(25) Emmanuel Dennis

All this time I assumed it would be King/Deeney/Fletcher as a #9 and Cucho and Dennis fighting it out to be our left-winger, but Dennis more than proved his worth as a central striker, as you say, not just with his goal!

 

Excellent display from him. Caused real problems for there defence, tracked back, flicks, good control, pace and a deserved goal for his efforts. Play like that and you deserve your own seat on the coach.

 

If today is his natural level, then we have quite a player on our hands. Brilliant link up play with Sarr, everything came off for him. I liked the way he chased and harried defenders. Brilliant pace. Not a clinical finisher and he made the wrong choice on occasions, but overall I was very impressed with what I saw today.

 

Loved the flicks! Think he pulled off like three of those kung fu style ones to Sarr.


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Partnership with Sarr looks promising, not least because he’s capable of keeping up with Ismailia.

They linked up really nicely a few times, and you’d fancy them to cause plenty of teams problems with their pace.

As obvious as the weaknesses with our squad are, it’s great to finally have an abundance of pace in forward areas after several years watching Deeney and Gray lumber around.

 

Looks like hope is back on the menu folks.

 

Gray is if course “lightening quick”.

 

And here is the rub . If our record signing played instead of Dennis then we would probably have lost .
So , who is responsible for AG signing on such terms ?

 

Not me.
We would have won 5-2 if our record signing and proven prem scorer had played.

 

What's most pleasing is that it actually didn't! After watching the extended highlights back, there were plenty of "nearly" moments. He did great yesterday, but he could have achieved even more than he did with a little more luck. Bodes very well if he can keep up this level of performance, and giving defenders someone to worry about aside from Sarr will be a massive boost for us.

Add Cucho or Pedro as another threat and we have a potentially nasty front 3 which should prevent most back lines from doubling up on Sarr.

 

What pleases me the most is that despite a pre-season that seemed a bit slapdash to a lot of us on here (I can't pretend to have been massively impressed by our pre-season), he already seems to have developed a great understanding with Sarr

 

Why are newspapers calling him Bonaventura?

Is this his real name, or is he double barrelled?

Would make a great chant, mind;

Bonaventura
Manu Bonaventura
Bonaventu-ra
Manu Bonaventura

 

I don't know exactly how Nigerian names are structured, I don't know whether his family name is Dennis or Bonaventure, but his full name is Emmanuel Bonaventure Dennis

 

Dennis has actually signed for Marseille. Fortunately his mate Bonaventura also plays a bit and agreed to take his place. For the first time ever, to save face the club have just kept quiet.

 

Is there any news on his injury?

 

It seemed the injury was a result of Mings (who else) stamping on his ankle.

This better not be another Deulofeu vs van Dijk type situation already.

 

Horrible first touch after receiving the ball back from Sema, a better one and he surely would have slotted it in. I'll let him off though which I'm sure he's delighted to hear.

 

imo Sema should have taken another stride then smashed it

Wrong choice to pass

 

Agreed, no idea what Sema was doing there.

 

Being Sema.

 

When I saw Sema run towards the box, I feared that he wouldn't be quick enough to dribble into the box and take on the shot, I think that's why he didn't shoot himself

 

Doesn't sound like he's going to be out for that long then?

 

Hard to tell as it looked like he twisted it in the process.

If it was just an impact injury or minor sprain then of course it's not that much of a problem, but he could have also torn something a bit more severely.

 

Definitely, and the pass was slightly behind Dennis.

 

Horrible first touch almost certainly because seconds before this move he'd been on the ground in pain and seconds after the shot he signalled to the bench he needed to come off.

 

I think there’s something very satisfying about gambles and punts that then come off.

A lot of our summer recruitment was either going to end up getting filed under ‘inspiring’ or ‘useless’, and it’s no wonder so many people felt nervous about it.

It’s obviously very early days, but Dennis already looks like he might end up in the first category.

If at least two of the gambles we’ve taken in attack, Dennis, King, Fletcher, Cucho, end up having good seasons and worth the risk we took in getting them, then that should go a long way to giving us a great chance of staying up.

The early signs also look good that our two seemingly random and unexpected additions in midfield, Etebo and Kucka, will also fall into the ‘inspiring’ category, and I’m still hopefully that Rose will eventually be the same.

 

One word of caution in all this, when Success had 30 minutes against Bournemouth we were convinced he was the next Ronaldo. I remembering him tearing the Bournemouth full back to pieces and rising like a salmon to head an equaliser!

Other exhibits in this collection - Paredes and Nyom.

 

Yes, very sensible words and caution is indeed needed.

I guess what we can say is he’s already helped us to our first 3 points and given that wins are mostly likely going to be like gold dust this season, even if he has an inconsistent next few games, he’s already achieved something tangible.

 

GT always said that you could divide signings into three roughly equal thirds almost regardless of what level the club was operating at:

1/3 would work out well and improve the team over a meaningful period
1/3 would add something as fringe players or back-up
1/3 just wouldn't work out

The trick, he said, was to ensure that the 'failures' were not the ones that cost the most money.

 

Yep, whatever happens now - even if he never scores again and acrimoniously leaves the club after flicking the Vs to the fans - he will still have been better value for money than Success.

 

Even when Success played well though, he still looked like Bambi on ice, dare I say Dennis looks like he might be more consistent?

Regardless, even if he isn't, we have King to start up front, and Cucho to start out wide

 

Has there been any injury news on Dennis? It’s hard to find when all watfordfc news sources are now paywalled.

 

Bit too soon to chalk him down in the ‘inspiring’ category yet. There’s still a bus ride to Brighton to get through.