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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
Player profiles:
Gary Fisken
 
Position: Midfield
From: Watford FC Academy
Career stats: Soccerbase
He is: Coming on nicely.

Profile:

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Gianluca Vialli's first season at Vicarage Road has been the eagerness with which he has blooded young players. It's fair to say that Gary Fisken has both benefitted and suffered from this.

Having made a brief debut at Maine Road at the start of the season, Fisken has featured more frequently than he can possibly have hoped, certainly when one bears in mind the management's penchant for central midfielders.

Gary has sometimes disappeared from games, and occasionally looked out of his depth, but his better moments have seen him grabbing the midfield by the neck and shaking it about a bit. It's particularly encouraging that he was far from intimidated by facing up against the Arsenal midfield in the cup, and his surging runs, bringing the ball out from deep in the face of a scurrying, backpedalling defence is certainly something we'd like to see more of. His impudent goal at Walsall also displayed no shortage of self-confidence.

Whilst the blooding of youngsters has to be seen as a Good Thing on the whole, it has felt rather haphazard at times, and that Fisken for a while seemed to fall behind the much younger and much more raw Jamie Hand was rather random. His subsequent involvement has been something of a footnote, but we've seen enough of Gary Fisken to know that this one might be worth keeping an eye on.

On the evidence so far he could either develop into a Richard Johnson or a Jason Solomon. Only time will tell.

Matt Rowson
Last updated: April 2002