It was always going to be a name that came up at the fans' forum - Mogi Bayat.

There was also lots of discussion around club debt.

You mentioned we’ve got a world-class scouting network. For me and a lot of others we see Mogi Bayat coming in and bringing us these cowardly players that don’t want to be here, throw their toys out of the pram when they’re asked to run. Why is that suddenly going to change? Is he still in the picture? And what made you sell Hasane Kamara to Udinese for £15m and then loan him back? How much trouble are we in for that? And why on Earth would you do that to our club?

GP: “You should put the same question to Tottenham. They come and bought from Udinese, Udogie, for £25m and loaned him back. That’s football.”

But I’m talking to you about our club, not Tottenham.

GP: “It’s actually, if we have an advantage and we can use our clubs to support us, why shouldn’t we use it when, in football, all the clubs that are now related actually do that? It was a brilliant solution because it helped us support the club without losing the technical ability of one of our important players.

“By the way, all of that is very public. So there is no possibility for us to hide, anyway.”

SD: “Let me just give some reality. We were relegated. We had to generate cashflow and finances in order to be sustainable. So we were able to sell, and Kamara wanted to play at the highest level. We were able to sell Kamara that enabled a good transfer fee so we could have the revenues for this club to continue and to compete.

“Because of the situation with Spurs and Udinese, we were then able to keep him for a year. So it’s not ‘how can you do this to our club’. We were able to do some good transfer business and make sure that we’re sustainable and we were able to keep the player for the season. It was a good deal for everybody, but there are consequences when you’re in the EFL. The new TV deal will help but our core business will be player trading.

“In order to be sustainable we’re going to have to sell players. That’s the reality of the EFL, and it’s not that we’re unique or unusual. We’re not the biggest club in the league but we’ve done exceptionally with the commercial revenues, we’ve done exceptionally with the season ticket sales, but there will be an element of core player trading for us to be sustainable.

“That is just part of the core business of this football club. There’s no problem with it. There’s nothing underhand. The EFL have no issue with it. None at all.”

So was there not an investigation announced?

SD: “No. It was the media being extremely provocative. As far as financial fair play, every financial fair play submission is examined. That’s all the EFL were saying. With every club in a related-party transaction, it’ll be examined whether they agree with the valuation or not. That’s it.

“And it has no consequence because of the other trading we’ve done and the other commercial revenue we’ve achieved, whatever value they wish to put on Kamara I’m sure they would agree he’s a top player. It’ll have no impact on our FFP submission. There was zero consequence to the Kamara deal. Zero.”

So in your mind does this fall in line with the 2013 season when a lot of players came over and Ian Holloway got upset? But then they started to close those loopholes. Is it part of exploiting around what the rules are?

SD: “No, it’s not a loophole. Kamara wanted it. Everything we do with Udinese is done at arm’s length and has to be independently verified, independently valued and independently audited. Kamara wanted to go, and wanted to play at the highest level. Fortunately Udinese needed a left back because they’d done the deal with Spurs. It was an arm’s length transaction. He was going, we get the transfer fee, and we move on.

“Spurs said ‘actually, we don’t him now [Udogie] so you can have him back and we’ll take him next season’. Udinese then say they want Kamara to stay. Fantastic. Kamara stays, we’ve done the transfer, everything is completely at arm’s length, completely independently audited. The EFL had zero concern.

“But it was a time where the media wanted to find a problem where there wasn’t a problem. But there’s been no investigation, there’s been no charge, there’s been nothing. Simple.

“FFP submissions are something every single club has to do, and that submission went in a month ago, two months ago. As far as I’m concerned, it’s closed.”

Mr Mogi Bayat – he is under investigation as party of Operation Zero in Belgium, Stades Rennes have talked about what’s going on with that, we seem to be the only English club who seem to be dealing with him since about 2018. What is his connection? Why have we previously been connected with him? And again, just referring to Ben [Manga], he talked a few weeks ago about the difference between agent-based recruiting and scouting-based recruiting, based on the fact that sometimes you need to be sure you’re getting what the team needs rather than what the agent wishes to sell. What’s your position on Mr Mogi Bayat? Obviously we do see him there, he is a contentious figure, we are a small club but we have values. I think we find that one difficult to reconcile. Can you help us do that?

GP: “In general, we know we need to work with agents. Agents have become an important part of our everyday business. We have agents who want to bring players out even if you want to keep them. Of course need to be connected with agents that will help us. We have no particular preference of any agent. We just look for the guy who will bring us at good value. The agent at the end is not the one who is out on the pitch.

“We have more interest in the player than the agent. The agent will make a deal happen based on his strengths, his interests and his ability to influence a player. Mr Mogi is just one of the agents that we use. He has been developing his ability in France and Belgium. He has not been suspended in his ability to work, so I don’t want to get involved in his personal situation. Until someone is proved guilty, I understand….”

He's innocent until proven guilty?

GP: “That’s right. So I think that we have focussed more on does a particular agent – and we’re not agent based – but we do like to establish good contact with certain agents because we know that we have an advantage.

“With some agents we don’t have a good relationship because maybe we don’t share the same philosophy. That’s the kind of environment we are working in. It’s challenging and so you do establish relationships, but it’s not a particular interest in working with one agent. It’s all player based.”

It’s so important we get this communication and transparency, because otherwise we look at things like Vakoun Bayo signing for Charleroi on loan on July 1 for €1.5m and on July 2 us signing him for €5.8m. The managing director I think at Charleroi is Mr Mehdi Bayat, Mogi’s brother. He was formerly I believe the managing director and has operated in those facilities because it was his uncle’s club at one point. All of this without explanation leaves a vacuum that rumour and suspicion can fill. Could you take us through that particular transfer – and I appreciate you had the same route through for Dodi Lukebakio which was an extremely successful, kind of profitable thing for us. But can you help us understand that?

GP: “It is, again, just a player transaction. And we had some successful transactions. We actually missed on a very good one, Victor Osimhen. They had Osimhen and they offered him to us, and we didn’t take him.

“Because we have relationships with certain agents we will be offered certain players. And that’s the way you will see it working. And again our evaluation, other than with the player, if the player is good enough we don’t care who the agent is. We just try to get the player at the best possible conditions. We expect the agent to help us in that. That is where he can help.

“We shouldn’t give too much importance. Why would I put the club money into a deal that I don’t see as beneficial for the club? What interest do I have with any other club being linked to Mr Mogi?

“All the agents are the same. I evaluate them on are they bringing added value to the club or not. Everything else really doesn’t matter.”

What about the difference of the €4.3m from one day to the next?

GP: “We just evaluate the player at the moment we sign him. If there is a value that we consider is right, therefore we do it. Just as you remember before, another deal with Lukebakio. It was quite the opposite way. We sold him for £20m. That’s football.”

SD: “The bottom line is that because of the relationship with an agent means you get a player. They believed Bayo was going to be a top player for them. So the bottom line is Charleroi had an option to buy him and make him their player on a five-year contract. It’s not like buying a car and that’s what it’s worth. He’s their player at that point. He’s scored all the goals and they’ve exercised the option so he’s their player. At that point they could demand €20m, €40m, €50m. He’s their player.”

So they’ve flipped him in property terms?

SD: “Effectively. But without the relationship you wouldn’t have got the player. You wouldn’t have got the player or the ability to sign him. Now the player – it’s down to the technical department if he’s good enough. But you simply wouldn’t have access if it wasn’t for that relationship.

“It’s the same with many, many agents. I wanted the technical department to sign the winger that went to Everton for a million, forget his name, brilliant player . . . Demarai Gray. Everton got Demarai Gray for a million because they had the unique relationship with the agent. It was impossible to get that deal and it’s why he went to Everton.

“This is football and it is all about relationships, and you get players you wouldn’t get if you didn’t have that relationship. Equally we miss out on players, like Gray, because we didn’t have the relationship with the agent.”

GP: “I also think that in this case, the representation really is not correct. Because look backwards to a similar deal, we had on loan at Udinese, Udogie, with an option to buy. After one year playing for us on loan we exercised the option to buy, for a value I think of €2m. The following day we sold him to Tottenham for €25m. How do you explain that? It’s the same as in this case, you got to look at the value of the player at the moment you do the transaction. If someone is smart enough to get a player on loan with an option to buy and then execute the option, and then re-sell the player…well they have done a good job.

“But when you look at the player when they signed him [on loan] one year before what was his valuation? One year before Udinese was able to identify the potential talent and nobody else decided to sign him under those conditions.

“It’s happened more than once before, and that is the business of football.”

You talk about the media creating a story around Kamara, something that in your eyes wasn’t a thing to be discussed or as big was as meant. As a fan, we’re not into the detail of that negotiation, we see the optics in the media and make our own assumptions. Dare I say some of the distrust we feel as fans comes from this silence, there isn’t the transparency. We’ve talked a lot about philosophy and vision. What are we practically going to do to have that better connection with fans or to allow us to build that backing so we don’t end up in this situation again?

SD: “The Kamara thing is a really good point. There are certain things that we can’t discuss and we were genuinely trying to be open and explain, and that openness and explanation has caused the problem. Certain journalists said ‘ooh, he’s gone to Udinese, are the EFL going to investigate that?’

“We would have been best just saying nothing, let the transfer occur, say nothing. There are certain things we can’t talk about, and when we do in a genuine attempt to be open and honest it comes and bites us.

“But to answer, we had the Covid situation which really brought a halt to everybody. I think we need to restart these kinds of meetings, I said we’ll do At Your Place every two months, which I like because you can get around and speak far more informally.

“We’ll always have communication through the website which has to be sanitised. We have the relationship with the Watford Observer where we can be a little more open. And we need to do more of these, and we need to do At Your Place.

“And we need to win some games. Win games and life becomes a lot more pleasant, and people are more prepared to listen. In the 11 years we’ve been here, this is not where we want to be. We want to be back, being successful, playing entertaining football, and we want to be open and we want to communicate.

“It’s an accusation which I think has more weight when things aren’t going well. We’re defensive – but we’re not. I’ve always wanted to be honest and open, I’ve always wanted to do fans forums, I’ve always done the At Your Places. There are certain things we can’t talk about but I’ll restart the forums, I’ll restart the At Your Places and we go from there.”

This is all about starting, or restarting, that validation so that we get to hear, we get some understanding and hopefully we create some empathy in understanding both ways, and hopefully it is two-way communication.

I’m intrigued about the comment you made that all agents are the same. We seem to have funnelled an awful lot of business through Mr Bayat, and it’s been reported that when his UK company was established there was a member of our parent company board that actually set that company up, and retained a financial interest in it for several months afterwards. How is that not a conflict on interests?

GP: “Again I think we got the facts wrong. When Mr Bayat arrived in the UK he used the same company of accountant that we were using as a common service. That is really the only connection. We introduced him because he arrived in the country, we introduced him to our accountant and he started working with them. That was the only connection. We never had any participation or any connection with any property with Mr Mogi, or any company.”

But that accountant did sit at the time on the board of directors, that’s according to Companies House.

SD: “It’s very common for accountants to set up shell companies. He set up the shell company with himself as the director, waiting for the nominations from Bayat as to who will be the directors and owners of the company. When those nominations were given, he then stepped off. It’s quite normal in setting up a shell company. This is what the accountants in companies do, and then they’re replaced and that was that. He had no operating role. As soon as Bayat nominated who was on there, he was replaced. It’s just not where the media were taking it.”

If the dates are unclear on Companies House I’d say he’s not a very good accountant.

SD: “Listen, I’m not going to get involved in what Bayat and a former accountant are doing. All I know is that everybody is happy is that that’s what occurred. There is no issue for Watford Football Club. What Bayat or a former accountant do is of no consequence of this football club.”

You mentioned earlier we are in a good financial position. The most common two questions are around what is the state of the current finances – obvious the most recent set of accounts came out and we had debt of £129m or £128m, to Mr Pozzo and external debt. The question is what is the current state you can share with us now, and also about servicing that debt. You mentioned last year that it was a £50m loan and that was what you needed to worry about. Mr Pozzo wasn’t going to claim back anything until…

GP: “Never.”

Excellent, you heard that, never. That’s clarity and transparency for you.

SD: “The situation is really simple. We have £25m of debt with Macquarie that will be repaid in full in 12 months’ time, and then we are effectively debt free. We only have owner debts, and owner debts is a vehicle for funding the growth and continual development of the football club. It’s quite normal, it’s what most owners do, put working capital into the club. That’s the position.

“The only thing we need to concern ourselves with is Macquarie debt and that’s £25m, repaid in full in 12 months’ time. And then we’re effectively debt free. That’s our position.”

In terms of that we are in the Championship. The last time we dropped from the Premier League to the Championship I think turnover dropped from £120m to £57m. We’ve just concluded a season in the Championship and we’re about to see another one. How is the two-year plan to pay that off? How are you going to work that?

SD: “Everything is cashflow. It’s completely repayable. I don’t want to go into too much detail but the most important thing is, given the contracts of our playing squad have gone down to a level that is entirely sustainable makes the debt entirely repayable, and entirely workable in the 12-month period.

“We’ve had a lot of high earning players who through contracts expiring or through sales are no longer with us. So the actual squad global salary is at a level that is entirely sustainable in the EFL. That’s the work we’ve done over the last four years with changing the composition of the playing squad, and that puts us at a level that we are now entirely sustainable. We have no issues with the repayment of the Macquarie debt.”

Do you know the ratio of wages to turnover?

SD: “I don’t. We’re just working through it today. I don’t want to give a number.”