End of Term Report 2022 – Part 6

29- Cucho Hernández

Sometimes the how is as important as the what.

There’s a tendency, particularly with a struggling side, to champion the triers.  Application over ability, a frantic charge around over deft touch.  I can hear Rupe sneering “oh yes he tries hard“.  This should be a minimum requirement, and certainly not sufficient in itself.

But in a season like this one, where we had such an excess of untapped, unchanneled ability and such a deficit of leadership, of drive, of oomph, Cucho Hernández was very welcome indeed.  He doesn’t carry the ability, threat or experience of some of his attacking colleagues, but Roy Hodgson’s decision to briefly promote Cucho to a regular starting slot (until injury curtailed his season) was both noteworthy and completely justified.

Nor was it just effort, garnished as it was with personality and ability.  This much was evident from his opening salvo against Villa, followed up with the ridiculous corner to cue up Juraj Kucka’s equaliser at Goodison Park and the ferociously defiant strike at home to Manchester City.  These were the highlights of course, and Cucho’s staccato involvement reflected the variable form of a young player adapting to a very different environment.  But one of few attacking players to come out with credit.

Next Season:  When I wrote this piece I gleefully reported here that early rumours linking Cucho with a return to Spain had been beaten away and hurrah for that.  Now it seems that he’s being lined up for a move to the MLS with Columbus Crew.  I’m progressing through stages of grief, can understand that the reported fee is reasonable for a player who wants to leave with two years left and so on.  Still.  Disappointing.

31- Francisco Sierralta

So this wasn’t entirely expected either.  Francisco Sierralta’s promotion season hadn’t been perfect… but it hadn’t been far off, even if he did seem reliant on a senior partner, William Troost-Ekong, telling him where to be.  Enthusiastic reports from his international exposure with Chile spoke positively of the scope for him to step up to Premier League level.

A series of injuries – calf strains, hamstrings – haven’t helped and his occasional forays into the first team didn’t inspire great confidence, but at a time when most of the team was struggling, Sierralta’s extraordinary physical attributes being seemingly cheaply cast aside was very odd.

“Odd” just about sums it up.  Odd that we saw so little of the dominant figure of last season.  Odd that he was given scant chance to recover his form.  Odd that there was as much as a rumour of a move to Israel to be denied, unthinkable a year ago.

Next Season:  If Rob Edwards sticks with three centre backs and wingbacks, the central “have it” role should be made for Francisco.  The summer’s passage will suggest whether last season’s disappointment was rooted in injuries, or in something more complicated.

33- Juraj Kucka

At around 4:25 on August 14th last year many of us held misconceptions.  We were (briefly) 3-0 up on Aston Villa at a sun-bathed Vicarage Road and, in man of the match Juraj Kucka, we had a new midfielder who looked like a nightclub bouncer but exhibited the deftness and grace of a ballerina.

In truth, that’s (probably) the player he used to be.  We caught glimpses of that sort of form as the season progressed, as if he was humming a half-remembered tune but at the age of 34/35, his best days were clearly behind him.  This was most consistently evidenced by his inability to sustain an endearing level of belligerence for anything like ninety minutes.

Pre-season, he had declared a willingness to be employed as a utility player;  on that basis he was a decent signing being experienced and capable of filling into a number of midfield roles.  As it turns out he featured in two-thirds of our Premier League games, starting most of those without, in all honesty, us suffering any more bad fortune in midfield in the injury stakes than might be considered par.

His good bits were good, and there was enough application there for his Watford career to be reflected on in the same unmemorable but just-about-positive terms as Moussa Sissoko once divorced from the season in which it was cloaked.  With a halfway acceptable set of midfield options, he’d have been a perfectly adequate option off the bench.

Next Season:  Nominally back in Serie B with Parma, although his contract in there is up in June.  Not, in any case, at Vicarage Road.

39- Edo Kayembe

Sometimes I get to do really interesting stuff at work.

A few years ago I was involved in a study (and a publication) studying the evidence of transmission of happiness via chemosignals.  “Do we sweat happiness?”, loosely.  The study involved collection of sweat from individuals in a frightened, happy, or neutral state.  Sweat collected under the three conditions was pooled and presented to a separate set of subjects, “blind” to whatever it was that they were smelling.

Remarkably, frightened sweat prompted frowning, on average, in the facial muscle movements of those exposed, and a tendency towards focus on detail, a stressed response, in a cognitive task. This was not altogether a surprise, others had done similar previously. But Happy sweat prompted muscle movements associated with smiling, and a greater chance of “big picture” responses in the same cognitive task.

A big challenge – not my bit – was identifying stimuli to provoke said conditions.  “Frightened” and “Happy” were easy-ish…  Horror clips/movies and comedy respectively in a slightly warm viewing room.

But the neutral control?  What does neutral look like.  Neutral isn’t bored….

But I’m neutral on Edo Kayembe.  I’m not sold, completely, but I’m not writing him off either.  I quite like his defiant oblongness, there’s something there…

Next Season:  ….but whether it’s enough to forge a memorable Watford career, we’ll have to wait and see!

That’s your lot as far as the school report goes.  Season Preview will start going up the weekend before the start of the season.  Enjoy what’s left of the break.  Yooorns, etc.