The phrase "almost deserves" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when indicating that something is close to being worthy of a particular recognition or value, but not quite there.
Example: "The film was entertaining, but it almost deserves an award for its originality."
Alternatives: "nearly merits" or "close to deserving".
Jennings almost deserves his own category.
It hardly seems accurate to describe "The Pianist of Willesden Lane" as a solo show, even though storyteller/concert pianist Mona Golabek is the only performer onstage: The classical music Golabek plays is such a powerful presence — and one so integral to this affecting and intimate show — that it almost deserves its own curtain call.
In effect, Brees's record will be severely watered down, so much so that it almost deserves an asterisk".
But the whole thing is undeniably done with style, from the black Spanish glass and gleaming diamente-studded walls of the ballroom to the 450-vintage wine list, so long it almost deserves to be made into a Hollywood epic.
"The setback for the pro-choice movement is almost deserved".
The differentiations in Mr. Baker's workmanship almost deserve their own movie.
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
So far, the one major ratings success for a nostalgia show this month almost deserved it.
There's something disappointingly inane about their reaction - they almost deserve the Spice Girls instead.
Is the idea of a $400 stroller so outlandish that, on some level, those who have so lost sight of their own privilege as to leave one unattended almost deserve to be robbed?
By doing so, he lifted the lid on years of international indifference to the plight of thousands of people fleeing a variety of human rights crises in the Horn of Africa, who fall victim to highly organised and brutal gangs of Bedouin people-traffickers in Sudan, Libya and Egypt, but have been dismissed as economic migrants who, in the eyes of some, almost deserved their fate.
