At 33/1, you could make good money on Gracia next to be sacked. We normally announce them a game or two before the end of the season...
I wasn't convinced by him at the at our place event. Likeable, and he gave us a bounce factor that will see us over the line but I really don't see him staying. After he left Dux said managers have a max 2 year shelf life, wouldn't surprise me if we're on the lookout for another Silva type
When it comes to the question is Gracia the right man, you have to look at various things. Does he have an excellent squad to pick from? I would say no. Put Deulofeu, Chalobah and Cleverley in that side, it would make a difference. But, if SD is to be believed and we won't be making a lot of signings next season, then you have to judge on the squad he's got, as that maybe the one he has next season. Has he inspired the side to raise itself above its natural status? Well he started off very well with deserved wins against Chelsea and Everton, plus a gritty win against West Brom. For me, where it started to unravel was at Liverpool. He was found badly wanting there. The line-up was not right, which is fair enough to get that wrong, but he did nothing to rectify that at half time. His reading of the game and his substitutions have been questionable. You do expect defeats at Arsenal and Liverpool, but they should not have been as heavy as they were. We are gifting costly late goals too often as well, which tends to tell me, he's not doing the right thing to effect the match in a positive manner. His substitution of Hughes for Okaka directly cost us that late goal against Bournemouth. It was poor judgement. He did a very similar tactical move against Burnley too and the match fell apart again. Today, he took off Hughes for Sinclair and we lose the game again. Seriously, why is Sinclair even on the bench. It's fine if he does these things and it pays off. Then I would be saying he's a great coach for doing things I would not even dream of. But unfortunately he's doing things which seems to be detrimental, as if he hasn't grasped the situation yet. Of his 11 games, he's won 3 draw 2 and lost 6. You can be sure we'll lose the next two away games without even scoring too, which will give him a remarkable away run of 1 draw, 7 defeats, no goals scored, 11 conceded plus whatever Spurs and United score. He will be judged on this. So far it's only 11 points from 11 games. I don't think it's the return the owner would be expecting.
If we are stuck with this squad and this idiot for a manager then next season we are bang in trouble.
Yep, Wolves promoted after Joka threw away the game in the last seconds of injury time. They won't threaten the relegation places and with their supposed resources, comfortably top 10.
I sometimes feel that Gino and us fans expect too much. Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy with the crap football on offer, but we can't be deluded to think we're anything other than what we are - a bang average Premiership side. Everyone around us has the ability to spend £20m like its nothing. We might be great at picking up promising 18 year old Colombians, but when it comes to established players we're fighting transfer battles with other sides in the division. We have no edge over them in this regard. Gracia could be doing more, without a doubt, but he's been given a bargain bucket defence and a toothless attack to win games with. Unless the club spend heavily, we'll continue to tread water in the division, regardless of who the head coach is
I have just seen his post-game interview on SSN after also reading his comments in the press conference held after the final whistle. Before I add the following comments, I should add that I have a big belief that this club is getting towards a juncture where it needs some stability and an investment of time and resources in a manager and his beliefs. Thats the next step for me that Watford FC needs to take... With that being said, his tactics/lineups, the last few performances and his subsequent comments have convinced me he is not the man to take us forward. As Malts has already said, there was initial hope about him due to the wording of the 'Silva sacked statement' and the rumours of his ability to draw results from an average team. The Chelsea result and performance was impressive - but we were 10 minutes away from drawing against 10 completely uninspired men. Put that aside (which is fair to do, it was a great night, I accept), we have been awful. We ground out results against Everton and WBA but the football was turgid and not a good sign for things going forward. When we play away from home, we play as if there is only 1 point available. Its simply not good enough. Too many players are having every weekend off and the manager is accepting it with a smile and a weak and hollow promise of learning from our mistakes. He has not improved us defensively or made us hard to beat. I don't need to elaborate on that. You all know. He's smiling in his post-game interview. He should be seething. He should be calling the players out and not giving weak explainations of it 'being unfair'. It isn't. We are woeful and getting worse. Teams are rubbing their hands together at the thought of playing us. Make a statement. Drop the captain. And show some strength in some of your interviews. He's coming across as a dead-man-walking...which may well be the case, but this damn well translates in performances and attitudes from the players. I don't trust this man with having an input in the close season, as his tactics and demeanour are convincing me that any opinions he has on player recruitment could well be more players who buy into this dour style. This manager is not the one to bring about the things I want for us going forward as outlined in my first paragraph. I am convinced of it. And I'm beginning to think that he and Gino are too.
The outside world doesn't think we should be in the Premier league anyway, so it depends on what you as fans expect. I saw a really promising side start this campaign, only to fall badly away. I think it's fair to expect more than what we are getting currently. No one expects Watford to be challenging for Europe, but we have been relegation threatened for the past two seasons, which is disappointing. The investment in the past two seasons has gone up, but the improvement has gone backwards. We were a better team in our first season, than we have been in our last two. First season we got 44 points and 13th place, last season we missed relegation by just one place after picking up 4 less points. This season looks even more hopeless as the current 37 points doesn't really look likely to be significantly added to. We're just scraping by and I think the owner will be hugely disappointed by this. Remember what Scott Duxbury said before the season started? We don't want to be just scraping by this season. So, after the investment of this season, the return is well short of what they expected. It's reasonable that the fans pick up on this and have the same expectations.
The owner has to take some, if not quite a lot, of the blame though. Recruitment of both players and managers has been highly questionable. Though I think Gino was genuinely unlucky that Silva turned out to be such a ****.
And Duxbury. He should be held accountable as well. Agree about Silva. At the start of this season I thought we'd finally got a manager to take us higher up the league and help build something for the future. The first couple of months of the season only strengthened that thought. Who knew Silva would turn out to be such a ****?
I agree with your sentiment. I will be honest, apart from the collapses against Bournemouth and Burnley, I've enjoyed the football at home far more than anything Silva served up. We play a more enjoyable game. Where he's lacking is away. We've been absolutely appalling away from home, whereas Silva's away form was very good, certainly at the beginning. But this negative momentum is building. We are all experts at recognising this now. We know how the owner reacts to these runs. If we limp over the line, as looks highly likely, we all know Gino will pull the trigger again. I think hiring Silva was a real statement of intent. It was not the club's fault he made it obvious he wanted to go to Everton, which was an outrageous thing he did. Once the results declined, he had to go. Then what does Gino do? He has to get someone in, and Gracia was available. He's not a novice either, he's got a lot of experience, and he stood out for me at Malaga. He was very good there. I had a lot of hope, and I think the owner did, but he was a punt. He's not the first choice. It doesn't look like it's going to work out though. We can all sense that it doesn't feel right, which of course is a big shame for everyone.
What we need is a Great Escapologist, someone like Pardew, Pulis or Big Sam. We'd go through hell until February and then it would all come together and we'd soar out of danger and finish the season with a nice warm glow of satisfaction. Until it all happens again the next season.... Well, it would make a change to do it the other way round. If we can't get better, why not be just as bad in a different way?
You can't spent £50m on players and expect that to magically make you better, not anymore. I don't think there's a single side that hasn't spent at least £15m on a player, so why are we special? Look at the eye watering amount of money Everton have spent to achieve 42 points My point is that there is nothing special about our squad, its no better than West Brom's in my opinion, we're just fortunate they've done so poorly
Key is their defence is much better - and coached well of course. We have good attacking players in midfield and are missing 2 more but we need to improve up front and in the back line.
Exactly right. What I feel the club needs to do in the summer is make an appointment in the same vein as Silva, but with a better moral fibre. I do not believe Gino is beyond reproach, especially when it comes to recruitment in critical areas of the squad. But I don't blame him for taking the punt on Gracia - we needed someone in quick as any malaise (a la Stoke/WBA) would have been suicidal. And could have resulted in Pardew/Hughes or similar. Its an odd one. I don't want to criticise Gracia as I believe he was a better option than we could have got. Short term - Yes. Long term - No.
Yes, but not by much. Strikers worse, midfield better, defence worse, keeper worse. Difference is Burnley have had consistency for the last few seasons, and have been able to establish. But yeah, let’s sack Gracia after 10 games.
Wagner summed it up perfectly tonight. He acknowledged that on talent alone, their team would not match up to ours. But as a team? Thats the key.
He just seems horrendously one dimensional and stubborn. Seems to be short on ideas tactically and clearly has (unwarranted and undeserving) favourites, whilst others are being pretty much frozen out.
As has been said before, Gino had to sort out the situation with Silva and find someone who he could drop in at short notice. OK, maybe it wasn't the best appointment - but, Jeez, look what they did with appointments at WBA and Southampton.
I think the best way to put is that Burnley are greater than the sum of their parts; we are worse than the sum of ours. Graham Taylor once said "give me a star team over a team of star players, any time". Pretty much sums us up right now (perhaps ours are more "individuals" than stars).
Completely agree apart from the last paragraph - we need to bring in some proper defenders whether Gracia stays or goes.
l doubt that Gracia will be in charge for next season. The board will already be sounding out a new manager for next season. It is clear that Gracia does not have the 'smarts' to be a Manager in the Premiership. Change is coming.
Entirely agree. But why? 1. Poor management 2. Poor player recruitment 3. Revolving door management which means players don’t give a fook because someone else will be along soon. 4. All 3 of the above.
I've already said something similar to this in another thread: - I think the defence are unfairly taking the blame for our current state of affairs, I think our toothless attack are just as much to blame if not more so. Lets face it, we have lost quite a few games by the odd goal, but had the attack managed to find the net once or twice at the other end, we would have won or drawn those games. In quite a few of those games we have arguably been the better side, and then one defensive slip has cost us the game, but what about all the sitters that have been missed by the forwards in those same games, more than often out weighing any defensive errors. It is often said that the best form of defence is attack, and quite frankly if the attack had been doing their jobs properly the defence might not have had as much pressure put on it. Hence I think the attack is letting the side down more than the defence.
