The Udinese eight: Crystal Palace boss Ian Holloway annoyed at Watford's use of loan market

 
Nik Simon9 March 2013

Ian Holloway descended into a characteristic rant as the debate over Watford’s number of loan players from Udinese resurfaced.

The Crystal Palace boss revealed that he was not aware of Watford’s eight-strong contingent of Udinese players until he read it in the matchday programme before last month’s 2-2 draw at Vicarage Road.

Holloway’s comments came following two goals from former Udinese striker, Fernando Forestieri, which helped promotion-rivals Watford to a 2-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday on Tuesday night.

“I didn’t realise until I got there, Udinese, Udinese,” said Holloway. “I’ve heard of it but Udinese, Udinese, Udinese, Udinese, Udinese, Udinese, Udinese. They’ve got eight players from Udinese, and two from Grenada which is their other club, they own them as well.

“I want to have loan players but the rules should be the same for us to loan from foreign clubs as we do off English clubs.

“You can’t have nine or ten players from one club, that being your parent club, owned by the same owners. That doesn’t make sense. We're not allowed to borrow ten players from Man United.

“Apparently it’s the European laws that we’ve got to have now because we’re in the EU and all that.”

Holloway was clearly in an abrasive mood and described speculation surrounding Wayne Rooney’s Manchester United future as “a load of absolute tosh”.

Speaking about reports that Sir Alex Ferguson was ready to offload Rooney this summer, Holloway said: “I don’t get this. All of a sudden it’s all over every paper that he’s going, what a load of absolute tosh.

“Sir Alex can pick whoever he likes whenever he likes and he does and he’s brilliant at it. He decided to leave him there and play Ryan Giggs and to me it was working until the bloke was completely crazily sent off.”

Holloway was clearly aggravated by the rumours.

“Sir Alex will play him wherever he sees fit. It doesn’t mean there’s a big rift, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m sick and fed up of it.”

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