Tom Ince scored a hat-trick for Watford in the Carabao Cup and is now preparing to face his old side Stoke in the Championship
Tom Cleverley is predicting Tom Ince to feature more prominently this season after appearing to give his Watford career a kick-start this week.
Ince left Stoke City permanently in the summer of 2022 to join Reading and he moved on again to Watford 12 months later only to make just eight starts in 2023/24. Now aged 32, however, he has pulled himself into favour thanks to his performances in pre-season and after coming off the bench in an opening day win at Millwall he scored a hat-trick in a 5-0 Carabao Cup thrashing of MK Dons.
It puts him in contention to feature against Stoke in the Championship at Vicarage Road on Saturday and boss Tom Cleverley told the Watford Observer: “In pre-season he came close to goals on numerous occasions and he is a really intelligent player, and I love intelligent players.
“Positionally he knows the game – you don’t need to coach players like him much because they know where to be. He can adapt within a game and he has real quality in that left foot too as he showed with his three well-taken goals and assist.
“I see Incey featuring a lot more than he did last season because he has attributes I really like.”
Ince joined Stoke from Huddersfield for £10 million in 2018 and was a key part of the attack under Gary Rowett – but Rowett left after half-a-season and he didn’t suit the diamond formation of Nathan Jones. He had spells on loan at Luton, ironically under Jones, and Reading before saying his final goodbyes after four years on the books.
