I'd say that we pretty must just need a striker. Improving in on the left wing would be nice, but I suspect they won't be anything other than a £5-8 M transfer or two. The big money needs to be pumped to a CF. I feel like a 4-2-3-1 would be nice with Dahlberg/Bachmann/Foster, Masina/new signing, Sierralta, New signing/Kabasele/Cathcart/WTE/Wilmot, Kiko/Cover signing, Chalobah, Hughes, Pedro/Left winger, Cucho, Sarr, New CF signing. It feels like a younger, solid squad than the relegation buddies. And to those saying we need Troy for pens, I'll just reply "How many pens will we get in the prem?" VAR would rule out quite a few of the soft Sarr ones.
We also would have stayed up if he'd just scored it and we'd subsequently held out for the remaining 20 minutes...
I would rather have Moore from Cardiff than Deeney. He doesn't really score headers, only pens. But still better than Gray or Success.
I can think of loads of things we could have done tbh to help us stay up ! VAR gives penalties for even the slightest of touches it seems - more then ever. Defenders can hardly touch an attacker nowadays . But on a general point of course most of our attacking players (particularly ones worth north of 30 million) should be able to score a penalty so certainly don’t need to rely on Troy for that.
There were indeed so many of these annoying sliding doors moments and every one of them conspired together against us, and yet still any one of them going the other way would have seen us safe - Deulofeu's injury, Villa's last minute goal scored by a player that shouldn't have been on the pitch (iirc), that Deeney penalty, Villa being awarded a point for a draw against Sheffield United when the goal-line technology failed and didn't register the goal Utd scored - even Arsenal's integrity-filled decision to rest six first-choice players for their game against Villa, then turn around and field a full-strength lineup against us on the final day. All annoying, and all various degrees of pathetic to point our fingers and get annoyed about (if we're being self-aware) given how many of them there were, and we refused to take advantage of! Funny to consider though, in this context, if Deeney's sole remaining strength and justification is his ability to convert penalties - that his failure to do even that is one of those individual moments that relegation could be traced directly back to.
He can pick a pass. That's more what I mean by "game intelligence". I agree he offers little. Just think he offers more than Gray and Success! Cannot see us signing more than one forward, so being realistic. Some excellent players miss penalties. Let's not pretend he hasn't got an impressive strike rate from PKs.
Totally irrelevant though isn’t it? Excellent players are excellent, when you’re excellent, then you have the ability to positively influence each minute of 90 minutes of each game over 38/46 games. Nobody in their right mind would choose an excellent penalty taker over an excellent footballer player would they?
This is an interesting one because in one way you're totally right - Deeney can literally do more with a football than Gray can, by quite some distance. He's decent with the ball for a player in his position (as long as you view his position as centre forward). The problem is that yes, Gray can do basically nothing with the ball - you can never, ever rely on him to play the right pass, or indeed even any pass, to control the ball when he receives it, or to finish even the most presentable of chances when they are afforded him. However, whilst he's doing nothing in an individual sense, he is doing nothing whilst existing in the confines of the formation, and the other 10 players, that we want to play, and are our best players, and the system of play that we actually want to be playing. He even fulfils one role in it, in running and movement to occupy defenders and keep them from stepping up as far as they otherwise would just in case the stars magically align and he gets onto the end of a through ball that splits them and manages to control it, a la Birmingham. Troy, on the other hand, affects everything else about the team around him, from the formation to the other players to the mentality and how we move up and down the pitch as a group, negatively, whilst doing slightly more with a football somewhere between the middle and upper third of the pitch. Everyone here knows my thoughts on Gray, but if we weigh those two things up, it's definitely possible to draw a conclusion that overall Gray takes away less from us as a team overall than Deeney does/fits better whilst being largely incompetent into it, and so, as a result, actually offers more than Deeney. As I said, it's an interesting one...
Personally I think Grayy is lucky to be at the club at all having broken serious Government guidelines twice and not really appearing to be sorry for it either but that is in the past and I guess it's tricky to dump someone on so much money like that without wanting something back on your investment. I guess generally will be nice have some strikers fully focused on the football and stuff off I guess as certainly it's going to be hard for us to get goals.
A mix of what I’d do and expect, included everyone out on loan. Whether we want him or not Deeney is most likely going to be here.
Or, who simply have a different view from you. I have a lot of time for Troy, and given the vast amount he has done for the club, I find some of the comments on here unnecessarily harsh.
Like earn millions and millions of pounds from us whilst consistently failing to even keep himself fit between seasons, leading a dressing room with a very questionable mentality and seemingly playing a significant role in the downfall of several head coaches, and winding down his performances season on season for several years whilst giving ever-increasing interviews and soundbites that bring the club into disrepute and make us look like a laughing stock via the medium of the national media? Yeah, I guess that is quite a lot.
Again, that’s completely fine, but it has no relevance to his footballing ability now does it? Those comments all say he should be here next season and given the chance to prove people wrong etc. Troy does not deserve to be in our plans next year because of what he has done in the past, because that would suggest that Troy is more important than Watford as a whole and Watford surviving in the Premier League. Do you believe Troy’s actual ability should be overlooked because of what you think of him as a man?
Again - your view. Which seems to be, take all the potentially negative aspects, chuck away the positives, and amplify. Are you sure you aren’t an Arsenal fan? You’d fit in nicely with their similar views on that complete donkey (their view) Auba.
If we're after a couple of strikers I'd try and get Moore as well as one other, hopefully more proven/experienced player. Along with Pedro he'd be a very different option. Could afford to offload Perica as well then too.
Nope, but I think he has more ability than people give him credit for - see his sweet finish and the pass to Sarr vs Liverpool - and I think we could use that in small measure, combined with his experience and leadership.
But how does that work in reality? Because to get that moment vs Liverpool you have to put up with 10/15 games of him doing and contributing absolutely nothing. To get those moments once in a blue moon he’d have to be our main striker which is essentially suicide. He can’t be a bit part player and still make the positive contributions he does occasionally make on demand, that isn’t how it works.
You know your argument is pathetically weak when you come in with just the first response farting out claims that I'm an Arsenal fan. I haven't amplified anything - I have left several things out, but listing them all would take longer than any of us want to be here for. It's all on the record, so you don't really have the option of pretending it didn't happen, unfortunately.
We’ll just have to accept that we see games and players differently. I see good stuff from Troy most games he plays, but I accept that others may see it as the bare minimum expected from him. But then there are people on here who seem to believe the Hughes isn’t good enough for the Prem, which I find totally baffling.
I meant it is about perspective - yours seems to be relentlessly negative, to the point where you give no credit for the positives. As for Arsenal, I still remember being at Highbury, watching a chance missed, and hearing the bloke behind me scream “Henry, you’re rubbish!”.
1 moment every 10 games at most. He's a dead weight on the club and has been for 3 years. His goals and assists bear that out, along with every other stat you could look at. He barely touches the ball most games he plays. How you can defend that, and want more of it, I find quite remarkable.
I think you’re setting quite a low bar for good things. Ultimately Troy is a number 9, he once scored 20 goals for us in three consecutive seasons, but he has now got to the point that he can’t do that at all even in the championship. We need our number 9 to be able to score goals, particularly in the Premier League. The good things you see from Troy we don’t need him to do for us, we need the goal scoring bit otherwise all he’s doing is taking up a place in the team and negatively affecting use elsewhere on the pitch.
Why does this ridiculous Firminio argument come from every time? We scored less than a goal per game last time we were in the Premier league, where are our goals going to come from this time around? Here is a crazy thought, ditch the 33 year old that can no longer score, run, get on the end of crosses, leaves us overrun in in midfield etc. etc. and bring in a number 9 who can actually score the occasional goal. Are you actually against that as an idea, and what has Firminio got to do with it?
@Simmos - is this another one of yours? @wfcmoog is @Simmos another one of your wind-up accounts which you're now using to create further wind-up accounts in some kind of warped Inception/russian doll-esque trolling technique?
The problem is, Jon, you're knowingly pushing several fatuous arguments - there is a difference between being 'relentlessly negative' and recognising, as the majority of right-thinking people can, that Troy's overall contribution now and for the past few seasons has trended overwhelmingly towards the negative. 'In terms of Arsenal' only you ever mentioned them, so I don't really care what you remember from them - it's not an active part of this conversation. Similarly, in terms of implying that Firmino and Deeney share similar attributes or worth because they are both No.9s who are not known for their goalscoring, that is both laughable and utterly disingenuous. Not only does Firmino still score far more than Troy from open play, he is not only capable but an expert at playing as a lone centre forward/'No.9' whose main role is not, in fact, to score goals. Troy, by comparison, is literally and demonstrably incapable of playing as a lone centre forward to begin with, and his lack of goalscoring is certainly not by either choice or design; as well you (along with the rest of us) know.
Of course we have a younger quicker 18 million worth , 70k a week striker who might decide it's time to step up and put in some performances worthy of the tag and his wages. We basically have 4 strikers who probably won't come to anywhere near the standard required in the top flight and that is a real issue. We'd need a big turn over in that position - 3 out and maybe 3 in? At least we can probably put together a defence and midfield to compete with a few additions.
No, they wouldn't. The choice isn't going to be between an excellent player and Troy though! It's between Troy, Gray, Success and Peneranda. To me, it seems obvious who would be the most useful to us.
