Spending anything over £1m for a player in the championship these days is rare, would say Brighton have defo backed the manager there for sure. Not many teams have spent over £1m all season it seems, loans and freebies to get them off the wage bill seems standard these days.
I remember the glorious day when Watford bought Nathan Ellington for £4.5 million and gave him a massive 3.5 year contract. A wonderful piece of business that was.
I've often wondered why Elton John hasn't become the owner of Watford.
He obviously loves the club, he must be worth hundreds of millions and he can't spend the loot once he's dead.
Why didn't he just acquire the club when it was in finicial difficulties?
Well he used to pour millions in Camel but I think he was very upset about general anti-gay sentiment in the 80s/90s at football and that killed his love for the game unfortunately.
Mmmmm .... Dung I take it you're young - because you really know very little about the 'Watford past'.
Elton became totally disillusioned back in the 80s when Watford Borough Council scuppered his plans for the club.
Before Hillsboro, before the Bradford fire, way before the Taylor Report ..... Elton & GT had big plans for WFC.
A 36.5k all-seater football stadium, with an additional 9k all-seater arena (for concerts etc), hotel with Conference annexe, plus Leisure & shopping centres to be built @ Vicarage Rd & on the huge allotment area to the rear of the ground.
Basically it was so well planned that all the funding was to come from the leases etc granted to the commercial partners (who were already in place, and were to fund the entire development) - and WFC would get a new ground, new arena, and retain freehold on all other properties on the site .... proper free-rolling!
All they had to to was get the Council to flog, or donate, the land down the back of the Rookery .... simples - job done!
Well .... they hadn't taken into account having to deal with the 2nd most corrupt Council in the entire South East (the London Borough of Barnet held the undisputed crown at that time - and probably still does).
The Councillors (most of whom had to do a 'moonlight flit' several years after - the Council's accounts could not be verified for 7 years of their tenure, and the Auditor's refused to sign them off due to the theft that went on) promptly offered ONE acre only (out of 90, I believe) and refused to budge .... not their scheme - 'back-handers' were highly unlikely!
So the whole 'Watford Revolution' hit the buffers with an almighty thwack ... Graham Taylor phuqqed off within a year, and Elton flogged the club not so long after.
The same area has had 'Regeneration Proposals' - running to nearly half a billion squids - swirling around it for many years now, but the money's not there.
SEJ & GT were gonna 'regenerate' the shit-hole that is West Watford for 32 mill of someone else's dough 30 odd years ago.
Politicians at local level are just as crass, incompetent, and corrupt as their Westminster counterparts ....
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