Hodgey

Strange isn’t it - Dawson is an extremely average cb, yet I find myself annoyed we didn’t get him given he is as good or better than any of our cbs, and will be strictly bench material for a relegation rival...

Can someone please explain why McCarthy is suddenly so bad. He was our deserved player of the year and frankly has made as many mistakes as Gunn over a much longer period. Yes Gunn has potential to improve and yes McCarthy has resell value. That I get. What I don’t get is why so many are suddenly convinced he is a sub par keeper. I’ve seen a lot of him and he has always looked a safe pair of hands so can those calling him out explain why. Here’s a novel idea - why not have two good goalkeepers in case one gets injured. I can’t fathom why people are so keen to get rid of him given his good history with us - are people rewriting history here or am I just ignorant about goalkeeping ???

We’re not going to get £50m from our misfits we want to shift. At best we’ll sell a few for c £25m and maybe get £5m loan fees for a few others (but at subsidised wages). Add a nominal £10m to that and you are likely to get a budget of £40m where we are going to need to be very savvy to find the cb and cf we need (sadly we have wee Ross negotiating). Hopefully we can get a couple of loan deals in without ridiculous obligation to buy (again we need Ross to somehow do this).

Think we should be aiming for min 14th with anything else a bonus. Last 6 games were a more accurate representation of where we are - hard to beat but struggle to win. We have a way to go to catch Watford, Wolves, West Ham, Leicester, Everton who will again be in the mini league above us. We should aim to come top of our mini league and prime ourselves to be in the hunt for 7th with those teams the season after.

I’m sure he does want to fight for his place and ideally would be good enough to at least be an impact sub. Sadly as stated he has none of the attributes needed at this level and never will have. Not his fault - blame lies squarely with Ross and team (I mean they’ve tracked him for 5 years so had plenty of time to assess). Again you can’t blame him for getting paid much more than he is worth , and dropping down a level means a significant pay drop. So best all round we send him on loan for a fee and subsidise his wages for a year (shop window) than be pressured to play him given he’s one of our higher wage earners. Same goes for Hoet, Gallagher, Fraser and Carrillo. Think we may have to accept subsidised loans until their contracts run out (3 yrs ?). It’s better than thinking they have a use as squad players - as they don’t (eg recent West Ham debacle) and it will negatively impact results (and cost us more money in lost places / relegation).

Lol - good point so long ago forgot that was still the Prem !

The opinions on here are interesting. I do get those who question whether since Dec JWP is having a brief purple patch before returning to the frustrating footballer who didn’t stamp himself on games - hence sell whilst stock is high. So can I ask those with the sell opinion - would you still sell JWP for £35m if he maintained his current form ? and if so I why ?(ie think we can buy better, better to sell him than others etc). Personally I think if Ralph stays so does his form and we have a 10 goal a season midfielder on our books (which probably equates to c 10 points). Another question for fun - have we ever had a 10 goal a season midfielder in the Prem ??

The problem with this is that £30m isn’t actually a lot. We would do very well to find a player of JWP talent who would come to us for £30m. Far more likely we would bank £10m and buy a £20m dud. Until I see some evidence our recruitment has recovered from the disaster of the last 2 years, I don’t want to see any of our better players sold, no matter our top league goal scorer (which I believe he is...)

It remains a massive worry, as a ‘break even’ club our entire business is basically at the hands of this at best unproven bloke. We know he didn’t get Ralph in, we do know his job was to recruit Hughes, Puel, Pelligrino, Carrillo, Moi, Boufal, Hoet etc. His responsibilities were also contract negotiations - so those thinking we have players on undeserving contracts should also worry, or if you think the Ings deal isn’t great. That said you would say that Redmond, Hoijberg, Gunn and maybe Armstrong have looked solid buys. Personally I simply can’t see how he has ended up in charge here - sadly I think we’ll see a few more questionable buys and wasted tens of millions before he’s replaced, just hope it doesn’t do too much damage. Also after last window fiasco I can’t see Ralph putting up with another poor window - he’s too ambitious to allow that to tarnish his reputation, so hopefully he’ll do Ross’s job for him and leave him to sort the paperwork and make the tea.

I think the issue is not how much we would get, but who would take them on their wages. I’d imagine we would be happy with nominal fees c £2-5m for most of them to get them off the books. We would have done very well to get rid of 10 ‘squad’ players for £35m,, but throw in £25m a year saved on wages you have a sum to get a couple of decent 1st team players (cf and cb) and a back up right back. Needs to be done - 1st job of this new bloke from Everton and Ross (not hopeful they will have huge success)

Also more worrying is he is also in charge of contract negotiations. Been very quiet on this front - aside from a couple of youth players we’ve done nothing here, I’ve no idea what their strategy is on this - are they trying to run everyone’s contracts down in case we go down ? On second thoughts I’m glad he’s not making any decisions - we’d probably see extensions for Moi, Long and Austin. I’d be hoping that we are trying to secure new contracts on sellable assets we’d ideally keep - Bednerak, JWP, Valery, Bertrand and Redmond (can’t think of anyone else to be honest I’m that bothered about)

I’ve not exactly sat in the fence on this one in the past. Not sure what is going on, but this fella is way out of his depth - he’s been portrayed as the Doogie Howser of recruitment but the reality is his history is nothing special and he lacks the experience and skills needed for the role. If you combine this bloke with our new external perception - relegation strugglers with no money - I can’t see us doing much good in the transfer market. At least our youth dev is showing signs of recovery. To the comment about just needing someone to sell players - well he has shown he can’t do that either - we perennially have to loan out duds as we can’t get them off the wage book, and undersell anyone good (VVD exception - but that was only due to Gao refusal to sell - not Ross). I’m gobsmacked that with our intention to be a self funded business - we are happy with this pound shop character in charge of the most vital part of it. We merrily pay average players £40k a week - why wouldn’t we pay that for someone good in this role (and build a team round him on similar wages) who could make a fundamental difference. He may have potential - but he should take a junior role and get someone capable in charge.

The boy clearly has talent - he’s been facing some of the best wingers in the Prem and hasn’t looked particularly out of his depth - having never played senior football he’s made fewer mistakes than some of those around him. That said he would be bottom 3 in terms of Prem rb rankings, so I think both sides of this argument have a point - he’s got talent and has improved, but in our situation we shouldn’t be gambling on a player who will always struggle at this stage of his career vs rival rbs.

2 things killed us against them away. Firstly Sessignon and their LB got round Valery far too easily, secondly we made Mitrovic look like Ibrahimovic - I’ve never seen a player own CBs like that - won everything. Not sure we have addressed either point. We can outscore them though - shame we have no decent wingers as their full backs are a massive weak link. I think draw - if we lose this that means Fulham and Cardiff have done the double over us so you can’t complain when we go down - only team we are better than us Udders.

To me it’s pretty clear - the board (rightly) saw that the people in charge made terrible decisions on contracts and signings. They got rid of a couple - but in order to run the club with continuity kept a couple (and to find out who was actually culpable). They are not going to waste good money after bad so I imagine they challenged the team to rectify mistakes (get rid of deadwood) and once done have another crack. They failed to do the first and either were not allowed (possible) or not capable (probable) to do the latter. I’m hoping that we see a new DOF and scouting/contract team in place by the summer. I think the question of being broke is hard to prove. GAO backed us (invested) in the transfer market in Jan/Summer and we’ve seen zero improvement (you could argue we’ve gone backwards) he’s going to need more confidence before doing so again (be honest - if you were him wouldn’t you be thinking the £40m wages/transfer on Carrillo and Moi would have been better spent paying off 20pc of his debt at whatever interest he’s paying ???)

Barnes and Ramsay too

He was at the standard I expect a Prem CB to play - although he was made to look much better by some of the awful mistakes the rest of the back 5 showed, but for once mostly got away with. Still think we need another CB to play alongside him but yes he is the one CB who has shown continuous improvement so Hughes just ignoring him wasn’t clever.

He was always our most creative player - but inconsistent. The frustration is more that we have replaced inconsistent creativity with none - and lost £5m into the bargain. Here’s hoping that Ralph can get something out of Moi - I think there is something there but his confidence must be rick bottom.

Yes Dellman - I’m thinking of realistic options, were not going to get anyone with a great record now are we ?. I think they could do a job and would realistically accept, anyone we get now would have recent failure - otherwise they’re not touching this job. Maybe we gamble on the arrogance of Hughes ‘never been down’ as he is taking this lot down so that may motivate him ‘ie you’re not being fired no matter what..’ bit of a risk though

I was there and agree with most. Lemina ad Armstrong were very good, Cedric, Austin and the 2 cbs were very bad. Interesting to see the Redmond quotes - he beat players for fun but had zero output - I’m amazed people still think he is the best thing since sliced bread when he has no ultimate effect. He was as good as Redmond can be today - but that isn’t enough. We’re going down as we are without doubt, I’d bring O’Neil and Keane in. Our squad is average but unlike able and arrogant - I’d hope those two can stop that.

We didn’t outplay them - they had good periods and so did we but we definitely didn’t outplay them (look at the stats for balance - what was it 58pc Watford possession ?). We need to be very careful over this victim mentality - we didn’t deserve to win, yes on another day the ref doesn’t give their pen and gives our goal - but that is luck, with a neutral hat on we didn’t deserve to win.

Fair result - I thought we played ok. We are not fit enough and mentally unsurprisingly we don’t have any belief. But Hoet played well again (and I’m not a general fan), Gabbi was excellent first half but tired second. Redmond non existent first but much better second. McArthy excellent and kept us in it first 20, Armstrong finally playing as a non10 looked promising but was hit and miss, Lemina also good. This lot are going to struggle to stay up. Irrelevant of manager, they have lost belief that can only come with some wins. So my only complaint on Hughes, and an unforgivable one, is to get them fitter, Chatting to Watford fans on way back - their opinion was that if we had gone for it after 1-0 we would have won, but sitting back helped them. To be honest not my view of the game but thought I’d share.

Glad it’s away given they’ve won more games at st marys than us since Nov ! Wouldn’t surprise me if we won this. Given we’ll have our arses well and truly handed to us against Man City even if we play well we may as well give this a proper go. Think we’ll see JWP, Armstrong, Gunn and Targett for this one. He needs to keep Hoet and Stephens together though - looks like they are building something which is a positive.

I’d be playing him too if we carry on with this formation. Think the only reason Moi is playing is the price tag, he clearly is no better than JWP at the moment and his set pieces are much worse (and they can be the difference)