Ismaila Sarr -

Le dauphine, the local rag

 

What won't help his confidence is his lack of ability.

 

He'll be sold to Muff for £10m as part of the end of season relegation clear out.

 

Can I buck the trend on here and actually wish the lad a speedy recovery . I bet he wants to play and wouldn't want to be written off so early at a new club. Hope he doesn't read some of the tripe on social media and stays positive

 

He wouldn't understand it anyway.

 

So far, two managers have seemingly deemed him not good enough, he’s spent most of his time here on the treatment table and when he has played, aside from a cup game against a team two divisions below us, has shown nothing to warrant even a fraction of his price tag.

Obviously it’s still early days but right now, a cut price sale next summer wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

 

It’s always easy at 21 years old to come to a different country with a language you don’t speak, no pre season, a team that have no confidence, the manager getting sacked and the new manager playing a system with no wingers. difficult to see why he’s not thriving to be honest

 

He was **** before the manager got sacked though.

 

His price bracket suggests he should be able to cope with all of those things. Those who sanctioned the signing really need to take the rap for it. But even then, that doesn't make him any better a player. Against Wolves he looked like he'd never seen a football before in his life.

 

But what about the other five points Knight GT made in the post you quoted?

 

Utter piffle.

 

It's only piffle if you think the player is responsible for the price tag slapped on his head.

 

It may be worth drawing comparisons with another signing from Rennes, who took a while to settle having not been rated by a few managers - Abdoulaye Doucoure

He went out on loan before getting a chance due to injuries, there's plenty of time for Sarr and if anything his large fee signals that it's for the long term rather than the first 166 minutes of his Watford career, lets hope he does as well as Doucs, it may take a loan deal so that he gets a run of games, it's a long season

 

Anybody who thinks this lad hasn't got the talent to play for Watford knows absolutely nothing about football. As tripleH said Doucs took a while to settle. So give the guy a break. He's had zero luck with injuries so far and as I said before no preseason with us.

 

It's fair to make a comparison to point out that it took Doucoure almost a full season of being at Watford to find favour and form, and the same could turn out being true of Sarr.

However, I'm not sure what the loan has to do with anything - Doucoure went immediately out on loan to Granada before having kicked a ball for us. This likely would have been due to him joining in January and while we were already playing well with a settled midfield, meaning we didn't have much space for him yet. Doucoure getting games in the PL the following season had little to do with his Granada loan.

Sure, it seems a waste for us to have Sarr sitting on the bench with us right now, but I don't see how him going on loan to another league will make it more likely he'll get a chance for us in the PL. It's not as if he wasn't already playing regularly for Rennes.

Also, one difference between Doucoure and Sarr, is that when Doucoure did eventually link up with Watford he actually looked quite impressive in the limited cameos he was given before he finally became a regular starter. I remember many on here were confused as to why he wasn't being selected more earlier on. Meanwhile Sarr has shown little so far to suggest that he deserves a run of starts at this moment in time.

 

It was only Mazzarri who didn't rate Doucoure enough to play him and even then he was only out of the team for half a season before being an ever present. And the difference was Doucoure was just another signing, not a transfer record smashing one.

As everyone is at pains to point out, none of this is Sarr's fault and he might come good, but so far this transfer has been a really costly mistake by whoever sanctioned it.

 

We won’t really see how good Sarr is until next season. It will take time to settle, and it is far too early to write him off. I think the frustration is we need quality now to have a realistic chance of staying up. We have a lack of quality / creativity in the attacking areas, and if Delefeou gets injured then I can’t see us staying up.

 

Good points, although I think he could do with a loan just to get game time having missed pre season, maybe even to the championship just to get up to pace, sure it could be deemed an expensive mistake short term but long term he could get up to speed and come to term with all the teething problems listed previously. After all Doucoure had more time at Watford than some of us are giving Sarr. Look at the likes of Abraham and Mount at Chelsea yes they are English but that showed even they needing bringing up to speed by getting good game time and confidence, they are also in the same age group as Sarr.

 

What would a loan move achieve?

He didn't miss pre-season to go off on his holidays or because he was injured. He missed it because he was playing for his country in an international tournament. He should have arrived here fighting fit and ready to go, especially after a couple of weeks off. Of course missing pre-season means he missed out on all the friendship building with his new team mates and tactical work, but again, if the club are dropping £30m on him it implies they thought he could cope with that. And plenty do manage to overcome those issues without much of a problem. Top players just get on with playing and doing what they do.

 

Game time and getting up to speed with the pace of the English league?, Perhaps it would benefit him more than getting slaughtered if his next 45 mins for us isn't as good like his previous 160?

As I mentioned before Mount and Abraham seem top players now to name but two, they weren't a few seasons back the loans benefitted them, if we listed top players who have gone out on loan we'd run into a few pages, it's an option for young players regardless of how much a player is worth

 

As UEA correctly points out, he arrived here if anything having already had too much game time in the preceding months.

And where could he go on loan to get up to speed with the pace of the English league? How many £30mil players get loaned out to the Championship?

 

Yep, this is an important point.

If we had been doing well this season then people would have been much more patient with Sarr.

The fact that the club felt in the position to take an expensive punt on such a prospect rather underlines the general impression of them having been far too complacent over the summer and at the start of the season regarding the perceived quality of the existing squad and its chances of staying up.

 

True, although there's plenty of players his age who are now worth double that because they have. I'm thinking long term and regardless of the transfer fee though, it's a noose round his neck. We do crave instant success due to our position but I think we would anyway because of the fee which we would still be paying off if we 'cut our losses' and sell to another club.

How many record transfers at clubs have failed because fans naively think they will hit the ground running? I'm all for giving him time to reproduce his Rennes form rather than calling him a dud after a handful of games

 

If we sent him on loan to the Championship and it still took him some time to adjust there then any potential fee we could get for him in future would probably go down by even more than if we tried to sell him after being relegated ourselves.

 

Yes but his fee will plummet anyway, hence trying to make it work.

We could see if loaning to the Championship rather than the usual Udinese route is better by Ben Wilmot's progress next season. Could you imagine a Penaranda, Cucho, Suarez or Sarr filling their boots like Abraham did? Or even if Okaka toughened up down there last season, he could well have been doing a good job for us now if he had. Of course that's also down to the willingness of the player but It is maybe a route the Pozzos may have overlooked due to being unfashionable.

It is an option though especially as it is now working for other clubs

 

I did see it was thought just a twisted ankle and he wasn't sent home in the hope he would be fit to play their 2nd game. Not that he will be fit!

 

He won't be with us next season if we are relegated.

 

Cucho and Suarez have been filling their boots in La Liga 2 - is there really much difference to the Championship? And Sarr was doing well in Ligue 1 which is still a higher standard than the Champ probably.

And Wilmot would still be rotting on Swansea's bench were it not for an injury to one of their first choice CBs.

 

You make a fair point Knight, I hope things start to look up for Sarr. From what I’ve seen so far though I think it’s fair to say the jury is out.

 

Mount and Abraham were youth products. Sarr was a regular, star player for Rennes and an established international. The circumstances are vastly different. If we buy the guy for £30 million and then loan him to the championship we’d rightly be a laughing stock.

 

Yes a huge difference, both standard wise and physically

 

Good point but I was referring to next season if he doesn't cut it this as it's obviously of no benefit to us him going out this January, the guy is still young his price tag we should discard when thinking about how to get the best of young talent albeit one that's been bought into the club. He should be treated the same as any other player of the same age who's in the first team squad but not playing

 

I’d hope he can at least start making some regular sub appearances when back from injury. (When Flores isn’t busy shuffling full backs!).

 

I didn't read them.