After so few signings, Pozzo can help Watford best with a sale
Disgraceful. Despicable. Pathetic. An act of sabotage.
Just some of the descriptions being hurled around by Watford fans as the winter transfer window shut at 11pm on Monday night.
It was very, very difficult to find any positive voices: some did say the signings Watford have made look decent.
And there were comments of defence for the owner and the club: he’s invested so much, he took the club to the Premier League and Wembley, he’s better than most other owners the club has had.
However, the positivity and support was drowned by a wave of anger.
Just like during the home game on Saturday, where the chants directed toward Gino Pozzo were longer, louder and more vitriolic than ever before, so the reaction to the January window was more enraged, critical and even desperate.
Just how did the Hornets end the month with three less in their squad than they started it?
Why have they felt it is a good idea to sign a player who arrives with an injury which means he is unlikely to be fit for another month, by which time Watford could have played another half a dozen matches?
Where are the ‘oven-ready’ Championship experienced players Tom Cleverley made it so clear – lest that anyone needed telling – his team needed?
Who decided that playing the rest of the season with only two recognised strikers was a professional way to work – especially given one is facing a three-match ban and the other is an 18-year-old who a year ago was playing his club football in Mali?
What went so badly wrong because, as the club’s sporting director told The Watford Observer last week, preparation for January started in September?
When is someone other than Cleverley, who has had to face the press week after week, going to step forward and explain exactly what has happened?
As a journalist, you are taught that the key questions to any story start with are Why, When, What, Where, Who and How.
Each of the six questions posed above start with one of those words, and there are many more similar that would trip off the tongue of all fans, even those who can still see some liquid in a glass where many only see dregs.
For balance, let’s make it clear that Watford do not have a lot of money to spend on anything.
That is the equivalent to an individual getting to the day before pay-day and having to exist on the loose change in the cup holder in their car.
The days of paying Ismaila Sarr transfer fees are long gone. In fact, the days of paying any sort of transfer fees at all may be behind us for a while, given we don’t know what the signing of Egil Selvik from – surprise, surprise – Udinese cost.
Nonetheless, that Watford are brassic should not come as any surprise, least of all to those running the club.
When the last window closed in August, the club’s financial situation was the same as it is now.
Any planning for January must surely have taken into full consideration the accounts, the drop in revenue this season and produced a budgeted roadmap accordingly.
After all, there were another four months during which nobody could buy or sell anyone, ample time for all the background recruitment work to be done.
It’s true that the January window is much shorter than the summer one. It’s true that clubs are less inclined to sell. It’s true that sometimes prices can be inflated. And it’s true that even the best-laid plans can be scuppered by unforeseen changes of mind by clubs and/or players.
But . . .
None of the above seems to stop other clubs in the Championship or in English football generally from getting about their business – and they all seem to have contingency plans in place.
Not every club had a successful winter transfer window. But Watford are now on a run of failures in both summer and winter, under a number of different head coaches and with a change in sporting director.
If we accept that the chairman’s involvement in transfer dealings is more paperwork than player identification, then the only constant through all these dreadful transfer windows is . . . the owner.
Think back to the winter of 2023: Slaven Bilic repeatedly holding up three fingers in press conferences to count out the key positions in which he needed to recruit.
He had five players lined up to sign – he got none of them, instead receiving the best ideas of Ben Manga (who was appointed by the owner).
A year ago, Valerien Ismael had talked about needing a left-sided defender, a defensive midfielder and a striker.
What he got was an out-of-shape Emmanuel Dennis, whose return was like watching the reunion tour of a 90s boyband: all the hits were there, but they didn’t quite sound the same and they looked a little more portly and slow.
While Ismael was undoubtedly stubborn, one wonders just how many alternatives he was offered?
There was a genuine feeling that Dennis might roll up to London Colney on Monday for one more spin of the wheel. Instead he went to Blackburn – good luck with that one John Eustace, though invariably he will score against Watford at Ewood Park in April (especially as he ought to be match fit by then).
The last three January windows have been failures. It’s hard to offer evidence to the contrary.
Worst of all, Cleverley has exceeded all reasonable expectations by having the team in and around the play-offs from August to December.
It really has been an ‘against all odds’ story, taking a squad tipped for relegation and getting it involved in a battle for promotion.
All it needed was some canny signings. Not big money, we know that’s not possible. But loans and low-cost transfers.
And that isn’t with promotion in mind, as even with those additions there is still only a slim chance of finishing in the top six.
No, it was a window where with a bit of clever dealing Watford would emerge with a squad that would definitely be able to look up at what might be possible, rather than be worrying about what’s underneath them.
If what Cleverley, his staff and players have achieved in the first half of the season feels like something of a David and Goliath tale, then it seems the club have asked him to achieve the same in the second half of the season but have refused to give him a new stone or fix his slightly broken catapult.
Let’s look back at the summer, when understandably for the good of the club’s finances – plus with the approval of the head coach – Yaser Asprilla, Ismael Kone and Wes Hoedt were all sold for circa £30m.
Buying low and selling high underpins the Pozzo model, and back in the day it was the cornerstone of his very successful transformation of the stadium, the training ground and indeed the team.
Nobody, even the harshest naysayers, can overlook the time spent in the Premier League, reaching an FA Cup Final (if not the actual day itself) and some of the wonderful players that have graced the yellow shirt either.
But that was then, and this is now.
The £30m raised in the summer is what keeps the club ticking over, same as the sales of Joao Pedro and Sarr did before that.
It is neither a surprise or a failing that only 10% or so of that was reinvested in the playing squad.
What is a problem, though, is how the summer transfer window was executed.
Rocco Vata is a huge success, and whoever was involved in getting him out of Celtic for relative pence in footballing terms deserves to be named and applauded, because the £200k will almost certainly be turned into several multiples of that when it comes to selling the youngster.
But let’s have a quick look at the remainder of the summer business.
Fees were paid for Pierre Dwomoh (six appearances), Kevin Keben (one minute of first-team football) and Keiky Almeida (already sent back to Brazil on a free transfer).
Roughly, the outlay was similar to what the club received for selling Hoedt: even if matters reached a point where the Dutchman’s departure was inevitable, would that money have been better invested in trying to find another experienced, left-footed, pacy, ball-playing central defender?
Instead, in came the battle-wise but equally old Angelo Ogbonna, who has played eight times.
Moussa Sissoko’s return has not been a success, Antonio Tikvic (he of the unannounced permanent transfer) has been loaned out and Festy Ebosele’s loan was cut short.
The jury is very much out on Yasser Larouci, Daniel Jebbison’s aborted loan was a disaster, Vakoun Bayo was loaned back to us by those familiar Italian benefactors and is top scorer (but has actually only netted in seven of 30 games) and Jonathan Bond has provided the solid cover that he was signed for.
January 2023, summer 2023, January 2024 – can anyone make a cogent case for those three transfer windows being anything other than terrible?
Imagine how his day panned out as it became apparent only one was actually arriving.
Go back a little further to the start of the month, when the head coach was making a totally agreeable case for some players with experience, players who knew the Championship and/or English football well.
Try and put yourself in Cleverley’s shoes as January passed by and then the clock ticked towards 11pm on Monday and the realisation was that nobody with any experience of the Championship or Premier League would be added to the squad.
The Watford Observer is aware the Hornets head coach supplied a good number of names, and alternatives, to his recruitment partners at the club.
Sporting director Gian Luca Nani (Image: Alan Cozzi/Watford FC)
That was something Gian Luca Nani referred to last week, and said was harder: trying to recruit exact names rather than types of player.
However, having checked at the time the players suggested were available, were all either playing in England or had extensive experience of football in this country, and fitted within the parameters of the budget the head coach knew of.
Three have joined other clubs, the others have stayed where they were.
One of them, Fulham’s young winger Martial Godo, was to be the second player signed on Monday but the west London club decided allowing him to move was contingent upon them signing another player (not Wilian, who did return to Craven Cottage) and, when that didn’t happen, the deal was off.
Of course, Fulham are well within their rights to change their mind. But if planning started in September and work properly got underway on January 1, how did Watford end up mid-afternoon on February 3 with a problem for which they had no solution?
While it was very kind of sporting director Nani to give up his time last week and answer every question put to him without complaint, it is impossible not to go back to his programme notes from January 21 and revisit this line:
“Whatever happens and however you achieve something, the target is to leave the January window knowing that the squad is stronger than when you entered.”
When and Pozzo woke up on Tuesday morning, they surely cannot have believed the Watford squad is stronger than it was than when the club entered January.
If that was the target, then the club have missed it by a margin so huge it would make Bayo blush.
And does having a sporting director working for two clubs hinder Watford?
There have been debates in the past, among fans from both clubs, about who gets looked after best.
Since dropping out of the top-flight, Watford have probably been a less appealing offer when trying to attract new players.
However, a young rookie manager would surely be helped and better supported by a sporting director working on his team 100% of the time, regardless of where his office is.
Purely on number of bodies in the building, Watford are weaker now than on January 1: three players in, five players out (goalkeeper Myles Roberts is net neutral, given he returned from loan and when back out again).
There’s not much to argue about among those who have left.
Jebbison had gone beyond the point of redemption, Tikvic was clearly not going to feature, Ebosele was injured and Udinese wanted to sell him.
Ken Sema had not played for some time and was one of the larger burdens on the wage bill.
If there is any margin for a raised eyebrow then allowing Ryan Porteous to go out on loan is perhaps where that comes.
However, the Scottish international has, on the whole, not performed as well as he did in the previous 18 months and with the arrival of Abankwah and the move towards a back four, his playing time looked likely to be reduced.
Always an insightful and forthcoming interviewee, a line that Porteous said to Preston’s official website should raise a red flag: “I need a consistent run of games and a healthy environment.”
Those last three words: a healthy environment. That isn’t the sort of thing footballers generally come out with, even a more erudite one like Porteous.
Recently former head coach Chris Wilder spoke about interference behind the scenes during his time in charge, and it’s no secret the atmosphere and working conditions deep inside London Colney are not great.
On top of the five that have left, the club has also had to absorb injuries to Daniel Bachmann, Kwadwo Baah and Rocco Vata, while Imran Louza is playing through pain.
Following his red card on Saturday, Bayo now misses the next three games, against a trio of daunting opponents – just the sort of occasions to have a raw teenager as your only alternative.
Vakoun Bayo trudges off on Saturday. (Image: PA)
If, and it’s a bloody big if, you can argue that the quality of the signings made in January offsets the quality of those who have left, it’s impossible to take three signings, subtract five departures, three injuries and a suspension, and end up with anything but a negative number.
And then, even if the ‘careful what you wish for’ brigade can find a way of spinning that positively, we come to perhaps the most embarrassing element of deadline day.
Watford signed a player that currently has only one functioning shoulder.
If this was that lot up the M1, we’d be chortling away while creating memes and hammering them to hell on social media.
Instead, it is Watford fans faced with the ignominy of having their team announce a new signing that they know hasn’t played since November 24 because of a dislocated shoulder.
Caleb Wiley could be a truly excellent player and this is not an attempt to suggest otherwise. He’s played for his country and Chelsea saw fit to spend £8.5m on him.
However, putting aside he has never played in England and only registered 267 minutes of action while on loan at Strasbourg, Wiley isn’t fit to play. In fact, he’s not fit to train.
“It'll be a couple of weeks before we see him in training,” admitted Cleverley, once again the man whose head goes above the parapet during a botched month.
Who knew dry January referred to the liquidity of the Watford squad?
Goalkeeper Selvik will no doubt play very soon, and any international player has to be respected for that achievement alone.
But sadly the very fact he left Norway to move to Italy and then left Italy to move to England three weeks later puts his transfer in the file marked ‘odd’.
Having had 21 days to sample the Piazza della Libertà in Udine’s principal square, the impressive town hall – Loggia del Lionello was built in the 1400s – and perhaps visit the gardens of Orto Botanico Friulano, the 27-year-old keeper traded that for the Atria, Watford ring road and the pond (which won’t be seeing Hornet celebrations any time soon).
On the evidence of two of his three appearances, Abankwah looks a very good player, and brings attributes to the Watford defence that weren’t there before.
But he is on loan, and any development he makes between now and the end of the season will be to the benefit of Udinese – in much the same way that Wiley’s time here will help Chelsea, either by turning him into first-team potential or increasing his sell-on value.
It was on January 25, less than a dozen short days ago, that Pozzo broke his usual silence to release a statement about Cleverley which said: “We always identified Tom as a bright young coach who we could work together with to help deliver success to the club. We are committed to support him and look forward to the challenges ahead together.”
If the January window is evidence of what supporting a head coach looks like, woe betide we ever witness one where the club is working against the manager.
After the last two January failings, the head coach has carried the can shortly after.
Bilic lasted until March 4, Ismael was gone on March 9.
On February 23, Watford play host to the one team, above all others, who must be beaten.
Having been humiliated by Luton at Kenilworth Road earlier in the season, so much more than just three points rides on that single game.
The three fixtures before that looked tough before the January window – they are bordering on scary now.
Nobody would blame Cleverley if he were to walk away from Watford, knowing he can hold his head high for having taken an unbalanced and bare squad into the play-off places for most of the season so far.
It’s unlikely he will, given his love for the club and because he is committed and determined to try to make it better.
However, he will also know that football is fickle and he works for a man whose face has become the banner for the modern-day pattern of hire, fire and hire again.
To go right back to the very start of this piece, the anger displayed online since 11pm on Monday, in written and oral form, is as strong as anything for decades.
Those fans have made it clear in recent weeks they support Cleverley and his team, and at the same time left nobody in any doubt about their feelings towards the owner.
How that manifests itself at Sunderland on Saturday and particularly Vicarage Road on Tuesday remains to be seen.
The natives are restless though, with very good reason, and while Watford fans generally indicate dissatisfaction with a louder tut or a heavier shrug, it feels like this runs deeper.
The owner has done wonders for the club and has already etched his name and achievements in club history.
At this very moment, though, if he’s thinking of selling or looking for a buyer for the club, it would be a very good time to think and look a lot harder.
And if he isn’t, then perhaps he should.
