Ex-Premier League star says ‘I had to Google a lot of my managers’ in top-flight

There have been occasions in Premier League history when a manager who nobody has heard of has bagged a job out of nowhere – we're looking at you Pepe Mel.

When that happens, fans go straight onto Google for some frantic searching to find out how good (or bad) their track record is. And, as it turns out, players do exactly the same thing, too.

Or, at least, that's according to Troy Deeney. The former Watford man knows a thing or two about not knowing who the boss is. The 35-year-old went through 17 of them in his 11 years at Vicarage Road.

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From Billy McKinlay to Giuseppe Sannino (who?) and Vladimir Ivic (remember him? we don't), the Hornets have gone through more bosses than we have rhetorical questions over the years. So it should probably come as no surprise that Deeney had to go online to find out more about a few of them.

"At Watford, I had to Google a lot of my new managers," he told The Sun. "I’d never heard of Slavisa Jokanovic and did an internet search to find out that he’d actually played for Chelsea. We ended up winning promotion under him."

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He continued: "I must admit I’d never heard of Walter Mazzarri when he arrived at Watford and was quite impressed with his CV — that he’d managed Napoli and Inter Milan. But that one didn’t go well."

Mazzarri did keep Watford up in 2016-17, finishing one place above relegation in 17th. But the Italian boss – who didn't speak English – was sacked that summer.

Deeney left Vicarage Road in 2021 to join Birmingham City. He scored 11 goals in 56 games for the Midlands club before dropping two divisions to join Forest Green Rovers, who are currently in the thick of it at the bottom of League Two.

The veteran star has scored four goals in 12 games for Rovers, where he also works as a coach. If manager David Horseman doesn't improve results soon, Deeney could find himself in the hot seat, although it's unlikely Forest Green's players will need to Google his name.

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