Ismaila Sarr -

He’ll be the pride of Doncaster for sure.

 

He's a flop as we are not the size of club that can smash its transfer record to pieces and not have that player on the pitch. We are a third of the way through the season, in the relegation zone and have only just won our first game, all whilst our marquee signing has only managed to get 167 (underwhelming) minutes on the pitch in the Premier League.

I'm sure he's a lovely kid and he's probably a very talented footballer but we need a £30 million signing to hit the ground running, not be injured or look shell shocked by the pace of English football.

 

It all feels a bit frustrating because it is frustrating. But maybe it will still turn out ok. I’ve not written him off yet.

 

Why?

 

Jorginho has taken a whole season to settle at Chelsea and now looks like a heck of a player. Firmino was poor at Liverpool for at least half a season. Pires was dreadful in his first season at Arsenal and it took Bergkamp 10 games to score his first goal for Arsenal. Deeney was terrible (played in the wrong position) at the start of his career and is now our 4th highest scorer of all time. The game is littered with players who have had slow starts. This young lad wasn't here for pre season, came in to a side lacking in any kind of confidence and also picked up an injury which could happen at any time. Give the kid a chance. As for two managers not playing him, Gracia was sacked after 4 games so didn't get much of a chance to play him considering he missed pre season and he's been injured for much of QSF's reign. His pace, the way we are playing now, might be very useful but not playing wingers is certainly going to hinder his game involvement but it sounds like he's got a nasty little injury anyway so probably not available for a while.
He may turn out to be a waste of money but let's at least give him a chance

 

The trouble is, he's going to be judged by his transfer fee. Whichever way you cut, or how many excuses you'd like to make for him, he was not worth the extraordinarily high transfer fee we paid. For that money, he has to be not only a first team player, but the first name on the team sheet.

He may improve over time, but Watford massively overpaid for him and I don't think there's any doubt about that. This is why many see him as a dud/flop/poor signing.

 

Harsh. We looked ****-hot against Coventry m8!

 

The game is also littered with the likes of Alfonso Alves, Mateja Kezman, Corrado Grabbi, Bosko Balaban as well as nearly every Newcastle purchase. But I hope you are proved right.

 

What? Obviously he'd be left-back, that way Troy can battle it out with Hughes for the right-back spot.

 

You're absolutely right about players that don't come good but I just feel that we've not even given him a chance

 

I would like to see him more often before judging if we overpaid. Did people think Chelsea overpaid for Jorgino last season? The problem for him is that because it's Watford and he was far and away are most expensive signing, he has to immediately look like £30m worth of player. There is no chance for him to settle, learn the language, learn how we play, learn about the Premier League.
He is being called a dud because people have no patience. As I said, give him a chance and it may turn out that we got a bargain, or it may not, but at least give him a chance

 

Ross Jenkins didn’t score for something like 25 games and he didn’t turn out too bad! Troy’s still trying to catch him up!

 

We’re not seeing more of him because he’s currently not good enough to play. This in itself is proof that we’ve overpaid, IMO.

He may well go in to be the best player in the world but that wouldn’t stop the fact that we overpaid for a player who is at the level he is currently.

Watford just cannot afford luxury £30-£40m players sitting on the bench. For that money he has to be integral to the side. I’m sure when Watford signed him they didn’t see him as “one for the future”.

 

I agree that I'm sure the club thought he would be able to hit the ground running and are disappointed that this isn't the case but I feel dismissing him as a dud already is a bit unfair. If in a years time he is still not producing top quality performances then maybe we can say we overpaid, but I would prefer to give him a little more time. it's the completely writing him off part that I don't agree with.

 

From what I know of him (still very little tbh) he's a winger, and in the snatches of game time we've given him he's seemed to be played either as a striker or on the wing but with instructions to get central and become a second striker as much as possible. He also came into a team in an absolutely dire run of form and devoid of confidence. It wasn't ideal.

I think it's right to say that mistakes have been made in handling him so far, and the injuries are frustrating. Of course the price tag and hype amplifies this feeling. I don't see any evidence that he should be written off as a player though.

 

I've not written him off. I'm just saying for the player he is now, he's not worth what we paid for him. I think that's pretty clear to everyone.

As I said previously, he may become the best player in the world, but I'd still be saying we paid far too much for him at the stage of his career right now.

If we paid £10m on a punt, then fair enough, but it was reported everywhere that the figure was north of £30m.

Basically, if we wanted to sell him now, no other club would be interested in matching what we paid for him. This is the measure you have to go by as to whether he's worth the money. Of course that's speculation on my part, but I don't think many would disagree that if we wanted to sell him now, we'd lose money, and probably a lot of money.

 

There is no point comparing him to the likes of Jorginho or Firmino as if they take time to adapt, Chelsea and Liverpool just play a different £50 million+ player. We don't have that luxury.

 

Plus Jorginho played a fair bit last season but was rarely given a role playing to his strengths by Sarri. Our dud can't even get fit.

 

imagine if we'd spent the £40m on gabbiadini. We'd be top of the ******* league.

 

Definitively saying that he is a failed signing and that he isn't worth his transfer fee is absurd. We have no idea yet, and that doesn't change whether you're annoyed with the transfer decisions made or not (and yes, I am as much as most, as I've previously expressed).

He's a 21-year-old who's never played in a top tier league before, and has just moved to the most difficult league in the world, having not had a pre-season with his new team. He's had twelve games, most of which were for a team falling down around him and who had to literally dispense with using players in his position to stop conceding a record haul of goals. He was always going to be integrated to some degree for exactly those reasons, and the situation that has arisen has made it about the most difficult scenario possible to do that integration.

Unfortunately, our club doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the selling club certainly doesn't, so looking at it in as black and white terms as 'he's not worth the transfer fee for the player he is at exactly this second' is pretty irrelevant. We weren't sold him solely for exactly the player he is now; very clearly, his potential and the player it was quite widely believed that he would become formed a significant part of the price Rennes demanded (whatever that actually was). That's not to mention the fact that, again, we don't even really know what kind of player he is now. He's barely been played thanks largely to this aforementioned collision of factors, and when he has it's been almost solely out of position, added to the fact that we're not even near halfway through the season.

As many stupid decisions as the Pozzi made this summer, in some ways they can't win. If they hadn't spent that money, especially after we were rumoured to be chasing him throughout the summer, they would have been accused of lacking ambition and refusing to spend money on players of an appropriate level. People would have thrown about Gray as the albatross around our necks (which he is) to show that they were frightened into investing below the level required to compete. I'm sure if we went back to the Sarr transfer threads we could find plenty of posts expressing that exact sentiment right now.

The list of players who went on to be stars and came with big reputations only to fail to hit the ground running and take some time to adapt has already been reproduced here, so I won't do it again, but there have been plenty and we've all seen it/know who those players are. The Prem is notorious for this exact period of adaptation being required, so we don't need to go spazzing out because the one we bought, who has barely had a chance in a relatively small sample size of games, and is younger than pretty much all of them, isn't Cristiano Ronaldo from the second he arrived at London Colney.

 

I wasn't taking aim at you but others have basically written him off. He's not worth anything currently as we are not looking to sell him. As i said I agree he's not started as I'm sure we all hoped he would but I don't think it's possible to say if he's a success or not in just a short period of time. Anyway, he's injured now so we may not see him for a while anyway!

 

Of course you can compare them. A lot of money was spent on them and they didn't live up to the price tag for a while. It's irrelevant if they had other options.

 

Whilst Marco scored goals for fun for Derby and Darlington back in the last century, I don't think we'd now have to pay forty million for him? We would have to find someone to manage the hotel he owns whilst he shows Andre Gray how to score. Go get him now.

 

The ******* scored a hat trick for Sunderland before I even got through the turnstiles once

 

I do hope he's not a Success.

 

I know you like to put a positive spin on absolutely everything Watford wise, but right now he’s a flop and a poor purchase. The money would have been far better deployed across the team in a couple of other signings.

This is where the point about Jorginho comes into play. We can’t afford to have a 30m player not have any impact whatsoever because the team needed investment in a number of areas. Chelsea don’t really have that problem.

And frankly Jorginho made a contribution for Sarri last season. Sarr’s contribution has been close to zero.

 

Yes i do like to the positive side otherwise I might start crying! I do understand what people are saying and you are absolutely correct that he hasn't lived up to the expectation £30m of player should do, I would just like to give him a little time before saying he's a dud.
I think you might want to ask Chelsea fans about his contribution last season

 

Reported here at £18 million plus add on over time

 

Where?

 

France

 

£60m down the toilet on this one.

 

Plus the add-ons.....

 

The waiter at the local brasserie just nonchalantly whispered it in your ear while serving you, or?

 

Sounds about right. I reckon it would take about 3 months to shove £60m down the bog.