Six January signings for Watford that didn't really work out

Others are less concerned – and therein lies the beauty of football and transfer windows. Some people love and feel clubs need a busy January, but some are more content with a quieter four weeks.

Last week, head coach Valerien Ismael told The Watford Observer it was very much a case of ‘one in, one out’ for Watford this January.

And, as we have seen the first ‘out’ with Imran Louza leaving to join Lorient on loan, there will consequently be much checking of social media and apps.

So, in lieu of the first ‘in’ of 2024 - and to remind everyone new signings don't always work out as you might expect - here’s a look back at six January transfer window signings from the recent past . . .

Samuel Kalu – January 26, 2022

Could we really start anywhere else?! The Benjamin Button of the football world cost some £3m when he joined from Bordeaux, and went on to become a bit of a mystery man.

He made four appearances as Watford were relegated from the Premier League, but two of them came after the drop had been confirmed.

Last season he almost had his own personal chair in the medical room as a combination of hamstring and ankle problems meant he was unavailable for 30 of the 46 Championship games.

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He only played 228 minutes in total and while there were flashes of good things in a brief substitute appearance at Wigan and early on in the away win at Norwich (before he limped off), it was no real surprise that he was loaned out to Lausanne this summer.

He’s made something of an impression in the Swiss Super League and has started the last nine games, making 12 appearances in total and scoring three times.

Philip Zinckernagel – January 1, 2021

Rather like Kalu, the Dane who joined from Bodo Glimt became someone who started so infrequently for the Hornets you could get a t-shirt if you were at a game where he was named in the XI.

Indeed, he played only three hours of football spread across eight appearances during his first two months at Vicarage Road before a run of eight starts in the next nine games.

However, he was substituted at half-time during the 1-0 away defeat at Luton and although he returned to the team for the final two games of that promotion season, that was to be Zinckernagel’s denouement at Vicarage Road.

He spent the entire 21/22 season on loan at Nottingham Forest and helped them get promoted before Watford sold him to Olimpiacos for €2m.

Oddly, he played in six Champions League and Europa League qualifiers and one league match for the Greek side before they loaned him to Standard Liege, where he spent the rest of the season.

The summer he was sold to Club Brugge where he has already made 29 appearances and scored five times.

Ignacio Pussetto – January 14, 2020

Amid all the many players who have passed through the corridors of Vicarage Road and London Colney, few if any have caused more angst, confusion and unanswered questions than the Argentinian whose entire Watford career amounted to 156 largely inglorious minutes.

In fact, the highlight of those two and a half hours came in a couple of seconds on January 18, 2020. Pussetto made his debut as an 89th-minute substitute and cleared what looked a certain goal off the line to ensure a 0-0 draw with Spurs.

He made seven Premier League appearances in total, none of them longer than 16 minutes, the last of them in a 3-1 defeat at Southampton in June after the Premier League season had resumed following lockdown.

The following season, anyone who travelled to Newport for the 3-1 EFL Cup defeat on September 22, 2020, can claim their ‘I was there’ moment as Pussetto made his only start for Watford, assisting in the goal and getting booked before being substituted six minutes from the end.

After that, Pussetto was loaned back to Udinese and then spent a season at Fiorentina before Watford finally got him off the books this summer and he went back to his homeland to play for his first club, Huracan.

It’s never been quite clear how much the Hornets paid Udinese for his services, but reports around the €8m mark have regularly floated in the air.

Dodi Lukebakio – January 30, 2018

If you were to ask Isaac Newton, he’d probably say that for every Ignacio Pussetto, there is a Dodi Lukebakio.

Whatever the cost of Pussetto’s 156 minutes actually were, the club will point to Lukebakio as an example of how they can turn a handsome profit on someone whose Hornets heat map would largely be in the stands.

Of course, there is an alleged side to Lukebakio’s arrival at Vicarage Road – involving a very nice watch and two brothers – that still hasn’t been resolved and is best kept for another day.

As for the fee Watford paid to Charleroi, that fell into the 'undisclosed' category although a quick online search shows €5m as being commonly quoted.

Dodi Lukebakio in action for Sevilla against Arsenal (Image: PA)

Back to matters on the field, and unless you were at the London Stadium on February 10, 2018, then chances are you never even saw Lukebakio playing in a Watford shirt.

That Premier League match, which the Hornets lost 2-0, marked the Belgian’s solitary outing for the Golden Boys.

He replaced Gerard Deulofeu (talk about chalk and cheese in terms of impact at the club) in the 76th minute . . . and that was it.

You may have caught him warming up on the three other occasions he was an unused sub, but that afternoon in Stratford was Lukebakio’s entire Watford playing career done and dusted.

He spent the 2018/19 season on loan in Germany with Fortuna Dusseldorf, scoring 14 goals in 34 games, and in summer 2019 Watford sold Lukebakio to Hertha Berlin for a reported €20m.

More than 100 games and 28 goals later – during which time he also started his Belgian international career which has brought 12 caps and two goals – Lukebakio moved to Sevilla for €10m this summer, and has made 16 appearances for the Spanish side including four in the Champions League.

Mauro Zarate – January 24, 2017

If the likes of Pussetto and Lukebakio are actually pretty well known to Watford fans despite being able to measure the time they spent on the pitch with an egg timer, then Zarate requires more of a deep trawl in the memory banks.

The Argentinian forward cost €2.75m when signed from Fiorentina in the 2017 January window, but he was already familiar to English football having had spells at Birmingham, West Ham and QPR.

He made his debut on February 4, 2017, and played virtually all of the 2-1 win over Burnley at Vicarage Road.

Starts followed against Man Utd and West Ham, before a cruciate ligament injury ended Zarate’s season – and he never played for Watford again.

Loan spells with Al-Nasr and Velez Sarsfield followed before the Hornets recouped pretty much what they paid for Zarate when they sold him to Boca Juniors in summer 2018.

Now 36, he played last season for Danubio in Uruguay and Italian Serie B side Cosenza. In a career that saw him have more clubs than Rory McIlroy, Zarate has clocked up 518 career appearances, three of them in the yellow of Watford.

Nordin Amrabat – January 18, 2016

When rumours in the summer linked Manchester United with a Moroccan called Amrabat who has a shaved head and a beard, you have to wonder if any news outlet across the world wrote about the wrong brother.

Nordin Amrabat playing for AEK Athens against Brighton. (Image: PA)

United, of course, pursued and signed 27-year-old Sofyan Amrabat on loan from Fiorentina after the midfielder impressed for Morocco in the World Cup.

His brother, though, was Nordin Amrabat who walked into Vicarage Road almost exactly eight years ago, having cost around €8m from Malaga.

He didn’t have the most glorious start, struggling to make an impact during 12 Premier League appearances, save for being sent off in stoppage time of a 3-1 away defeat at West Ham.

The following season Amrabat was a regular name on the teamsheet, and he played in 18 Premier League games before a foot injury interrupted things at the start of 2017.

Once fit he returned to the team and made a further 11 appearances. However, what he didn’t ever do for Watford – which is quote important when you play in attack – is score a goal.

Indeed, Watford have a special place in Amrabat’s career: of the 10 clubs he has represented, the Hornets are the only one he didn’t score for.

Even in a very brief seven-appearance stint with Dutch club Almere City at the start of his career, he still managed to hit the net (albeit in a Dutch Cup second round match away to SC Genemuiden in front of a crowd of 1,200).

Amrabat was loaned to Spanish club Leganes for the 2017/18 season and was then sold to Al-Nassr for €8m in summer 2018.

Now 36, the forward is currently playing for AEK Athens and played in both Europa League games against Brighton earlier in the season.