Watford FC season grades: forwards
Here we are then, the book closed on 2023/24. I’d just like to point out two things —
- I know it’s been a while since the midfield instalment but I promise I didn’t lose interest halfway through. I’ve been in Canada for my honeymoon for three weeks so I thought better of trying to finish the job while away!
- The selection process for this was incredibly rigorous. By that I mean, I have missed players who played in the Championship — which was my original criteria— as they only picked up the odd minute (Hello, Albert Eames!) yet included Jorge Cabezas Hurtado because he played a whole 20 minutes in the FA Cup without featuring in the league. I’m aware this will be annoying to some — myself included. But it’s written now and I’m not deleting something I actually bothered to write!
9. Mileta Rajović (17 starts + 24 sub apps, 10 goals) B-
Oh boy, where do you start with Mileta Rajović? I promised nobody would get quite as long a run-down as Daniel Bachmann. I may have lied. The most remarkable thing here is anyone at the various levels of recruitment — and we have had more than a few cooks in that department — thought he was A) Up to the job and B) What he was advertised as when his arrival was confirmed.
I want to avoid giving Rajović a complete shoeing because there are mitigating circumstances. Firstly, he has come a long way in a short space of time, going from the lower reaches of Danish football to the most-competitive second tier in Europe, via a short stint in Sweden. That’s a big leap in just a couple of years. Secondly, he’s played a lot of football in a short time owing to the spring-summer schedule in Scandinavian football. A break followed by a full pre-season will do him the world of good.
Now the bad. He is perhaps the most technically deficient striker in my Watford-supporting life. Scott Fitzgerald is the other name that springs to mind. Someone who was effectively useless outside of the penalty area and really only existed to score goals at a time when strikers could get away with that. But he played here 20 years ago (Jesus, I am old) and, as his chant went, “Didn’t cost a pound.” The reported £1.3million spent on Rajović was not a particularly big outlay. But in a summer when the only other cash signing was £50k Tom Ince, it was a big deal for us and one we had to get right.
Surprisingly weak in the air despite his 6’3 frame, he looked like Bambi on ice at times and you could see the confidence visibly drain from him as the season went on and he goals dried up. Yet he has a knack for being in the right place at the right time that translates at all levels of the game. As Troy Deeney pointed out on an interview with Do Not Scratch Your Eyes, he scored 10 times in the Championship and that remains the hardest part of a striker’s job. All the rest can be coached. Over to you, Tom and company…
19. Vakoun Bayo (27 + 12, 6) C
Prior to this season last seen trudging off the pitch to a chorus of boos against Blackpool, who had a Vakoun Bayo redemption arc on their bingo card for 2023/24? I certainly didn’t. At a club where the revolving door waits for no man, I thought we’d seen the last of ‘The Crow’.
Yet he started the season as our first-choice striker and ended it with that status too, which says more about the paucity of options than Bayo’s own suitability for the role. It has been said ad nauseam that if you could splice Bayo and Rajović together in a Frankenstein-esque striker, combining outside-the-box work and predatory instincts in the area, you’d have one serviceable №9. It probably isn’t that straightforward but the idea holds greater appeal than seeing one or the other marooned up top on their own again next season.
Tireless, selfless and quite happy to do the unglamorous work outside of the box, the truth is Bayo isn’t so good at any of it that he can justify being an automatic pick, certainly not for a striker six goals in 2,226 minutes last term. He’s either the foil for someone else who benefits from his willingness to do the hard yards, or a role-playing striker who sees out games, puts the pressure on up front and replaces tired legs. Not someone you want to see getting the equivalent of 24.7 nineties in a season. I suspect that might not change in 2024/25.
17. Jorge Cabezas Hurtado (0 + 0, 0) U
I have to confess, this is the only player I’ve rated and not seen live this season and he only just make the arbitrary threshold for inclusion because, well, see the note at the top about my rigorous standards.
In reality, his Jorge Hurtado’s Watford season amounted to 20 minutes in the FA Cup 3rd Round win over Chesterfield. In other words, hardly enough to draw any meaningful conclusion from which is why he’s been given a U.
The same can be said of his injury-interrupted loan spell at Gillingham where his highlights reel in three substitute outings totalling 75 minutes whetted the appetite for more. It’s still too early in the summer to know if he will get more next season. But whether in WD18 or on loan in the EFL, he needs it.
25. Emmanuel Dennis (11 + 6, 4) C+
Well this is bad, and somehow fitting. I thought I’d done all the forwards, until I remembered Emmanuel Dennis…
I’m convinced this deal was done for two reasons:
- A desperate attempt to rehabilitate Dennis in doing so helping Nottingham Forest sell him this summer to achieve some unexpected revenue by way of a sell-on fee.
- The totally misguided belief we were one marquee signing away from playoff contention and the injection of a talent such as Dennis would be the difference maker.
In the event, neither happened and Dennis looks set to continue his increasingly nomadic existence away from Vicarage Road next season. Albeit there have been some spurious suggestions that Gino Pozzo would like to bring him back once more. Quite what he saw during this spell, the highlight of which was the drip campaign of content from the club’s channels, is anyone’s guess. Re-signed to much fanfare with reports of a 70 per cent pay cut taken to ensure the deal, Dennis more than held up his end of the bargain by declaring his love for the club
Yet on the pitch, we had to wait a considerable time before Dennis was deemed fit enough to contribute — even then he never looked fit. He clearly wasn’t the same player as his first spell though the same infuriating traits remained. Greedy, selfish, single-minded. Call it what you like. It was Dennis plus 10 other supporting actors in any production of his. Sometimes it paid off — see his brilliantly taken individual goal at home to Huddersfield Town — but all too often it did not. Let’s not overlook his crucial winner at Birmingham City. Conceivably, that was the difference between mid-table mediocrity and truly being dragged into a relegation battle as the beaten team that day found out to their cost.
So in terms of moments that had a really meaningful impact on the season, we are probably indebted to Dennis somewhat. But it’s impossible to escape the conclusion he was ultimately more hindrance than help.
37. Matheus Martins (20 + 19, 5) C
A season of two halves seems too generous. So let’s call it the definitely not clunky and completely catchy: ‘Season of one quarter and three quarters’ instead!
For the first month or so of the season, Martins was arguably the man for Valérien Ismaël’s Hornets. The one player who looked to have a bit of class and directness, willing to run at his marker, usually going inside and unleashing a rocket that whipped agonisingly wide or over. If you’d asked me to pick my Player of the Season in September, it would have been Martins. He was the one player capable of rising above the mediocrity.
But as the team found form through the latter part of autumn, Martins lost his. It has been repeated into Hornets lore that this was due to the death of a family member exacerbating home sickness. One, of course, hopes that’s not true. But it’s undeniable that he was an afterthought for the second half of the season and the last of his 20 Championship starts came on February 13 in defeat at Norwich City. A total of just nine came in 2024 as Martins once more found himself on the periphery as he has done during his previous half-season on loan at Vicarage Road.
Quite what happens next is unclear. The Brazilian is as much of an enigma off the pitch as on it. We still don’t really know whether we or Udinese really own him. It’s unlikely anyone will be clamouring for a third loan stint but there is clearly a talent there; someone who can inject a bit of trickery and unpredictability into our otherwise lethargic attack. I wouldn’t rule out an encore.
54. Jack Grieves (1 + 1, 0) U
Included as a forward even though he seemed to play anywhere but there, Jack Grieves was the one homegrown rookie who got a bit of a look-in this season, amassing 57 league minutes and a start in the 1–0 win over Sunderland.
It’s hard — if not entirely futile — to accurately assess someone who played so little football but I was at least there for his forgettable full debut. That’s forgettable in the sense that he didn’t really get a look-in. Bizarrely crowbarred in at right wing-back, a position he has never played before, Grieves was taken off at half time having not even had the opportunity to do anything wrong as no one passed him the ball.
Naturally, supporters are invested in a player who not only has the distinction of coming through the academy but is also a relative of Watford royalty as the great-great grandson of former keeper Skilly Williams. At 19, he probably needs a loan but our lack of forward options presently means he won’t be far away from the first-team picture, at least in pre-season. Good luck to him.