GG

Another thing to take into consideration, Championship clubs exploiting emergency loan regulations to sign players (often for large fees, with a view to signing them permanently at the end of the season) outside of the transfer window. Should this loophole be closed? Hull apparently signed George Boyd on loan for a 7 figure fee, is that improper use of a loophole? Or signing 2 Egyptian internationals on loan through the chairman's personal contacts? It'd be a tragedy if Udinese B were promoted at the expense of such an honest law-abiding club. Fuck that.

Pretty much separate issue unrelated to football. And that may not be the reason as to why Cassetti is registered to Udinese, just the most plausible explanation I can think of.

What I'm saying is that there's no valid justification for that assertion. Simply stating that you've made the assertion isn't enough to qualify it or for it to be worthy of genuine consideration. True, it's wrong though to leap from the observation that we've signed a lot of players from one club with whom some partnership appears to be in place to assuming that we're gaining a significant financial advantage over other clubs (that they otherwise could not manufacture for themselves). Big leap in logic. Registration restrictions apply to 'Temporary Transfers' which are defined in the Premier League Rules by V.6.1 and V.6.2 as follows: Subject to the conditions set out below, a Temporary Transfer shall be permitted: V.6.1. between Clubs; and V.6.2. between a Club and a club in membership of the Football League, the Football Conference, the Northern Premier League, the Isthmian League and the Southern League. Where 'Clubs' refers to Premier League clubs. Nothing in there against signing players on loan from abroad. The point is, what we've done is legitimate. You've said other clubs would have to spend an awful lot to get a squad as competitive as ours. This wouldn't be sustainable for a club like ours. Yet, we've found a legitimate way of doing so, which other clubs have the capability of doing. We've exploited this fact and now have the best squad of my lifetime. Yet, any minor challenge to the nonsense orthodoxy of 'how clubs should act' (with particular reference to how lower league clubs should be) and people seek to rule it out. Why? It's not harming youth development. We're not breaking any rules. Anyone could do it. Why do more people care about Watford's loan dealings than Chelsea's? They've got the likes of De Bruyne, Courtois and Lukaku out on loan at the moment. Serious amounts of talent. Is it not unfair on WBA and the rest of the PL as to how they can have a £17M player temporarily, who has no intention of signing permanently and is using the club as a stepping stone whilst ensuring that Chelsea have an advantage over their rivals insofar as Lukaku can't play against them? Seems more unfair to me than borrowing players from one club with a view to having them sign permanently, tbh. The media hysteria, misinformation and bollocks regarding our transfer policy this season is tiresome. It doesn't help that people lap it up and feel morally slighted by it, when there's no genuine reason to be so. If it gets outlawed, so be it, but until then it's a legitimate competitive advantage that we've put to good use. Get over it.

Not a traditional club partnership insofar as the players are coming to Watford to play for Watford, not coming to Watford to develop their chances of playing for Udinese. With Cassetti, I reckon there's some kind of tax benefit to him being paid in Italy and being on loan at Watford. Why would Udinese want him?

Diving is against the rules. I don't see where you're deriving a 'should'. There's no unfair advantage gained over any other club. Any other club could operate in a similar way to which we have. I'd assume we are paying their wages, Udinese's wage bill is relatively low, I don't see why they'd subsidise us directly. I can't say I know whether we paid to get them in etc. Abdi, Cassetti, Pudil, Ekstrand, Anya, Battocchio will probably stay. Vydra will sign if we go up and don't get a ridiculous offer for him. The others haven't impressed enough to do so. If you look at what Granada have done over the past few seasons, that's the blueprint. A load of players parachuted in from Udinese at the beginning to strengthen the squad quickly, but soon after that they're competing off their own strength. Nothing massively wrong with it, imo. Loans are temporary transfers which are defined as such only between domestic clubs. No restrictions apply to the number of loanees from non-English clubs. Calling us a tinpot team doesn't really help your case in any way and is a bit unnecessary and is pretty much symptomatic of the condescending attitude towards our club that's cultivated some kind of siege mentality amongst our fans against others. We'll sign who we want (from Udinese).

Suarez is breaking rules, we aren't. There's a crucial difference. It's not really a club partnership in the way these things usually work. These players are effectively ours. There is a chance that it might not work out, so it makes sense for the deals to initially be loan deals. We are not developing players for Udinese's first team. We are developing players for Watford's first team. Some of them happen to have been loaned by Udinese, done all at once in order to quickly bring our squad up to the requisite strength level required to compete in the Championship. No rules have been broken in doing so. I don't think it is against PL rules, actually. International loans work in the same way as currently in the Football League, with no limits applied. If we get up, we will sign most of the effective players permanently and possibly borrow a few more from our sister clubs. Other clubs can loan players too, by the way, it's not a Watford-only thing. There's nothing stopping any other club from forging a partnership (though it's unlikely to be as overwhelmingly beneficial as ours) with a foreign club to loan players. So why is it wrong when Watford have done it?

Seriously? Ipswich have loaned 14 players this season. We've loaned 12. Why is no one having a go at them? Crystal Palace, whose manager Ian Holloway claimed our approach is unethical, have loaned 8 players this season. In our most recent match, they fielded 5 loanees to our 6. Is that a significant difference? I'd say it's not. When it comes down to the number of academy players fielded (in that match), we had 2 to their 2. No difference there. The players on loan we've signed from Granada/Udinese will sign permanently if we want them and if there is no better offer (considering the case of Vydra). They're more 'our' players than those who play for Crystal Palace/Ipswich, or the droves of previous loaness we've had at the club (Cleverley, Lansbury, Foster, Adam Johnson, Weimann amongst others). I'd rather have the Pozzo contingent as we have it at present, with the chance for these players to become ours, than develop another club's player and not have a real chance of purchasing them. The difference between the players we're loaning now and the players we loaned then is that a large number are not English. This has no detriment on our ability to field academy players, something we have a very strong history of doing. What then, is the problem? The fact that we are not fielding mediocre English journeymen like most other Championship clubs, instead fielding genuinely talented foreign players? That doesn't seem like a genuine bone of contention to me, more a symptom of jealousy. I can guarantee you that if we were teetering above relegation, no one would be complaining. The fact is that we are able to field more of these loanees in any specific game as being loaned from abroad count as transfers in in the squad restrictions. In practice however, we don't really field significantly more than other sides to give ourselves great advantage. The fact that we're loaning these players from Granada/Udinese shouldn't be problematic either. The intention is to make them our players if we want them, but with players from abroad it isn't easy to guess whether they will adapt and settle, hence loans seem to make sense. We won't be getting loads of players from Granada/Udinese every season, just this season in order to quickly improve the competitiveness of the squad. There's little difference between this and having SAF loan players to Darren Ferguson's Peterborough. Nor any normal club affiliations that result in frequent loans. Pretty much every argument against how we've proceeded this season is bollocks. We're just as reliant upon loanees as a lot of other Championship clubs, we produce as many if not more academy graduates than other clubs (which should continue for the forseeable future) and this will not be a permanent state. Nor are we breaking any rules. The fact that a small club like Watford can be successful without throwing a ton of cash at players is clearly something that must be stopped, especially considering the influx of suspicious foreign players that seem to be giving them an advantage. Bollocks.

He trained with my team a couple of weeks ago. I have no idea how he was as I of course fainted the moment I understood it was him. Flash pony with no substance irl, very disappointing.

Looks class from the brief highlights I've seen. Unbelievable pace. Be interesting to see if he gets another spell there next season or goes back to the mothership. Very likely to sign permanently, only thing stopping it would be another club offering silly money. Still, once he hits maximim potential/value in the eyes of Pozzos he'll be sold - be that playing for Watford or Udinese. Of course, same as with any player at pretty much any club bar a select few. Hardly anything new. Seems to be the case that if players settle and perform at Watford they're ours (see Fernando Forestieri) to develop and sell on, sending them to Udinese once they look half-decent doesn't appear to be part of any plans. Either way, I'm pretty certain we'll finish 2nd this season. We haven't ever been as good all-round as at present in my lifetime and this is only the beginning.

Looks class from the brief highlights I've seen. Unbelievable pace. Be interesting to see if he gets another spell there next season or goes back to the mothership. Very likely to sign permanently, only thing stopping it would be another club offering silly money.

yeah, his hidden professionalism stat is really low

Al-Habsi Walker Shawcross Coloccini Enrique Fellaini Mulumbu Cazorla Mata Silva Van Persie Subs: Mignolet, Williams, Tomkins, Schneiderlin, Pilkington, Granero, Benteke

A lot of people are shitting themselves, both our fans and others. I'm not worried. I figure that if they get us to where they want us to get (in the short-term), the PL honeypot is so enticing that we'll support ourselves as a primary club. This loan thing is for player development and is only on steroids atm because we want to improve the squad very quickly (and Udinese/Granada have spare players to allow us to do this!). Sean Murray's signed up for 5 years (which is great news), even though we've applied for Cat 3 status, there'll still be focus on youth. I reckon the reason so many of them are Udinese players is for tax reasons more than anything else, they're effectively ours for as long as we want them/they want us.

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Was going to sign for Southampton a few weeks back, deal fell through due to a third party (apparently his dad!) demanding a fee at a very late stage.

If you stand to win a fair amount, they'll void it due to palpable error. If you're unlucky, that is.

Brendan Rodgers in being disloyal cunt shocker. Don't you know he's friends with Jose Mourinho?

His initial wage demands were £60k p/w appaz. Lul.

Most likely, yeah. But don't forget that the team Brazil put out was a side that's played together in a coherent system before. 'Team GB' looked clueless. Much more difficult to stand out as an individual if the collective is seriously non-functional. Not to say that Cleverley etc. are necessarily on a par with their Brazilian counterparts, but that the difference isn't as pronounced as it perhaps appeared, as a result of the lack of familiarity with tactics/teammates and so on. Personally, the midfielder who impressed me most for Team GB was Jack Cork. And I've seen him quite a lot and know he's nothing more than a solid if unspectacular player who'll, one day, play for a top half PL side regularly, as his experience grows. The balance and maturity he brought to the midfield suggested less that he's a brilliant midfielder, but that Stuart Pearce had it all wrong in the first half.

Cleverley was outstanding for us when on loan. But that was a while ago and injuries may have impacted him since. Definitely loads of potential there, he hasn't suddenly turned into a player devoid of prospects since.

I really want it to happen now.

TBF, Vialli brought in old players. It was awful. Except Filippo Galli. And Del Piero is 10x Galli in terms of legendary football status. Would jizz my pants if it happened. Though I'm readily assured that it won't. Marko Mitrovic is a more likely signing.

I'm cautious, still. I'm not happy with what's happened so far. We shouldn't have sacked Sean Dyche. I'm not convinced by Gianluca Nani/Scott Duxbury. I'm interested to see how our developing our own youth products will work alongside bringing in foreign talent. I'm concerned that our identity as a club will be heavily impacted. But I'm excited to see some good player play for us, but then we've had a lot of talent playing for us in recent years. I'm almost certain some level of success will follow fairly quickly, but the (non-financial) price at which it comes - whether or not that will be too high, that's the key question for me. Reserving judgement, feeling mildly concerned and cautiously optimistic.

We're linked with a ridiculous number of players atm. Fillipo Inzaghi, Almen Abdi, Fernando Forestieri, Felipe Gallegos, pretty much anyone at Udinese, anyone Italian and anyone in South America who's young, half-decent and has a decent forged EU passport.

Obviously not. But the statement from the Pozzos on our club website earlier today indicated that they'll look to uphold the identity of Watford FC and focus upon our academy, respecting the uniqueness of English footballing culture, yet immediately sack Sean Dyche and seemingly send a young Brazilian talent in on loan. These aren't necessarily bad things, but it's interesting to see which direction we're taken in - either way it'll likely be 'positive', but I do fear for the integrity of our club's identity - even if they're attempting to reassure us that it'll be maintained and upheld.