Watford FC 0-0 Sheffield United - 05/10/2019

Discussion in 'Match Day' started by Sort of OK, Sep 29, 2019.

  1. Jumbolina

    Jumbolina First Team

    I don’t think we disagree on CBs. The CBs will be the same (except Kaba out and Wilmot in) due to the daft long contracts we give. The full backs will be different in my view. Kiko will have suitors. Holebas and Janmaat out of contract.

    As for having the same defence if we are in premier league, you’d like to think Pozzo would learn his lesson.
     
  2. LaClusazSki

    LaClusazSki Reservist

    In and Outs following our relegation.

    Foster. Only playing as a hobby now. He can go next season and be free for the school run.

    Prodl, Dawson Mariappa, Cathcart, Holebas all staying only due to contracts. The oldest and slowest defence in the EFL.
    Kabasele, Kiko, Janmaat will leave.

    Doucoure, Deulofeu Pereyra, Sarr. All will leave.

    Success will be let go. Joao Pedro will be sold for his release fee of £20 million.

    Relegation will have impact off the pitch. The Pozzo family have already gambled on this season's Premier league payments (2019/20) on loan repayment.
     
  3. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Incidently - an Evertonian told me at hockey yesterday virtually the same story - except the deal was with the "Toffees" as he "...loved living on Merseyside...."
     
  4. leighton buzzard horn

    leighton buzzard horn Squad Player

    He has never moved from there. He lives on the Wirral in a place called Caldy. He would be a very good fit at Everton, despite a few of them being a bit teary eyed at comments he made a few years ago.
     
  5. Leighton Buzzer

    Leighton Buzzer Reservist

    H6CNNF.jpg
     
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  6. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    Home TeamWolvesAway TeamWatford
    Possession
    Home39%
    Away61%
    Shots
    Home6
    Away14
    Shots on Target
    Home2
    Away5
    Corners
    Home1
    Away6
    Stats don't always add up. We never looked like winning vs Wolves but stats say we were far the better team. Saturday we had 3 guilt edged chances to score of which you should probably score at least one if not all. They had none
     
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  7. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    Regardless of stats, playing this ultra-defensive formation against one of the teams we should be confident of beating, sends out the wrong message. What's all this fixation with a clean sheet? We have to improve the defence of course, but not like this. Not in this type of match. It's ridiculous to play this type of formation, at home to this type of team.

    It says "we're fearful of you and we're setting ourselves up for damage limitations". If we're thinking like this for Sheffield United at home, god help us.

    What if Sheff Utd had scored? How would we have managed to get back into the match with this formation?

    It's a way of playing when we go away or play one of the top sides at home. It's not the way we should play against the likes of Sheffield United. You have to set out to attack these teams from the off. Not sit back, give them the ball, and hope they make a mistake (which they did) to allow us to score.

    We are a side that needs to create many, many chances in order to score a goal. Using this formation reduces these chances, so we're left with little opportunity to score. The only thing that is likely to happen is we pick up 0-0 draws or the odd 1-0 win against the lower sides, but will be losing to everyone else, albeit, not thrashed 8-0 anymore. It's a system that can only really give you a 1-0 win at best, if you play it perfectly.
     
  8. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Holebas is out of contract - don't think he will hang around .

    Reckon we'd need a new set of full backs and quite a few atrackung players .

    A midfield of Chalobah if fully fit , Hughes in his natural position and one Quina /Cleverley would be good Championship wise .

    Deeney will probably get his usual 15 or so goals whilst even Gray might score more !
     
  9. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Gray will annihilate the championship. I can see him getting 30 goals for us there. If we are to bounce right back, I can even see a few fans completely forgetting how awful he is at the Premier League level and expecting him to maintain momentum, which he won't.
     
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  10. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Ah yes, when he said "there are two great teams on Merseyside; Liverpool and Liverpool reserves"
     
  11. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    [QUOTE...Relegation will have impact off the pitch. The Pozzo family have already gambled on this season's Premier league payments (2019/20) on loan repayment.[/QUOTE]

    And of course another budget hole will be the loss of the Richarlison sell on fee once Everton join us and Norwich down in the Championship.
     
  12. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    Fixation with a clean sheet. Barely 5 posts go by without somebody mentioning we hadn't kept one since February. Not conceding makes it far easier to win a match
    Damage limitations means that it's already a bad situation which you don't want to get much worse. We were stopping the situation happening at all
    But Sheff Utd didn't score so first part of the job was done but if they had, we had options on the bench to change things if required
    We can't beat anybody currently so that statement about playing like that against better sides counts for all of them at the minute
    We've tried this creating many chances way of playing and we've been getting thumped. It had to change.
    Everybody has been saying we have to improve defensively which is what we did. We haven't got the defenders to play a more attacking formation because we get found out as has been proved
     
  13. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    The point you seem to be missing, is that system should not have been used against Sheffield United. We should have been able to have beaten them with a more attacking formation, without worrying they would score 4 or 5 goals against us. They wouldn't have done this.

    You cannot play that formation against Sheffield United at home. It's a ridiculous thing to have done.

    By all means play it at Spurs and see how we get on with it. That game is one we could experiment with and may get lucky. In all likelihood we would lose this match anyway, so I think doing that then would be more understandable. We did not need, or should not have used the home game against Sheff Utd as a dress-rehearsal. Because we did this, we've dropped two more points.

    It was NOT a success, because we didn't win a match we should have won quite comfortably. By playing the way we did, it was easy for Sheff Utd. They had no fear we would score. We did not put their defence under any sort of pressure. Only two shots on target, which came about because they totally switched off on both occasions, was rubbish.

    You say, we could have changed it from the bench had we gone a goal down. But would we have done? Cathcart almost scored an own goal after 18 minutes. What do you do then, swap it all around? That's a nonsense. No coach would make big changes after just going 1-0 down at that stage of a match.

    Why not be more attacking in the first place. Score the first goal or two, then go defensive towards the end of the game if need be?

    There are only a handful of games in the Premier League where you should win. There are not many, and I bet pre-season if you had asked any fan which are the 5 games you are most likely to win, the vast majority would have Sheffield United and Brighton at home on that list. We've now blown those two already.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2019
  14. CleyHorn

    CleyHorn Reservist

    Some perspective on this thread:

    1. We had two shots on target. In the Blade's previous match, Liverpool had one. Henderson spilled that and Liverpool won 1-0. He made two good saves against us and it was a goalless draw.

    2. Everyone on here has been crying out for Quique to sort the defence. He addressed the issue by playing three CBs. And it was sorted with a clean sheet. But still they moan. Not the right formation re. Sheff Utd. blahdeblah. Should have attacked a team like them and tried to win the match. Blahdeblah.

    3. The Blades have not lost away this season. They drew at Chelsea.

    4. The stats. v Wolves and v Blades just posted by Knight GT are most informative. Loads of possession v Wolves but no end product. Better on all stats apart from goals. Just passing it around on the half-way line. So what? On Saturday we cede the possession but should have won the match. Possession stats. are becoming increasingly passe as a measure of anything very much at all really. How many times do Wolves ever win possession stats?

    5. I agree with everything that's been said about Kabasele, Pereyra, Cleverley and Doucoure. What the f.ck has happened to Doucs.? Not only did he keep losing the ball built his weight of pass was atrocious. Kabasele, like Cleverley has some 'engine' on him. For much of the second half he was in an advanced midfield role as well as in defence.

    6. Welbeck was right to take on his chance himself. Gray to his left wasn't alone. There was an adjacent defender.

    7 . Nobody at all was happy with a point. Least of all me. But that was progress. Quique doesn't have a 'magic wand' to fix everything all at once although some of our more 'entitled' colleagues would seem to think he should have.

    8. I really wish we had a dislike button on here.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2019
  15. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I 100% support Quique's selection and line up. He HAD to go for solidity to stop the rot, but the players on that pitch yesterday should have been able to carve out some opportunities themselves, or at least take advantage of one of the absolutely gilt edged chances we were presented with. That we didn't do that, is not down to the coach IMO.

    I am totally displeased by a goalless draw in a game I think was a must win, but it would have been even worse to lose that game and concede several stupid goals, as we have show we are wont to do on so many previous occasions.

    QSF was right to line us up to provide a solid base. If Doucoure hadn't been utterly useless, if Janmaat or Holebas had put in a half decent cross occasionally, if Gray, Dawson and Welbeck didn't miss sitters, then it would have been OK. It's the players who let us down Saturday, not Quique.
     
  16. CleyHorn

    CleyHorn Reservist

    Crystal meth?
     
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  17. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    You are failing to appreciate the depth of the defensive problem we have. We are defending so badly we have no prospect of going toe to toe with an attacking line up home or away.

    The classic path for escaping relegation is stop losing first. Find a workable defence, keep it tight and let the results build.

    Even saying that, had our strike force done it’s job we would have won that and we were never under real threat. That is a massive improvement.

    In the games ahead expect Quique to modulate the team between more defensive and very slightly more attacking.
     
  18. Stevohorn

    Stevohorn Watching Grass Grow

    White Hart Lane football ground never was on White Hart Lane.. more opposite it. The new stadium is actually nearer to WHL and the train station of the same name. 748 High Road is the address of the old stadium.. the new address is 782 High Road.

    Some Spurs fans i know call the new place "new White Hart Lane" even though officially it isnt.
     
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  19. lutonh8a

    lutonh8a Squad Player

    I stand by Quique for the selection on Saturday, we will not accumulate any points if we carry on conceding 3+ goals per game, like we have done on multiple occasions this season and against average opponents as well. Quique needed to start with the basics and it was evident he was playing for a clean sheet and for all Sheffield United's possession it was comfortable. If we were more clinical we could have won the game 3-0.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2019
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  20. Leighton Buzzer

    Leighton Buzzer Reservist

    He was forgetting Tranmere Rovers.
    I prefer them to Liverpool, Liverpool Reserves, Everton, Everton reserves and Tranmere Rovers Reserves.
     
  21. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    I think too much credit has been given to Sheffield United as a scoring threat. They must have been delighted by Watford's formation. It gave them an easy afternoon. They were more than happy to take a 0-0 and we obliged.

    I believed we'd have probably kept a clean sheet against them regardless. They showed very little attacking intent. I feel they were there to be beaten. We just didn't put them under any sort of pressure.

    The fact we still had three gilt-edged chances proves how vulnerable they were. All three chances were down to them switching off, not down to us pressing or a good move. The Gray chance came when a poor pass from us was inexplicably ignored by United defenders. The United fans even cheered it because it was such a poor pass to no one. But for some reason their defenders just didn't chase it. It was going nowhere, but Pereyra was the only one switched on enough to run after it. That was purely down to bad defending by them.

    The Welbeck chance was good play by him, but again, a United player completely sold himself by diving to head a ball when he was the last line of defence. A really poor piece of defending.

    The Dawson chance was very much the same. A routine freekick was just watched by United defenders. They all stood and watched Dawson run in unmarked.

    We didn't do anything special to create these chances, they were all caused by bad United mistakes. You rarely get a side making errors like that in the Premier League (apart from us of course).

    The game was there for the taking but we didn't go for it. We wanted a 0-0 draw and we got it. That's just not good enough. especially with the position we currently find ourselves in.
     
  22. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Anyone caught taking photos or, worse still 'selfies' at a football match should be publicly 5hat on
     
  23. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    For once I find myself in total agreement with you. If we set up like that for the rest of the season we will never score another goal. Even with five clodhoppers across the back we still looked vulnerable and, thanks to the total lack of defensive quality available, I'd say our chances of keeping a clean sheet against the overwhelming majority of teams in this league is still virtually nil.
     
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  24. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Enduring image.
     
  25. luke_golden

    luke_golden Space Cadet

    The evidence provided by every single game we’ve played since February would suggest that you’re possibly a little overly optimistic with this belief.
     
    Forzainglese, lutonh8a and Knight GT like this.
  26. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    Maybe, but there was no sense of proportion for this game. Great we got a clean sheet....whoopy-do. Does it really matter? We only got 1 point. Is this far we've dropped that fans are delighted with a 0-0 at home to Sheff Utd. Seriously, fans should be saying the formation was OTT for the type of opponent being faced.

    Who cares if we let a goal in. Would you rather a 0-0 draw or a 2-1 win? I get the impression some fans would be happier with the clean sheet rather than the three points.
     
    Lloyd likes this.
  27. CleyHorn

    CleyHorn Reservist

    Wtf! Honestly hb1, for a poster who is generally so forensic you don't half come out with some changers sometimes!

    Of course we didn't want a 0-0 draw! Quique wanted to stop the defensive rot and did so. Everybody on here (including you persistently) has been asking for that ever since the season began. And he wanted to nick the result and we had three guilt edged opportunities to do so. How those chances arrived is, by comparison, irrelevant. Are you suggesting that, generally, defences never make mistakes? That's cobblers. But we ourselves didn't make any on Saturday.

    We should have won the match. The 3CB set-up provided us with the opportunity to do so. The fact that we didn't wasn't the fault of Quique and his set-up at all.
     
  28. CleyHorn

    CleyHorn Reservist

    They'd probably take a selfie of that too.
     
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  29. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    If you use such a negative, defensive formation, o-o IS what you're looking to get. It has to be...it's the only logical conclusion. It's the most likely outcome against a side like Sheffield United. Neither team were looking to score a goal, unless it was gifted to them. It was always going to end 0-0.

    By playing like that in a home match, against that type of side, we did not deserve to win, because we didn't try to win.
     
    Lloyd likes this.
  30. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    I don't mind you having a different view to mine or other posters but that is just ridiculous. Of course we wanted to win and would have preferred 2-1 to 0-0. We would have preferred 5-4 to 0-0 but the facts remain, we concede too many goals and we don't score anywhere near enough. If we are failing to score enough goals then we must stop conceding so many to give us a fighting chance. Not conceding or maybe conceding one gives us a much better chance of gaining something from the game. If we had scored 15 goals this season I could go with your argument but we've scored 4! that issue was prevalent on Saturday as we missed 3 glorious chances which is probably more than we've had in any game this season. It's the worst in the division. If we are not going to score many goals we cannot have a defence that is going to concede a minimum of 2 or more a game. You are right, at the start of the season we would have looked at Brighton and Sheff Utd as home bankers but we are not at the start of the season anymore, we're nearly a quarter of the way through and we can't look at any game like that now. It's thinking like that which probably caused the Brighton result and is partly why we are where we are. We had to start getting the defence to play as a unit and that needed to start asap not after a game we thought we would win just because we attacked them
     
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  31. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Exactly! Who cares about a clean sheet if its achieved by giving up all efforts to be an attacking force?? Given that our squad has plenty of attacking flair and virtually no defensive quality at all, it is - in my view - absolutely bonkers to try to become a team that puts the emphasis on defending and keeping a clean sheet. We will never have a strong defence with the personnel that we have and QSF's approach will only serve to accentuate our weakness while at the same time diminishing the aspect of our game that caused the opposition problems
     
  32. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    If you play for a 0-0 draw, how can you claim we wanted to win? We wanted a clean sheet above everything else. This is how we set ourselves up. Anything else was secondary. If you cannot see this, then that's fair enough, but I think it's an obvious conclusion that most fans would concur with.

    All the talk was "clean sheet" before the match...…..it means so much to Flores and it seems some fans have bought into this. We need wins, not 0-0 draws. We need to set the team up to win games. The formation used on Saturday will bring a lot of 0-0 draws and narrow defeats. It won't bring you many victories, as we will not be attacking to opposition enough. The stats don't lie. We have to create a lot of chances in order to score. That's never going to change with the players we have. So in order to accommodate that, we need to be far more attacking in the home games against weaker opponents.

    The formation used on Saturday, is fine away from home, but should be used sparingly in the home games.
     
    Lloyd likes this.
  33. CleyHorn

    CleyHorn Reservist

    Yet again you try and win an argument by endlessly repeating the same mantra. So, (it gets so wearisome), we (or Quique) wanted to win the match by sorting out the defence (how many times have you alone asked for specifically that since the tail-end of last season?), keeping a clean sheet (how many times have you alone referred to the ever lengthening number of games without one?) and 'nicking something', for victory.

    There's nothing novel about 'trying to keep a clean sheet' b.t w. It's part of the common parlance of football.

    So I'm afraid there's nothing 'logical' about your post at all. In fact, it's entirely 'illogical' and in denial of all the evidence of what's been said on this forum since at least the transfer window.

    And where the hell does "It was always going to end 0-0" come from? It could very easily have ended 3-0.

    No doubt Muff, Chelsea and Everton were more 'gung-ho' than us. None of them won either. Everton lost 0-2.
     
    luke_golden likes this.
  34. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    Who said we played for a 0-0? There are many ways to skin a cat and just because we didn't attack them from the off doesn't mean we didn't try to win the game, it means we tried to win it a different way than we've tried so far this season which hadn't been hugely successful! Leicester won a title on allowing the opposition to have the ball, allowing them forward before counter attacking them which is how the first two golden chances happened. Have you not watched this season when we've been trying to attack, we get caught out and then everybody blames the defence. You are right, the stats don't lie, we've conceded 20 goals in 7 games before Saturday, nearly 3 a game. We have absolutely no chance of staying up playing like that. No matter what you think of our forward players, we should have scored Saturday and won the game, probably should have been 2-0. The way we were set up had nothing to do with us not winning the game, it is the inability to score a one on one or an open goal.
    I don't think most fans thought we were playing for a 0-0 at all, but then I'm not going to start suggesting what other people think
     
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  35. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    TBF at the start of each half we attacked well then went into our shell a bit letting them have the ball more than us without really being threatened.

    To give Flores and co some due they were screaming for us to push up at times when we were too deep in the first half.

    He was almost on the pitch at times!
     

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