Nobody would suggest that Watford are among the true elite of English football, not even the staunchest of Hornets fans. However, Watford are (relatively speaking) one of the biggest clubs, simply by virtue of having competed in the top tier of English football. Indeed, they have spent a decent amount of their recent history in the promised lands of the Premier League.
Naturally enough, then, they have had some brilliant strikers over the years – even if their leading scorer in the 2017/18 Premier League season was midfielder Abdoulaye Doucoure, with just seven goals! In this article, we take a look at some of Watford’s top goalscorers of all time. And in truth, there is only one place to start, and that is with the man who has a very strong claim to being the club’s greatest ever player too.
Luther Blissett, 186 Goals

Watford’s sharpest of sharpshooters, Luther Blissett is the club’s top goalscorer. The Jamaica-born striker has a list of former clubs that makes for somewhat strange reading, with three spells with the Hornets fit in around a year with AC Milan and an itinerant later phase where he played for Bury, Derry, Mansfield and Southport, to name just a few.
However, it is those three stints at Watford that concern us, and as well as being the club’s leading scorer, he is also top of the pile in terms of appearances. Blissett, who played for England 14 times (scoring three goals), began his career in football with Watford as a youth. He subsequently signed his first pro forms there and played for the Hornets between 1975 and 1983.
His career began in the old Fourth Division (now League Two) and under Graham Taylor he slowly established himself in the team. Taylor and Blissett helped the Hertfordshire outfit climb the football pyramid, and he played for them in all four tiers of professional English football during his first spell.
Moved to Milan
That included 21 in 41 league games in 1978/79 as they moved into the Second Division the following season. However, it was Blissett’s 27 First Division goals in 1982/83 that really caught the eye and earned him a move to Italy with Milan, for the princely sum of £1m.
He didn’t enjoy his time in Serie A, however, jokingly telling a journalist that it didn’t matter how much money you had in Italy, you “can’t seem to get Rice Krispies”. Despite claims to the contrary, Blissett was clearly joking but the comment was emblematic of his failure to settle in Italy.
Watford, Then Bournemouth
He returned to Watford after one campaign in Italy, for a fee of just £550,000, so this was an excellent deal for the Hornets. On his return, in 1984/85, he netted 21 league goals and played a further three full seasons with the club, plus a few games dropping down to the second tier for the start of the 1988/89 campaign.
He was then sold to Bournemouth who were in the same division, and enjoyed three very productive seasons on the south coast. In 1991/92 he once again returned to his “home” club, this time having just that solitary campaign at Vicarage Road.
Blissett is without any doubt a true Watford legend. He was the first black footballer to score for England, all three of his goals coming in a debut hat-trick against minnows Luxembourg. He was a fast, athletic forward, with a real eye for goal and was a good all-round striker who had a little bit of everything. He was hardworking and led the line well, using his physical presence both in attack and defence, as one might expect from a striker so well used by Graham Taylor. He was central to the club’s rise through the divisions in the 1970s and 1980s, and his record of 186 goals could well remain for many years to come.
Tommy Barnett, 144 Goals
Barnett played for Watford during the 1920s and 1930s and so far less is known about his exploits. However, for many years his was the benchmark that others had to aspire to, with his 144 goals the most scored by any Watford player at the time of his retirement. That record lasted emany years until Blissett went past his mark. A Watford supporter, Barnett continued to follow the side until his death in 1986 at the age of 77.
Ross Jenkins, 142 Goals
Jenkins was born in 1951 in London and was a youth player with Crystal Palace before signing a professional contract with the Eagles. In 1972 he made the move to Watford and spent the vast majority of his career with the club. Towards the end of his career he played in the US and also in Hong Kong but it is in Hertfordshire where he is remembered most affectionately.
Brought to Watford for a then-record fee of £30,000, his goals over the next decade or so helped move Watford up the leagues and, in a sense, helped create the club we know today. In all, he made 339 league appearances for the club and he briefly returned to Watford as part of Dave Bassett’s coaching staff in 1987.
Troy Deeney, 140 Goals

Deeney is a player that almost all Watford fans will be familiar with, with the powerful striker having played for the Hornets between 2010/11 and 2021/22. Deeney, now a familiar face on TV as a pundit, ended his Watford career with 140 goals from 419 games. Just a few more strikes would have seen him move second on the all-time list but it wasn’t to be.
Even so, Deeney is a modern Watford icon and by far their most prolific forward of recent times. A brilliant leader of the line, he loved to bully defenders and was a leader in the dressing room too. Deeney was the club’s leading goalscorer in seven separate seasons and his 21 goals in 42 Championship games in 2014/15 played a huge part in earning Watford promotion to the Premier League.
He got 24 the season before that, whilst his best return in the top flight was the 13 he scored in 2015/16. Deeney twice helped the club earn promotion to the PL, doing so again in 2020/21, whilst he also played a big part in getting the Hornets to the final of the 2018/19 FA Cup (we need not mention, nor choose to remember the score that day!).