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Watford striker Stefano Okaka knows why he has not featured for Watford since August, says Marco Silva.

The burly Italian scored and terrorised the defence on the opening day against Liverpool, before dropping to the bench against Bournemouth a week later and, much to the dismay of Watford fans, that was the last time he was named in a match-day squad.

Okaka came close to moving to Wolves on deadline day and there has been speculation that the two have fallen out, although other media reports suggest the Italian does not know why he has fallen out of favour.

Silva, however, was adamant that Okaka was fully aware of why he has been dropped and dismissed the 'lies' that have been written in the media.

It is clear that an incident after the Bristol City game and before the Brighton home fixture is to blame for the situation, though, which Silva also suggested could have handled better by the club, but he would not open up on what the problem was.

"I will talk about Okaka because many, many people have written a lot of lies about the situation," Silva started.

"It's clear that he started the first match against Liverpool and in the second match, he was on the bench. The third match, was the League Cup, he didn't stay on the bench; we changed a lot of players.

"Until that moment it was a technical decision only. After that, it was more than that.

"For me it's clear for everyone to understand: Okaka knows why he didn't play.

"Marvin [Zeegelaar] hasn't played one minute, neither has Jerome [Sinclair], but there have been some lies written about the situation.

"The situation with Okaka: he knows why he hasn't played until now - everyone in the club knows what has happened.

"Maybe in that moment, we could have solved it in a different way, but he has been training with us every day.

"He knows why in some moments he didn't stay in the squad, and everyone in the club knows that too."

He finished: "That's all I'll say on the situation, people like to write and it is not always the truth, it's important to say this. We'll see what happens in January."