Loan, permanant, whats the difference? A footballer is a footballer, shouldn't matter how they have come to the club as long as its within the leagues rules. Other clubs have been fortunate to have billionaire owners who have brought their club success but wheres all the finger pointing at them? Nothing wrong what we have done, it's just sour grapes that are causing the hate for us because you can be certain you lot wouldn't be moaning if we were struggling in the lower half of the table.
I don't thing there's any "hate per se (not from me anyway!) and there's no need for sour grapes (yet!) as no-one is promoted yet. We know you've not broken the rules and there's nothing we can do about it now but it shouldn't be allowed to happen again. I have already gone into the details on this forum in the thread about this issue so am not going through it again here (find it if you like).
Watford aren't breaking the rules. Don't blame them for taking advantage of the current system. We've had/got Stockdale, (Meyler), (Brady), Elmo, Gedo, Fahti, and Boyd. (bracketed players now permanent) 6 of those are regulars.....
In an unrelated note, Leicester's debt up to March last year was £46m due largely to player investment, but I'm sure that would have been reduced this year right? Anyway it's within the rules so I don't personally have a problem with it.
Thought I would add my tuppence worth and try to explain to those with an open mind that Watford are not cheats and do not deserve the abuse some bigots throw at them. I often look at the Leicester board as I have a soft spot for them having spend 3 years at Uni there back in the old days of Filbert Street and Frank O'Farrell or Frank O'Filbert Street as he was often known - which proably means I saw more Leicester games than many of you - and before you were even born in many cases. Back to the point. First - cheating - to cheat you have to break rules which Watford have not as foreign players are counted as signings not loans under the FL strange rules. So Watford have not cheated - fact. Now you could ask why the FL are so stupid to define a loan as a loan if it is UK but not if from outside the UK but that is a question for them and hopefully they will end the nonsense next year. Watford will then simply buy the players they want who are on loan from the other "family" clubs Second Have they behaved immorally? I don't think so - they have a rich owner who happens to own other clubs. He could easily sell players from one of his clubs to another and then sell them back if he wanted - would that have attracted headlines or that idiot Holloway's rant - I don't think so. Let's face it there are lots of clubs who have now attracted millionaire owners who have pumped money into clubs - ring any bells Leicester? I suspect most fans now hope they get people in who have a bit of money so that their club can prosper - anything wrong with that? Yes you could go back to the old days of local businessmen propping up clubs but modern football is not like that. If you don't like billionaire owners though then please start at Chelsea, Man City and the like. Third - will Watford lose its identity as a family club. In a sense this is more a concern to hornet supporters than it should be to others and when the takeover was announced we were very worried. We have an excellent Youth Academy and we feared the new owners would not respect this. In fact they have and we field as many of our own youngsters as most other Championship clubs and the Academy is still thriving. All the owner did was not to upgrade the academy as this would have cost millions that the club did not have. Feel sorry if you must for Cardiff whose owners changed their colours from blue to red - appalling and now wants to change their name too Fourth - our previous owner was an ex-bankrupt with a string of failures behind him and he took us perilously close to Administation and engaged in some questionable activity for which the club are soon to be punished - strange really as he diverted funds from the sale of one of our players Danny Graham to himself - yet WE will be fined for that. We are pleased that we are now owned by a "football" family and are playing good attractive football. Don't criticise us because we can afford some good players - you would buy those players if you wanted them and your owner was rich enough. We did not expect better than a sniff at the play-offs this year so don't begrudge us our enjoyment of an unexpectedly good season. There are probably 5 good teams in the hunt this year Cardiff, Hull, Leicester, Palace and ourselves - let the best team win. You may or may not agree with what I have written but at least those of you with open minds now have some facts on which to judge us
No rules broken, no issue. Some clubs are wealthier than others, some have connections to other clubs that assist them and all clubs will do anything they can to give themselves an advantage, as long as no rules are broken, it's fair enough. The loan rules will be changed in the summer, but it wouldn't have effected the Watford situation, they could just transfer the players for a quid each if they wanted.
Indeed - only because they're doing well you hear about it - I think it is actually more likely that owners will look to own clubs in different countries and sell players for a quid to whichever of their teams need the best players at that particular transfer window. Then it will be interesting to see what they do about that...
Not sure you would be able to stop that - to be honest it does not have to be a quid anyway - if you own both clubs whatever fee is agreed is just moving money from one pocket to the other. You would then have to look at people not owning more than one club - but then you get corporations controlled by who knows who - and a real minefield. More than that - why is any of this a problem when you can get a Russian billionaire , an Arab sheik or a Far East consortium investing silly money to "buy" success? The only issue here is that it "feels" wrong - and the FL rules on loans make no sense. What difference does a player's nationality matter - make the rule the same and clubs like Watford will simply obey the rules as they do now.
£29m? Is that for the year or total? Interesting that your wage bill went up £11m to £28m. You can get some good players for that kind of money. Not a problem though, no rules broken.
Where's the criticism of cardiff city no to mention the many teams in the country that are spending bundles that they don't have on players. If we were 18th nobody would bat an eyelid.
I don't have any complaints about Watford's use of a loophole to sign players within the existing rules - if our clubs were in similar positions I'm pretty sure they'd do the same. Owners having clubs abroad does raise some interesting possibilities and anomalies for the future though. What would happen if a single owner controlled two clubs in separate European leagues and both qualified for one of the European competitions? Surely that would create a situation that would be considered totally unacceptable and the fact that such a possibility might arise should make the concept of multiple ownership also unacceptable.
how can any team be given a points deduction when they're not breaking the rules. Sadly you seem a little ignorant on the facts. Perhaps you should do some reading before you make assumptions you can only back up with heresay
I would just like to add that now the Ian Holloway and Adrian Durham have ranted about our non rule breaking, the FA will be looking at the system. Should they change the rules, that does seem to backfire on everyone else, who now can't use the rules in their clubs, so the only team to benefit from this rule, because nobody else bothered to use it, will be Watford. Yay us!
To be honest, THAT post I made was a little OTT. I blame beer, and the large amount I consumed last night.
Well put sweet thing - personally I don't have a problem with what you have done because there is nothing in the rules to stop it - therefore you have merely taken advantage of possibilities - I do however have a gripe with the whole 'loan system' and think it should be abolished - it is complete bollocks Leonardo - I am old enough to remember Frank O'Farrell - my old man took me down to my first game at the start of the 1969/70 season - so I saw the whole of Frank's tenure before he left us for the relative obscurity of Old Trafford ... no bloody loan systems in those days - proper reserve leagues where you earned your promotion to the first team on merit ...
