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You may have seen that over the course of the 2018 summer transfer window, Watford managed to turnover a comfortable net profit of £16 million. Many would argue that in this day and age when newly promoted sides can spend 9 digit figures as a total over an entire window, the somewhat “established” Premier League sides should be keeping up. Especially with Scott Duxbury, Executive Director and CEO of Watford FC stating that the club should aim to be the “Best of the rest”, we should be looking to compete in the market without clubs like Fulham, Wolves and even Leicester. But I believe that this shouldn’t be the objective, at least not for now. Although one-off cases such as Bournemouth’s new record signing Jefferson Lerma and new Fulham loanee Sergio Rico were rumoured to be considering moves to the club and ended up joining close rivals, this isn’t a cause for too much concern.

There is the question of: “Why haven’t we signed a striker?”, and it is completely understandable and to some extent true; Having three strikers in Andre Gray, Troy Deeney and Stefano Okaka can seem bleak on the day of the new season, but a possible reason for this could be the financial investment of £18million that was put into signing the former. Gino Pozzo and the higher-ups at Watford may believe the ex-Brentford striker is yet to hit his best, and there may even be a new role for him in Watford’s system. Especially with creative players such as Will Hughes and Gerard Deulofeu looking to be a mainstay at the club now for at least a season or two, there’s no denying the service is there for the attack. Furthermore, if the 4-2-3-1 becomes the main formation, Gray or Deeney (or even Big Stef) will have 3 very competent creative midfielders at our disposal. Of course, Michy Batshuayi or Paco Alcacer would thrive a lot more in this system as proven strikers, but Watford can do more than “get by” even with the attack at our disposal.

Then there’s the topic of Brazilian winger Richarlison, sold by Watford to Everton for a fee rising from £40 million up to around £50 million. There’s no denying his obvious talent, but there also can’t be any denying the inconsistency present. He was a very good player at the start of the season, ending not when manager Marco Silva left but before contrary to the belief of a large chunk of the Everton fan base. Towards the later stages of the season Richarlison became the role of (not so) super sub. He was finding it hard to get minutes and overall just didn’t fit the needs of the squad as well as the alternative, Roberto Pereyra. He was useful in a 4-4-2, but this would create more issues for players like the aforementioned Pereyra, and Will Hughes who was seen as a wide midfielder in this system. Watford weren’t the only club to sell an expensive asset due to the lack of need for him. Derby County offloaded former Hornet Matej Vydra for £11 million to Burnley due to the fact that in Frank Lampard’s new system, Vydra’s role as a number 10 was needed a lot less. As a result, they decided to get as much profit as possible from the current Championship top scorer off the back of his success, similarly to how Watford have offloaded Richarlison while his stock is still high.

But despite this, we haven’t spent all the money from his sale. Why is this? Well it’s no secret Watford have had financial problems before the arrival of the Pozzos, and even having been in the top-flight for three seasons now, our net spend looks for bad reading. Since the 2014/15 season, Watford have had a net spend of -£172.69 million. This is the 10th highest in Europe. This is as a result of taking punts on players such as Isaac Success and even Valon Behrami. These cases are very different but both result in losses. Behrami was signed to help us in a defensive midfield role in our first season and moving forward from that. Unfortunately, when the time came to sell the Kosovian born midfielder, he was in the later stages of his career and few clubs would want to bring him in. Therefore we took a loss but a necessary one, selling him to Udinese for a small fee. With Success, he is a more pricey investment which hasn’t yet worked out. Sending him out on loan does little to recoup funds, and until we eventually sell players like him for profit or loss, that number will remain in the minus. This is saying nothing about his ability, more that as of yet it has proven difficult to get our money back from what was, at the time, our record signing.

To conclude, this profit made was for the greater good of the club long term, and contrary to Paul Merson, we are relatively comfortable.

Elliot Murray

All feedback is appreciated, thanks for reading.

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