(25) Emmanuel Dennis

Should probably also recognize the fact that his form dropped off a cliff right after the AFCON fiasco.

Whatever noises were being made by the club and player himself at the time, I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that his entire demeanor changed from basically that point onwards, as he went from being a constant menace to the entire opposition back line, to battling with King Ken for garbage time minutes.

 

I don't for a second want to excuse the club for anything they've done, but there's a funny timing-related issue with that, that basically makes it impossible to determine the real root cause of his crashing back to earth - obviously, as you say, there is the Nigerian call up fiasco. But the reason that call up came was that it was timed perfectly with the culmination of that ludicrous, totally unsustainable purple patch of world-class goal contributing form.

Did that form then disappear in a puff of smoke because he was angry about the call up situation, or was the call up just emblematic of the effect an insane run of career-high form had on his ego and how he viewed himself as a player? Is he acting out because he felt we denied him an opportunity, or because he immediately believed his own hype, let it go to his own (slightly enigmatic) head, and became determined to play in a selfish, ball-hogging manner with the aim almost solely of boosting his own numbers and reputation as a result?

A sort of chicken and egg type scenario, perhaps.

 

Yeah, agree that we’ll never really know whether it’s cause and effect, or simply regression to mean and the timing is a coincidence.

Either way, we’re left wondering what might have been.

 

Well those of us who attended the fans committee know, but my NDA says I can't tell you. (shhhh PM me....wink, wink)

 

Exactly.

And we still have people convinced that we will definitely get £20m-£25m for him in the summer.

We will be seeing bids at half that amount - and from what we know about him from the outside looking in, he’s likely to agitate for that move. Can’t see him being happy to waste a season in the Championship like Sarr was.

 

Absolutely - not a cat's chance in hell.

It's more likely Sarr will be here next season than Dennis, and from the past few games I'm fairly sure he's actually already completed a transfer away leaving a semi-animated facsimile in his place.

 

Can't wait till he leaves ,plays for himself not interested what so ever in the team he's stinking the place out not worthy of wearing the shirt

 

Seriously who writes this trash

 

Not 100% sure what there is to disagree with here? Have seen a couple games where he doesn't look up for it, but apparently he's ran the most distance for us this season

 

With all the horrendous, lifeless, spineless losers that make up our squad, it is utterly bizarre to me that anyone picks out Dennis of all people to have a pop at.

10 goals and 6 assists in this Watford team. He should get a statue.

 

16 goal contributions and some don't like him because his body language is a little bit maverick. Hilarious.

 

It's all very Watfordy. Herald the huffers and puffers and slag off anyone with any half decent output.

 

Well I hate them all.

 

By the way, for perspective here's some other numbers:

Sadio Mane - 14 goals, 2 assists = 16
Riyad Mahrez - 11 goals, 5 assists = 16
Bukayo Saka - 11 goals, 5 assists = 16
Wilf Zaha - 11 goals, 1 assists = 12
Raphinha - 10 goals, 3 assists = 13
Jarrod Bowen - 9 goals, 8 assists = 17

 

People will appreciate him once he's gone and we're back to watching Ken ******* Sema.

People were the exact same about Deulofeu. Our fans hate players who actually have talent and contribute in a proper, measurable way, but love utter dross like Cleverley who run around a lot with next to zero ability.

 

Compared to Cleverly who put in a few 8/10's 5 years ago and has been nothing but 5/10 ever since. We prefer consistently average to someone who can sometimes be a game changer.

Josh King checked out in January and gets less vitriol than Dennis.

 

Exactly this. Only Fessi managed to bridge the gap, and even he came under intense criticism from some of the muppets in our supporters after his absolutely textbook shithousing against Wolves.

Give the average Watford fan a try-hard clogger, and they’ll back him to the death, but try to walk up with a bit of flair and you’ve not got a chance.

I think our fans are allergic to fun.

 

I’m not sure it’s quite so binary, players like Cleverley can still be absolutely useless and hated, whilst Dennis can still be frustrating and selfish at times.

Plus I think there is a big element of what the people criticising the fans who criticise Dennis for in themselves. Because he’s our best player and contributed the most they’ll blindly put up with anything from him, there is nothing wrong with wanting more from a player, it’s quite Watfordy to just accept a players faults because he’s better than the other players.

 

Running with the ball until you fall over or picking an absolute worldie of a turdie to a defender. I think he's been great for us. I also think in some of these morerecent games he's been poor and extremely selfish.

 

King is a classic example of a player that knows he's not quite been good enough. Probably playing within himself as he's so injury prone. Made a fortune, stolen a living.

 

Historically our biggest boo boys always seemed to be our less skillful players

Gavin Mahon got horrendous abuse as one example

 

Yet some on here aren't sure if we can even get as much as £20mil for 24 year-old Dennis.

 

And we won’t.

 

Of course we will. Be disappointed if we didn't get more tbh.

 

Ighalo got 21 goal contributions and attracted £35m bids.

Dennis has 16 with 5 games left, is 2 years younger, is playing in a significantly worse team, has played across the front line and imo has superior technical ability than Ighalo. Not sure why it's a ridiculous notion that we'd get bids of £20m plus.

 

Obviously Dennis will go for 25+ - for all the bad decisions we make, he was a very very good one.

 

Thank god for Mogi.

 

Don’t think it’s obvious. He could easily go for 15-20 given our predicament. Or Udinese.

 

Whoever we bunged a few grand to say it.

 

The link with Villareal mooted by some ITKs on here a few weeks ago has been reported today by the Standard. We’re looking for £20m+

https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/fo...er-watford-villarreal-unai-emery-b996612.html

 

All seems to have gone a bit sour, a shame really as he was magnificent in the first half of the season! I guess this is why he's at Watford and not a big club.

Take £20m for him and move on. Good business (for a change).

 

I still think his stats would have been much better if he was allowed to join the Nigerian team at Afcon. I also noticed he only started playing selfishly in the second half of the season.
We already knew when we signed him that he is the Nigerian Balotelli hence a difficult player to manage, he has been our top scorer and most creative player in the team before the Afcon, once he stops scoring we are nailed on to get relegated, every African player dreams of playing in the Afcon, why would anyone think we can get the best out of him by stopping from playing at the Afcon? We got relegated from that time, and a lot of saw it coming when the news broke out he was not going to the Afcon.

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