So Ashley is tying up the loose ends on his expected move to Man U. However the fee is less than some expected at £17m. Watford expect to receive 15% of the profit of approx £7.5m, lets say a round £1m, not bad for work which was done in Jan 2007! To my way of thinking Baz has banked approx £6m so far this summer, let's hope the money gets spent wisely, because I can't see any more "bumper Summers" until Watford are promoted back to the "big League". Your thoughts, as always, are welcome.
Cowie and Loach could still go and provide enough cash for a few years repayments. Murray in a year or two could go for the sort of money that oxlade chamberlain did
BAz would have to be happy with near £6m. Makes you wonder whether it should not all go into paying off debt due in the next two or three years so that the club would be more or less self sustaining with no debt due for 3 years or more.
You've got to balance debt out with survival. If we get relegated, then there will be a lot less money coming our way....so it is a good idea to spend to a certain extent. We've got to look for loan signings and cheaper young players/Bosmans......but if the right comes along who is going to do well and be worth more next season then that's a good investment.
Elixir, I agree that we won't have any more bumper summers, but that's down to Laurence Dasani's greed, incompetence, and lack of cash. The point has been made by several people that we had to do something and we had to do something this summer, and they're not wrong. But now that we are no longer spending millions on transfer fees and wages, the trick to our business model is about hanging onto players long enough, so that when we do sell them we see the lion's share of what they're worth. The current strategy might pay down debt more quickly, but provided we stick to the schedule, there was no pressing need to do so. There'll be no more bumper summers because we're flogging off all of the family silver in an eBay auction with pessimistic "buy it now" values attached. £3.5m was definitely the low end of what Graham could have gone for. £1m was good for Buckley as-is, but poor when you look at the bigger picture, which is that his value was only heading in one direction if he stayed. Players like Walcott, Young or Oxelade Chamberlain will blatantly go on to play for England, and will always be worth millions, even at League One clubs. I hope that Murray is in that bracket, but it's too early to tell. Him aside, maximising the value of youngsters destined for solid careers in the middle of the Premier League depends on us staying in this division, and on playing them for long enough that buying clubs can be confident that they're not flashes in the pan. Dyche will need to match or better Malky to achieve the first, and Dasani will need to change his ways fast if there is any chance of the second.
An unapologetic Bazani bashing diatribe based on nothing at all. What has he done wrong, apart from buying your beloved club when noone else was interested and the Good Lord wanted out? With fans like you, I'm not surprised anyone was interested in taking us over. Why don't you go and join the Bassani Out facebook group and give the rest of us a break from your poison?
The feeling that each other's opinions are absolute tripe is mutual. Take me up on the facts if you wish, but please stop bothering me for my opinion. I won't put the request so politely in future.
This is a crucial £1m-£1.2m that we can use. I believe that some of the money we have received from Young, Graham, Buckley, Mackay and Saracens must be put towards the squad, as we have lost two key players which need to be replaced, plus we desperately need a left-footed left back.With Forsyth it seems we have our left-winger sorted, would be nice to splash some cash on the other two positions!
I am not in the Baz is wonderful camp - is there one? - and can see he has only had a previous history of business failure which does not bode well However unless there is any real prospect of someone else investing in Watford then he is all we have - and goodness knows how long Simpson and co. tried to find a decent buyer. therefore I have decided to judge him for the time being only on what he does for us. So Greed ? I cannot see where evidence of greed comes in yet - he has put money in and taken nothing out as he is not allowed to - he may be hoping to make money but that is not uncommon in life. Incompetence? - well some might argue he could have got more for DG - but others would reckon he got it about right - especially with the £1m for Buckley - on MM he did what he could but if a manager wants to leave you have to let them - all you can do is get compensation - which he did. Lack of cash? How does anyone know? He was released from bankruptcy less than 3 years ago so should have had no money then but has so far put in over £4m which must have come from somewhere - who knows where or how much more there is where that came from I am afraid it will all end in tears as I do not have warm cuddly feelings about the man - but in the spirit of supporting Watford and getting behind our club I am prepared to shelve those reservations and judge the man only on current actions - on that score he has done OK so far
Transfer just confirmed, just not the value. Let's hope it is more towards the £20m mark, and that Sean get's to see the majority of the money!
I suspect we still have the same transfer targets as before, just a little more cash to 'play with' to convince them to come here! Seeming who is out there, even a £1m we could do a lot with!
The three go hand-in-hand Leo. If he doesn't have the cash to back this whole project up, then he is surely banking on the fact that by provided he pays off Ashcroft while we are still afloat, Vicarage Road is worth more than what he is exposed to, and therefore his exposure is minimal. That would make him shrewd, but being able to spot an opportunity is not incompatible with any of those three things. If he does have the cash, why are his actions time-critical, rather than profit-driven? With Buckley it most certainly was, and I do not even accept that this is an opinion. £1m was good money if we took the view that an inconsistent player who can beat anyone on his day is worth that, we're tired of waiting for him to do it consistently, Brighton can have him at face value provided we're get a respectable slice of the pie if he fulfils his promise. 15% was a good fee if Brighton were paying over the odds up front for his potential. The combined deal was a hodge-podge, a hurried and poor package. Graham too: several clubs were in the running to pay £3m for him. I don't have a signed, sealed and delivered contract stating such, but any reasonable person will accept that calling that "pure speculation" is akin to saying that Alex Ferguson is only a good manager in some people's opinions. We damn well knew that we could bank on £3m, there were no ifs about it. Even accepting that we didn't want to risk him starting pre-season training and getting injured, we had a month to negotiate from that baseline, with a nominal £500k at risk. And lest we forget, I should be dragged off by men in white coats for daring to suggest that money doesn't grow in Bassini's back garden. What's the small chance of losing £500k, balanced against the large chance of not losing it, and the small chance of making anything up to an extra £1.5m, for a man wealthy enough to own a club capable of sustaining Championship football? Even if you don't accept any of that, we then come to Julian Winter. Bassini was either stupid enough to not realise that he was alienating Winter, or content with getting rid of him. That was incompetent, and I assert that to be a fact.
You're probably not a million miles wide of the mark on any of this NNW; however you are taking the less rather than more favourable view on it all - the guy so far seems to me to have done OK rather than spectacularly well or badly and I guess as I was expecting him to be awful he has exceeded rather than fallen short. I am going to wait and see without high hopes
It's a fair point Leo. But if it had taken another year for the Simpson/Ashton mess to become apparent, we would not have a club right now. Pessimism and holding people to account are the order of the day in my view. I would note that Graham Taylor has twice in recent weeks come out and spoken in defence of Bassini, once when Winter went, and again when Dyche was appointed. To do so twice is somewhat out of character for him. I take that both as a sign that things might not be quite as bad as I fear they are, but also as an acknowledgement from him that the chatter this summer is not simply empty rhetoric, but genuine concern from well-meaning people that the club needs to keep in mind.
Lack of money is an absolutely fair assumption, given that he has no known source of income and he is servicing the debt through "player trading" rather than from personal reserves. I'm not attacking Baz and will be an interested spectator. But I am most definitely sceptical of anyone who takes over a football club, unless they are a fan, and am surprised even by those with vast oil wealth. I don't know what Baz intends to get out of the whole affair, hence my puzzlement.
I would call this a 'windfall'. Why can we not use it to put down a new pitch? I accept that the timing is not ideal, but perhaps we should ring-fence it...(hang on, hasn't that term been used before?)
Please don't use that word Bloother. We're coming to the end of a four year contract on enough money for Nathan Ellington to be able to appease his appetite. We don't need to be putting the idea of building a ring fence into people's heads!
Am I right in thinking that the £3.5m for DG will be paid up front? I seem to recall a Swansea fan saying their chairman likes paying for things up front as opposed to clauses/installments etc. If this is remotely true then I cannot blame Bassani taking the offer. I doubt any other club would come close to offering a deal which included £3.5m+ in advance. Yes, we may have got £4.5m in some contrived deal but with the way the economy is at the moment and the teatering edge of a cliff many clubs find themselves on, I do not see £3.5m as an overly bad deal. Yes, there may have been several clubs interested at £3m but I'm guessing these will have only paid something like £1-2m up front, something we can not afford to accept.
I could buy that point of view Si, were it not for the fact that the Football Creditor's rule is watertight, and even when it is eventually removed, it will not be done so retrospectively. It's not as if we were attempting to sell to teams that cheated their way to Champions League semi finals or the 2008 cup final.
