Academy And Under-21s

Think he’s doing both jobs.

 

Contract news in...

https://www.watfordfc.com/news/news-academy-contract-offers-departures

I'm surprised Coyne and Fraser-Grante have been offered new deals. Coyne is energetic but lacks any real quality on the ball either when in defence or midfield. He's also quite fiery, which is no bad thing, but this often translates into needless fouls after he makes mistakes. Fraser-Grante just looks a bit powder-puff right now and doesn't strike me as a dynamic type of wide forward/midfielder.

George Abbott is also interesting as the club could just have easily exercised the extra year option from his last contract update. Possible 6th centre-back option for the season ahead? Probably another loan though.

I'm also pleased to see Josh Mullins has been offered new terms, hopefully a loan higher up the leagues next season to really see where he's at. And nice to see Jake Watkiss get offered something too as he really looks to be taking to the attacking left-back role. Not anywhere near 1st team level as of now but if he keeps improving as he did this season just gone he may offer something in a couple of years.

No real surprises with those not being offered new deals, in my opinion. I thought the club may persevere with Charlie Davis as he was a regular throughout the last couple of seasons so it'll be interesting who steps up in central midfield now for the under 21's.

 

Only players I can't see info on are Luigi Gaspar and Aaron Burton - so it's unclear if they've had a new contract offer or been released. Otherwise everyone seems to be on a contract until 2025 now most likely, apart from Eames, Grieves and Adeyemo. Unsure about Shaq Forde, but I presume he's until 2025 as well.

 

I'd say they're staying because all released players have been deleted from the relevant team pages and both Gaspar & Burton are still there.

For Burton it may be he's been offered a 3rd year as a scholar? That wouldn't explain why it hasn't been included in the news though.

The only other reason I can think of as to why neither were included is if both have suffered long term injuries and the club have added an extra 6 months/year to their existing contract by default, to make sure they're with an income while any treatment is ongoing. That's the best I can come up with on a busy day though.

 

Me again!

Gaspar looks like he's knackered his right knee during training earlier this month so I may have guessed right and the club are looking after his treatment etc.. A long post on instagram says it was a non-contact injury but doesn't go into any detail.

Still looking for anything Aaron Burton related.

 

Did he just get injured as a way of making himself even more attractive to us and cementing a contract offer ?

 

Not just injured, but according to the post alongside the photo's he talks of this being the third such injury. If he were a stick of rock it would say Watford Football Club all the way through him. #ClubLegend (albeit a broken leg end)

 

21s is a midweek league and he’s not a first team coach so he will be free Saturdays I’d guess both him and Daniel’s have registered as it’s a team Steve cook has some affiliation with.

 

The academy account for Watford has tweeted an under 18 pre-season result today (4-0 home win over Notts County) along with the names of the scorers.

We've had some cracking names in recent times without any making any real impact in the older age groups, but hopefully one such graduate will buck that trend.

Take a step forward young Horacio Ali Sticca. What a fantastic moniker.

A quick search shows him to be athletic in both speed and strength - 100m & 200m representative for his boroughs athletic team, as well as doing well in the discus.
He also plays for the Middlesex Schools Football Association side. In fact last year, as of January, he was named in the under 14 group so playing for the under 18's for Watford this week shows him to be playing several years above his natural age.

Fingers crossed he progresses well and stays!

 

He may even be good enough to walk away to a prem club for peanuts in the near future!!

 

Also has confirmed the new scholars.

wasn’t raul vancea the highly rated lb if so he’s actually signed a deal.

 

Step forward Man City. We will get a new vending machine in the game room for him. Bargain.

 

That's correct Aylesburyorn.

He's not the only youth international in those announced today either. Marats Galajevs represented Latvia at the European Under 17 Championship in 2023 and Jonny Scriven was around the England under 15 squad - I'm not sure if he played or not, it may have been a training camp he was named in - in 2022/23.

Interestingly (or not), Scriven was included at the same time as Emilio Ballard-Matthews who has since moved on/been stolen under the cover of night by Wolverhampton Wanderers.

 

Quite by accident I've noticed Watford are entering a team in the Daraselia Cup this month.

It's an under 16 competition held at the 'Ilia Kokaia Football Centre (home of FC Graga) and the Saguramo base of F.C. Locomotive Tbilisi', as quoted on an insta post for it.

A 6 team tournament, split into 2 groups of 3, it's being played between August 23 - August 28.

Group A
FC Dinamo Tbilisi
Juventus
Watford

Group B
Valencia CF
Galatasaray SK
FC Locomotive Tbilisi

 

That's super interesting, and pretty good that we've managed to get involved alongside those other clubs. Maybe the Chakvetadze connection had something to do with it, with him having been a former Dinamo player?

I notice that the games at last year's tournament were all streamed live on Dinamo Tbilisi's Youtube channel! They also added highlights. Seems a decent chance that the same could happen again this year, which would be great.

But on another note - we're going to get absolutely spanked!

 

Ha! I didn't know about the live streaming or highlights possibility and was getting a serotonin surge before you brought me back down to earth with the reality of who we'll be up against

Hopefully they'll be shown though, maybe take some positives out of individual performances/promise if nothing else.

 

The Daraselia Cup kicks off tomorrow.

Watford vs Dinamo Tbilisi are the first game. Kick off at 3pm UK time.

Supposedly the games will be live streamed on this website of the Georgian state TV station. According to some random Georgian bloke it should be available to UK viewers, but we'll see. Hopefully I won't have to suddenly try and get a VPN that has Georgian servers available!

https://1tv.ge/lang/en/

 

Anyone able to watch it?

 

Also, is Forde injured? Went from having a great season in League 1, to many of us wanting to see him in the squad this season, to now he’s nowhere to be seen.

 

I paid to use a VPN with a Georgian server to watch it.

Our u16s' opening game vs Dinamo Tbilisi was a rather unfortunate 3-0 loss. All their goals were set pieces.

I'm writing a slightly more detailed report, but first here's what the teams were:



And the subs:

 

First off, even though the game was played at 6pm Georgian time it was apparently 35C. Perhaps the home side were more used to this than our lot.

Regardless, in general Dinamo were physically stronger than us across the pitch, and to a lesser extent a bit quicker. Despite that though, once we got a hold of the ball some of our passing was decent and the scoreline flattered them a bit.

Ultimately, the game came down to set-pieces. Neither side managed to create much through open play. We actually won a lot of corners in the first half but didn't do much with them. Then on 30 minutes or so they won a free-kick on the edge of the box and their number 8 Elisashvili did his best Chakvetadze impression by curling it over the wall and in to the net. It really was a very similar goal.

Then in the second half we huffed and puffed to try and get back in to the game, but again didn't fashion much from open play. Then they had a corner at about 60 minutes which one of our subs Lamidi (who came on for Vancea to play LWB when we switched from a 433 to more of a 352) decided to rifle in to his own net. Really poor play. Then a few minutes later a few of our lot (including Lamidi again) switched off from another corner and it was headed in at the near post.

Out of our players the only one I'd heard of prior to this was Raul Vancea the LB, who has had an England call-up before. He was disappointing tbh and didn't really stand out. He seemed to have decent pace, but his passing and dribbling were both sloppy. Hopefully just an off day for him, but at first glance he didn't seem to have the 'X-Factor' which Galvez and Amass both had before him, and perhaps explains why he is still here.

Our best performer on the day was the left-footed left-sided CB Tyler Notley. He looked very composed on the ball and both his short and long passes were crisp and accurate.

Our number 10/AM Marat Galajevs looked a powerful runner, but was rather uncoordinated. Seemed more suited to rugby maybe than football.

Our striker Eboue had a few silky touches, but struggled physically in holding the ball up.

Stevens and Akinyimika were relatively tidy in CM, but didn't offer too much.

There's not much to be said about the rest of them.

For Dinamo Tbilisi their number 8 Elisashvili looked impressive even before his FK goal. He was very much a box-to-box central midfielder, receiving the ball from their CBs to start attacks, dogged in the tackle to win the ball back, and also bursting in to the box when they were on the attack.

Their number 11 Chikovani was the other contender for MotM, a powerful right-footed left-winger/attacking midfielder with a decent strike on him. Scored their 3rd goal with the header from the corner.

Their RB Diakonidze also caught the eye.

Slightly worryingly, Dinamo's supposed two best players at this level didn't even feature for them - 16 year-old attacker Vakhtang Salia and 15 ! year-old LB Saba Kharebashvili have both been playing first-team football for them of late. If the Euros and this are anything to go by then Georgian football is in a decent place at the moment.

I'm a bit concerned what will happen when we play Juventus next.

 

Which of the 2 starting XI is us and which is Tbilisi ?

 

I'm unable to get to see or go to games right now and following anything is nigh on impossible, so thank you for the write-ups LR. It's much appreciated.

But despite even the club failing to report it, I did find your concern (and mine!) turned out to be misplaced as we beat Juventus 4-1 today.

I haven't watched it but here's a link I found on YouTube for the match in full. Hopefully it works if you're inclined to catch up.



And for anyone who thinks I'm making it up and can't be arsed to watch, here's proof in photo form

 

Thanks for the link. So it turns out Georgian state TV have multiple youtube channels and I'd been falsely checking the main one... pah!

Though it would have been better if you could have posted the link to the game before mentioning the score, so the result wasn't spoiled. But never mind, at least we won.

Bit surprised the second game was already the day after what was a tough opening contest.

 

So on the subject of the Juve game having now watched it: I don't think we were particularly better than we were against Dinamo, but rather that Juve were surprisingly weak and sloppy. But there were still some good performances out there and moments of quality.

Our two wingers, Moulton on the LW and Clatke on the RW, did basically nothing vs Tbilisi, but were both good today. Moulton was particularly lively and probably MotM, getting our first goal with an excellent strike and winning the ball high up the pitch a number of times. Clatke didn't really get involved in the game enough, but whenever he did get the ball his dribbling was good and positive, and he added to his performance with a very good free kick goal.

Notley was impressive again at LCB. As well as his passing, he's also proactive in his defending and has plenty of pace. If he can reach enough of a physical stature for a CB then he could be one to watch.

Vancea was fine but didn't stand out again tbh. Galajevs benefitted from playing against smaller players who gave him more space.

I don't know who scored our 4th goal off the bench? But they seemed lively. They were wearing the 17 shirt which had been worn by Lamidi in the previous game, but it definitely wasn't Lamidi - who likely was dropped after his terrible cameo vs Tbilisi.

The goal we conceded was again a header from a set-piece. All of our goals conceded in these 2 games have been from set-pieces, so definitely an area to improve!

This Juve game does make me wonder what the heck they're feeding them in Tbilisi!? Our game vs them was practically men vs boys, whereas this one vs Juve was more like boys vs boys.

To underline the point, below is Tbilisi's 15 year-old left-back Kharebashvili. who has been playing in their first team already. He looks more like 22! A number of their players vs us seemed relatively older than their years and almost to a man/boy they had been stronger and more combative than us. For those with plenty of time on their hands our earlier game vs Dinamo is also available to watch on the same youtube channel as the Juventus one.

 

A correction - I just remembered something - the reason why our RW was much better today was because our starter was not Clatke but a different player! Still wearing the no.7 shirt, but it was actually Smith-Daley who started today, whereas he only came off the bench vs Dinamo. S-D is left-footed and looked much more of a natural out there than Clatke had in the first game, who had struggled as a right footer on the RW.

 

I do apologise, these are long days right now and I wasn't thinking. Sorry LR.

I had a watch through the night and one of the most overriding things I noticed was how poor the pitch and ball were. The playing surface seemed to be made up of equal parts of ice, velcro, sand and grass. Awful.

And the ball appeared to have similar qualities while having the unique ability to stick, slide, spin and bobble - all during the same pass! Its passion for swerving like a demented paper plane on long aerial passes didn't help matters either. Both teams seemed to have trouble with both surface and ball and one or the other was often the reason for play breaking down.

I quite enjoyed the game. We appeared, on that showing at least, to have players who understand that movement off the ball is key while rarely shying away from receiving it. I wasn't awake enough to really take in individual performances but as you rightly say, Tyler Notley looks very accomplished overall.

Plenty of hope in this set of players that one or two may step up in the future but again, that's on this one showing for me. Far too early to really judge.

 

I asked this the other day but it probably got amongst us smashing Juve.

What the heck has happened to Forde? Is he injured?

 

Maybe. That seems strange though after the successful loan spell in League 1. He was all fired up at the end of last season and wanted to prove himself in the championship. Majority of Watford fans were excited to see what he could do this season, but he’s dropped off the face of the earth. Not a single mention of him, not playing for the u21’s.

So I’m completely speculating but I wonder if;

a) he’s fallen out with Clevs/club over attitude issues.

b) he wants a new contract and we’re not meeting his demands, so he’s sulking

c) he’s been deemed not good enough and we’re trying to sell/loan him.

d) he’s got a long term injury and the club have failed to communicate anything.