I've been saying this for a while, since before Watford were actually any good. Before that, no one really cared. It's not technically wrong, but it does seem to give an unfair advantage.
What we're doing is a loophole, there's no question about it. But I don't think the manager of Crystal Palace is the right man to make that particular point. Selling a player for £10m up front, keeping him for the promotion campaign, and using the money to loan half a dozen Premier League players, as well as keeping hold of a squad that you wouldn't have been able to afford without the cash up front? That's a loophole all right. Let me say this about our situation though: our owners are using their own resources. Much like Cardiff's owners, albeit in a very different way. By contrast, Crystal Palace's promotion challenge is being bankrolled by another club, another set of owners. All the risk from here on in is being taken by Manchester United. What if Wilfred Zaha breaks his leg in April, but Palace clinch second?
Attempting to put my neutral hat on, the problem with changing the loan system is that it would most likely give Watford a bigger advantage than the current rules do. If we were only allowed five loanees in the squad, regardless of where they came from, we would probably have loaned Vydra, Abdi, Pudil, Ekstrand and Chalobah (i.e. the five players who would not realistically have agreed to sign for a Championship club at the start of the season), and probably have been able to sign most of the rest (apart from Forestieri, I can't think of any other player who was realistically looking at a better league than the Championship this year).
Personally I think Ian Holloway is a total and utter complete kunt of the highest order and have little interest what the irritating little runt has to say. Watford have found a loophole in the loan system and used it - fair play to them
It's not as if we don't utilise the loan system, but in some way the loan players perhaps don't care as much as they'll go back to their Italian ivory towers regardless of how Watford do. Watford still use their youth players so they are probably getting a good balance and their results reflect this.
Doesn't work like that in Watford's case - when the players go back to Udinese, it's the same owners! Don't pull you weigh at one club, you'll be frozen out at the other! I agree that I'd rather not rely on domestic loan signings. We saw in Sven's first season that you don't get the dedication and, come the summer, you don't have the players either. Much happier doing it the way we are now (buying over-priced, over-hyped players didn't work either!).
I neither agree nor disagree with this, but I don't see how you could stop the flow of players from the Pozzo scouting network to Watford. A change in the rules (the loan rules for instance) would only change the mechanism by which they arrive.
Thats it just stick a bloody transfer embargo on them As AKCJs said about buying and selling for nothing. Arent you signing Vydra?
Yeah, the whole setup is a bit dodgy in my opinion. If they changed the loan rules, Watford could just "buy" all of these players for peanuts, and just "sell" them back at the end of the season. EDIT: Sorry, was just replying to this before I read the response of AKCJ
But, with the current system, what's to stop a club loaning a whole team from a foreign club, and just strolling to the league title? Then the next season in the Premiership they would be buggered, unless they loan that whole team again. Are the loan rules the same in the Premiership?
I think that people are only moaning because they are so high up the league tbh, if they were 12th, no-one would care.
Of course that's true, if they were bottom of the league and getting hammered, no1 would care. But they are definitely gaining an advantage from it, which is the issue.
Had Barcelona brought a **** team. We will say Barnsley and loaned them all their young players. Barnsley would then walk the league which would be very unfair on everyone else competiting in the league Yes I understand the FA, Football League cant do anything about it until the summer now but they really need to look into it. But we did the same thing the other year just not on the same scale. We was playing Jeff Bruma, Kyle Naughton, Patrick Van Aanholt, Diomansy Kamara, Yakubu, Ben Mee One of them couldnt be the in the squad as that would have been over the loan quota allowed but we also used Miguel Vitor who didnt count as a loan because he came from a foreign club
Just limit the number of loans from individual foreign clubs to one or two, and stop people who own foreign sides from purchasing others in different countries. Watford have seven loanees from Udinese FFS, who their mafioso owner also owns.
