A distant 3rd in the POTS rankings. I was actually a bit proud of my fellow Watford fans when I saw that.
Finished the season level on goals with Porteous and managed two more assists than Pollock. But it's not his fault, it's the fault of all the players around him...
Both Pollock’s punt up the field that was stunningly volleyed in by Bayo against Derby and Chakvetadze’s run from the middle of the park and ball on a plate for Kayembe against the scummers are worth one assist, do you see how that can be a very flawed way of measuring someone’s use to the team?
Harsh on Pollock - it was a decent deep ball into a dangerous area. He’s put a few of those in this season.
It was a little bit behind Bayo which made it an even better finish, but regardless of how good a ball it was, you can expect to pick up an assist for that about (fag paper calculations here) 1 in 100 times, raw assists are not a good way of measuring someone’s use to the teams
One of the lads I sit with said at the end of the match “I’m looking forward to watching Chokevetadze’s walk around the pitch with the players and wives. He’ll be ok in the middle but will no doubt do something daft when he gets near the goal ends. Probably walk into the corner flag or hand his kid off to someone in the Rookery”
Has scored five league goals in the last seven seasons, played across the Championship, Bundesliga 2, Slovakian and Belgian top flights. Anyone thinking a Premier League club is coming in with a £20-25m bid is off their rocker. Nice footballer to watch, works very hard for the team but very little in the way of end product, even in weaker leagues.
Wow that's horrendous stats. I had no idea. But agree can't see anyone putting up those figures. Still very important player for is and don't want him to go.
£20m, no chance (he will also turn 26 at the start of next season so he's hardly a 'prospect'!), but alongside his lack of goals for a player of his ability, he still creates plenty and gets way more involved in games than say, Asprilla last season, I think we can fetch around £10m for him
That's over-simplifying to the extreme. This season he was top of the league in progressive ball carries, carries into final third, top midfielder in total carrying distance and total progressive carrying distance. And it's not like he's just above everyone else - he's miles above. Carries into the final third, for instance: 159 compared to second place Sainz with 111 (playing as a forward, and playing more minutes). If you look at per 90 stats he's more than doubling players like Daniel James and Gnonto. Trust me, these stats will put him firmly on the rader of a lot of clubs, both in England and abroad. Why are these stats important? Because a player who regularly receives the ball and carries it 30-40-50 yards up the pitch creates havoc in the opposition half, creates space for other players and generally means that the opposition team need to be more careful when sending players forward. Why do you think Bayo scored 10 goals in the first 26 league games when Georgi was on fire? It's not because Bayo is good, it's because there was space caused by defenders having to rush towards Chakvetadze to try and stop him.
He’ll go somewhere else and be a very good player. We don’t deserve nice things at Watford, it’s like spicy food, some people ate allergic to a player who might try and do something that isn’t passing sideways, and heaven forbid it doesn’t always come off.
In total fairness, he missed 100 games through injury in that period, largely during two stints in which he missed 41 and 51 consecutive games each; the latter constituting the entirety of the 20-21 season. It's definitely true that it would be amazing if he had/had had more end product for us to date, but there are multiple reasons for that; both his fault and not. I still maintain that for a real club, he would end up being deployed as a Kovacic/Dembele/Grealish-at-Villa type ball progress and press-resistance figure rather than the great-attacking-hope focal point that we are desperate for him to be.
I buy this to a certain extent and I'm sure there will be some interest. But not at the price some of our fans seem to think he'd attract. At the end of the day, if you're a Premier League team splashing a significant amount on a winger/attacking midfielder you are going to want them to do a bit more than run with the ball. Will he even be able to do that as well at a higher level/in a team that has less of the ball? His goal return can't go any lower so you're really putting a lot of stock on ball carrying and hoping other players can actually put it in the net.
I do agree that he won’t attract interest from the absolute top teams, especially considering his injury record. I believe his downturn in performance during this season was also partly due to carrying an injury. But don’t forget that we sold Ismael Kone for 15 million to Marseille last summer. There are lots of clubs out there with money to spend and who will be very interested in Georgi, even though the top 10-12 clubs in England might not be. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up in France, Spain or Italy for somewhere around 15-20 million.
He held up very well this season considering his injury record, only got injured towards the end of the season and I think that was an impact injury from getting kicked around rather than a muscle or a tendon?
We still would not be "debt free". I'd imagine about 0.5% of that would be invested back into the squad. Have to keep those lights on otherwise...
Alright he can add more goals to his game but he created 73 chances this season (25 more than his nearest teammate), he can't magically turn our forwards into lethal finishers. He's going to leave but I find it crazy how people aren't bothered by it. It's going to leave a huge creative gap in the team.
Only 6 assists, but his expected assists was over 8 (which was in the top 10 in the division) which tells you that our strikers couldn’t finish their dinners, if we had a proper striker making the kinds of runs proper strikers do for most of the season, I’m sure that xA figure would have been even higher, and that’s before you take into account that even during the occasions he fluffed the final pass/shot, he took the ball well away from danger by picking it up on the halfway line towards the oppo’s goal
We will sorely miss him, majority of our fans would rather see a clogger playing and don't appreciate Chak. That being said, if we had to choose between keeping one of Chak or Louza, it has to be Louza all day long for me.
On the one hand his raw stats are extremely underwhelming and we probably need the cash if we can get a good fee. On the other hand, he is just such good fun to watch. He's a player who makes you actually want to watch Watford and heaven knows we need more of those. Bin him off.
Maybe he doesn't even want to go. His figures would be better if our forwards showed better movement in the area and could actually finish. He's a great player not brilliant but that's why he's at Watford.
