We've had a few horrible seasons which is reflected in many of our post match comments on here.... One minute we're glad of the clear out, like that the current crop are "together", enjoy a couple of good performances, and then we're back to moaning again because our team is mainly 6/10 quality. In hindsight I reckon that if we'd had Kayembe, Sema, Lewis and maybe Bayo available yesterday we would have won with a much stronger performance but I'll gladly take what we got...
Fair point and you could say last summers recruiting hasn’t proven to be totally successful with Livermore being the best which was very unlikely. Might help keeping the the same manager for once over rather than everyone having to work with another new one . (Hope i haven’t tempted fate there !!)
Leading on from your point about the goals scored.. We’ve scored a goal in 20 out of the 27 league matches so far. Not bad when you consider that the biggest (or at least, my biggest) concern before the season was wondering where the goals were going to come from. Val has got the absolute best out of a bang average squad. It may not be pretty at times, but christ, if you can get Jake Livermore to score 2 absolute scorchers in one game, then you’re certainly doing something right.
That's taken me most of the morning to read all of this thread. A few points We're in a false position? Are we? Why? We've played 27 games which is more than enough to say you deserve to be where you are. We are very lucky and have a very lucky coach! You make your own luck and I get it that sometimes you can be lucky but not over 27 games surely. It's more than luck if it happens again and again The fans singing, "How sh1t must you be, we're winning away". Have they not seen our recent away form? Dave was terrible. Each to their own but certainly second half I thought he did a heck of a lot right even if the final ball could sometimes be better. Glad we are signing him The game was awful from both sides first half. Second half was much improved and thought we looked dangerous when coming forward. Their chap up front was a handful but cows ar5e and banjo spring to mind Hamer - I don't think he saved anything Bachmann wouldn't as well but he has a much calmer influence Morris - Third choice at full back and we all know his faults. Bit unlucky with their goal as it deflected off him. We know he's not at the required standard but he's what we've got currently and at least he gives everything Sierralta - Never been his biggest fan but yesterday he was very poor. Not good enough with the ball at his feet and made some dreadful mistakes that we got away with Hoedt - My current player of the year. Stuck to his task well against their chap up front who was a handful. Giving him the captaincy has helped as well Andrews - Shaky first 30 mins but a good defensive clearance at the end of the half seemed to help. Much better second half TDB - Just not sure what his strengths are. Ok as a back up but I feel it's an area where we need improvement Livermore - Just incredible. If you told me back in August that the whole away end at QPR would be signing his name I would've said you need to give your head a wobble. Surprised he was taken off and also look surprised Giorgi - mentioned above but very happy to sign him as I think he will get better and better Asprilla - The most forward thinking player in a first half where we just didn't want to get the ball forward. Didn't think he should have been subbed either as a long with Giorgi I thought they would create more chances Martins - Hugely frustrating player as has shown he has ability to do things and created a very good chance that ended up being cleared for Livermore to score the second goal. Much prefer Sema though Healey - Looked awful first half but also got very little support. Thought he improved second half but cannot see him scoring goals Thought the subs, Pollock, Porteous and Rajovic had a positive impact on the game, Raj seems to be getting better at holding up the ball which is great to see. I love Pollocks attitude. Barely ever gets on the pitch but when he does he is so passionate about doing well. I really hope he gets a chance and takes it but suspect he's not quite up to it We'll play better and not win so take the rough with the smooth and on to Bristol City and hopefully another win just for @Malteser2 sake! I see we've sold out for Bristol City but presume that's not the whole end?!
That’s fine. I agree with you, opinions are wonderful. Constantly droning on about them, with multiple hundreds of words around the same thing, for several pages, is not. Anyway, there’s a perfectly good solution there so I have finally put them on ignore and it’s already less annoying to read stuff on here.
Completely forgot about the "Winning away" chants, mainly stemmed from the yoof particularly on the way back to the station. Very odd.
Quite. The thing about this season's Championship is that it is incredibly tight in the middle. The top 4 are away and WBA in 5th have a cushion. But 6th to 18th are only separated by 8 points. Blackburn in 18th are arguably in a false position because they seem quite decent, they have won the exact same number of games as us, but their issue is that the 7 point difference is we've drawn 9 times to their twice. To put those who are still adamant that our squad is terrible (it's not, it's just average but clearly not as good as our squad was from 2015-2020), outside of the top 4 we have the joint best number of goals scored (44 with Norwich and Plymouth), fewest defeats and joint best goal difference below 6th. We are where we are on merit and the table speaks for itself at this time of the year, we've been above average but not good enough for the play offs.
Each to their own indeed, but I just can't see how anyone can prefer to watch poor players who try hard to sumptuous players who can turn a game with a brilliant piece of skill or whatever. I'd rather see a few flashes of genius a match than 90 mins of chasing down lost causes and the like. But I appreciate I am in the minority among our fanbase (the older ones, anyway). I think it's in our clubs DNA to value hard working cloggers over flash Harry's.
Absolutely, we are clearly different in our views. I hated seeing more talented players being half arsed and not giving a damn - it isn't to me what Watford is about, and working hard/giving your all is one of my fundamentals in life. Labelling the current squad as poor seems harsh. Maybe not as talented as previous squads but certainly not poor, you don't sit in the top 30 clubs in the country with a poor squad. Your last point is only half correct though - "I think it's in our clubs DNA to value hard working cloggers over flash Harry's". They don't have to be cloggers to be valued, but they do have to work hard. Hard working talented players is the best of both worlds.
BTW some people knock him but I thought TDB did OK yesterday. He's been out, then playing FB and now back in midfield. The only trouble he has is when he receives the ball facing his own goal and gets somebody up his jacksy, then he doesn't look comfortable but he mainly managed to wriggle out of it. Moving forwards I think he does OK and I thought him, Andrews and Asprilla worked quite well together.
Poor in comparison to where we were just a couple of years ago. It's not the fact we are poor that is the problem - I know our place and that we are little Watford - but it's just how unnecessary it has been that makes it so frustrating. We had a shot at being more than little Watford and we blew it, so probably I am overly harsh on the players, it's not their fault after all When I played I was a flash harry type player, and I definitely didn't work as hard as the less skillful players as that just wasn't what I was there for. They had to work hard and do the donkey work to justify their place, that's the way I looked at it... I was basically the exact player you despise, but I understand their mentality.
Personally, I've always liked TDB. I think there's a quality player in there, but he needs an injury free run and some good coaching. I think finally he's got a good coach and he seems free from his injuries, so is having a good run. He's developing his forward game, whereas you can see he now likes to run up field with the ball. He rarely did this before, and would happily just recycle the ball and not impose his personality. So, lots of plus points, but where he's lacking, and I've noticed it a lot recently, he switches off when he should be defending. He tends to ball watch. The defensive side of the game is not natural to him, but he really needs to work on being alive at all times. Track runners etc. Virtually all players in the modern game need to defend at certain points in a match. This is his major flaw but I think good coaching will iron that out.
I agree we had a chance to kick on, frustrating that we didn't but I've seen it enough to know it is a cyclical game. Brentford and Brighton will fizzle in the same way loads of clubs before them have. Still frustrating though. I like a flair player, but I will never be able to understand not putting in maximum effort into anything - that is a mindset that is alien to me in anything, not just football. The elite players have the talent and the work rate. The most stark example is two players we had last season - Sarr didn't have the work rate, Pedro has. Pedro will have a much better career than Sarr.
To be fair I think it's a very very small number of people consitently moaning on here about the quality of the team, the volume of the moaning is just distorted through constant repetition and baiting. I think most people on this forum are pretty reasonable and realistic.
You talk about Blackburn and point to our draws versus their losses but look up the table at WBA and it is our draws against their wins that are the difference between us. The table is very tight.
How does that compare to the average position of where teams in the league concede? It could also support what I've said in the past ( and something you've agreed with) about just how important wide players cutting inside from the flank and curling the ball in to the opposite corner is as a method of scoring in the modern game. It is quite remarkable that they have basically all come from the left flank, but I'd also expect more goals from that spot given that more players on a pitch are right-footed and so there are more capable of scoring such goals from that flank; also perhaps that because left-footed players are more rare, then right-wingers might be on average of lower quality across a division than the player on the other flank.
You must have missed in recent weeks that we've had players who try hard in the likes of Kayembe, Kone and Livermore also all turn games with some brilliant skill / shooting. Okay they're doing it in the Championship and not the PL, but it's not as if we've just been winning games by playing aimless hoof-ball and then bundling it in to the net from close range.
Sadly can't view the league as a whole, but looking at the teams either side of QPR in the GA column shows a bit of a mixed bag, Hull have a group of goals conceded from the opposite side of the D, whilst Boro also have the same, albeit with few goals conceded.
Cracking win, and good to see us grinding them out despite not playing that well for most of the game. When we went 2 up though, we looked like we could run away with it and score everytime we went forward. Why did Ismael make that triple change? Just invited pressure and genuinely up there with one of the worst set of subs I've seen. Had we not won that, it would have been all on him. Hopefully he realises that and learns from it.
I think most on here understand your frustration with how Pozzo royally screwed up, but there comes a point where you have to either accept it and move on to attempting to support where we are now, or just stop bothering. I was getting close to considering the latter, but IF Pozzo shows he will continue to support VI properly within the confines of the totally avoidable 5h1tfest he's created, then my atavistic identification with WFC as an unexplainable entity will win out. That's not to say I wouldn't welcome a well-intentioned buy-out of Pozzo by someone with more resources, but I just don't see that happening.
Well of course I enjoy it when I'm in the moment at the match, but posting on here allows time to reflect on the reality of the situation and that's when the negativity creeps in. I loved it when we were an ace Premier League team. Loved it. I actually still believe that if we scraped into the playoffs and fluked promotion Pozzo would pull a load of ace Italian players out of the bag (I note udinese have some Italian striker I've never heard of) and we would go back to being ace again. I desperately do not want a return to the 90s.
Guaranteed to have cut holes in their socks to desperately look like a professional. Sorry I mean to relieve the calf pressure...
He's got to rotate the players to keep them fit, esp given the absence of Kayembe and injuries. We just can't afford to play our strongest 11 for 90 mins each game over the recent busy period, it would be asking for trouble. 2-0 up away to a bottom 3 side was probably the time to take a risk and rest some of our better players to avoid late pulls and strains.
I doubt anyone disagrees with any of this, other than the bit about pulling a load of ace Italian players out of the bag and being ace again - our last promotion suggests we've lost the ability to do that now
There may be several reasons, including hidden injuries, but I believe the chief reason is rotating the squad. It's probably a function of how thinly spread he believes our best players to be.
100% agree with this. It's what I have been saying for months but you have summed it up far better then I have been able too, thanks for posting!
I don’t know who Dave is, but he is either great or crap and we may or may not be signing him permanently
