Out of interest. Had Deeney been on the bench, is it permissable to bring him on to take a penalty. Then after he had scored, to sub him off again, obviously.
Good to see your doom mongering is back with a vengeance I too am disappointed we got done by a sucker punch against Stoke and failed to shut Everton down for a few minutes after our second. Conceding our first livened up their crowd. Defensively we are not the best but that's partly because Silva wants us to play an attacking expansive style. We could play like a stoide
The point I was trying to make was that to play in Europe you need a large infrastructure which we haven't got, Leicester only just managed to stay up last year, it would be great to play in Europe again but not at the expense of the Premier League! We are still finding our feet, Rome wasn't built in a day!
Telling it like it is is not doom mongering. I’m just honest in my appraisal, but people you like just don’t want to hear it. But that’s fine. The defensive problem is not down to Silva’s style. We’ve been leaking goals at an amazing rate for two years now. The problem lies with key personnel we have in central defence.
Holebas is a marmite player, you can go from loving him to hating him within 30 seconds of play sometimes.
Well that was a loooong journey home. I felt sick to my stomach, and now do again after reading this thread. I'm not particularly furious at any of our players (apart from gray, obviously). Just a freak, horrible, painful, deflating, baffling defeat. The likes of which we will probably never see again in our lifetimes. I mean it was just extraordinary to watch. The new goalie behaving like that (I had high hopes for him after reading what ex managers have said about him). The slip for the penalty. The 12 mins of injury time. Getting a last minute pen and the one person in the stadium who wanted to score it more than anyone else misses it....you cant make this stuff up. The worry for me isn't the defeat, it's the fact it's 3 in a row now. We've seen in previous years how the rot can set it. As ever the international break comes along to ruin everything. Getting a win v west ham is quite important now. A lot of the **** teams seem to be winning and our cushion can easily disappear. I've gone from looking at teams and thinking we are miles better than them and thinking we'll brush them aside, to looking at teams and thinking "well hernandez is a decent player...." and fretting about how we'll cope. Hopefully pereyra is back and on form. He is vital to us (as shown last season too).
Style of play is one thing, but being top of the league for leaking goals at set plays is another. We are crap. They score on their first corner and it was embarrassing to watch the free back post header. Zonal marking is not working and that’s nothing to do with the quality of players it’s because they don’t know wtf to do.
“The Everton fans think it’s all over but here comes Cleverley with the penalty. He’s not a legend at Goodison ........ he is now...”
We can't even say it's been a good start because Brighton are above us. Feels very much like Swansea when they beat Man Utd a few years ago and Ashley Williams said they were now targeting Europe. Swansea believed it, dropped their levels and nearly got relegated. Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk
We may not have deserved to win them but against Stoke and Everton we had 70 and 62% possession and I'm pretty sure we had the majority against Chelsea, therefore something is wrong that we have lost all three, back to basics I believe!
Over the last couple of seasons, the team that dominated possession has lost as often as not. Possession stats aren't a reliable indicator of who "deserved" to win
It's clear that the failure to sign a top quality CB & also a goalie we actually wanted is coming back to bite us...Silva's reaction to the late business in the transfer window made it obvious he thought we could struggle if we lost Prodl and/or Kaboul & Gomes...and so it has come to pass. I also remember that after the Man City game at the end of last season, when Derek Payne was asked on 3CR what he felt about Silva being Pozzo's first choice to replace Mazzari, he replied that offensively we should see a marked improvement, but he was concerned that Hull looked very weak at defending crosses into their box, even when they were winning games, and that as that was also a major weakness for us, he was not convinced Silva would solve that problem. And he hasn't.
My belief is that our performances have been pretty good for large spells in matches. This gives the perception that we deserved to win. However, we have a fatal deficiency. We cannot defend. We have the worst record of any side in the EPL over the past 58 games. We have conceded a staggering 109 goals. Those are the facts and until this is resolved we will not achieve anymore than a hope to survive ambition.
What struck me about yesterday was how predictable all their goals were, I could honestly see it would be a goal before each one went in. There was nothing "freak" about yesterday. As soon as the ball went over the top for the first, you could see the keeper come out and it was instantly going to be a goal. Before the corner was even taken you could see about 4 Everton players unmarked on the back post. The 3rd was the most predictable of them all - one way or another Holesbas was going to take him down. Liability. Cleverly couldn't have looked more unconfident if he tried. His run up was so awkward and his positioning was so wrong. From where I was standing I could actually see the fear on his face as he glanced across at the ref while he was waiting to blow the whistle. Nightmare drive back, I was so hungover I had to pull over at the services twice to fall asleep. On top of that I'm pretty sure I got caught speeding twice. **** day.
Our defence is an absolute shambles that can't seem to do even get the basics right. Watching corners is infuriating, it's Sunday League stuff, front and back post, mark up the big men, players on the edge of the box and someone quick on the half way line, it's so ******* simple. That is truly shocking. Exactly, possession means **** all if you can't score goals (Stoke) or can't defend (yesterday)
Only to house two friends who went and are still shell shocked! Some sensible reflections on here and a definite need for balance. However,having just stopped waking up with the Chelsea misses on my mind,I now have this unfortunate episode. I hate football sometimes.
Holebas is a liability. In any team you want players you can trust/ rely upon. Putting in a few 7/10 performances is not worth the clear goalscoring opportunities he continually gifts to the opposition, nor the persistent petulance/ stupid yellows meaning that he cannot compete as well for tackles. I'd even rather a player that puts in consistent 6/10 performances, like Doyley used to be. A few good crosses is not worth holding our breath every time there's an attack down the left, knowing that an act of stupidity is always looming. The saddest thing is that most fans knew he was going to cost us a penalty in that moment - it was all just so predictable. However we clearly don't have to settle for either option. A left back in the January window needs to be one of our main priorities, along with a striker (even though Gray, miss aside, had his best game for us). He's a marmite player because he's awful and I hate him. And I just know that anybody who does like him must clearly either have an incredibly short term memory, or deluded enough to believe that this time it will all be different. Both deserve the scrapheap.
Depends whether you are an optimist or a pessimist. The optimist thinks we need another match quickly to get a win. The pessimist thinks we would lose, and would benefit from a fortnight to regroup. I agree Pereyra is important. Shame that he is made of glass.
Does anyone else think that had Gomes not been injured we'd have won that comfortably? That moment changed the game.
The penalty was due to a slip, how can you slaughter him for that? I think he's been one of our best players this season, and was my POTS last season too. All teams need a few snides in their side, and I'm glad we've got one in him. I used to hate playing against players like that. Yes he's not perfect, that's why he plays for watford and not man city. Some people will hate him no matter what, because he's a nark. And that's fine.
Yeah that's true. I just think it'll do the players no favours to sit around stewing on this defeat. Especially cleverley. Though who am I kidding, I doubt any of them give a toss and have forgotten about it already!
We’ve lost 3 in a row now. This is turning into a slump. What we really need is to be playing Watford in our next match! Oh.......we’re fcked then!
Probably. But the most worrying part of that is a facial injury to a goalkeeper caused the team to collapse and concede three goals in 20 minutes or whatever. Shouldn't happen. Against a team who are genuinely ******* terrible with a cab driver coach.
The defensive problem is down to injuries to Prodl, Kaboul and Cathcart happening all at the same time and the fact that Britos is a liability. If just two of those three had been fit I am convinced we would now have a minimum of another 4 points. Realistically a club of our size cannot expect to have effectively 4th, 5th & 6th choice class experienced central defenders. Even if we did, they wouldn't be happy sitting on the bench at best, particularly if they were internationals. We have to accept that we are just extremely unlucky to have our best defenders injured at the same time.
Exactly right. We just dont have the squad to cope with this amount of injuries. Just like we havent got an ace flair player to step into the shoes of pereyra (imo getting rid of zarate was a huge mistake). The more pertinent question is why are we getting this amount of injuries year after year? Bad luck? or something else?
I agree entirely that injuries have played a part. However, even when everyone is fully fit I’m not convinced the defensive issues would disappear. 109 goals conceded in the last 58 games is terrible. All these injured players were involved in a lot of these games. If we accept Gomes in NOT the problem, then it has to be the defenders. Personally I consider Prodl improves the situation but the others are pretty much even in ability. You’re just swapping one problem with another when you rotate our defenders. As a collective they are just not good enough.
Fair enough. I look forward to you disagreeing with me at monthly, for the rest of the season. I was more annoyed at him for the first, than for the penalty. Every professional player knows that you need to protect the keeper for the first few minutes they are on. Trying to shelter the ball for that amount of time, in that position, without clearing it was an error you wouldn't expect from an 18 year old. You get taught to not dither on the ball outside the box at the same time as learning not to pass across goal. I repeat. As a defender, getting caught on the ball in that position facing your own goal, is unforgivable. Tussles in the box are often a battle of reactions and composure. Holebas has unbelievably poor composure in such situations. Lennon turned him and Holebas lost his footing. You could replay that situation 10 times, in different parts of the pitch and there would be the same outcome: Lennon would have the beating of Holebas, and the latter would foul the former. In both situations, Holebas showed that he has little awareness of his positioning on the pitch, and is rash/ thoughtless in dangerous areas. That's not why 'he plays for Watford', that's why he shouldn't. Sure - he gets lary, which endears some fans. But this situation is remarkably similar to when a number on here had to explain why 'passshhunate Pudil' wasn't good enough. You need consistency to give confidence to the defense, and Holebas gives off neither.
I'm worried. Not about Watford, but about the fact that I find myself agreeing with more and more of Relegation Certs' (football related) posts. Do I need to seek help?
Maybe he's suddenly transformed into a genius!!!! Or alternatively, perhaps you have a blind-spot over one of your favorite players.
Holebas is in our team for what he brings going foward, and for that we have to sacrifice something at the back. It's who he is and will never change. Our manager knows this and our defenders know this, and I blame them for not giving him more cover. I'd rather we played with attacking full backs than defensive ones, as it means the football is better to watch. If that means the odd error at the back, I'm happy to accept it. Maybe you'd rather we were much tighter at the back and had more 0-0 and 1-0 results. I respect that if so, but I am glad we are more swashbuckling.