Looks like he could be handy - he may even silence the Facebook fans who are demanding we sign British players...
Well we did sign 3 in the summer - ok King isn’t British by birth but he has played here all his life .
They tend to forget about those though - and selectively target. No words of complaint about the likes of Dennis, but want WTE/Kabasele/Masina replaced with 'good old British players with Premiership experience'. Strangely silent re Gosling and Fletcher too.
Well we could field a defence of Foster Ngakia Cathcart - Rose I wonder how that would go down ! I mean we could but like a lot of clubs we don’t just operate in the British market .
Is that headline shorthand for "we are desperately looking everywhere for any hald decent players we can afford" ?.
This 'we can afford', a lot of money comes into clubs in this division.Granted that things like ground improvements have been made but the club has had Premier money for a few years now.Buying mainly on the cheap doesnt seem to work in the Premier so maybe put more investment into 'homegrowns'. OR.do the Pozzos have the same Wallpaper supplier as 10 Downing St...hopefully Football Club owners cant claim back from taxpayers.
I think quite a few of us have wondered why we don't seem to produce more 'homegrowns' anymore. Could part of the answer be that the clubs with the most money, and Watford are small fry in the money stakes, are hoovering up the young talent at a very early age, paying large signing on fees to boys that haven't even become teenagers, and taking the loss when they don't make it through the system. As an example Chelsea were reported to have 62 senior players on their books in 2017, 26 of them out on loan, and a further 11 waiting for a club to take them. Goodness knows how many they had at junior level. The last player then to have made it through the juniors was John Terry 17 years earlier in 2000.
If I were the guardian of a promising youngster at a 'big club' I wouldnt be too optimisic about their future chances,but it seems the same would apply at Watford now.The policy seems to be recruit for smallest possible amount of money...but in the main the evidence is the players arent up to the standard of the top division.Wonder whether the owners are actually happy just .to have a 'yo yo' club.Hard to know as they dont talk very much to the public. Expect like me you found a lot of satisfaction watching the likes of Terry, Blissett,Barnes etc etc develop,albeit some of the time in lower leagues ,Long gone days. Should they get relegated,could be better to settle in the Championship-plus then likely to play my apparently real club at Kenilworth.
The issue with our Academy and Palace, both of which had excellent reputations before the ELP brought in the new rules and we could only afford to go for level 3 status. Only the very large clubs are able to support level 1 status and it has strangled those clubs that earned well out of them, Crewe were another club that has a good academy. We chose to tailor our academy and then the EPL brought in U23's and even now each window, each year, you see us playing catch-up trying to get high enough calibre players in and we go for lots of released players from elsewhere in the hope of picking up that late bloomer. Our Academy will never be able to work in the same way it used to.
And the ones we do develop then get poached. Jadon Sancho , and most recently, and gallingly Tomas Galvez also tom Moneybags oop north. Sickening. It must be so disheartening for the you team staff.
