Honestly think I’d be done with the club if it came to that. It’s bad enough we’re currently married to some fraudulent Belgian gangster, so the thought of replacing that with a despotic, human rights abuser, is just too much. It’s really been sickening to see the Newcastle fans and media fawning over their disgusting new ownership, carrying on the same gutless behavior of Citeh fans. Nope, that would be it for me. I’d still come on here, but it would really only be for the Bargain Hunt thread.
Yep. Anyone who says otherwise is lying let’s face it. Since that is unlikely I’ll take a semi competent owner who looks after the club finances and doesn’t deal exclusively with his agent mate, whatever division that might be in. And a single youth player would be marvellous.
Thinking on those lines, all we need is a multi-millionaire owner(s) who are willing to help us move forward as a club. Yes, they would clear all our debt which would be nice of course, but then hopefully understand that we have been going backwards for a good few seasons now, kicks Duxbury out the door and gets a CEO in who actually knows about football. I agree with @Knight GT in the fact we do not need a Oil rich baron either. A money sensible and streetwise businessman/woman who wants to be the heart of a new era for the club, that the fans' can get on board with and actually communicates with us. That's what we ideally need, but will we need to put up with Gino and Dux until they either turn us into the next Derby/Bolton (on the brink of Liquidation) or they finally see sense and sell up when a decently sized bidder comes in for the club.
Meh. I reckon there would be a lot of mental gymnastics if it actually happened to get comfortable we had a “good” benefactor as opposed to the Newcastle baddies. This conversion process would take about 7 seconds before we all rubbed our hands at the shiny crack mercenaries flying off our nobleman’s production line!
My thoughts exactly. As the ownership of football clubs has got more and more dubious the whataboutery has got worse too. It's been a slow chipping away over 15-20 years and so now we're here, with dreadful regimes now the owners of several clubs. I tend not to really count anything Manchester City have achieved as really being terribly valid and it'll be doubly so for Newcastle. It's just an exercise in soft power for who-knows-what-reason and I can barely bring myself to engage with any games City play. (Much like our lot at Wembley in May 2019). When City are on my brain just sort of shuts down and doesn't really see a sporting fixture. I can't really explain it but Liverpool could win all 38 games 5-0 and I'd feel more engaged. That's not to say that a US-based financial group is somehow a cuddly community ownership model but these owners are not all the same. In fact one of the most corrosive phrases in any discussion is when someone says 'oh, they're all the same'. Often it's designed to shut down the discussion or deflect from any unpleasantness but it leaves me feeling the same as TV pictures of 50,000 useful idiots in black and white shirts cheering one of the worst things to ever happen in English football. Of course, it's more complex and nuanced than that but I can say that it would cease to be 'my' club for the duration of any ownership like that. I'd be done before the WO published the first photo of a smug Watford fan waving a tenner.
Agreed with this, topic came up when at the Brentford game and said I’d be utterly done with the club. It’d betray everything the club has stood for whilst I’ve known it and before, and even though Pozzo’s lost the plot, the work they still do in the community is reflective of the club we should always aspire to be as I understand. Principles are a dying breed in this world, it’s important they’re not lost entirely, especially over football.
Are there any decent despots left? I'd have loved Saddam or Gadaffi back in the day, but nowadays, I guess Kim Jong-Un would be cool.
Am going to this . So far have been unbeaten on the road this season apart from Leeds. Oh and Arsenal, Spurs and Spam but they don’t count as they only down the road for me . Am expecting another win to cap off a great awayday season culminating in a win at Chelsea to stay up .
Yeah, I know where you’re coming from, and I think it’s reasonable that people may feel uneasy with the owners, but go along with it anyway once things start picking up on the field. The other thing that might play into this is the fact that I’m 5000 miles away, and going to games etc just isn’t part of my life. Imagine that makes it easier for me to withdraw from it. I watch football on a Saturday and Sunday morning whether we play or not, so I can imagine I’d still watch a game here and there, but actively buying stuff from the shop, or going out of my way to watch games/follow the club? Don’t think I’d have it in me.
I have to go the opposite way on this one, and here's why - I grew up in a Hertfordshire village in the 80's, yet my brother and I were the only people who supported a local team. 10 percent 'supported' Spurs (because they were a 'cup' team back then) and the rest were ******* Liverpool. Their allegiance to a random team in the north west had nothing to do with the fact the scousers were winning everything back then, oh no of course not. Strangely nobody supported Man Utd, although had I been born ten years later I suspect they may well have done. I used to drink in a pub in a part of St. Albans called Marshalswick on a Sunday afternoon which always showed the football (pub since demolished) - these now 'grown up' plastic scousers would all be in there without a hint of irony yelling in their fake cockney accents 'c'mon you scousers!' Made me want to honk up. They all used to laugh at us for supporting Watford, as if they were superior and that leaching on to a big team automatically made them more knowledgeable about the game despite the fact that I've been to Anfield more times than they have (and I've been once). After being ***** for a long time, they've all piped up now just like it's the bloody 80's again, singing about Klopp and co like they know them. I hate them all more than I currently hate Ponzo and the D1ck. So it's petrol dollars over fake scousers for me, and I'd love to see them pipped by Pep again so that their only title in 30 years is still just the one that finished with zero fans and saw them thrashed by us.
Looking at their forum the fans certainly think so. Not surprised as they talk about resting players and bringing in the likes of Jesus, Grealish, Sterling etc (not as good for them as the main starting line up but will be v us )
I’d prefer his sister. No player would ever turn down a contract from her. Would make Karen Brady cry within minutes of meeting. And then she’d never be seen again.
A charismatic man-of-the-people frontman who makes it appear to the media as if his clever financial management is launching us up the table, while behind the scenes a thick fog of complicated BVI-registered money laundering operations controlled by cruel foreign autocrats is filling up our coffers.
We should focus on keeping the score under 20. Anything lower than that is unrealistic. Watford 3-18 Abu Dhabi FC Watford- Dennis 1'. Uncle Roy 5',8' Abu Dhabi FC- Bald man 9',10',11',12',13',14',15',16',17,'18. Ederson 80',82',84',86',88',90+2',90+7',90+39'
We could line up against City with all of the players who've been humiliated by them in the last five years and it would still end up something like this: Also, all those outrageous scorelines posted remind me somewhat of this farce - the way the goals went raining in, it seemed it had got to a point where the American Samoan players just accepted the inevitable:
What a depressing read, are you GoingDown in disguise? A bit harsh on Pep too I feel lol, hardly a fraud and the City - Liverpool rivalry over the last 3 or 4 seasons has been great to watch from a neutral point of view. Anyway the scoreline could be anything between 1-0 and 10-0 for me but will probably be near the top end.
More and more big hitters are getting involved and eventually the PL will be a much more level field… just not for us. First it was the big 4, now the big 6… Newcastle will become Man City on steroids there’s no doubt about it. Money does in theory buy success and in Everton’s case, with a world class manager in Ancellotti, he managed to make a rubbish squad look half decent. The money is filtering it’s way down the to Championship, meaning every year it’s going to be harder to achieve promotion. I hope we are there at the top next year, but with potential opponents in Norwich, West Brom, Burnley, Sheff Utd & many other teams with a strong PL past it’s going to be the toughest ever
I don’t really agree with the last part, every season three teams go down with parachute payments, in seasons gone by you’ve even had teams like Villa and Newcastle down there in the time we were in the PL. It’s been like that for a long time and will be no different next season to what it was this season, or the season before that. The latest TV deal is a rollover from the last TV deal, so PP payments have been at the same level for some time now. Unless they stop relegating three teams from the PL nothing has changed.
Hassanal Bolkiah ibni Omar Ali Saifuddien III, also known as current Sultan of Brunei. Incredibly wealthy and keeps his head down on the world stage. The only issue (and it's a big one) for me is the rampant homophobia and his dogmatic anti-LGBT approach.
I'd be done with the club. The fact that we (mostly) all grew up close to London and chose to support our local club rather than be a glory hunter means we have moral compasses in that such a takeover would not sit well.
Me too. The Toon takeover was reprehensible but who amongst us believed the PL would say "no"? Football in this land has sold its soul in a Faustian pact and it's hard to see it recovering any time soon. If some dirty money ( more dirty money?) came to Watford I would not be able to stomach it.
I’m not sure - sort of with jumbo - and think most of us would find an excuse why our Saudi owner is whiter than white and so different from the rest and sit back and enjoy the show
Talking of bad things in football, that Belgian court case about forgery, bribery and money laundering is due for 2023. I am proud we are whiter than white and have no links in any way to bad things like financial crime or oil money.
I once worked as an industrial plumber at a hotel in central London where he was staying. He took up the entire top floor and there were armed guards everywhere. He also owns a number of properties in the village I live in including one enormous mansion. I believe he stays there during Royal Ascot. If I bump in to him I'll have a word to see if he fancies owning a football club!
The gulf between Watford and City is so vast these days, that it wipes away any competitive edge. I was wondering how stripped back you could make City before the game became competitive. Maybe they could play with just 7 players or play against their U18’s. I would actually like to see that, just to see if Watford actually got close to them. Even then I think Watford would struggle to win, but it wouldn’t be a thrashing at least.
