Watford Fc - A Deeply Rotten, Toxic Club

No we didn’t. We were terrible against Newcastle and saved it with a last ditch goal. They had only 1 shot on target yet were easily the better team until they inexplicably let us back into it late on.

 

Thank you. For me it just highlights further that they don't know what they're doing. No plan/vision etc. Knee-jerk solutions to problems they caused. And the coach always gets the blame (despite them being mostly terrible also).

 

I always thought your posting on here was cynical for the sake of it - but you've been more or less right all along. We are a pure toxic club that just stink the premier league up by making up the numbers.

 

Thought I’d add my 2 cents worth here. For a number of reasons I have gone off football, with the last 2 years really being the final straw. Without wanting to create a debate, I will just say the top reason was really seeing the corporate greed front and centre while it being a difficult time for many.

The achievement of promotion was a nice experience, but a strange one with the no fans thing and that seemed to be the end of my football passion. I had already begun to loathe the premier league with that corporate greed dialled up to 11 and I never regained my passion. I will admit the Villa result pleasantly surprised me, but my instincts were that it will never be for me any more.

I look back at my passion for this club and I look more favourable on those moments while we had our backs to the walls and fought against it. When it didn’t seem we had mercenaries, but those who were willing to stay. Perhaps I was na*ve, but it felt different. I don’t feel that way with the how the club has ingratiated itself with the corporate demands of the lucrative Premier League.

i really do feel Deeney leaving marked the end of my passion for this club. As others have said, it feels too far gone from a local club to a franchise. One thing that particularly flummoxed me was seeing Jay Demerit with other premier league representatives going to North America to rustle up some fans. What?! What happened to leaving a local club to organically make its influence? I guess that’s not marketing sense.

My last league game was Watford 3 - 0 Liverpool. I am happy to keep it that way. A great memory. I dreamed of us making a cup final and I saw it (I was 1 when we were at our other one). Incidentally the financial misconduct from Man City that season got swept under the carpet (just another example of the corporate greed).

I will always want a Watford win and will note the scores. But that’s it for me now. I have become so disillusioned I just wasn’t upset by the Norwich result. That says something!

 

I think Gino as an owner of an English football club is in the mould of managers like Boothroyd or Phil Brown, they strike the right chords for a very brief period, but most of their success is down to the stars aligning and they end up spiralling downwards.

With Udinese he hit on a money ball type formula that has to date been successful if the yardstick is to not be relegated. Spend the bulk of your cash on attacking players, and defenders are just traffic cones that can keep enough goals out if coached in a certain way. There are also all the stories of them having all those VHS recorders recording games of all the young kids they were scouting, but now with things like Wyscout every club in the world has that info at their finger tips, hence the increasing desperation in going after more African players. This means the advantage they once had over other clubs has now almost completely gone.

The PL is a different league and that moneyball formula from Udinese doesn’t translate across in the same way, or at least it definitely doesn’t anymore. Relegation and then what looks like a certain successive relegation is absolutely proof positive of that, but still Gino ploughs on regardless with the same tired methods that are proven to no longer work.

Of course the usual suspects will say we can’t compete because of money, but I just don’t believe that. Gino made pretty much the right call on everything up to 2019 and then has made pretty much the wrong call on everything post 2019. I don’t believe it’s coincidence, I believe it’s a stubborn person stuck in their ways who refuses to learn, who think they have a winning formula, but like a Boothroyd, that formula is very much of the ‘here and now’ and if you don’t learn and adapt you’ll quickly be left behind.

Gino has shown he’s a ridiculously stubborn man, completely stuck in his ways and completely unwilling to adapt to what everyone else can see happening around him.

Jossy hit the nail on the head a few posts up with how we approach managers. Look at Ivic and Munoz, a disciplinarian to a joker. Then look at Munoz to Ranieri, a criminally under experienced coach to the most experienced coach you can possibly get.

Gino thinks his moneyball theory for the squad means you can just parachute any old fool into the hot seat to react to the latest issue in the opposite way, but it’s become even more desperate and ridiculous as time has gone by to the point who on earth do we appoint now?

We created a wonderful opportunity for ourselves which has been completely squandered by pig headedness and arrogance on behalf of Gino.

 

we have become the football equivalent of M&S trying to understand the growth of online shopping. Completely outdated and wedded to a means of operating that we believe is a USP but actually is out of kilter with the rest of the market.

 

I had a dream, that I’ve had come to the conclusion WFC does as much as possible to irritate its supporters, last season rumour has it we were promoted to the P.L., they only let the fans in twice the first time they put on a horror show losing to those giants of Football Cardiff.

Last week towards the end of our planned defeat at Newcastle a cross was put over and our young Brazilian non English speaking midget accidentally jumped the ball hitting his head and ending up in the back of the net.

This resulted in us fans getting ahead of ourselves and believing we could beat the leagues worse team on a cold Friday night in front of the cameras, a team that doesn’t score but does concede plenty. I dreamt we put on a horror shows that even the floodlight couldn’t stand to watch and lost 3-0!

It wasn’t a dream it was a blo*dy nightmare!

 

Leventhal piece this morning lays bare……?

You guessed it. A toxic atmosphere around the club. I’ve listed the key details in another thread. Won’t do it again here because I’m sure you can all guess them anyway. After all, they get regurgitated every 6 months.

 

The league has moved away from having 11 of the best players, to having a director of football who ensures attributes beyond just brief moments of passing, tackling and skill are noticed.

Determination, energy, ability and footballing intelligence to beat a press, stamina, managing a game, injury-resilience, leadership.

All skills no longer just the bare minimum, or skills required at bottom of the league clubs to get by. Vital ingredients in modern English football.

I have no idea why, but the Pozzos seem to have completely forgotten that all good PL teams first and foremost have a solid spine, which includes a good goalkeeper, two solid defenders who can get out of trouble, two central midfielders and a striker with, at a bare minimum, the majority of these attributes.

And then you add high quality flair players and back ups as optional extras. Not as your core.

 

Gone to about 7 or 8 Wealdstone games this season and only 3 Watford. It has been like that for me for about 4 seasons now.

A few years ago I would have been fuming at the performance last night and would have been in a bad mood all day today. Apart from maybe 5 mins of venting, it was more just apathy from me last night.

 

This goes back to what a number of posts have indicated, those at the top have created an atmosphere where people are offered up as scapegoats and it allows for underperformance by the majority to seemingly go unpunished.

Until we have a direction, with a clear objective and plan of how we get there we will keep finding ourselves in the same position.

Side note, I certainly don't believe Pozzo wants the club to fail but I just simply think he's run out of ideas of what to do next - their model worked so well for so long it's like they got complacent and never prepared for the time it wouldn't work. Approaching 10 years of their stewardship, with a core group of advisors around him all the same, to keep it fresh it needs to be changed every 3 years with new ideas brought in.

 

I agree with many of the comments and I seem to recall when we were first purchased by the Pozzos a Udinese fan came on here and literally described exactly what has happened over the past 10 years. Get to the prem, establish, sell best players, replace them with cheap punts in the hope 1 becomes a star to sell, never investing in the defence, no communication, fans becoming disillusioned….. I don’t think the vast majority of Udinese fans like the Pozzos either. They are so out of touch with modern football and they now don’t have the resources to compete. It’s a billionaires playground now. When you look at the progress made at the stadium …. Let’s not forget that they couldn’t do it any cheaper if they tried …. I mean the SEJ is built by the company that built the Barnets ground …. It’s basically scaffolding and tin roof - yes it’s better than the derelict mess we had before - but it’s so cheap.
West Ham fans warned us about Duxbury- he is the biggest fraud ever. He’s silent and evasive, never gives a straight or honest answer and is out of his depth.

Gino sell up and go - thanks for the ride but you keep repeating the failures so you are becoming a fool.

Duxbury - just go, keep your usual silence and slip away quietly

Ranieri - Thanks for trying, you don’t need this, go and enjoy your retirement now.

im beyond sick of this club now - it’s an embarrassing sham of a club from a football sense

 

There’s one idea where to go next that he hasn’t tried - sack Duxbury, remove Giaretta and get his tongue out of that fraudster Mogi Bayat’s ringpiece.

The modus-operandi is ‘jobs for the boys’. It’s ‘Who do I know?’ not ‘Who is best?’

I agree. I don’t think Gino ‘wants’ us to fail. That’s non-sensical. It’s his business and his finances. I don’t believe he’s on some kamikaze mission to blow all that. I don’t believe he’s out of ideas - I think he just knows the ideas he doesn’t want to go near because it’s out of his comfort zone. He’s stale because he won’t progress as an owner.

I think he’s at the centre of a vicious circle of repetitive behaviour as an owner and uncomfortable decisions need to be made to stop that. Time will tell whether he has the courage to do that but I think he has a job on his hands to turn the tide now.

 

When do we riot and have banners outside the stadium calling for the head of Duxbury to go?

 

This is so true, but compounded by the people around him having been so for so long. There is something to be said for stability and long service but it's when it turns into outdated/archaic ideas and working practices that it becomes a problem - and that's where we find ourselves. But changes at the top in that leadership team can change the mind of the most stubborn individuals and I firmly believe Gino could be swayed.

 

Anyone get a A0 "Mazzari stay on the bus" style poster knocked up in time for Brighton

 

Some great posts here, lots of nails on head.
I think that Prem football as an entity is basically rancid now. Billions being squandered on overrated players, most of whom are just worried about their net wealth and their next big move.
The top 20pct of better players are playing in the top several teams, with the other teams desperately trying to pick up some quality hoping to stay in the Prem, and mostly failing.
You look at a team like Burnley and they know what they are, and work accordingly relying on hard grafting players who give their all most of the time.
GP got away with it for 4 years but now the wheels are coming off fast.
Even Everton, ManU are going thru hell, so the whole sherbang of the Prem is a conveyor belt of big money and overpaid players who can't hack it.
Our only chance is for GP to go back to the old ways of "building" a squad that want to really work hard and develop - but there's no chance of that happening in the current set up.
We need to cull the dross ASAP and find some young gems to work with in the championship for a couple of years and build something we can all believe in as our club..

 

Well, that's what I said in the Newcastle thread post-game - I didn't think we did do ok, and it certainly didn't raise my expectation. It was mostly pretty lethargic, low-quality and lacklustre, masked by a sudden burst into something resembling life in the last 15 minutes.

 

Elite football is the rotten, toxic sport. Most elite sports for that matter.

I do think that we've hit the ceiling of where we can go from here but I'll tell you this for a fact: A billionaire isn't going to provide any soul and you'd be lucky if they've even heard of Graham Taylor.

The soul of elite football left a long, long time ago. I fully agree that if you want to find that feeling again then you need to head to non-league.

 

Did they really? F*ck me.

I don’t know why I’m surprised as I really shouldn’t be. But I still am.

 

Some people clapped the team off at full time mate.

 

Systems are dependent on people. Get the people right and a system will work. Our model is different from almost every other club, but it’s been proven to work WHEN we’ve got the right people.

So we hire and fire Head Coaches as though it’s going out of fashion, but when we’ve actually got the right ones, we’ve had success.

Ditto with the players. We sign and sell so many, it’s hard to keep up at times. But again when we’ve signed the right ones (both for playing ability and character) it’s worked and we’ve unearthed some gems.

The problem right now is we’ve generally hired the wrong people to work under our controversial system. A manager way past his sell-by date. Several players not worthy of wearing the club shirt. Illogical recruiting, the wrong players in the wrong positions. So many mistakes have been made, and the whole thing feels really stale right now.

Deeney was way past his best, but with his departure and those of Hughes and Chalobah it feels as though good club men have left, and it’s no wonder there’s now an over-riding feeling of new players coming in to whom the badge means very little.

I know the arguments about Xisco being out of his depth in the PL and I have no wish to re-open that debate, but the truth is he lifted the club. He got the players playing for him. He won promotion. Yes, we should have got more but he still got us 7 points from his 8 matches this season. We were 14th. But our owners couldn’t wait to resort to type, to fire, to then make a similar mistake to the QSF second appointment and to bring in somebody totally unsuited for the demands of micro-management in the year 2022. And we are all paying for that now.

 

Dear god.

 

I’m sorry it’s come to this for you, but that’s a great post. What would the group of players, led by Neil Cox, who stood up for the club when it faced oblivion in 2002 think of the current bunch of mercenaries?

 

I don’t want to get into too much of an argument about it but this is pretty much nonsense. It’s nothing like scaffolding. It’s a standard metal frame football stand with concrete terracing. All football stands these days have a metal roof. Look at pictures of Liverpool’s £100m new stand and at the same phase of construction it looks basically the same. Where I’d agree they did save a bit of money was on fit out. The facilities within the stand are spartan to say the least. Overall though they sorted out a problem that 20 years’ of owners had been unable to do and removed an embarrassing carbuncle from our stadium.

 

@Jossy The shameful treatment of Luther, whats that about I somehow have missed that?

 

I think you also have to make allowances for the fact a new stadium was always a possibility, and possibly what Gino desired. It doesn’t make too much sense to go overboard on the current stadium if it was going to be torn down 5 years later.

 

The joke of it all, they spend and lose money on players as if its confetti ie Dawson, Oublare (spelling), Janmaat, don't waste three million on Carlas kick a ball and you don't have to worry so much about the Executive Boxes going into hibernation

 

Wasn’t he annoyed that they released a video referring to him as Luther missit.

They then seemed to ignore that this was a little disrespectful to the clubs leading goal scorer

 

It’s a temporary stand.