[SOLD] Gerard Deulofeu

Deeney just takes up space these days

 

Excellent research. I think we've relied heavily on the midfield scoring goals since Iggy left. It makes perfect sense that having more defensive managers in QSF and arguably Pearson, has made it harder for midfielders to contribute. The likes of Doucoure, Pererya, even Capoue seemed to offer more of a goal threat in previous seasons.

 

Yeah, I was referring to Geri and Sarr etc. They usually take 2 opposition players out of the game, creating space for others.

 

We do create plenty of chances but we can't ******* finish them, hence as I have been banging on for ages, WE NEED A CLINICAL STRIKER!!! Or even just a half decent one would be good enough.

 

A in the ?

 

I don’t care what anybody says, or what he actually contributes, Geri is the type of player who makes watching football fun. I don’t care if he’s **** most of the time, because every now and again, he’ll produce something ludicrous that makes all of the other stuff seem worthwhile.

Maybe start a thread about it?

 

Someone like Vydra ?

 

However one of the changes Pearson made was to move Docuore further forward, Docuore had plenty of chances playing further up the pitch but his finishing and passing is now woeful. You can lead a horse to water etc...

 

Scored a decent amount in the cup final season and was showing good form under Pearson. I wonder what you want when you say ‘pitiful end product’? You realise the relative size of our club? Getting a lethal finisher in the PL costs about £50m...

 

Except he’s not ‘incredibly’ wasteful.

His biggest criticism is that for a player of his ability, he’s too inconsistent. But if he is was better at that, he wouldn’t be at our club in the first place.

 

Who are you comparing him with?

 

I'm not comparing him with anyone as such, I just don't buy into the hype around him and that seems to have ruffled some feathers.

What is an interesting comparison though is his seasonal stats. Assists last season compared to the season before stayed the same, but his goal return dropped by 60%.

Putting stats to one side for a moment, just watching him last season he was evidently more wasteful and had less impact on games. He's not alone with that of course, but he certainly played a part towards our relegation by his regression. There is an excellent post further up about our defence being largely similar to other PL seasons but our goal return dropping off a cliff. It is certainly our forward play that cost us last season.

We conceded 5 more goals last season than the season before. Not a huge amount, especially when you consider a freakish 8-0 walloping at City. But we scored 16 fewer goals. That is a huge amount and pinpoints the area of the pitch that needs attention.

Pereyra scored 3 fewer
Deulofeu scored 6 fewer
Capoue scored 1 fewer
Doucoure scored 1 fewer
Deeney scored 1 more
Gray scored 5 fewer

Between those six, they scored 15 fewer goals this season than the season before.

 

Poor old Gray. Hardly on the pitch and getting pelters for not scoring as many as the year before. And why was Delefeou not scoring post lockdown? His fault too!

 

I have sympathies with LB's view on this. GD is an incredibly talented player and great to watch when he's onsong. That hattrick at Cardiff was brilliant, the goal at Wembley unforgettable, but it's so frustrating that he hasn't scored or created more. I guess that's why he's been playing for us and not a top 6 side given the ability he has. He's like an upgraded Fessi. I'd love to see him stay but realistically he will go on a structured deal with low upfront and meaty performance based bonus.

 

I think Deulofeu falls victim of our fan’s expectations having spent 5 years in the prem. A few years back I could only dream of watching a player of his quality at Watford, signed from Barcelona! Yes, he has his faults but I fear it maybe a while before we can attract players of his ilk again.

 

Let's hope we can bleed every penny out of Everton eh

 

If Deulofeu had 'end product' he'd literally be challenging for Champions Leagues by now

 

If we're comparing seasons, it's worth looking at how his position changed:

18/19.....19/20​

Min Played....2082.......2106
At CF..............1674........674
% at CF...........80%........32%
Goals................10............4

As you can see, his time at CF was about 2.5x more in 2018/19 and coincidentally his goals scored were 2.5x greater.

 

Let’s be fair Kevin De Bruyne would have trouble assisting our centre forwards. There’s no movement from them .... delofeu wasn’t the issue. We are too easy to defend against - primarily last season we had one threat on the pitch at a time, Delofeu or Sarr - stopping one is easy ...... the rare times they played together we caused teams lots more issues ...... but our blunt strikers were still no good.

 

Adam Leventhal has covered this well in the Athletic. Couple of 'highlights' below:

That’s not to say they’ve been bad at creating opportunities — last season they managed to get into plenty of decent positions and ranked 14th (rather than 19th, where they finished in the table) for expected goals (xG) excluding penalties at 43.5. The problem was they only scored 29 goals aside from the ones Troy Deeney (five), Gerard Deulofeu and Roberto Pereyra (one each) scored from the spot — meaning there was an xG deficit of 14.5.

Watford’s percentage of shots on target (28.8) was the lowest in the Premier League last season... Their 2019-20 output ranks them 97th out of 100 teams from the last five Premier League seasons in their ability to hit the target.

No one has undershot xG as much as Watford over the past five seasons, with an overall deficit of 15.5.

95 per cent of squad members who featured for 500 minutes or more this season didn’t manage to hit their xG. That, again, is the worst of any Premier League team over the last five seasons

Whilst the whole squad were guilty of woeful finishing, the article points out, however, that Delufeou undershot his XG more than any other. He creates a lot but scores relatively fewer than any other player.

If we didn't know it already, it all definitely supports the view we need wholesale change at the top to improve our potency if we expect to go straight back up. Delufeou, Deeney, Gray, Pereyra, Success, Penaranda - would happily move them all on at this point and start again.

 

So basically confirms factually what I and a few others have been saying, our relegation is predominately down to not being able to put the ball in the net.

 

Yes, the article opens with stating that we got away with having a shaky defence throughout our PL stay but got away with it because we could score. As soon as we lost our ability to finish, we got found out.

 

But there aren’t many who disagree with that?

I just think that I, along with @Jumbolina and a few others, have been trying to point out that you attack and defend as a team and striking/scoring is a lot to do with confidence as much as ability. I think Deulofeu, Pereyra, Deeney, Sarr all have the ability when given a chance - but what they lack is the confidence or consistency to get into those positions. And Deeney lacks the fitness.

A new No.9 aside, my honest opinion is that the stats shown above would markedly improve if we have defenders who are good footballers, with confidence to play, rather than just aimless whacks up the pitch and treating the ball like a hot potato that they don’t want possession of. That will grow the confidence of the attacking players we have in our ranks that have ability.

We could have had Aguero last season and I’m not convinced we would have stayed up. He’d have been chasing a lot of the hopeless supply our current lot have.

Get a back 4 who are comfortable with the ball and playing out from the back - and I’m certain the goals go in at the other end at a far better rate, almost irrespective of who’s the striker.

 

Playing out from the back may have it's merits in keeping possession and creating more chances but that's kind of besides the point.

XG and XA stats are indicators of being able to create meaningful chances to score or assist. Everything I've seen suggests we have no problem doing this - these players do have the consistency and confidence to get into dangerous positions regularly, and they're doing so regardless of the style of play the defenders are adopting.

What they're not doing is finishing having made that hatful of chances. Having the defenders play out from the back won't change that.

 

But we would’ve though wouldn’t we? Our main striker scored five from open play, I’d back Aguero to score more than five goals from open play, let’s face it a couple more would’ve done the trick. If you’re seriously suggesting Aguero would’ve contributed no more than Deeney, well I’m kind of lost for words.... I mean by that logic Van dyke would’ve made no difference to the defence then?

But anyway, defenders require less skill than forwards, scoring goals in football is the hardest thing to do and hence why generally they’re the players that fetch the big bucks. It’s easier to coach a limited bunch of defenders to defend to an acceptable standard, you can’t coach a bad forward to score goals at the top level.

We’ve failed to invest in both attack and defence, but it’s ultimately that lack of investment in attack that’s cost us the most. This is the worst ever season we’ve had in the premier league for goals scored and we have the worst record in five years of the entire league for chance conversion, there isn’t really any escaping from those facts.

Gray was a dud and Welbeck was a gamble that didn't pay off, that left us with a 32 year old Deeney who has had two knee operations, has no pace anymore to beat an offside trap and has scored only five goals from open play. Our defenders might be bad, but to a man none of them are as bad defenders relative to how bad Deeney is as a forward now.

We do defend and attack as a team, but how does it help our defence to have a forward who has no goal threat, provides no threat to the defenders and is never on the end of any crosses, thus repeatedly returning the ball to the opposition?

 

I think I can help you there. If we'd had Aguero up front we'd have got the extra few points needed. Aguero who have scored a good 5 or 6 vital goals coming off the bench for the last 10 mins for Deeney in 3 or 4 games.

 

This is likely the view of the hierarchy at the club too. Don't resolve the shaky defence that's plagued us for 5 years, just keep buying attackers and hope they cover the problem.

I saw a post recently that claimed that it would cost too much money to solve the problems in defence. Yet we spent £40m on an attacking player who's likely to leave on loan.

 

Lack of investment in attack?
Deulofeu - £13m
Gray - £18m
Sarr - £40m
Pereyra - £10m-£15m
Okaka - £8m
Penaranda - £9.5m
Isaac Success £13.5m

That’s over £100m on ones off the top of my head alone...

Compare that with fee’s spent on defenders (and GK’s) - you’ll soon see where there is a lack of investment. A few of those players above just about cover the TOTAL amount we’ve spent on defenders under the Pozzo’s on their own!

At this point I’m going to bow out of this debate as there’s nothing to be said that hasn’t been said before - I don’t debate we need a striker. But we have Joao Pedro and Suarez who I think we should give a run to before we look to bring in anyone else who could block their pathway. We have neglected the defence for so long and it baffles me when people think we can afford to do it again. (Not staying you do...)

 

Well we invested £30m in the attack in Sarr. Unless midfield/wingers don’t count in this odd attack v defence binary debate. I fully agree Deeney was horrendous and I think if Gray played all his minutes he’d have done better (pens aside).

 

Looking at your list it’s incredible someone can argue we haven’t invested in attack. Many a poor investment yes, but it hasn’t been neglected and ignored so criminally as the back line.

 

It is quantity over quality. Only two or three of those signings are premier league quality and fit in the system we wanted to play.

Okaka, Penaranda, Success, Sinclair, Obbi Oulare were not expensive on their own, but together they come to about the same price as Sarr. None of them have been good enough to have any impact on our squad.

Andre Gray is a different issue in that he can be a premier league striker if played in a two, but we keep bringing in managers who want to play lone striker systems.

That is like £50-60m spunked away on players not fit for the job they have been brought in for.

 

Okaka wasn't bad but he never really fit in with various managers' plans. The others listed like Oulare were a waste of space

 

Okaka was never fit enough to play more than 45 minutes a game.

 

Exactly this

 

Why can't you guys admit that it's our lack of a half decent finisher or two that has cost us dearly. I agree that the defence is not good by any means, but it is at least adequate in comparison to our strikers who are ******* rubbish!!!

We create plenty of chances, but it is our inability to turn those chances into goals that has been our problem.................................................

WE NEED A FOX OR MAYBE EVEN TWO IN THE BOX
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If we get those "FOXES" we will bounce straight back as long as we also keep a core of our most experienced players in the other positions as well.

The time for major surgery is when we have won our place back in the PL, as many of those I hope we keep for this season in order to win us that place will be great to win us the championship, but will not be good enough to play for us in the Premier League.