Can’t really post any links - but it’s been mentioned to me by a couple of people that bringing Brenner in from Udinese is one of the things the club might potentially do in January.
Cracking record pre udinese but he’s not exactly big or physical and not sure how suited to the championship he would be.
Only about 500 minutes played though to be fair to him! But definitely fits the profile of what we were looking for in the summer (quick, makes runs in behind, good finisher etc). Has had a torrid time at Udinese, was bought for €10m in the summer of 2023 to be their main striker for the season but got a horrible injury right at the beginning of the season that kept him out until January and struggled to break back into the team for the rest of the season. Has started a fair few times this season though and seems much more in the mix of things. His goals from his time in MLS are below.
"....but got a horrible injury right at the beginning of the season that kept him out until January and struggled to break back...." Welcome to Watford, Brenner.
His tackling stats also look high, suggesting he'd be good at pressing which TC should appreciate and which none of our current forwards aside from Bayo give us. Do you happen to have any general highlights of him in attacking areas from this season? He looks good in those MLS highlights, but I'm wondering if that long injury lay-off last year might have cost him a yard of pace?
Scored goals in a Mickey mouse league? Check. Scored once. Ever. In a half decent league. Not Bayo? Check. Sign him up.
Sadly you can't download Serie A clips in WyScout this season, I think it might be a rights issue (they had no Serie A footage at all for the first month of the season which was absolutely awful for me and every club in Italy, I had to find the full games "elsewhere" and then fast forward through to find each set-piece and record it separately, was proper grim. But it's back now but you just can't download them, so think they maybe had to give up the downloading rights in order to show them). But yeah, in the footage i've just watched of him this season he does seem slightly slower than in the MLS clips, hopefully it's just the few clips I watched!
Maybe this is part of what prompted @Burnsy’s post. Basically saying Udinese planning on loaning him abroad to gain minutes. https://m.tuttoudinese.it/calciomer...otrebbe-lasciare-l-udinese-in-prestito-167701
Until recently I watched MLS fairly religiously, so this would actually excite me quite a bit. Perfectly possible he could become a huge flop, but at the same time, his situation does seem to have quite a few echoes of some of the most successful 'pick-ups' we have made over the Pozzo years; young and promising, catches light and gets bought by a much bigger team, but for whatever reason fails to have the expected impact and fizzles out somewhat. We have swooped in at that point to be the branch that catches their fall and if we really try, we could be again
The goal he scores at 22 seconds in is hilarious 23 minutes in with the game at 0-0 and the opposition get done by one through ball and then just jog back to try and tackle him lol He does look like a tidy finisher tbf but the standard in the MLS is so bad its hard to really tell
Watched a few highlights of MLS to see how old Cucho was getting on. I genuinely think there's an unspoken agreement not to have any good defenders or keepers as Americans fans want higher scoring games. Every game there's some calamitous defending or a keeper chucking one in his own net.
Top scorer for New York Red Bulls I think . Cucho seemed to have little burst of form but maybe not particularly consistent .
He’s been very consistent. 44 goals and 19 assists in 64 games. A very good record there. And Bradley Wright Phillips performed well in the MLS like 15 years ago. The standard is significantly better than that now.
"Pressing" is when you do your work out of possession . If it is the best attribute then that should tell anyone with half a brain how competent that particular footballer is .
It's simpler than that: they only have a very limited amount of designated player spots and targeted allocation money (that allows them to effectively slightly exceed their overall salary cap) to play with. As a result, GMs will almost always focus on using that money to bring in exciting attacking players, either from Europe or, increasingly in recent years, younger Watford-esque gambits from South American leagues. This means value is inordinately focused on the top third of the pitch, and so that mismatch is fundamental and exacerbated. In my experience of watching it over the years, there does also seem to be a strange lacuna in coaching rigour, even when it's European coaches responsible. Teams just don't move in the coordinated, almost balletic way with extreme pre-instilled tactical discipline that they do in most other visible leagues. That's where the America, Fucck Yeah! influence does seem to come in, to my mind. The amount of defenders and midfielders who will just receive the ball and decide the best course of action, no matter the situation, is 'head down, charge forward, let's dribble it into the goal', is far too damn high. It's not a great surprise when you get a real European/European-experienced coach come in that they create teams that look like they are playing a different game to all the others; Gerardo Martino's fledgling and yet eventual title-winning Atlanta United in their first two seasons being perhaps the best example of this.
I've often wondered whether the DP salaries cause some sort of resentment in the squad. Every squads wage bill is fully public each season and it usually shows the 3 DPs earn weekly what the rest of the squad players earn annually!
While on the pun topic, I did drive the Brenner pass last summer, the scenery was stunning; the Italians' driving skills less so