Max Watters

I wasn’t against us signing him permanently but he’s been mostly poor. He doesn’t contribute enough in general play (often times doesn’t even bother jumping for headers) and misses chances more often than he scores them.

I do feel he’s been a tad unlucky this season as it seems every time he’s about to hit some good form, he’s got injured. He will probably end up staying though as I can’t see anyone buying him from us and we already need more central strikers.

 

Really? If he’s the best we can do it says it all why we’re in such a mess. He’s hopeless in one on ones, weak in holding up the ball, crap in the air and never attacks crosses in front of goal. Apart from that he’s ok I suppose…..

 

I was told a story about Watters I've no idea if it's true. He was at Doncaster and they sold him to think it was Crawley he scored a few and was sold to Cardiff for 1m+. This caused Donny to ask what have we missed why have we missed out on the money. The answer they came up with was they had missed nothing and Crawley had Cardiffs pants down. What I don't understand is we were warned the loan was average at best but we still signed him.

 

Watters is not good enough. Its as simple as that. Remember that this is League 1 and he's not good enough! He's not utterly appalling. He can kick a ball. He's fitter than most of us. He can run around a bit. But...he's not good enough even for L1. Another player pinching a living. Like many others we should get shut as soon as is doable.

 

No one would take him off our hands though. He’ll have a relatively lucrative contract having dropped down from the Championship with Cardiff.
He’s got another 12 months of pinching a living off us sadly. Plus he’s tying up vital wage bill cash.

 

He looks the part, good stature and plenty of pace but he just seems petrified to be on a football pitch.
He's had enough opportunities now and we need to get a striker that is more reliable and can bring the best out of players around him.

 

He’s like an apparition. You sense he’s there but he has zero physical presence.

 

He's one of many players, strikers especially, who tries and can't be called lazy.
However, I agree he hasn't got a clue where the net is and that's really what he's paid to do.
We've said on here that he needs game time, like every player does of course, and he's been given more of it this season.
But his goalscoring record, and his continued missing of easy clearcut chances, is so disappointing.

 

I really wanted him to be a success here. You can see that he's a genuinely nice lad. He tries, he puts in the KMs on the pitch, but there's just zero end product.

As a Club we really do have to start being much more ruthless in our approach to signings, contracts and just the perception of and around the Club.

Speaking ruthlessly, on a purely football basis, I don't care if he's a nice lad, I don't care if he's a "good person to have about the place". He's a striker who doesn't strike, he needs to go. Closely followed by a goodly percentage of the current squad who may all be good lads, but unfortunately they're not very good footballers.

We need to be leaner and meaner in every third of the pitch. We've had 754 goalkeepers this year, and not one of them you could look at and say "100% he's our number one", a similar number of defenders, most of which need to leave. Midfield is awash with players with no pace whatsoever, no ability to beat a man or drive a counter attack. And barring DKD upfront, we've got the worst crop of strikers I've seen wearing the red of Barnsley for as long as I can remember...and I suffered through Liam Dickinson's "performances".

 

Strange that Istvan Ferenczi is regarded as a cult hero here, whereas Watters useless, even though having played the same amount of league games (53) they have a very similar goal count (11 & 8, respectively).

 

Ferenczi played as a target man and could hold the ball up for the team , Watters offers nothing really.

 

But stories like this happen all the time. Imagine if wolves tried putting a club of signing Hammill. Hes a legend for us but was shocking elsewhere.