Still early doors but you could do far worse than taking a real interest in what is unfolding, the Pozzo’s have provided enough quality and they have the experience of dragging Granada from 3rd tier Spanish football to establishing them in La Liga. If this can be replicated with Watford playing Zola’s continental brand it is bound to have a positive effect on the English game as Premiership teams will need to combat our system or risk being left red faced.

Probably to accommodate those European giants with feeder clubs abroad and without suspecting it could be used in reverse, Fifa in their infinite wisdom ruled that overseas season long loans were to be treated as transfers. Now should Watford win promotion it may seem unfair on whoever misses out but all these players’ purchase and development costs have been paid for by our owner, they are not freebies and the club has every right to use them for this season at least. Maybe they will change the rules or maybe they see this as a good thing, we’ll just have to see.

I did state in the piece that many of the players have the option of signing permanent deals.

While the comments about perennial loanees, in the latter part of the piece, were more a comment on the process as a whole.

Thanks for all your thoughts. If you’d read one of my earlier articles – Twenty Ways to Annoy a Football Fan – you’d appreciate the irony in this little piece, that I assumed would be largely ignored, causing quite a stir.

I hope you don’t bet for real…

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/watfordfc/watfordfcnews/10036732.Watford_confident_they_will_sign_loan_quartet/

Watford have 1 player on loan (Nathanial Chalobah) from Chelsea. The other players you mention are on temporary international transfers, and all have end of season purchase clauses. This is a different classification to loans, which is why Watford have not fallen foul of the current loan limitation rules.

Due to the lateness and the complete mess the clubs finances were in at the point of takeover, the decision was made to move the players on temporary contracts to allow the new manager time to assess who he wanted on a permanant basis.

Four of the above are now in advanced negotiations to make their moves permanant in January, and a decision on the rest will be taken in due course.

This is not the same situation as was found at Doncaster last year, Watford are not being used as a shop window. No one who has actually come down and watched the team play can doubt the desire and committment of the players to play for Watford.

What is more disconcerting is the continual sniping of so called journalists who want to shoot down what is happening at Watford. It’s amazing to see that it is acceptable for ‘big’ teams to flex financial muscles to stockpile players they have no intention of playing, yet Watford taking advantage of a pool of players from teams owned by the same people is viewed as being wrong.

Maybe its just that the so called experts don’t appear to like the idea of little ol Watford mixing it with the big boys with a chance of actually being competitive.

Even the most ardent of Dyche supporters are Zola men now, we could not have dreamed for better new owners and by that I mean you can stick your Sheiks and your Oil barons, the Pozzo family will never get bored of football.

Also Watford’s financial position in the last few years ment half our squad may be sold in the summer anyway! Now we aren’t in that position and working towards being a sustainable club.

Would you rather we have a super rich owner who buys players without proper scouting, inflating prices and wages? The reason why there has been such an influx of loan players is due to lack of time to evaluate the squad. Come January, a couple loan players will be sent back and the squad trimmed.