We were the better team for most of the game. Better fans by an infinite margin. Moral victory to the Horns. Even though we lost I came away proud of the team and town. I feel sorry for Chelsea fans supporting a fake and plastic club with no soul anymore, even when they win they're sh1te.
I was going to write something about Silva's poor tactical decision making the cost us the match - then I remembered we had just been beaten away by Chelsea who brought Davide Zappacosta (€28 million plus bonuses) and Willian (£30 million) off their bench.
Just looked at the table. Only Stoke and Palarse have conceded more and they are both in the bottom three. Admittedly games against Citeh are a large part of the explanation for that.
We have 3 centre backs out injured -how much more cover do we need ?? I am not convinced that Cathcart will come back but Kaboul and Prodl are further options
I find it amazing that some "fans" are singling out certain players for criticism. we are a bloody good side and were a hair's breadth from beating Roman's money laundering mercenaries. Grow up!
So we keep up the symmetrical pattern of winning every other league games so far.. and we are all but a quarter of the way through the season now. By my calculation if we keep up our current form & points per game ratio, we will end up playing the Everton role from last season.. clearly 7th. Or rather we would have last season.. you know what i mean.
Silva was spot on with his comments made about our deadline day dealings, although I know some felt he shouldn’t have gone public with them. Our defence doesn’t seem to have received the same quality investment as other parts of the squad. We don’t seem to be able to prevent headed goals, but equally we don’t seem to be able to score them. Let’s be truthful, those were shocking misses today by Richarlison, Carillo and Kabasele. Richarlison has fast become my favourite player but that was an appalling miss to put us 3-1 up (the header, not the shot he screwed wide as we then scored just after that). We had Chelsea on the ropes today and only have ourselves to blame for losing. The ‘plucky old Hornets’ viewpoint will see us saying bad luck, we’re still doing great and let’s move on. But if we have true aspirations of really achieving something this season I think that attitude is now outdated and we should all feel gutted tonight. And annoyed. And let’s hope that annoyance will come back to bite Stoke next week.
Yup but the 5 quoted are not too shabby and compare pretty favorably to e.g. Everton (Williams, past his sell by date, Jagielka, ditto, etc). Its not a crisis in terms of CBs. I still think bringing Watson on at Stamford Bridge is of more concern.
And the latter, as I suggested earlier in the thread, raises for me the season's biggest mystery: WTF is up with Hughes?
We play with wide forwards and full backs who attack. The sacrifice is accepting we might leave gaps at the back. You can't have the attacking options going forward and keep clean sheets. Its not about the quality of individual defenders. Anyone wanting to criticise the team , defence or manager would do well to consider if they would prefer us to keep it tight at 0-0 and if they'd like Walter back.
We’ve had 10 different scorers in the league already this season. That’s in 9 matches. Doucoure is our leading scorer with 4. Those goals have come from a grand total of 4 shots on goal. A 100% strike rate!!
To be fair we have conceded 17 goals but 13 of them have come against Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea, against the lesser teams we have done reasonably well defensively.
I am certainly conflicted. Very proud of the style and spirit of our side but frustrated that we didn't finish the job. Chelsea were there for the taking.I hope the team realise they can match up favourably* with all in this league. * bar MC.
Agreed. I enjoyed today, even though we should have got more out of it. But that’s football, I’m sure we’ll win a game later on in the season without deserving it.
The way we played in the first 25 minutes of the second half reminded me of our first season in the top division under Graham Taylor 1982/3 when we took every game away to the other team and played with such enthusiasm some of the skill shown was breathtaking! Whilst we can all be disappointed not to get anything from the match points wise, we did get the satisfaction of seeing us leading the champions for 22 minutes and until injury time being right in the game! That is a marked improvement on the " can't be bothered, give up attitude" we saw for much of last season. To be disappointed to losing away at Chelsea is indeed a great sign of how far we have come!
Quote: At the Bridge, Watford completed an astonishing 403 passes and claimed 47.3% possession, these are not the stats of a team worth a 1/3 of their opponents. They were unfortunate not to take anything from the game as Richarlison missed two clear-cut chances either side of the 2-1. http://www.itsroundanditswhite.co.uk/2017/10/21/chelsea-4-2-watford-3-talking-points/
This is probably going to sound strange seeing as he has scored 3 goals already this season, but Richarlison doesn’t seem to have that cutting edge when it comes to finishing. He’s got a ridiculous amount of skill and can beat players for fun, but his finishing, be it with his foot or his head seems to be very reactionary. It’s hard to imagine him bending a peach into the corner like Pereyra can and has for example. Obviously he’s very young and is a raw talent at this stage, plenty of time to work on it.
First on MOTD, despite Huddersfield's sensational win. Constant praise on Sky. The only thing that seems real is the lack of outrage about the officials.
I was one of Watsons biggest supporters last season and love to see him in the Watford shirt. But that sub was atrocious. Watson for deeney? Defemsive mf for attacker? We had them on the ropes. We should have gone for the kill. Very un Silva like. A very odd sub and I think that was very important.
The thing I don’t understand is that the people defending him are saying things like - give him a break, he’s obviously not match fit, and he’s bound to be off the pace etc. Well that makes it even worse, obviously that’s not his fault personally, but why on earth would you bring a player like that into a finely balanced game against a top team? It doesn’t matter which player it was, bringing on a DM was a big mistake, bringing on an ageing DM who has barely played is very bizzare.
Well played today, Difficult to criticise as we did well until the 87th min. I think Pererya going off was the turning point. Putting on Capoue would have kept Chelsea occupied more but I can see Silva's thinking in using Watson. Must wipe slate clean and concentrate on Stoke.
I see a few having a go at Richarlison today. Yes, it was a bad miss from Rich, but I think it is too harsh to blame him in any way, shape or form. The fact is, he is getting in positions to score, something that no other forward seems capable of doing on a regular basis. He was a constant threat and won so many free kicks today and I think it was him that laid it on a plate for Bobby P for our 2nd - it was a cracking pass slotted through players, and if it had of been De Bruyne, the pundits would have been purring.
Yep. How many times was be fouled today? He caused alt of problems and i think without him Chelsea would have pushed on more in the first half
Absolutely whilst Rich is getting fouled and winning us free kicks, our defence is not under so much pressure and letting in goals! I personally believe the fact we have 15 points after 9 games is down mostly to two people Rich and Silva!
Dyche making similar observations in his game against City, as did Deeney on TV last Saturday night. Undoubtedly a systemic bias in favour of big 6.
We didn't have them on the ropes at that point. Chelsea were already asserting themselves and were starting to threaten. Clearly Silva was trying to stamp more authority on midfield, but it didn't work. Not sure what would have been the better sub still.
Yes it was great to see how he didn’t let the first bad miss affect him. I thought, bar his finishing, he had a good game. I thought it would be written in the stars he’d score today after we all feared he’d be suspended and he certainly had his chances. Any criticism of him on my posts was purely for the finishing. He certainly doesn’t let anything get to him and now has 3 goals and 4 assists for the campaign, a great return already. Scorer and provider. Re Watson, Silva trains the team all week. He doesn’t stand on the touch line drawing substitutes names out of a hat. He must have seen something during the week to suggest that Ben was the right player to come on, once he’d seen enough of Chelsea’s attacking threat to decide a point would be a decent outcome. It just felt so horribly negative though coming as it did after a wonderfully attacking first 75 minutes, plus the last three matches where we had kept attacking with great success to the death. For me one of the best things of this great season so far has been we have never ‘parked the bus’, to use that awful expression. Ok so it’s meant we’ve conceded quite a few goals along the way, but equally we’ve only had two blanks this season, one against the best side in the league and the other with ten men. We’ve scored in all of our away matches. Though I’m fed up tonight I’m sure in time my memory of today will be that period between the start of the second half and their equaliser when frankly I thought we played them off the park. Two defeats only this season, to the runaway leaders and the defending champions. Both Champions League sides (unbeaten ones in that competition actually).
I’m glad this is being highlighted by others. These teams are so strong, they do not need extra favours. Again watching this game, it was clear Moss was not being fair and impartial with his decisions. It’s a concern because it makes games farcical. It’s impossible to play Chelsea and the ref, but this is what we have to do. Somebody has to make a stand against this behaviour as it’s ruining the integrity of the game.
