Pozzo explains why he is not a director of Watford

I just wondered if you felt there was any need for any introspection? You’ve spoken with conviction and been quite bullish about how the set-up is working. You’re very proud of it, you think it works, you think changing the manager works, you think that the players coming in are working. For me as a supporter it looks like it’s not working. What we’re seeing on the pitch is diminishing returns. The players look disinterested, they look uncoachable. Managers are coming in faster than they ever have done before. We have to keep everything in context because we’ve had a wonderful ride over the last 10 years and seen some brilliant things. But it feels like we’re back where we started when you got here. Just with a bit more debt and a more challenging football environment. What I haven’t heard from you this evening is an acceptance that perhaps you’ve got some stuff wrong, and you need to look inwards at yourselves and your decisions. Are you actually getting it right?

SD: “We’re always introspective and we’re always questioning our decisions. We’re always looking to improve. I have to take a little exception: when we arrived we had a three-sided stadium and we were 12 hours from administration. So we haven’t gone back to where we were.

“Of course in football you’re always having to reset, you’re always having to re-evaluate. It’s not that we’re being bullish, it’s just that we’re saying we need some perspective. The club is in a good financial position, a good infrastructure position. We’re rooted in the community: the work we did during Covid with the hospital. We are a very good, well-respected top Championship club.

“Of course we’re always questioning why are we a top Championship club and not sixth year in the Premier League. And we want to get back. We have to make changes and it’s not just one quick fix. We’re constantly looking at what we need to do differently here. We bought Ben in, because we saw we needed to do something.

“Of course we’ve gone back, our ideal is not to change the coach. Our ideal is to find that perfect fit that we feel will give us that stability. We’re striving for that. Of course we’ve made mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s what part of your success is, you build and react to your failures.

“We’re not sat here arrogantly saying everything is wonderful. We’re just saying we need a little context. I don’t think the past 10 years have been anything short of remarkable, with the development of the club. We’ve had four years where it’s not been.

“I don’t want to be finishing 13th or 14th and Luton being promoted. I don’t want to be stagnating in the EFL. The ambition to do what we’ve previously done burns bright, and of course we’ve got to change things and re-evaluate, do things differently and improve. It’s not about doing things differently, that’s wrong – it’s about improving. It’s about making sure we develop and we grow.

“None of us are sat here on our laurels saying we’re wonderful. On the contrary. We question every single day. It’s one of the advantages of having Gino here every day, we’re able to question, react and change. That will never stop.”

I recognise that, and as supporters we all recognise that. We’ve seen it. We’ve been to Wembley. We’ve seen Vicarage Road. We do recognise that and we appreciate it.  But are there signs of change Gino? I heard you say ‘this manager’s the wrong fit’ . . . ‘this manager’s the wrong fit’. If repeated managers can’t get a tune out of the players that the senior team have put together, isn’t there a case of ‘it’s not them, it’s us’? I don’t see any evidence that we’re turning this around. Scott you’re absolutely right, the stadium looks magnificent compared to what it was, we all recognise that, it’s a given, I hope you know that. But we’re in the business of football and what we’re seeing on the pitch – you can see it in the stands, it’s half empty. And obviously that happens when things aren’t going well. I would just like to hear or see some more concrete evidence that we are taking a step back and thinking, actually, is it Chris Wilder’s fault, is it Ivic’s fault or actually is it us?

GP: “That’s our goal at the moment, in the sport’s mind of our club, and so we were addressing how we miss maybe some personality inside the team, in the players and what they represent, we were talking about Troy, and I was mentioning before about how that group came together over a certain cycle, and we end up having most of those personalities not on the pitch. They were on the bench or injured and, yes, you can say that possibly we should have anticipated that. We should have moved before maybe. We had the personalities but they were not on the pitch.

“How do you solve this? Well that’s what we’re doing. We actually now finally assembled a new group that will be fired up to take that responsibility. Some of them have arrived with us in the last summer and the last winter. In football terms, when you have a successful squad, you have to look and think how long will you be able to hold onto them. We might be able to hold onto them for quite a long time – maybe too long.

“Maybe that’s what we have to look at, to have that positive personality that also brings something to the team on the pitch, and there has been a disalignment. Over the last years we have had players on very high wages who unfortunately have contributed in the past but were now not able to contribute much. That was limiting the ability of doing what were supposed to do. Now I think the situation is better in that sense.

“Of course, we need to identify the leader. You have seen some of the players already on the pitch who will be here next year that I think have that. I think they do deserve that credit. I think we all feel the same: we need to have that kind of positive personality, people that want to be at the club and want to progress, and of course the coach is a fundamental element to keep all those other elements together.”

Gino, I like the beard, it suits you very well. I just wanted to ask you – I’m interested when I look at Companies House etc etc and you’re not a director of Watford Football Club or any of the associated entities connected to Watford Football Club. First of all my question is why is that? And my second question is about Mr Mogi again I’m afraid. He seems to be more than an agent to us. I sit very near you and he’s there nearly every single week, and you’re sat with him, and I just wondered why that was, if he’s just an agent?

GP: “The fact that I don’t sit on the board as Chief Operating Officer or Executive Manager, all of them has a certain responsibility and I believe it is important that each person at the club has a clear responsibility. Me being there puts me in that certain position, and who’s going to judge me?

“I prefer in a sense to sit back and leave that responsibility so then you can judge what each one is doing in a more independent way. And then you can appreciate the good things, and make changes when things are not working well. If I were there, who’s going to question me?

“I don’t think it would be fair for me to take that responsibility directly. It would be no advantage for the club. I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s the way I prefer to be is a professional doing their jobs as a board instead of just having a position of the owner running the club. The fact we established certain philosophies for the club and then we looked for the people that shared them and have the same values is how we like to run the club. Then those values and those ideas have to be developed, otherwise they just stay an idea. And those people are in place.

“We’re looking at the financial position of the club, and without going into too many details the club is in a fantastic position right now. We will be debt-free at the end of this season and the plan to repay the debt is in place, the money is already there. That’s why we had to make sacrifices, we had to sell important players, to improve the financial position of the club. Of course the club in the Premier League was generating some revenues which it is not generating now, so some players have to go but that’s not a problem, we all understand.

“The important thing, looking forward, is we are not carrying over any debt. We are not having any situation unsolved. So the club is really in a fantastic position to look at the next challenge and to move on without any burden on our back.

“Again, Mr Mogi is an agent. I have other agents which I work with that am I close to, in terms of I like people who bring value to the club. And we are able to judge.

“This is our position: I have no interest in working with a particular agent. There is no added value there. But there is added value in the football team to have certain relations. And you have better relations with some than with others. Really there is nothing else but advantage to the club, and that’s all that counts.”

But it’s reported that Mr Mogi walks around here [the training ground] opening drawers and files like he owns the place.

GP: “Really, it’s a bit like the other information that we had an interest in Mr Mogi’s company. It’s false. Life is a lot simpler. If Mr Mogi brings a good deal we are happy to do it. If we don’t like the deal, we don’t do it. So really we are not that concerned because we don’t feel we need any agent in particular, but we feel we do need to work in a football community with agents. I would love not to have to work with agents, because they are a cost to the club, to any club. But you need them. You need to build certain relations in the football community. And Mr Mogi is not different from any other agent.

“If you look this up we have many agents that we work with, both at this club and at Udinese. Then in football over time, we’ve been involved many years, you tend to build some relationships with some agents that you feel will help you doing the deals for the club more than others.

“For example if I have an agent who decides not to accept a contract and decides to take one of our players out, I’m not gonna work with them again because I don’t think this is working. It is a partnership which is the player and the agent working together with us. If someone is working against us then we’re not going to work with that agent much more. Why? Because they may be doing their interests but in this situation they’re not doing mine.

“I will not point a finger as we do not have any particular interest, it’s a matter of the more one agent can bring added value the more deals we will do. For example in South America we end up doing deals with maybe two or three agents because we’ve established a closer relation with them. So when they have a good player they will be the ones often that offer that to you, or when you’re scouting a player you can have a connection there that’s probably gonna work harder to get you a better deal. Other agents might put you in a competition with other clubs, bringing the price up and you don’t want to work with them.

“It comes about establishing relations, and that’s it. There is no exclusivity, there is no interest. Whatever works for the club.”