Jimmy Russo doesn't want to discredit Brendan Rodgers but questions move to Reading (From Watford Observer)

Jimmy Russo doesn't want to discredit Brendan Rodgers but questions move to Reading

3:40pm Friday 5th June 2009 in

By Frank Smith »

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Watford chairman Jimmy Russo has questioned what changed in the 48 hours between Brendan Rodgers declaring he was ‘100 per cent’ commited to the Hornets and his previous manager expressing his desire to talk to Reading.

Rodgers became Reading manager yesterday, although the Royals had yet to confirm this before the Watford Observer went to press.

Just last week Russo was adamant Rodgers would be staying at Vicarage Road after speaking with his manager but on Friday the 36-year-old said he was keen to speak to his former club.

Watford granted Rodgers permission to speak to the Royals on Tuesday but Russo says he already knew by then that Rodgers would be leaving the club.

Russo said: “It incredibly disappointed me because I thought I had a good quality conversation with him on the Tuesday and he was very dismissive with anything to do with Reading.

“Obviously in 48 hours something changed and he expressed a desire to talk to Reading.

“With the best will in the world I really want people to come and be happy to be at Watford and fight the Watford cause. If somebody comes to the club and stays a few months and starts having hesitations he’s probably not, in the long-term, the right person for the club.”

He added: “I don’t want to discredit him but I want people to know the facts. I will let people draw their own conclusions that this guy [Rodgers] went there [Watford], was given a chance and seven months later he wants to leave.

“I had no intention of moving Brendan Rogers on so the club could get compensation because we saw him as the future. So something obviously happened in the 48 hours between last Tuesday and Thursday.”

In the end Russo and chief exceutive Julian Winter agreed a compensation package which will land the club an initial fee of more than £500,000, which could eventually rise to around £1m if Reading achieve promotion back to the Premier League.

Although it has not been announced yet, assistant manager Dean Austin, football consultant Frank Lampard Snr and football physiologist Karl Halabi will be joining the Royals in the near future.

Watford refused to comment on Reading’s approach for Rodgers until they announced his departure, which was criticised by fans who stated the club’s promises to be open and honest.

But Russo said: “We took the decision as a board and Graham Taylor advised on this one, that we shouldn’t go public [about the approach]. The reason for this was two fold.

“One because I felt that if we made a statement in the public arena that it would weaken our negotiations with Reading, in that if we had agreed and went public then we would have accepted the situation of life without Brendan.

“On the other hand I had to be very careful because if the whole Brendan moving to Reading broke down then I would have fans turning on Brendan because he had an interview with Reading. Part of me was protecting Brendan. I had to protect Brendan.

“In the end the information was slow coming through but I think the way Julian and I handled ourselves was right because of the compensation and protecting him from a backlash from fans had it gone wrong.

“I can actually confirm that it only went through at midday today [Thursday] so as soon as I could give them information I did.”

Russo told Rodgers about Reading’s approach on Friday.

When asked about what Rodgers said to him, he said: “The quality of conversation was that I had already been approached by his [Rodgers] representatives and the people from Reading had approached me to have a conversation with him and he said he would like to have that opportunity to speak to them.

“So, as per his contract, he could have left the club by paying what Watford regarded a poor compensation package and walked out of the football club and we would have had no manager and a low fee.

“When somebody doesn’t want to work for someone, there is not much you can say to anybody in any sort of employment, so he was in a strong position and could have walked out for that fee, which would have given us even bigger problems.

“So I am really pleased with the deal we have financially, we just need to be positive and move forward.”

Russo said he did not want to discredit Rodgers and praised Reading for the way they handled negotiations.

He said: “I am very happy with how [Reading director of football] Nick Hammond has conducted himself throughout these transaction. I am pleased with the way they went about doing things. It doesn’t affect our relationship with Reading except for that I want to go there and beat them good and proper next year.”

He added: “The way Sir John Madejski and his team have conducted themselves has been of the highest order.

“In all fairness to Brendan, I think he has had an affiliation with Reading as a young lad working on the coaching staff and I understand his father-in-law used to play for Reading, he is local to Reading itself.

“Maybe he had a feeling that Reading is a bigger club than Watford with a Premiership set up. My gut feeling is that it is a Premiership set-up but not a Premiership club and I did say to him at the time that it would be a wrong career move and would be going sideways and not going forward.

“I did as much convincing as I could but once I realised that he wanted to go that it was a lost cause.”

Comments(46)

Johnjones1959 says...
3:57pm Fri 5 Jun 09

Jimmy, to us the ordinary fan it stinks of tapping up, and for quite a while by the looks of it, I can understand the lack of communication and I think it must be hard for you guys not to be able to say what you really think of this wholly discredited, disreputable individual, Glad his back room rubbish is going as well more sh*te off the payroll, you need to act decisively now to get us back on track, make a statement regarding which players will be staying so the true fans of the club know, appoint your new manager and lets move on.