No, indeed, that was the overall message of my original post, basically. Iggy-wise, I don't feel like we've ever seen any real evidence that he bounced back from his post 2015 slump/his goalscoring wasn't an incredible purple patch - scoring in China tells us very little, and at 31, frankly, his scoring rate has been abysmal wherever he's been outside of that calendar year season of 2015 (except for the FA cup with Utd, and the aforementioned far east excursion, but I'm not sure that's a great indicator). I think relying on him would be more of a gamble than Vydra, who has scored when in the right circumstances throughout his career and has several fundamental attributes of technique and talent that we know we can credit him with as a footballer, and given the choice I'd take Matty. Largely personal preference and opinion, though, of course.
Exactly. Can’t really compare yet anyway as Xisco has only had 3 matches but already he’s seen Capoue sold, Cathcart and Kabasele injured, Garner ineligible for one fixture and so on. I don’t know if there were injury/covid reasons either for the lack of Deeney and Cleverley last night. Also, few people were criticising Ivic after only three matches anyway. I certainly wasn’t. So the comment about many of us giving Xisco an easier ride isn’t valid yet, as you aren’t comparing similar timescales.
The first 6 weeks Vlad had a bare bones squad as half the team were hoping to get a move away and were not interested in playing for WFC, and even when the window finally shut we still had a load of players unavailable for various reasons. It is only just now that some of those players are now available. Not that I would consider some of these our best players, they alledgedly were supposed to be: - Deeney, Hughes, Capoue (he was here at the time), Cleverly, Kabaselle, Gray, to name but a few who were not available to Vlad, in fact we only had 17 players available for our first match and half of them were u23 players.
It is a huge over exaggeration to claim that those players 'were not available to Vlad', excepting Hughes and to some extent Capoue. Regardless, when the highest number of them were playing together under Vlad, we played the worst football of the season, and possibly that I've ever seen us play, so I'm not sure what leg your point possibly has.
I am not supporting Vlad necessarily, but to try and claim The Kid has a weaker team to choose from than Vlad did is way off the mark
Even with far better teams over the years we have never got decent results at Old Trafford. don't really know what you were expecting
You have missed some very dark days at the Vic then. I believe the players just didn't respond to Vlad and his communist values. I will go to the Spurs friendly, ok it was a friendly but I was full of hope and optimism after that. We were swarming all over them and played decent football, but come the league games it all disappeared. This I can't fathom. It doesn't matter now anyway. I will give Disco my full support if he gets the same sort of desire he got out of them yesterday.
Thank you for the info. I have not Sky sports or BT sports, so I will try to find a fee stream or otherwise buy from the website once in a while.
How depressing is it that Troy will just walk (slowly) back into the team and our play will adjust for the worse accordingly, such a farcical situation.
You are quite right about these 4. Deeney - Played just 1 of the first 10 matches. Hughes - missed 16 of Ivic's 20 league games. Capoue - missed half of Ivic's 20 league games. Gray - missed 11 of Ivic's 20 league games.
Couldn’t it be argued that being denied Gray and Deeney for several of his matches in charge actually gives Ivic the stronger hand over Xisco?
I am including effort/intensity/speed of play and actually doing anything at all rankings in that assessment, but yeah it's probably most fair to categorise it as the worst in the post-Pozzo-takeover era.
If you ignore all the context in my posts then sure, but also not completely, in the sense that Xisco does not have the club's best midfielder available to him, having just been sold, has only just had JP available to him for the first time, has the three first centre backs in the line of succession out injured until now and similarly doesn't have Perica available. I don't really understand what you're trying to do if not support Vlad when you make some snide attack out of nowhere about Vlad not getting support, particularly when, as Malts has pointed out, in the directly comparable time period, he was getting plenty of support, and later on when he wasn't it was because he had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't capable of doing that was needed - there was barely a man, or woman, on here who didn't think his time was up, and that included many who had been extremely and even aggressively vocal defenders of him just a few weeks earlier.
Our actual best player would probably be Will Hughes, particularly as he will actually do what he's capable of doing when he's on the pitch. If playing to his ceiling/where he should be, it would fairly unquestionably be Sarr, and Sema has at times been very lively this season, although I think he is quite a strong flatter-to-deceiver, if I'm honest. That being said, he always works hard, gets stuck in, and all those other cliches we love/hate but that many Watford players could still undoubtedly do with taking more heed of. In terms of performance levels this season, Kiko Femenia has also got to be up there - probably the best player in the team consistently this season, but obviously what he does is never going to be as flashy or eye-catching to watch.
He wouldn't know as he flounced off the shoutbox after the goal, gave a "I give up" type of speech along with a few fans, and then left.
Assuming both teams are full strength it will be a pretty big shock if Crawley hold on to their lead against Leeds. EDIT: Now 2-0 after typing that!
Leeds aren’t really but still credit to Crawley and their main man Watters isn’t playing . Just shows how the depth is different between the top teams and the rest .
I don't know why Leeds didn't seem interested in the competition, it's not like they look like being caught in a relegation battle. Perhaps their squad is more affected by COVID than others, or just sadly fewer teams take the FA Cup seriously these days?
Caligula is making an absolute horse's arse of his goalkeeping,helped by a pitch with more lumps than Miss Pugh's gravy!
And people why generally the top teams win these competitions. I wonder if Chris Sutton will say Leeds disrespected the cup like he did when we rested a few v Newcastle in 2019. And we won !
With a goal from Isaac Success. Setup by Quina after a great run from Penaranda. Ah those were the days.
