He's like the kid at school who could dish it out and went crying to the headmaster when anything came back to him. And given his long running campaign of bitterness against GT I suggest he looks up the word disrespect in the dictionary - and hypocrite too just to be on the safe side.
Look who was on Question of Sport: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0c0jjj9/a-question-of-sport-series-48episode-27 Poor Troy had to name Zaha and Josh King plus see Richarlison!
Watford are the club that embraced the chaos… Date published: Thursday 24th January 2019 8:28 please log in to view this image Adalberto Penaranda is probably the perfect poster boy of the Watford FC ownership fog. In June 2015, he was signed by Udinese (Pozzo family-owned). He was immediately loaned to Granada (Pozzo family-owned). In February 2016, he was sold to Watford (Pozzo family-owned), before being immediately loaned out to Granada (Pozzo family-owned). Then Granada were sold, ending Penaranda’s loan deal, so they sent him to Udinese (Pozzo family-owned) instead. After two further loans at Malaga, Penaranda made his Watford (Pozzo family-owned) debut on January 6, 2019. A strong whiff of Modern Football catches in the throat. The Pozzos were the first simultaneous owners of clubs in Spain, Italy and England’s top flights. After Watford used loan regulations to bring in 14 players from their sister clubs on temporary deals in 2012/13, the EFL moved to change the rules. The arrival of foreign owners has allowed this club to establish itself in the Premier League and become a shrine to short-termism. No club in England’s top flight has traded more players in the last three years. Then there’s the story of the forged HSBC bank letter, provided as proof of funds that allowed Gino Pozzo – Giampaolo’s son – to become sole owner in 2014. The club was fined £3.95m, the largest ever EFL financial penalty, and the club’s executive chairman Raffaele Riva resigned. But scratch below the surface, or perhaps just take a small leap of faith, and there is a story beneath the ownership complexities that deserves to be told. Watford have established themselves as one of the best-run clubs in the Premier League. At a time when competing with the financial elite has become increasingly hard, they are on course to finish in their highest league position for 40 years. Before 2012, Watford were a Football League club by almost every measure. They had enjoyed eight top-flight seasons in their 115-year history, the era of Graham Taylor, John Barnes and Luther Blissett giving way to inevitable mediocrity. Before their takeover, Watford had suffered significant financial problems and hadn’t even finished in the Championship’s top ten for four years. Their record signing was striker Nathan Ellington, bought for £3.25m in 2007. The Pozzos’ promise to secure Premier League consolidation looked like the typical over-ambitious platitude of those desperate to claw some quick PR. But Watford have found a way, from Championship mid-table to secure Premier League club and potential challengers for a European place for only the second time in their history (sorry Anglo-Italian Cup, not now). And if the speed and sustainability of the journey is impressive, the ingenuity of the method trumps all. The first thing Watford did was accept their place in football’s financial hierarchy. The latest financial figures (covering the 2016/17 season) placed Watford 16th by revenue and 15th by wage bill in the Premier League, while there commercial and retail income was lower than Burnley’s. As chairman and CEO Scott Duxbury told the Financial Times: “If we just simply replicate what the bigger clubs are doing, then we’re going to fail. We simply don’t have their resources.” Duxbury was tasked with finding a different way, and relied upon a scouting network far beyond the norm for a club of their size. The plan was to buy players in high volume from clubs, leagues and countries who would demand low transfer fees, with the intention to improve them and sell them on at significant profit. Duxbury, together with Gino Pozzo and technical director Filippo Giraldi, have regularly spoken about their obsession with transfers. Many don’t work out, but enough do. The Pozzos have form. At Udinese, they established a scouting system that was the envy of Serie A. Between 2000 and 2007 alone, Udine signed Vincenzo Iaquinta, Sulley Muntari, Asamoah Gyan, Samir Handanovic, Cristian Zapata, Mauricio Isla and Alexis Sanchez for nominal fees and subsequently sold them all at far loftier prices. Replicating the same strategy 15 years later was always likely to be more difficult given the general boom in scouting systems, but Watford have found a way. Take Richarlison, signed from Fluminese and sold for £30m profit after 12 months. Take Odion Ighalo, sold for £20m. Take Abdoulaye Doucoure, dropping strong hints about a possible move to Paris Saint-Germain; he was signed from Stade Rennais for £9m. Targeting South America has been a deliberate strategy, to the extent that Watford currently have representatives from six of the 10 CONMEBOL nations on their books: Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. Players from that part of the world typically command lower salaries than European players. They are happy to use Watford as a stepping stone, and Watford are happy to let them. If they move on up, both parties win. Pretending to be something you’re not helps neither. Domingos Quina is the latest example, picked up at the last minute after Watford heard that West Ham were happy to sell an 18-year-old entering the final 12 months of his contract. Quina never made a league appearance for West Ham, but has already played eight times in all competitions for Watford and scored a memorable first Premier League goal. His value is already at least ten times more than the £1m they paid in August. Just as controversial as player short-termism is Watford’s regularly changing cast of managers. The Pozzos have employed nine different permanent – the term clangs – head coaches in six-and-a-half years. But again, it’s all part of the plan. “Coaches, they have a limited shelf life,” Duxbury told the FT. “They’ll either be very successful and maybe go on to another bigger club or they won’t work out and they’ll move on. We don’t want that disruption when a coach leaves a football club.” It’s a bold strategy, but in many ways an admirable one. If the Premier League is becoming increasingly short-termist, what’s the point in fighting the tide of what Gary Neville famously coined “the immediacy of modern life”? Rather than sticking fingers in their ears and heads in sand, Watford have learned to thrive amid the chaos. Having players and managers picked off by bigger clubs is an inevitable hazard, so why not embrace it? There are finally signs of change given Javi Gracia’s new contract, but don’t be fooled too easily. Watford will remain guarded against the rug being swept from under their feet. And so they should. One mistruth that must be addressed is that Watford supporters are in any way critical of the model. Before Watford played Burnley on Saturday, former manager Sean Dyche spoke of a club that had gone through “a radical shift from when I was there, from a community club built on the community to now built on a model”. If that implies that there has been some loss of connection between supporters and their club, it is deeply misguided. The commitment to the community and the club’s history has remained throughout the Pozzo ownership. Saturday saw the second anniversary of Graham Taylor’s death marked with a poignant tribute and free drink for every supporter. These things matter. Watford fans do not need a consistency of starting XI from season to season, or even the same manager, to feel close to their club. They merely need to be satisfied that the club and its staff are focused on making the club the best it can be. At few grounds in the country is that more obvious than at Vicarage Road. Daniel Storey
Watford have signed Southampton goalkeeper Adam Parkes for the rest of the season. Parkes will play with the Under-23 squad. The 19-year-old has previously been capped by England Under-17s and has been with the Saints since the age of 10. He signed his first professional contract at St Mary's in December 2016.
Two of Watford’s fixtures in March have been rescheduled for live TV broadcast. The home game with Leicester City has been moved back from 3pm on Saturday, March 2 to noon on Sunday, March 3 and will be shown live on Sky Sports. The trip to Manchester City the following weekend will still be played on Saturday, March 9, but will now kick off at the later time of 5.30pm to be broadcast on BT Sport.
I was due to land at 1pm on the Saturday and race to the match so very happy with 24 hour delay, I'm glad they listened to me That said, had I known earlier I wouldn't have booked my car in to airport parking for fast getaway, instead I would have taken the train!
Maybe the WO has gone anti Mexico... Every thing else net wise is running smoothly and: This site can’t be reached www.watfordobserver.co.uk took too long to respond. Try: Checking the connection Checking the proxy and the firewall Running Windows Network Diagnostics ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT
Probably Trump is blocking it for you. Have you tried to get in by going to the sport pages? https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/
The only problem is those sort of matches with early kick-offs tend to have a weird atmosphere which can only help the away side.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my (reasonable) query on Thurs re Daniel Storey piece Mr A1. Nice
I think you request was rather lost in the text nick, but I will answer for you. Daniel Storey is an English journalist and author. The Deputy Editor of Football365 until October 2018, Storey was named the Football Supporters Federation ‘Football Writer of the Year’ for 2016. He has written for The Independent The Set Pieces, The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, Sky Sports and Vice. No I have no idea what Vice is before you ask.
Scuppered me again! Impossible for me to get to Vicarage road by train on a sunday morning. Grrrrr ! Why do they make the ko so inhospitable ?
Vice is a Canadian, on-line, independent "news" channel. Often acts as a platform for odd, alternative, topics. Not my go to channel for verifying a story.
