Fee Watford paid to secure new signing becomes clearer | OneFootball

Watford signed new addition Ismael Kone for a fee believed to be in the region of €8m to €10m, according to an update on Twitter from journalist Manuel Veth.

The 20-year-old’s move was believed to be a record fee for selling club Montreal which previously stood at €6m – but it was unclear how much the Hornets decided to fork out to bring the Canada international to Vicarage Road.

Slaven Bilic’s side are likely to have made a sizeable profit during the summer transfer window because of the volume and quality of first-teamers who left Hertfordshire, with their most high-profile departure being the £20m sale of Emmanuel Dennis to Nottingham Forest.

However, he isn’t the only man to have left the club, with Hassane Kamara being sold to Udinese for a reported £16m before being loaned back to the Championship side for the remainder of the 2022/23 campaign.

Cucho Hernandez, Philip Zinckernagel, Moussa Sissoko, Tiago Cukur, Adam Masina, Kiko Femenia, Pontus Dahlberg and Samir also departure, providing the Pozzo family with a decent amount of cash to invest during the January transfer window if they wished to.

And they have already got busy before the upcoming window has opened, with Canadian Kone now joining for a fee that could be as big as €10m.

The Verdict:

The central midfielder is only 20 but has appeared multiple times for his national team, with some of these appearances coming at this year’s World Cup, so it’s no surprise that the Hornets have had to pay out so much for him.

However, he should be able to slot in seamlessly to life at Vicarage Road after performing on the world’s biggest stage and could potentially make the step up to the Premier League next season.

They need players who are going to be invested in the project for the long term and signings like Kone will be important considering they currently have four loanees on their books.

If all of them fail to make their temporary moves to the Hornets permanent, that will leave Bilic or a potential successor with a sizeable void to fill during the summer window, so having a midfielder who could come in to replace Hamza Choudhury will be useful.

The ages of Tom Cleverley and Dan Gosling also have to be looked at because long-term successors will be needed for them – and Tom Dele-Bashiru may not be deemed ready to be a regular part of Watford’s first team so could potentially be loaned out again when January comes around.