I find it really difficult to blame QSF for today. He must have worked all week with the players on a plan for this match and what we saw out on the pitch was surely not it. You can disagree with him on the players he chose and even the formation, but the lack of effort from minute one is surely not his fault.
Our friends in China reported: "When Sanchez Flores first took over at Shenhua, the former Espanyol and Watford manager set two goals for himself — to achieve better performance than Shenhua's seventh rank in the 2018 CSL, and to give younger players more chance. Obviously, the club recognized his effort on the second goal, but its current league position was untenable. Sanchez Flores said in an earlier interview that he considered his new career in China a challenge in terms of both football and cultural differences. During his short reign, the Spaniard kept experimenting with formats, using 14 different starting line-ups in the past 15 rounds of league play. Shenhua only won one out of its seven home matches in the first half of the season. The club is on the lookout for a new foreign striker to help drag the team out of its current lowly status and predicament."
I think every single player should be made to make a public apology for that performance. Stop mollycoddling the useless ****ers.
I've been a Watford supporter for 56 years and I've never been ashamed of it until now.Absolutely disgraceful.
Some interesting comments from Flores here. Looks like he thinks he could be sacked soon, from reading between the lines. https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/s...rd-defeat-manchester-city-damages-reputation/ He's come here to at least tighten up the defence. A good second half display against Arsenal was very good, but today showed, he's had zero impact, which is very disappointing. There's no shame in losing to City, but there is plenty of shame in losing in the way we did. If we lose the next two, with performances anywhere near the level as it was today, he'll be gone I'm sure.
Also admits that the players are too precious to be punished in any way. A very sad state of affairs.
I give QSF a free pass for this week, he's had barely any time to work with the players and he's been parachuted into a horrible run of games. But he needs to show next week he's learning lessons fast about the many weaknesses of this squad.
I think he knows he's at the club because of circumstantial reasons. It was a surprise we went back for him, and a surprise he decided to come back. I never thought it would be a long term appointment, and I would be surprised if he's still our coach by the end of the season, but I didn't expect he could be possibly be gone by the Sheff Utd match....but now I can see it. 8-0 defeats have the effect of speeding things up.
In a nutshell we should look back on today as the end of an era. Finally after a good few years of thinking we are going to be a sustainable Prem team we have to wake up to the fact that we aren't. By the time the January window opens we will be gone and the firesale will begin. I love you Watford. I hope you can come back from this. You bunch of chancers.
This always going to happen . Many have stated already on this forum, we were in freefall from the latter half of last season and the club failed to address this problem. We have a Championship or Division 1 defence at best. Too old, too slow, unorganised and clueless. Other teams strengthen and we stood still, hoping that they will be 3 team worse than us. It has been an embarrassment since kick off against Brighton. You can only laugh at the situation and amuse yourself by predicting how many goals we will let in each week. I am still a fan, but this season is over. We need a miracle in order to survive
There may be some good news though....not Watford related, but odds on Silva to be sacked have moved today. Now he's 5/6 on to go with PaddyPower. QSF odds have fallen drastically as well. He's gone from 20-1 to now 7-1 with BetFair.
Terrible result, terrible performance, but to be fair, probably too soon for him to turn it round. I have a bit of a doubt if he is the right man for the job, but I doubt anyone would have been able to produce a much better result today. It the roles had been reversed and the managers swapped at the start of the week, then I suggest that the result might not still have been that much different.
Good point. For them, relegation is not soemthing to dread. They know that their personal careers have done fine despite being going down. This mindset must play some part in how they apply themselves to matches.
They won’t be as bad as today because City and Liverpool are on another level compared to the rest of the league. However, we do desperately need to find a philosophy that fits our team. 4-2-3-1 aint working, neither is 4-2-2. Quique has a big job to fix this mess of a team (a result of lack of support from the top level figures at the club) and he needs to fix it quick if he wants any hint of a chance of lasting til January. Last week we played some decent football. 31 shots against Arsenal is ironically the statistics you’d expect from a City team. The downside being, we weren’t clinical enough and we were 2-0 down at half time. Flores needs to balance his team out, re-work the starting 11 and find a style of football that suits his *best* players - simple task for any form of management. Are we bad? Yes. Are we really as bad as today suggested? Perhaps but not for certain. We know we can play football... We have far better players than all of the promoted teams have, yet we haven't found any sign of winning consistency or form yet. These are essential to stay up! Swansea is a real determining factor as to whether our team is Championship or Premier league standard. If Quique has any balls, he needs to field his personal strongest team, playing *his* philosphy and treating it as any other Premier League game (afterall, Swansea are a borderline Premier league level team). If we lose that game, or we play poorly, it comes down to management. For me, that match really does project whether we have the attitude to claw our way out of this inevitable relegation battle.
We're poor against these types of teams, but we're not 8-0 bad.....or shouldn't be. QSF has been here long enough to have got a resilient, purposeful, positive performance from his team. He got a reaction against Arsenal in the second half, but especially under a new manager, we should never have been taken apart like we were today...….no matter who the opposition were. Maybe if City played St Albans in the 3rd round of the FA Cup you'd expect an 8-0 result, but not from a fellow Premier League team. Just like the Brighton performance and loss haunted Gracia, this will have the same eroding effect on Flores, I suspect.
LINE IN THE SAND Seriously, what QSF should do is get a barrel load of sand, pour it over part of the training pitch, then draw a line in it. Then apologise to the players for his (QSF’s) f@ck up in his team selection and set up. (Why give poor Foulquier his EPL debut in THAT game)? Then tell the players ‘“we are in this together” and get the players who want to FIGHT TOGETHER AND FOR EACH OTHER AND HAVE PRIDE IN THE CLUB to step over the line. Players who feel they aren’t committed (and who make inane comments to the media) can stay right where they are and after they’ve trained and played with the U23’s they can come to QSF when they’ve had a change in heart and if they don’t for the rest of the season they can then fack right off. He’s got to do something drastic to turn this around..
4 points from the next two league games is a must now imo. Not too fussed about Swansea. Maybe QSF will give others a chance if they perform on tuesday.
**** that. Play each of these ******* that played today. Maybe with the exception of Deulofeu. They've earned it.
