work out how succesful the whole operation has been since the Pozzo's took over in 2012 is to look at the financial results as these have to incorporate all those factors including the revenue from being in the PL as well (i think the overall revenue in that period is around £900m!).

On that basis, when they took over, our football club had a profit and loss balance of minus £5m at that time. From the accounts to June 2023 that had increased to minus £65m. So £60m worse off , which includes the sales of Kamara, Pedro, Dennis, Cucho as well as Richarlison, Doucs etc.

Gino looks to have funded that £60m by injecting loans and if we do end this year externally debt free we have gone full circle in terms of league position and the owner has ultimately funded that journey. This obviously ignores the highs and lately lows of the teams performances as well as what the current outlook is for our club

 

I’m in the naughty corner for comparing our owner to an Italian dictator of the 1940s on this thread.

Is there any user here who genuinely felt offended by my jovial comparison?

Do we fear the club ever read this forum and might take action if they don’t like something?

Good grief…what has the world come to if so?

 

You may joke, but one careless social media post is exactly how Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany and Farage's Britain started.

 

I'm not personally offended nor did I read your comparison. However, I'm not entirely sure if it's appropriate. and when I say not entirely sure I mean I genuinely don't know. If we had a Ugandan owner and compared him to Idi Amin would that be appropriate or could that be construed as straying into racism? I think some people might be offended. I have a German parent and always feel slightly uncomfortable if someone jokingly refers to a German as a nazi or a Hitler.

Hoist up the woke flag........

 

My point was simply that our owner is an Italian, and has been accused of running our club as a dictatorship.

So a comparison with another former dictator from his country seemed perfectly reasonable, on a forum where most people here do seem to have some sort of sense of humour.

Whether we like it or not, some words have transcended in the English language from proper nouns into words used more widely to describe a style of behaviour. That traffic warden behaves like a little hitler, etc.

My girlfriend is German btw, so I understand your point about being careful around them with certain expressions.

 

Have you mentioned two certain conflicts in the 20th century and particular game of football in the mid sixties!!!