Posted in the suggestions thread the other day I’d heard about benfica right back signing but didn’t have a name. looks like it’s this guy
Looks like he’s been out on loan elsewhere so probably didn’t come up in searches for ‘Benfica Right Backs’ lol
Well we need a right back. Glad the club are bringing in younger players but we've now brought in three (maybe) who have never played in England before. Hopefully they can all hit the ground running.
Yeah it’s a big risk and makes me think they’re giving up on promotion this season and maybe looking at next season. Hopefully not true but we’ll see. If we’re to get promoted this season I think we need some Ben Watson type signings.
Has 20+ apps in a decent league at 21 so in hopefully got something about him. Couldn't get a start for Rio Ave this season though. Just needs to be more dynamic than Gaspar and less **** than Ngakia to improve the team.
I did look at players out on loan to be fair but must have missed him. I think that’s the right approach. Were not gonna chase down the top two this season and bringing in Dan Gosling types will push us further from getting promoted in 23/24.
Watched the obligatory YouTube compilation with awful backing music. He looks like he could just about pretend to be a Championship footballer. By that I mean he is a million times better than Gaspar and Ngakia.
Yeah this seems to be happening - fee of 3mil EUR. https://www.record.pt/futebol/futeb...e/joao-ferreira-perto-de-assinar-pelo-watford He seems to have a good profile and I like the look of him. Seems quite quick, as well as physical and solid defensively. He was capped 28 times at youth level for Portugal at levels U15-U19 so has decent pedigree. His stats below - which appear to be for last season when he was playing for Vitoria Guimaraes - also seem pretty good - decent progressive, attacking stats and good defensive ones. Only slight concern is his pass completion percentage seems a bit low, but looking at his stats history that season was his lowest passing % and it's been better again for Rio Ave this season at 82.3%. Oddly enough FBRef has Hassane Kamara as one of the top 10 most similar players to him (but given his age he can hopefully become better than Kamara with game time). It's worth noting that Rio Ave play with wing-backs, and have a 22 year-old Portuguese player who they already own who has been playing well there in Costinha - both of which could be reasons why he's not been starting there. They also make it seem very weird why he even went on loan there to begin with. Here's a year old youtube vid:
@reids - do you happen to have his stats for this season? The fbref ones above appear to be a year old.
Credit it where it’s due. Great piece of ITK knowledge. If he’s better than a lump of wood then he will be an upgrade on the current custodians of the right back position.
Sadly don't have the SB radar, someones forgotten to pay a bill somewhere, hopefully get it fixed this week. Our internal data tools have the following data on him:
Thanks, the guy has been very reliable this season with transfer news on Davis, Martins, Kone and now this guy ahead of any news sources. will try and keep fellow hornets updated as and when I know more on anything else. Fingers crossed for Hughes news after the TDB announcement
Someone on Twitter has suggested Rio Ave had an option to sign him on a perm but didn't take it up, don't know how much the fee would have been mind
Yes as per above it appears to have been €5mil. But with them already having their own young player doing well there, it makes a lot of sense they wouldn't play him much and consider forking that out - it's quite a lot for a small, mid-table Portuguese club.
If this is a Ben Manga choice then I am completely on board - hope we are backing him from the outset.
There used to be a funny little man at Radlett T&SC that had a car sticker with " lay me on the patio". Never saw another. Funny place Radlett.
From that Youtube vid it would seem he's tall, skillful, reasonably quick and goes by the name Joao. How on earth...etc, etc..? Keep that conveyor belt rolling. And the next one please Mr Manga.
