I don't think he thought it was a genuine attempt to play the ball, I mean he couldn't. I think he was so caught up on the moment of giving the penalty that he forgot the rules. I imagine the same thing happened with Kabasele decision and that's probably worse.
What an absoloute ****, the pundits commentating live were full of praise for how tight and organised Watford were and how good they had been at neutralising the Man City threat Couldn’t agree more with your comments teams like Watford / Bournemouth are only in the PL for the entertainment of the top 6 sides, so even though we can’t compete with a team worth we’ll over £1bn We should have the decency to set ourselves up in way that let’s Man City look amazing and score 10 goals
I was more thinking about the manner of the defeat as opposed to the defeat itself. Certainly a team with ambitions of constant top 10 finishes will need to take more points off the top 6 teams. Will be interesting to see how Wolves get on today. Chelsea are certainly a notch below Liverpool and Man City but can’t see Wolves getting battered and can actually see them nicking a point. Do any of us have such confidence that we are capable of the same at the moment? But before this comes across a bit too negative, especially in our current position, we were doing pretty well yesterday before that decision which clearly did have a significant impact. This is a learning curve. Hopefully we’ll handle this better next season.
I don't have too much problem for being criticised for the way we approached the game. I think it came about because of the Liverpool result. We just cannot go toe-to-toe with these clubs. They have massive wealth and can accumulate as many great players as they like. A club like Watford has to do something different. If we play an open game, then we lose 5-0 or 6-0, then we get criticised for being flaky, or a "bag of Revels". Someone like Schmeichel only wants to watch elite football. There are many pundits like this who do not appreciate all aspects of the game. They want to see the top six and European football only. This is why you'll always get disparaging remarks. He's probably still upset that his son had a poor match against us last week, so you have to also take that into consideration.
I've been trying to work out why we perform so badly against top six sides. We look at the fixture and know it will be a defeat and that's quite damaging. We are only playing a 26 match season with 12 defeats already accounted for. It puts a lot of pressure on getting results in all the other matches and is something that we need to address in future seasons. I think the main reason why we struggle is because we lack technical quality and this is exposed when we pit ourselves up against the very best teams. Other sides, apart from the very worst teams, do have higher calibre players than us, so when they play better sides they are able to compete better. We are very good at competing with the rest of the division but cannot raise ourselves against the elite. It does surprise me that other teams have less trouble than we do, but it's the only reason I can think of as to why we struggle so much, yet other sides are able to do well. I think we play a lot of our games to the maximum of our potential, but we do not have another gear to go up into, whereas other sides, often play below their ability, but can raise their game against the best on occasions.
This is something we need to work on in the future. As I suspected, even Capoue has admitted we lost focus after the first goal. We cannot allow a bad decision to totally affect us like this. Captain for the day Étienne Capoue was honest in his assessment of yesterday evening's game, cutting to the quick with the controversy surrounding the first goal. The Hornets had held Manchester City to a goalless first half, but Raheem Sterling's opener had everyone baffled after the referee, Paul Tierney, overruled his assistant and gave the goal even though the England forward was clearly offside. “We worked so hard in the first half, and we wanted to do the same in the second, but the referee made a wrong decision and killed us,” said Capoue. “We concede another goal straight after because our minds were still on the first goal because it was very obvious it was offside, but the referee changed his mind. “We tried to push and we changed the guys up front and they made a difference but it was very hard today against this big team.” https://www.watfordfc.com/teams/first-team/capoue-we-worked-so-hard
Agree with you that our performance was resolute, but personally if you look at the stats feel it's clutching at straws & unfounded to say we might have held out for a point. Especially as there was 45 mins left to play after that decision. They had 9 shots on target to our 1. Like it or not they deserved the 3 points.
I don't know - there was an interview with him talking about how proud of Kasper he was following the Leicester owner tragedy.
Actually the double jeopardy rule is only for fouls deemed accidental, deliberate fouls still incur a red card. There's no way Pickfords rugby tackle could be deemed as accidental as he was nowhere near the ball. A stonewall red card and doesn't even get booked for it.
Thing is, you might be right, you might not - you can't prove it either way. Goals change games. The least we should be entitled to is that obviously illegitimate goals are not awarded, so that we at least have the chance to find out whether we will be battered, fair and square by a team assembled for about 20x the budget of ours.
Incidentally, my first reaction on shoutbox was to think Tierney was right. I was wrong. So was he. Mea culpa
Another big mistake by our ***** officials, it may or may not of cost us but by Javi's reaction at the time and Capoue's comments after it certainly changed the game. I think Javi's plan was to hold out for 70 mins then chuck Troy and Del Boy on and go for it. We will never know all because the ref doesn't want to be on the back pages as the one that made the wrong call and cost citeh the title. These officials need punished. Maybe the officials should have their own massive league table, that we can all see. They get points awarded for performance and who's in the top 10 gets the following weeks prem fixtures.
https://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/threads/watford-h-post-match-thread.339310/ A bunch of deluded odious degenerates. If we could spend upwards of £1.5 billion pounds perhaps we could come out to play on a level playing field. Where were Manchester City before the petrodollars ? Nowhere. Another sleeping giant apparently. It might cheer up these chinless wonders that it would still take them another four decades of winning everything in sight before they can even come close to matching the efforts of their neighbours in Manchester or their current arch rivals on Merseyside. These morons like Schmeichel who expect us to come out and play attacking football need to look hard at themselves. For them football might be just entertainment now but for us it's a serious business. At least we are not owned by another set of individuals who come from a country where freedom of expression is limited and where human rights are continually abused.
What a bunch of *****. They seem to have Manure levels of arrogance already, despite being nowhere near as successful. Embarrassing.
I am out of the country and just catching up. Can I ask those who watched the game how did the players coming into the team perform. Was Britos and Kabasele a competent pairing or should we accept that they are definately second choice to Cathcart and Mariappa. Is there any hope for Massina as a replacement for Holebas. Is Cleverley going to step into Doucoures shoes when he leaves in the summer?
Only my opinions but CB pair both did well, with occasional slip ups but no better or worse than marriapa. I’d argue Cathcart number one based on consistency with the other 3 on par. Massina did well first half, but overrun second, but then that’s fair enough based on how the second half panned out. Better than how he performed at Liverpool but nowhere near replacing holebas. No one is going to fill Doucouré shoes if he leaves. It was noticeable, even with him performing below last seasons standards, how much we miss him when he was out. But cleverly works hard and when he gets a run of games is your 7 out of 10 man, a bit like a midfield version of Cathcart.
A fair assessment. I think we need a new formation next season if we lose Doucoure. The current setup never works when he is missing as the other midfielders aren’t dynamic enough.
They were insufferable when they came to the Vic. It’s clearly a Manchester thing. Arrogance clearly as a coping mechanism of living in Manchester. Spreads beyond football as the Gallagher brothers so ably demonstrate.
I don't really understand why we are so bad against the top 6. Maybe we are too positive and optimistic and should play more defensively like we did yesterday. The flip side is that we are doing really well against all the other teams. Itd be interesting to compare our record against the top 6 to other teams.
Defensively we’re not great and, more significantly, we are not that great at counter attacking. Wolves caught Chelsea and broke with accuracy and pace. They had threatened a couple of times before scoring. Not sure we pose as much as a threat from that position. There are signs with Deeney and Deulofeu but actually feel Deeney and Gray would be a better bet for this with Deulofeu out wide.
Hang on, the final stats are irrelevant. How many shots on target did they have before the goal? One maybe from Aguero from a tight angle that was straight at Foster? Apart from Aguero's header wide and Mahrez's shot from the edge of the area, they created nothing as our game plan was working perfectly. That's why it is so annoying, with a bit of luck we could've got a point as we were defending so, so well.
As far as I'm concerned, if we're going to lose away, I'd rather we entered the last 10 minutes knowing that we're going to lose and not hanging on for a "fortunate" draw. I hate that feeling of agony and anger that erupts in me when we throw away a point or two in the last ten minutes or in added time. We all know that we're not great at hanging on for draws away from home (one or two games perhaps excepted). I have never held the view that because we are drawing with 20, 10 or even 5 minutes to go, we are going to get that point. Invariably, as soon as I start believing we'll get a good result, we ship a goal. Perhaps after all these years, I am just a defeatist.
