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Watford will have to buy back Ozan Tufan for £5.6m if they stay up despite terminating flop’s loan transfer
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WATFORD have terminated the season-long loan of Turkish international Ozan Tufan but incredibly, they may not have seen the last of him.
The 26-year-old midfielder arrived from Fenerbahce under Xisco Munoz last summer and was not exactly a roaring success.
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He made only his sixth start for the club in the 4-1 loss at Leicester in the FA Cup on January 8 and that also proved to be his last outing for the Golden Boys.
New Vicarage Road manager Roy Hodgson made an immediate decision to send Tufan packing back to Istanbul.
Watford paid the Turkish giants a loan fee of £1.6million but as part of the deal, the club will have to buy him for £5.6m if they stay up.
Incredibly, the obligation stands - so if Hodgson digs Watford out of this massive hole, Tufan will be heading back to Watford permanently on a nice fat contract.
Who said football was knackered?
WORLD WIDE WEBBER
STUART WEBBER is the Norwich sporting director who made the decision in November to sack Daniel Farke and bring in Dean Smith.
With the Canaries now at least having a glimmer of hope of staying up, Webber - along with the rest of the club’s board - got the decision right.
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It was made clear to former Aston Villa manager Smith that it would be unlikely that the club would be able to do much business in the January transfer window.
Even so, eyebrows were raised when Webber, 37, missed both the Premier League games against Everton and Watford - which Norwich won - to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
Webber, who has another climb in the pipeline at some stage to potentially raise money for charity, was in constant contact with the club and his new number 2, former Carrow Road manager Neil Adams, who was previously the loans manager.
Webber was still back before deadline day when in the club’s only piece of business during the month, they loaned Todd Cantwell to Bournemouth.
The Cherries have an option to buy him in a deal which could be worth £11m.
Norwich have rightly been criticised for their summer transfer which saw them spend approaching £60m without any great success.
One of those players who has struggled massively is American Josh Sargent, who joined from Werder Bremen for £8m.
And ironically, while Webber was somewhere on a mountain, Sargent scored twice in the 3-0 win over Watford.
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IT WAS IANEVATTABLE
LEE JOHNSON won a Football Writers’ Association northern managers award for leading Sunderland to the Papa John’s Trophy last season.
Yet Johnson lost his job a week earlier after a 6-0 thrashing by Bolton.
And at the bash in Manchester on Sunday, Johnson was sat next to Ian Evatt - the manager of Bolton.
GULLIT WASN'T BEING RUUD
RUUD GULLIT conducted a 45-minute Zoom call with various journalists ahead of the Laureus Sports Awards and was in full flow until his screen went blank.
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There was a 30-second panic among the reporters before the former Chelsea and Newcastle manager returned and apologised for leaving the call.
The reason? His mum had just called.
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