Six players who left Watford in January windows gone by

There have been two outs so far, Imran Louza on loan to French club Lorient, and then the permanent transfer of Rhys Healey to Huddersfield.

So, while the wait for confirmed transfer arrivals go on – and following on from last week’s look at some previous January signings – here is a look back at players who have left Vicarage Road at this time of year in seasons gone by.

Darryl Janmaat to Den Haag, 2021

A fee reported to be around £7.5m had brought Dutch international Janmaat to Watford from Newcastle, and the full-back went on to clock up 85 appearances over four seasons at Vicarage Road.

He scored a couple of very memorable goals in the 17/18 season, a 25-yard screamer away to Southampton and then that mazy, jinking run to score in the 4-1 home win over Chelsea in front of the Sky Sports cameras one Monday night in February.

A knee injury meant he missed three months of the next season, and a similar problem meant his final game for the Hornets was in a 2-0 win at Norwich on November 11, 2019.

Darryl Janmaat scores against Chelsea. (Image: Action Images)

The club agreed Janmaat could leave on a free transfer and he returned home to Holland, officially joining Den Haag in January 2020.

However injury continues to blight him, and after just 16 games in two seasons he retired at the end of the 21/22 campaign.

Etienne Capoue to Villareal, 2021

Surely one of the most technically gifted midfielders to have worn Watford’s colours, Capoue joined Watford for around £6m in the summer of 2015.

He had previously been at Spurs, but found game time limited after being one of a number of players signed by the North London club with the money received when Gareth Bale was sold to Real Madrid for £85.1m in 2013.

Capoue wasn’t the only player signed with the Bale proceeds that struggled: Roberto Soldado, Paulhino, Nacer Chadli and Vlad Chiriches didn’t pull up any trees either.

But Capoue was a star at Vicarage Road, winning Player of the Season in 18/19.

He made 181 appearances for the Hornets, scoring 14 goals. He didn’t find the net at all in his first season with the club, but then scored four in the first six Premier League games in 16/17, including in the 3-1 win over Man United at Vicarage Road.

Having started all but one league game during that campaign, he was in and out of the team in 17/18 but was then a regular again the following season and scored in the fifth round and quarter-final as Watford reached the FA Cup Final.

Relegation followed in the covid-hit 19/20 season and noises that Capoue wanted to leave began to be reflected in his performances – most notably an abject 2-0 defeat at Huddersfield in December 2020 in which he scored an own goal.

His final game for the Hornets was in the 2-0 home win over Norwich on Boxing Day, before he departed for Villareal.

He has been a success in Spain too, and is now nearing 150 appearances for the ‘Yellow Submarine’.

Capoue was named Man of the Match as Villareal beat Manchester United in the 2021 Europa League Final to win their first major trophy.

Marvin Zeegelaar to Udinese, 2020

One of those signings who made fans glad that Wikipedia existed, Zeegelaar amassed only 13 appearances in three years at Vicarage Road.

Watford weren’t the first English club the Dutch defender had played for: he made two outings for Blackpool on loan from Turkish club Elazigspor in 2013.

Marvin Zeegelaar in action against Spurs. (Image: Action Images)

All of his 12 outings for the Hornets came in the 2017/18 season. He made his debut in the 2-0 home win over West Ham on September 19, and followed up with easily his best performance at the club as he created two goals in a 3-0 away win at Newcastle.

Not long after he was sent off before half-time in a game at Burnley, and although he made five more Premier League starts and one in the FA Cup between Boxing Day and mid-February, his final Watford appearance was to be in the 2-0 defeat in the reverse fixture with the Hammers.

In 18/19 he made a dozen appearances on loan at Udinese – not the first or the last to tread that path – before making the move permanent in January 2020.

He stayed there until the end of 21/22 campaign, was without a club for half a season, and then rejoined Udinese again and made seven more appearances.

Now 33, he was linked with Birmingham City a year ago but that move never came to fruition and he appears to be without a club still.

Dion Pereira to Atlanta United, 2019

A former pupil of Queens School in Bushey, Pereira had won Watford’s Young Player of the Season award in the 2016/17 season.

He was rewarded with a call into the first-team squad as an 18-year-old and was twice an unused substitute before making his debut as an 83rd-minute replacement for M’Baye Niang in the 3-0 defeat at Leicester in May 2017.

Dion Pereira in the game at Leicester. (Image: Action Images)

He made his home debut on the closing day of the same season, coming on for Niang again in the final 15 minutes.

That it was it for Pereira at Watford though, and in January 2019 he jetted off to join Atlanta United of the MLS.

He made 18 MLS appearances during 2019, mostly from the bench, but was then released by the American side before the start of their 2020 campaign.

After nearly a year without a club, he joined Luton and played for their Under-23 side before a brief loan spell at Yeovil and a longer stay at Bradford City.

This season he has been loaned to League Two club Sutton United, where he has made 14 league appearance and three in the cups, scoring twice in a 3-0 win over non-league Horsham in second round of the FA Cup last month.

Pereira also earned his first four full caps for Antigua and Barbuda last year, scoring in a 3-2 CONCACAF Nations League defeat to Puerto Rico in November.

Odion Ighalo to Changchung Yatai, 2017

While many transfers between Watford and Udinese have been unsuccessful/mysterious/baffling (delete as applicable), there can be no doubt that the arrival of Ighalo in summer 2014 was the prelude to an immensely prolific two and a half years at Vicarage Road.

The striker had played at home in Nigeria and then in Norway before joining Udinese and spending time on loan at Granada.

In fact, Ighalo has played more games for the Spanish side (132) than any other club in his career.

After a few appearances from the bench for the Hornets in the 14/15 season, he was pretty much a regular from late September onwards. His 20 goals in 38 appearances included four in the remarkable 7-2 home win over Blackpool in which Watford had trailed 2-0 at half-time.

That Ighalo/Deeney partnership... (Image: Action Images)

His strike partnership with Troy Deeney was deadly, and the rise to the Premier League didn’t slow him down as he scored another 18 in 42 games.

In August 2016 he signed a new five-year contract at Vicarage Road, but suddenly he and his famous ‘Ighalo chop’ lost their efficacy and he scored only two goals in 20 league and cup outings in the first half of the 16/17 season.

Nonetheless, his feats had attracted attention across the globe and a fee reportedly around £20m took him to China in January 2017.

He stayed there until February 2021, except for a much-publicised loan spell at his boyhood club, Manchester United, where he played 23 league and cup games scoring five times.

Since then he has moved to the Saudi League where he has played for three different clubs, currently with Al-Wehda for whom the 34-year-old has scored 10 times in 19 appearances.

Diego Fabbrini to Birmingham, 2016

Another Udinese to Watford striker transfer, that didn’t have anywhere like the impact of Ighalo, was when Fabbrini moved to the Hornets from Italy in summer 2013.

He was one of seven players who joined from the Pozzo-owned club, and scored his first and only goal for the Hornets in only his third Championship appearance – a 3-3 draw away at Reading.

Diego Fabbrini (Image: Action Images)

However, he couldn't hold down a place and in January he was loaned to Siena in Italy.

Fabbrini was back at Watford for the 14/15 campaign, but barely got a game before being loaned to Millwall and then Birmingham during the second half of the season.

The Hornets loaned him to Middlesbrough at the start of the following season before agreeing a permanent transfer to Birmingham in January 2016.

His peripatetic career saw him play for 18 different clubs but never amass more than 60 appearances for any of them.

It looked like his career had come to an end when he left Italian side Lucchese last summer, but less than a fortnight ago the 33-year-old signed for Sambenedettese in Serie D, making a 29-minute substitute appearance against Tivoli on January 14 and setting up the equaliser in a 2-2 draw.