At least he will been the same wavelength as our new right back, right winger and Pedro if he is not sidelined for too long
Sport Witness repeat a report from 'Record' that Henrique Araújo was expected to travel to London on Thursday, but that has been delayed because of his birthday celebrations. The player turned 21 on Thursday and will now make the trip to England on Friday afternoon. Not very impressed with his attitude if the report is true, although it was always unlikely that he would be available for the Rotherham game on Saturday.
Andrew French tweeted that he has been waiting to announce another arrival during the whole of this week. He still expects this player (who will be either the midfielder or the winger that Slaven Bilić wants) to be signed and he thinks that the player is good. I wonder whether this is the signing expected at the beginning of the week by the people on WFC Forums and Do Not Scratch You Eyes.
Going by players we have been linked with the recent past, and one who impresses in the Championship - I'm thinking it might be QPR's Ilias Chair. Although I'm not sure he's within our price range.
According to the Mail, we're still looking to sign Ryan Porteous from Hibs - for whom both Blackburn and Udinese have both placed bids. I'm not surprised that Udinese's bid was turned down though - £250K was a bit cheeky. Blackburn confirm bid for Hibernian defender Ryan Porteous but face competition from Watford | Daily Mail Online
Chair is a very talented player, but - unfortunately - I think that he is well outside Watford's price range.
Tell them to suck it up - after all, they pinched Lee Cook, Alexandre Bonnot and Michael Ngonge from us.
Oh come on. Who remembers Cook, Bonnot & Ngonge. Really ! We pinched John Barnes (who) from them and arguably Tony Currie. Who got the better of those deals ?
That's very harsh. What does he know about WFC and how much his career will take off now he's at Watford (who?) , given he's at Benfica ? So he misses 1 game. Do you think he's sweating that much over our league position ?
Oh come on - that was said tongue in cheek! We didn't pinch John Barnes from QPR - he played Youth football for Stowe Boy's Club before joining Sudbury Court, to whom we paid a set of jerseys in return for his signature. And we never pinched Currie from QPR either, arguably or otherwise. We signed him mid-way through his apprenticeship after he had been released by Chelsea.
Au contraire. To say Barnes was playing for Sudbury court is true, but misses out half the story. Barnes was training with QPR when we tapped him up. I agree about Currie - I got QPR and Chelsea mixed up.
In football parlance, tapping a player up means trying to persuade a player who is contracted to club A to sign for club B without asking for club A's permission to approach him. If Barnes was training with QPR, there would have been no contract involved, he effectively would have been similar to a free agent - so tapping up wouldn't have applied.
He knows that he will receive a salary of €25 thousand plus performance bonuses so I would expect some enthusiasm. I think that he will have been given information about Watford (through Helena Costa) before he agreed to join on loan. It was important for Benfica that he is going to a team in third place and fighting for promotion. I wrote "if the report is true" and I suspect that there are other reasons for the delay. The 'Record' website reported that he has already completed medical examinations in Lisbon before he travelled to England. I did also point out that it was always unlikely that he would be available for the Rotherham game on Saturday.
Troost Ekong back to Italy ? https://m.calciomercato.com/news/salernitana-ecco-il-rinforzo-in-difesa-arriva-un-ex-udinese-36740 Would be surprised if he and Pollock both left without us getting some sort of defensive cover in ?
