Put some damn respect on Emmanuel Dennis' name

Emmanuel Dennis has to be one of the most underappreciated Watford players for a long long while — Every fan is entitled to their opinion, but let’s be honest.. on no planet should Hassane Kamara have won Watford player of the season. Reality is nobody should have, but if one player deserved it, it was Dennis. Don’t get me started on Ben Foster coming second, an embarrassment to the club last season. Now my little rant is over, back to the topic at hand; Emmanuel Dennis. Before I get into the meaty stuff regarding his style of play, how good he is, how good he can be, and what he struggles with, and why he’s misunderstood/unfairly criticised due to unfair accusations chucked his way regarding his attitude and his willingness to “bond” with the squad. Saying players have outright bad attitude’s is a hugely dangerous game — mainly because the club will control the narrative at all times. For example his time at Club Brugge.. Dennis was labelled to have a “bad attitude” and falling out with ownership, but what they don’t tell you is he lost his brother in a freak accident in late 2020, and from bits and pieces his agent has said.. his client wanted to leave Brugge due to them not letting him time off to grieve, and his loan move to Koln was something he didn’t want to do, but he just wanted to get out of Belgium and the German club were the only team that satisfied the demands of the transfer. So the “poor form” from the end of 2020 to summer of 2021 is easily explained via that. Watford managed to pick him up for £3m last summer. Immediately Dennis hit the ground running, and what happened? the powers that be in Brugge admitted they regret selling Dennis.. funny that eh? There was also a report from The Athletic saying Dennis had failed to bond with his teammates.. which I found slightly convenient but also interesting — mainly because I spoke to three Watford players (I wont name names, but they follow me on Twitter, so do your worst in working that out) and each of them singled out Dennis as one of, if not the most popular players in the dressing room. It’s he said, she said of course.. but there’s a reason behind every story.

There’s also another narrative out there that Dennis hasn’t had a good record prior to joining Watford — which is completely false. If you remove the last 12 months of his time at Brugge/Koln, which we’ve already spoken about.. his record stands at 28 non penalty goals, 6 assists in 74 90 minutes played, which is pretty good going considering he’s played the majority of his minutes out wide on either flank. At 23, moving to another country in the worst Watford team I’ve probably ever seen, and hit 10 non penalty goals and 6 assists in 29 90s is nothing short of amazing. From September to January, Dennis’ form was the best I’ve ever seen at the top flight in the Pozzo era.. obviously he couldn’t sustain that level due to many factors. The AFCON debacle, his own performance levels and Watford being Watford, not knowing their arse from their elbow when it came to managerial appointments — from Xisco, to Ranieri, to Hodgson; three completely different styles from one another; and to go with it, Hodgson is the worst manager I’ve ever seen at Watford, and we’ve had some right shit. Giving Hodgson the likes of Pedro, Dennis and Sarr is the equivalent to buying Stevie Wonder a VR console.

Regarding Dennis’ style of play — he’s a forward which we all know, but he doesn’t have a set position. He operates mainly centrally, but is equally as comfortable left or off the right. A hard working forward who tracks back and wins the ball back quite frequently in his own half — partly due to Watford’s style of play, but also to his willingness to help with that side of the game. Per FBreF — he’s in the 90th percentile for tackles, interceptions and pressures for forwards in the Premier League. In fact only two players are slightly above him in that instance.. yep; Joao Pedro and Richarlison, it must be a Watford thing.

Dennis defensive actions heat map.

As I’ve already said, Dennis was in a terrible Watford side that had zero creativity and defensive ability for that matter. Only Kamara, Louza, possibly Kucka, Dennis and JP10 can come out of the season with some credit in the bank. For now I’m focusing on his strengths — we’ll get to his flaws later. He’s very quick, a high volume dribbler too. He likes to run at pace, slow down, and then commit the defender so he can shoot around them, mainly because he’s a very good finisher. Has scored goals with his head, left or right foot.. his leap especially is hugely underrated, Watford should have used Kiko and Kamara to cross to the back-post for Dennis, because his timing and leap is very impressive. He’s also a very elegant ball carrier, can sometimes get brushed off the ball fairly easily, but can at times ride challenges with extreme ease, so I think it’s more underestimation on his behalf. Now to his flaws, and the main one is decision making.. he can dribble in silly areas, he will take huge risks in places you don’t want risks to be taken. He can also be prone to overplaying when in a transition situation, but some of that can be labelled at the door of the manager *cough* Roy Hodgson *cough* as Dennis wasn’t the only one guilty of this, the entire forward line was, and the feeling is Roy didn’t coach attacking patterns of play once during his time at Vicarage Road.

Emmanuel Dennis shot performance since the 17/18 season

What’s next for the Nigerian? well he’s heavily linked to Everton to replace Richarlison, and for a fee of roughly £20m, it’s a no brainer for any club. a 24 year old with proven track record in Europe, Belgian football and now English football, he adapts very quickly. Is he a better player than Richarlison? no, probably not — Richarlison has that extra level of mentality to get the job done, although Everton’s team is far better than Watford’s. Do I believe Dennis is more talented than Richarlison? I do, but talent only gets you so far. If Dennis can develop that steel the Brazilian has, he’ll go up a level. In terms of usage on the pitch they’re very similar, but in terms of actual play style, they’re very different. Off the ball Dennis is very much a team player, likewise with Richarlison, but the difference is the decision making — Richarlison has completely ironed out his flaws from his time at Watford, them flaws more or less being identical to what Dennis is currently doing. Whilst you might slightly, by the tiniest margin.. lose some tenacity from Richarlison — I believe Dennis will get you more goal contributions, simply because he’s the better finisher.

Dennis vs Richarlison pizza comparison chart