Article in the Guardian about Stefano Okaka's rebirth in Italy. 16 goals in 58 games at Udinese and recall to the Italian national squad. https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...kaka-udinese-watford-i-need-people-to-love-me Yet another striker who 'failed'at Watford and went on to better things: Glenn Murray - forced to train alone at WFC has scored 2 in 2 games at Forest. Richarlison - stopped scoring at Watford, benched towards the end of the season. Has scored 34 goals in 100 games for Everton, 8 goals in 23 games and Copa America winner with Brazil. Ighalo - stopped scoring for Watford. Ended up playing for Man United scoring 5 goals in 23 games mainly as a substitute. His move is considered a success at Manchester United. Vydra - dumped after signing a long term deal. Currently playing in the PL. Am I the only person who finds this weird?? It seems to me that if Troy perceives u as a threat you're fooked. Troy has barely scored from open play for over 4 seasons, yet he's seen off all these strikers and is still 'the main man'. It's completely insane!!
I'll only think this is weird if/when we do finally get rid of Gray, he starts scoring again. That would be a miracle and would prove Watford are well and truly cursed.
Lack of coaching of the forwards. Lack of faith in some of them. Playing them in roles that do not suit them as the sole spearhead, out wide or miniscule minutes off the bench so they remain rusty and lack sharpness. Opposition teams will look at where forwards like to go, their anticipation, how they deal with rough stuff, which areas to force them to go to make them uncomfortable. So you need to keep coaching the forwards to counteract some of this. I think in general over the last few seasons the lack of coaching finesse, attention to detail as seen with setpieces, defending corners, unit cohesion on the pitch is all over the place. We have relied far too much on individuality. If said individuals do not spark negative results and performances abound.
Luther offered a year ago to do some specialist coaching work with the strikers... and got deathly silence in response Zola when he started worked with the strikers and look at the result Its criminally undervalued imo
Okaka is a decent player, just doesn’t doesn’t have the fitness to thrive anywhere other than a league as slow as Serie A
Okaka goes in the Pussetto category of 'good player, but completely unsuited to English football', I always rated him ability wise, but there's only so much he could do when he was blowing out of his arse after half an hour...
Murray--treated terribly by the club, yes he started very poorly with us, but surely worth more of a look-in than he got Richarlison--started off like a house on fire for us, but the guy hadn't had a break in 2 years with all the games he played in the Brazilian league and for their U20s so it's no surprise he completely tailed off from about November Ighalo--proved a useful backup at United, scored some goals against average opposition in the Cup and in the Europa League, but I wouldn't go around claiming he was a roaring success, I don't think he scored a league goal for them Vydra--probably should have kept him, he's a good player even at Prem level, although his goalscoring record is poor
Okaka was good here as well, I'd rather we kept him than Deeney. There were plenty of us who wanted him played more because he generally did well when used. It being called a "rebirth" is a bit of a stretch really. It's still too soon to come to a broad conclusion on Murray - his goals came against Wycombe for one thing, and given that we couldn't get rid of Troy or Gray he wasn't going to get a look in here whatever happened. Let's not forget he somehow managed to appear our worst player when he did play for us, and that was when the team was generally performing terribly. Richarlison stopped scoring here in part because he was shattered from an overly long season, and also because he threw his toys out the pram after Silva left. Ighalo was done here. He was alright for Utd but he'd had lots of time to recuperate in the mean time, worked his nuts off because Utd are his boyhood club, and was mostly used in easy Europa League games or as an impact sub. His wage was also ridiculous. Vydra is barely "currently playing in the PL" - he hardly gets any minutes for Burnley and hasn't done much when used let's be honest - 0 goals and 0 assists in 456 PL minutes so far this season. He's likely still better than what we have now of course, but it's not a high bar. The one I find most amusing is Uche Ikpeazu - who has scored as many goals from open play for Wycombe as Gray and Deeney combined in 1/4 of the minutes. I think that mostly speaks to how crap our current lot are, rather than necessarily to Troy's influence here though..
A half fit Okaka is 10 times more useful than that clown who masquerades as a footballer in our number 18 shirt
Nothing new. We all know Deeney is untouchable and undroppable, other strikers just sit around getting less and less motivated until they leave or give up trying.
