Oh it's better than that. He only arrived there this week due to visa and quarantine issues and that means he's landed there too late to be included in their next game... which is their final game of the season. Even by the often weird goings on at Watford, this is pretty special. He's basically on trial to see if they want to loan him again next season.
A striker is top priority but I do have reservations about our midfield. True - Hughes/Cleverley/Challobah have done well in recent months, but there have been periods in many games where we still look a bit over-run in midfield, and against non Prem opposition. The old Douc/Capoue partnership was good Prem quality but I'm not sure we'll have anything like that next season, and that worries me a bit.
TBH, apart from Sarr and maybe Sierralta central midfield is the least of our worries. And all three have more Premier League experience each than the two above which will be crucial.
I'm not confident in anyone other than Sarr, Sierralta and possibly Hughes and Chalobah being good enough to achieve survival. We are going to need to make some seriously astute signings and we HAVE to finally spend some money on a decent striker.
As an American who follows the team closely but is nowhere near as knowledgeable about soccer (sorry, "football") as some of those here, I do find some of the comments and suggestions a bit baffling. One thing I do agree with is that we desperately need a real striker (or two) with creative flair and there is nobody in the pipeline right now. If ownership needs to swallow hard and pay up for any position, it is here. I am much more optimistic on JP than some here because the growth curve is incredibly steep with his age and experience, but agree we can't count on him in that role. But defense largely seems like the last place I'd focus our $. Barring a collapse in the last couple of games, we will wind up with the lowest goals allowed of any Championship squad in at least a decade. We will add at least one quality player in Young to that mix And we have a young keeper (26) who has by far the lowest goals allowed average of any keeper in the Championship in as far back as I can go (at least a decade)-- yes some of that is due to the play in front of him (though he should get credit for helping to organize the defense) but he's also 2nd in the league in save percentage. Behind him we have a keeper who was doing well before injury as our number one and has lots of experience in the Premiership. It is guaranteed we are not going to get an elite Premiership keeper on the market, because if they are truly elite, they are not going to want to play for us. But it is possible the young guy we *already have* could be elite, or could develop that way. I'd at least give him a chance, knowing we have a quality option behind him. Our $ need to be spent building our attack. Relatively speaking our defense should be a major strength.
I think one difference to Pedro & Cucho is they could grow and explode any minute due to their age. Deeney & Gray were only ever going to hit new bottoms that’s the main difference. [mention]lowerrous [/mention] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Will spare you all the horror of me writing out an entire squad list, but basically we need: At least one striker of the actual requisite pedigree, goalscoring and line-leading ability to allow us to play most formations modern football revolves around. A centre back to complement Sierralta and not give even better opposition at least one free go on goal on the edge of our area per game out of sheer niceness. My thoughts are that Kabasele, for his faults, should be third choice, and WTE can either be fourth or banished to the shadow realm. A first choice left winger (although it's possible either Zinck or Cucho as a wide forward could possibly fill this role - the jury is out) A central midfielder to at least compete for a starting berth with Chals/Clevs/Hughes etc - Jordan Wiemer over on the celebration Buzz podcast gave his number one recruitment area as a box-to-box midfielder, Doucoure style, and I am very convinced by his logic - we are at some risk of getting overrun in the Prem, and we can't necessarily rely on the constant energy and fitness of Cleverley - we need a centre mid who can chase back players no the break and contribute defensively, as well as progress the ball through the middle and handle transitions between midfield and attack. Personally, I'm somewhat aligned with lowerrous in that I would not field Hughes in his Championship wonderman role of deep-lying playmaker - it's not his actual game and he got worked out and nullified by opposition managers enough as the season wore on to suggest that it would be even more profligate to rely on it as our only creative source and method of moving the ball from defence to midfield in the Premier League. Unlike lowerrous, however, I do believe in his fundamental quality and ability enough to say I would play him further forward; most likely in the role Derby fans always told us was best-suited to him: the most advanced midfielder in a three. A back-up competition left-back, although again I am similarly-minded in that I feel Masina may well have learned quite a lot from his season down here where we all float; in particular how to use his considerable size and physicality defensively. On the right, I can't decide whether Femenia and Ngakia are enough or not - that would presumably mostly depend on whether or not Ngakia suddenly carries out a great-leap-forward and cements his place as a somewhat defensive right-back in the Prem. I think it's possible, but far from guaranteed, and I haven't forgotten the three full seasons Femenia spent as a senior player in prime of his career for us in the Premier League. That doesn't entirely fill me with confidence, despite how amazingly he has done this season - for a more recent example, see how that under-bridge-dweller Nathan Jones immediately identified and exploited his weakness using a dreadful set of players to the point he managed to get him red carded. This is provided that we keep Sarr for a season - I'd be surprised if the fee we want, which will presumably have gone up again slightly, will be attracted this summer, with COVID weakness still evident in the market; his main historical suitors looking increasingly likely to miss out on Champions League qualification and thereby cost themselves tens of millions of pounds in income; and the fact that although he has done brilliantly, it was in a division below, all contributing as to why.
Have you watched WTE play? That sounds more sarcastic than I mean it, but seriously, can you not see why a significant proportion of the Watford-supporting contingent is shitting their pants at the idea of him in the Premier League?
He would certainly seem to be the weak link and would not get away with some of his careless mistakes in the Premiership. But given the overall *relative* strength of our defense, an inexpensive and adequate replacement would be fine there. But I see a lot of fans saying we need two new defensive starters and a new keeper to begin with. I'd much rather save the 5 million or so we might spend on a bigger name defender on getting a higher quality striker, given that, other than Sarr, I'm not convinced any of our guys can put the ball in the net at the level of the Premiership.
My slight concern from yesterday is SD seemed to suggest we got relegated by mistake and we were an established Premier league side. That is the mistake many clubs like us made and also meant they slept walked in to relegation (suggested to me lessons not learned) Confidence plays a big part, but our midfield which had been the strongest part of the side was mostly sold off in the summer. Defence has been outstanding this season but that does not mean it will be enough next season. That said due to the financial situation I do not see massive football manager style changes. Probably a max of 1-2 per outfield position (ie defender, midfielder, striker).
Ok, fairplay, I see the angle you're coming from more. I think the problem is we've been burned hugely by a lack of appropriate defensive reinforcement before, and any of the players we have already aren't really good enough to partner Sierralta and be confident that they are an upgrade. Sierralta is also an absolute beast, but also 23 and with relatively incredibly few senior games under his belt (not that that has shown at all to date) - I think he needs a senior partner to help him in the craziness of the Prem and also, if possible, teach him something (not entirely sure what that is, but I'm sure we'll find out). It would be nice to be able to scrimp at centre back and then put that towards a forward, but we've been taught a very sharp and very recent direct lesson about the folly of that at Premier League level. In terms of attack, though, of course - I agree entirely. As I said in my own post, a goalscorer/centre forward is the number one most vital signing we could possibly make. We will sink or swim more than anything else on the back of that. I just don't see us having the luxury of it being an either/or.
I'm not sure about Bachmann. His save percentage and goals conceded record is mightily impressive, but if you look at some of the more detailed goalkeeping metrics like Goals Saved Against Average (basically like xG but for goalkeepers, you look at the difficulty of all shots on target the keeper faced and see how many he let in relative to the 'average keeper' - I don't have access to them, but see them posted sometimes by analysts), he doesn't perform well at all. He is saving a high percentage of mostly really poor shots on target because our defence is restricting our opponents to mostly speculative efforts. He is also quite vulnerable under crosses/high balls. I think he is ok, and could improve, but I don't think he is in the top 20 goalkeepers in England. He hasn't really put much of a foot wrong, but promotion is not really a time for sentimentality. I know it looks like Fulham are going down, but in Marek Rodak last season they had one of the best keepers in the Championship; they went up and brought in Areola who has been an obvious upgrade. Foster has been in a slow decline for a number of seasons. I'd definitely have him as number 2. But I think therein lies our GK problem. We have a number of GKs I think we all would feel very confident/satisfied with as our number 2 (Bachmann, Foster, maybe even Dahlberg) but none of them stands out as one the best keepers the country/world.
The trouble is we can feel as comfortable as we can in the top flight but teams like us will always go down at some point with a bad season or run of poor form/luck. Not likely to get a Coventry type team staying up for 30 odd years now.
Deulofeu Would cost too much for someone who would only give us sporadic displays and who is not great at finishing. Pereyra - I would not in the least bit be interested in a player who was not in the least bit interested in playing for us when we were paying him. Absolutely not. No.
Apart from his passing which is nothing short of abysmal he has the most annoying habit of turning his body and head while going to block a shot. Premier strikers will pick up on this and simply throw a dummy, glide past him and get a shot off. He doesn't fill me with confidence at all.
Only Wellbeck and Pedro have better strike-rates than Gray in that list. Welbeck only with us a short time and Pedro has only played in the Championship (?). Of course, this does not take account of the positions they were playing in, nor if they were substitute appearances, etc. Deeney and Igahlo and Vydra were already with us, were they not? & they have better figures??
He's clearly a great and influential character, but he kind of confuses me in that alongside his shockingly abysmal passing (something almost unparalleled in professional players I have seen, when you factor in the tendency to play it to the opposition under literally no pressure, still) I'm not really sure what he is good at as a defender/centre back. Don't get me wrong, that's not shade to suggest he's all round not good at anything - but he's not particularly big/tall, he's not aerially dominant whatsoever, he's not particularly quick and one-on-one he's average to decent at best. I can't quite work out how a defence with him as a permanent fixture in it was quite so historically good. Perhaps that leadership, evidenced by his role in the post-Coventry mutiny/meeting of minds, is his USP, contributes strongly to our overall defensive organisation. I'm not sure if anyone has seen that in action or not either way - I can't really speak to it myself.
A forward not on that list who probably should be is Richarlison. Not an out-and-out striker, but neither are some of the other names on the list. He only scored 5 goals in 38 appearances, but it's hard to argue that he wasn't a successful signing as we made a tidy profit on him.
Yeah I agree, you put more eloquently/ bluntly what I was getting at which is why we need to develop and we can't afford to go stale (as we did)
Bachmann Foster Dahlberg Kiko Ngakia Sierralta New LCB Ekong Wilmot Kaba Cathcart New LB (Young most likely) Masina Chalobah New CDM Hughes New CM Cleverley Gosling Dele-Bashiru Sarr Zinckernagel New CAM Quina New LW Sema New ST Pedro Cucho Gray* Deeney* Cucho can really fill in anywhere in the front 4 and has done so far in his career. Utilized mainly as Striker though throughout his career, regardless of what people think his position actually is. However when you look at his heat maps over the past three seasons, he’s drifted wider each season, so positionally its changing. I will try and post them in the team bus. 18/19 was spent more centrally with getting wide. 19/20 was spent much more LW. This season has been RW and LW (predominately RW). I actually think the Prem will suit him much more than La Liga. Less technical, but more pace and power. You also have to consider how each team plays, Huesca, Mallorca and Getafe all play differently. Wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes Sema’s competition this season even though I’ve listed him as a ST. Sell/don’t renew contracts Elliott Lazaar Navarro Sanchez Success Perica *Gray (if someone comes in for him) *Deeney (Ditto)
Plenty of interesting and sensible suggestions on here. However, there is little comment about the potential abnormality of this coming close-season: How affected will the clubs be by Covid? Just how much money will be available to each club for signings, and particularly to Watford, who have also been on parachute payments? A goal-scoring striker is the hardest of all positions to fill; they just don't grow on trees. And the price will reflect that. Maybe the original Pozzo trick of finding footballing gold in far-flung corners of the World will pay off one more time. Maybe not. But, if you don't score goals, you don't win matches and I don't see anyone in our squad who remotely looks good enough as an out-and-out striker. Maybe we will rely on everybody pitching in with a few goals each. Maybe.
I think our striker problems were so severe in the Premiership its a niur I haven't seen the stats that you refer to, but these would at least be some bit of empirical evidence for skepticism about Bachmann-- I am open-minded, but the primary stats are pretty impressive. The people who are saying get rid of him need to provide some evidence beyond just that he hasn't played in the Premiership-- because his overall stats have been pretty dominant. And I can't recall him letting in too many "howlers" as I believe you say. Regardless, I'd say that I'm at least somewhat optimistic that some combination of Bachmann and Foster would give us at least the 17th best Keeper situation in the league and if we have confidence that's the case, there are other areas that I'd place at a higher priority for us to fix, IMHO.
Fair enough on Sierralta and pairing him with someone experienced-- I think we largely agree overall. In that case, I'd find someone adequate but slightly overaged with a lot of time in the league who could help mentor or steady him. But given that the Pozzos aren't going to open up the bank vault, I don't think pairing him with a star is a priority. Again, as I put it in the previous post with respect to GK (but with even more confidence here)-- I think with some small tweaks our defense will easily be at least 17th best in the Premiership and maybe, if we do really well, even Mid-table. In contrast, unless we catch a break and Swansea or Barnsley wins the promotion playoff, our offense is undoubtedly going to be dead last. So that's where we need to concentrate our efforts. And this has been a problem for some time-- I know some soured on Deeney later in his career, but the reality is, he was always a terrible striker at the Premiership level. He had a total of 29 run-of-play goals in five almost full seasons for us. In contrast, Salah scored 30 run-of-play goals in just one season. That's the level of gap between where we have been and the "haves". The reality is, we haven't had a Premier-league level striker for years-- we need to by hook or crook, loan or purchase-- whatever is needed, get more than one *proven* top-level striker for this squad. Obviously not going to be someone who is elite by Premiership standards but someone who at least looks like he belongs out there and can be a real threat.
I think measuring our own recruitment against one of the best attacking players of the past decade in this league is possibly a tiny bit harsh, but I like where we're aiming! In terms of Deeney (as well as our other attackers) that is an opinion shared by a great many people here for quite a few years, and oft-expressed also - you're unlikely to find anyone here who isn't aware that goals in attack is the most important issue, as it has been for several years. The effects of the disastrous purchase of Andre Gray, what it did to our subsequent recruitment policy, and the responsibility it bears on what happened in the seasons since, are a strong contender for the most discussed thing on this forum. There has also been plenty of relegation-dissection talk here focusing on that exact issue of attacking paucity in general. But, that talk also focuses on the issue of defence, and I am not as optimistic as you for our current crop/am not as convinced that someone adequate is enough. And as I said, recent lessons have rather suggested it isn't - Dawson being a key example of that. No one's suggesting buying a defensive 'star', especially not with the fees centre backs now go for, but it does have to be an improvement, and that may not be £80m, but it doesn't exactly come 'cheap' either, unfortunately.
This is from about a month ago. Dillon Phillips was doing well but he hadn’t played too many matches at that point. Bachmann is in the top left - a strong save % contrasted with not such a good record in terms of prevented goals per 90. That stat, coupled with his vulnerability under high balls (which has got less problematic recently to be fair) means that going in with Bachmann or Foster as our number one would be a risk. I agree though that he hasn’t had any howlers that I can recall and looks a perfectly decent keeper but I don’t think he’ll be the 17th best GK in the league (who would he be better than? Not Krul who has been superb or a Begovic should Bournemouth get promoted. Even if you look at the teams going down, Areola at Fulham and Johnstone at WBA are almost certainly better keepers than Bachmann) and either way, being the 17th strongest in each department doesn’t strike as a particularly surefire approach to avoiding relegation.
Totally agreed on Gray. That's why I'd lean toward a short-term solution here while we can build the rest of our roster back, rather than risk another big swing and miss. Re: Salah, I just don't want less than 1/5 of a peak Salah for our Main strikers. 1/3 of a peak Salah will be fully acceptable. More seriously there were 34 guys who had eight or more run-of-play goals in the Premiership last year. Deeney hit (and did not exceed) that mark exactly once in five campaigns for us. Plus playing through him deformed the rest of our offense. I'm not trying to slag on the guy-- he was a good striker for us at the Championship level, but in the Premiership he was out of his depth from moment one and I don't think our management ever fully grasped that. I just think if we don't dramatically upgrade there it's not going to matter what else we do with the rest of the team.
Thanks for posting this LeedsOrn. This is very informative. Certainly agree with you on Krul. I would note That Bachmann's save percentage is up two percent plus from where it was when this data was compiled. I think that this sort of advanced stat can be very helpful but my take having looked a bit at football advanced stats (and I could be misinformed) is that they are still well behind the sorts of advanced stats we have in Basketball, Gridiron Football, etc. and that they can lead to some screwy results-- (i.e. they just look at where the shot was taken from without fully accounting for defensive positioning etc.) I get that this is particularly tricky to do well in football, but I have seen some very strange results on advanced stats sites-- like one that suggested Deeney was our 2nd best player this year. I think that given the current state of football advanced stats, it's probably best to average traditional and advanced stats to get a sense of how a player is really doing.
I think that’s fair. I like advanced stats but my main issue is that there can be a lot of fluctuation between different models of measuring the same thing. At one point this season (around 2/3 of the way through the season so there shouldn’t have been any sample size concerns) one xG metric had us as the second best team in the league. And another had us as the sixth. And it wasn’t clear why. I fear prevented goals per 90 could do something similar though I think, theoretically at least, it is a more useful metric than save percentage in the same way xG is a more useful metric than just looking at number of shots. Bachmann’s save percentage (for what that stat is worth) is very good. And watching him suggests he is also very good at preventing opportunities from rebounds (I don’t know how that would come up in this sort of metric). But I don’t think he is in the top 5 keepers in the Championship and so, unless he improves, and we give him time to improve, he isn’t going to be one of the top 10 or 15 in the PL next season. The question is: do we want to use our resources on this? And that depends on who, who is better than Bachmann, is available. GK is always an interesting market as it skews older, very good players often leave top clubs where they are languishing on the bench either permanently in search of first team football or on loan in search of more experience. If we’re creative we could upgrade Bachmann without breaking the bank. It would be harsh as he’s been very reliable this season, and he’s very likeable, but promotion isn’t a great time for sentimentality.
https://www.transfermarkt.us/gianluigi-donnarumma/profil/spieler/315858 Sorted. And on a free as well.
I think we just need Ashley Young. Plus a decent loan signing along the lines of lingard and we'll be fine. Don't want to disrupt a successful side with 5/6 new first teamers as has been suggested by some. I genuinely think that's good enough for minimum 16th in the premiership. Many of our young players are just going to get better.
Exactly, Doucs and Capoue were a class combination who helped us to mid-table for a while, but even they couldn't prevent us getting relegated in the end. Hughes has generally been a notch in quality below Capoue, and Chalobah a notch in quality below Doucoure, so the idea that we'd be comfortably safe with them as a pairing is cloud-cuckoo land. Chalobah has at least improved this season, and still has a chance to get close to the level Doucoure was for us, but Hughes will never be a sufficient Capoue replacement. When you look at Fulham's squad, they have Anguissa, Lemina and Loftus-Cheek all in CM, all of which could be argued are slightly better than any of our current options, and yet they are still facing relegation. Our midfield has "Premier League experience"... of getting relegated; just what we need!
