Thanks! You could look at it another way, though, which is that he scores a variety of goals. Free kicks, penalties, inside the box, outside the box. And he did that for a mid-table team.
The really fascinating thing about this is that all three Turkish topscorers listed here are former superstar No.9's for the great FC Internazionale Milano #Pipeline #Cosmic
Most of the goals are very good goals. He scored 3 FKs but also a lot of other good goals. He also played for a pretty bad team which created almost the least amount of xG in the league and basically got them to 7th himself. There was a stat that no other player won more points with their goals than him in Turkey this season. I wonder if you expand the graph to show also other stats like passes, pass completion pct, fouls won how it will change. I don't really like these kind of graphs that don't show important stats like those, it can give a false perception depending on the player. Anyway, I think he was good enough for Watford, but it was obvious the Watford fans did not want him here from the start, it's difficult to play in that kind of environment as a player. Also the fact that he barely even played.
Difficult to play in that kind of environment? Most of the criticism was on here or social media - the matchday environment was fine for him. He wasn’t booed, jeered etc. He just wasn’t very good. There’s likely a strong argument to say he needs a decent arm round him and made to feel like the main guy - needs his ego fed and we didn’t do that. But let’s not pretend he showed enough to warrant it either.
There were a couple of terrible misses when he did play - as you say I guess he just needed a bit of support and sense that wfans and staff believed in him and maybe an extended run, though there were no signs in his limited game time that such belief would have been warranted.
Even away from the goal he spent most of his time trying to back into defenders and giving fouls away or falling to the floor and not getting free kicks. Maybe he's just got a bit of an unusual build for a footballer but looked like he was carrying quite a lot of weight and never looked fit. I'm happy to pick the club up on their (many) idiotic decisions but can't pan them for settling Manaj's contract when cutting our losses on him looked the most sensible thing to do.
Yes it seemed the sensible thing to do at the time - imagine the reaction on here if he'd been retained/offered a new deal given what we'd seen.
Think people are forgetting that, by global standards, the Championship is a very good league, genuinely, which leagues in Europe would you say are definitely better than it? The top 5 leagues, sure, but after that, overall, I bet the Championship is on a par with the Dutch league. There's that, and also the fact that some players, even now that football has become far more homogeneous across countries these days, just can't adapt to certain leagues and countries, Pussetto for example is decent in Serie A, but with the strength of a wet paper bag, I don't even think he'd hack it at League 1 level
He looked thoroughly depressed when he started against Newport in the League Cup and they duffed him up all game.
Yup! Read an article a couple of months ago from Opta who did an investigation into the overall quality between leagues (https://theanalyst.com/eu/2024/03/the-strongest-leagues-in-world-football-opta-power-rankings/ - the Eredivsie was given a "power ranking" of 74.6, I just went through and worked out the average of the Championship which worked out at 75.38 - so the average Championship team is actually (very slightly) better than the average Eredivisie team
Rajovic scored 11 goals last season so sometimes goals give a false impression. Like Raj I very much suspect Manaj is a one season wonder
Well, first of all 11 goals and 0 assists in 43 appearances in all competitions isn’t really that great. Bayo had 7 goals and 3 assists in 42 appearances, so pretty much the same goal involvement. In comparison, Manaj had 22 goals and 3 assists in 36 apps. But stats aside, if you look at Rajovic’s goals almost every single one is created for him. Manaj scores a lot of his goals by creating them himself. Rajovic could never score a free kick, or any goal from outside the box. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen him take a proper shot - he doesn’t seem to have the proper technique for that. Then again, it’s probably unfair to compare someone developed by Barcelona to a self taught guy from the Danish lower leagues.
He did take a good free kick or two later in the season which I must admin surprised everyone! We'll see I guess. As I say probably helped the guy managed to stay fit in Turkey. Seem to remember he got injured early on v QPR then came back and quickly got re injured.
Whilst this is theoretically most likely true, I'm not sure it applies in this situation, given the fact that Manaj has never spent either a single minute of his youth career at La Masia, nor a single minute of his adult career training or playing with the senior Barcelona squad. I'm not sure what the relative comparison is for someone developed by Piacenza, Cremonese and a smattering of Sampdoria to a self taught guy from the Danish lower leagues. (*None of this is said in defence of Rajovic)
Don’t disagree about the Championship being a relatively strong league, but you’ll still get people every season saying it’s and incredibly poor/weak league, or every season is the weakest ever, when all evidence is to the contrary.
Comparing the number of appearances can be a little misleading. Rajovic played for a total of 1,931 minutes in all competitions compared to Bayo's total of 2,436 minutes in all competitions. Manaj played 2,612 minutes in all competitions.
Surprise, surprise - the Twitter guy from Finland is saying it’s the fans fault why he (and others) didn’t succeed here.
He touched the ball 3 times, one of which was giving the ball back to Italy. Did well for his shot though.
Good luck to Menaj … he wasn’t suited to Watford, be it how we play or the physicality of the Championship. He just wasn’t a player who was ever going to succeed here. So whatever his future holds the club did the right thing and moved him on …. As for Bayo and Rajovic, I have seen nothing from either to suggest they are good enough for what we want either …. Bayo runs around a lot but can’t finish and Rajovic is so immobile and poor technically that he offers nothing other than having a knack of being in the right place to score some tap ins - bit imo for why we need all 3 are woefully inadequate. However I would if pushed give Rajovic another season but only as backup
We need more all around strikers who can score goals I guess. Hard to find but we've had them before even in rubbish times. Mind I guess they wouldn't last long.
He generally was looking sharp though and and made good runs, and the control for his shot was great.
