Wtf was Connolly doing making a goal-saving header from the corner right at the end? I hope he improves and doesn't get into a habit of doing that every game.
3 Things 1) Heurelho Gomes, his celebration after we scored the first. Scenes. 2) Craig Cathcarts Back-heel in the first half to stop Russell running through. 3) That boy Nick Cruwys. He's one of our own. Proud to be associated with this football club.
Wow, my heart is slowly returning to normal. The amount of times I hear the opposition 'were due a bit of luck'. Well against the top teams we get NOTHING. Blatant penalty, but never a red in a million years. Some ridiculous yellows, with the Deeney one for being climbed on the highlight of the bunch. Every criticism since the Pozzos took over has focussed around a lack of desire and heart, and an unwillingness to put bodies on the line. We have answered that. Adlene is just a star. I cannot say how brilliant that second half performance was. With such gratitude to get the point, we shouldn't forget that we got the best out of a terrible situation. We are now exhausted and have to take on the league leaders. We really need 3 points if we want automatic promotion. The return of Abdi and Fessi is desperately needed. This is a throw everything at it, must win game. But in such a crazy season, we must believe we can do it.
1) agree. Gomes is awesome. Put in a great shift all night. Love 'im. 2) agree. Cathcart's backheel was top drawer. A good player with signs of greatness. 3) agree. Nic Cruwys is one of our own. Get well soon, you are not forgotten. We sang your song before the final whistle and it helped the team over the line. #fornicforpromotion
Just back from the game, and haven't had the benefit of replays so excuse any inaccuracies. Was also quite low down in the stand, so didn't have the best view. I thought Gomes was absolutely fantastic tonight - I think he was at Tottenham at the same time as Darren Bent, and I like to think that helped him make a couple of excellent stops from him. Great from crosses, a couple of reflex saves, generally excellent. I didn't even think it was a penalty at the time, looked like Motta got the ball. Seems like pretty much everyone disagrees, though, so I'm sure I'll see it differently after looking at a replay. I'd definitely be appealing the red - hopefully they would suspend it so he would be available for Boro but miss Millwall. The ref was very card-happy with Watford players; it started early, with a terrible Watson challenge, but some of them were ridiculous. I thought he'd given us a free kick when Deeney was booked! Thought Ighalo still looked a little rusty, glad to see him get a goal though, hopefully it can start another run. Layun was very quiet, but I wouldn't say be was particularly bad - I think a lot of people think he's doing worse than he is, purely because we were expecting so much from him. Certainly doesn't add a huge amount at the moment though - Anya on the left and Motta on the right as first choice, for me. Hopefully for Boro, though, we see either Pudil or Layun on the left (probably Pudil, as Layun played today) and Anya on the right. I think having Paredes on the pitch would have been a little too much for my heart to handle. Great second half from Guedioura, the ball to Ighalo was spot on. Thought he was a bit sloppy in the first half, but he more than made up for that in the second half. Unusual starting Deeney, Vydra and Ighalo together given that we didn't have a striker on the bench, but two of them scored and Deeney played fairly well so can't really criticise that too much. Watson wasn't great, rash in the tackle and misplaced a few passes. Could we regret extending his contract so early if we go up? We'll see. I actually thought Angella had a decent game - he and Cathcart both let players behind them once or twice, but were pretty solid defensively. Support was excellent for pretty much the whole game - one of few matches where we've been loud even after going behind. Derby's 'Watford are sh*t' was the epitome of originality and sophisticated humour, so congrats to them for that. Overall, it's definitely got to be seen as a point gained given the circumstances. If we were going to get 4 points from these two games, it had to be this one which we dropped points in. A win vs Boro is absolutely crucial if we're to go up automatically, I think.
Not even worth discussing at this stage of the season. It's just something we have to accept will happen the majority of the time and another factor that we need to play against. Massively proud of the team as a whole tonight. Special mentions for Vydra for being such a hero in the first half and Guedioura. Gomes showed why he was such a key player for Spurs in their Champions League campaign a few years ago. I don't think most of our fans realise how lucky we are to have this man play for our club. Being robbed of the three points today makes the Boro game even bigger. I hope I'm wrong but I can't see having to play 45 minutes away from home with 10 men whilst being the late kick off on the Friday and the early kick off on the Monday doing us any favours. The team are simply going to have to dig even deeper and show even more character to do it. If we do go up this season it will be an absolutely phenomenal achievement when you take into account the amount of s**t we've had to push uphill all season. Call me crazy but I still think we'll do it, even with all that's gone against us.
Friend was very chummy with some of the Derby players though, ex-Premier League player Ryan Shotton in particular.
Only recently back and not seen the highlights. We always get **** refs. He seemed totally blind to anything Derby did and got the red card completely wrong. The quality of our football when it was 10 v 12 was fantastic. You could sense the self belief in our players, even at 2-1. Derby's crowd lost a ******* when we got it back to 2-2 and you sense they think their season is stuttering to an end. AG just oozes quality. His touch, tackling, positioning, close control, vision and passing were all superb tonight - what a player. Pointless being critical of anyone after a tough game like this. Boro on Monday will, I feel, define the remainder of our season - we must stay in the leading pack.
There's no Watford conspiracy, just a bucket load of crap decisions we have to contend with against the top sides in the "big" games. Norwich home and away was influenced by poor decisions against us, Bournemouth away was one of the most blatantly bias performances toward the home side I have ever witnessed in my life, and yesterday another terrible decision went against us. The only difference, was yesterday we got a point. When Derby went 2-1 up, there is no way we should have taken a point from that position, but we did. This fills me with confidence for the remainder of the season. I'm going to write to the FL, should we still be in the Championship next season, and ask if they could deduct 10 points at the start of the season, just so we can get the crap out of the way up front.
We played heroically in spite of the bloody ref.......Guedioura was immense and the team managed to eek out an impressive point, they can be really proud of their performance last night, play like that and we can beat ANYONE in this league, including Boro.
I was watching at home, and I have to say, the Watford fans were immense, all I could hear was a wall of noise from them for the majority of the match - and the Nic Cruwys song towards the end was loudest of all. Brilliant. In other news, Tom Ince is a...well you all know what I'm going to say. Ridiculous wearing gloves, and his ridiculous dad, I mean, who gives themselves a nickname? The Guv'nor, what a tool!
Just a fabulous game of football. That's why we all love it so much. So many twists and turns, so many talking points. My thoughts, for what they're worth. After a slow start (you'd have expected Derby to come all guns blazing anyway) I thought we played 40 minutes of some of the best, most controlled football I've seen from us in a big match this season. Great to watch. Then came our usual kamikaze moment. We've almost come to expect them. Whatever the moans over the harshness of the red, the fault was totally ours for putting ourselves in a position where a decision had to be made. We carelessly lost possession in midfield and Motta's tackle was crazy (thought he'd been playing quite well up til then but we had been warned about his discipline when he joined us). Berate Friend all you wish, but we only had ourselves to blame. 2 mins til the break, keep possession, keep our discipline and we go in with a lead. Terrific backs to the wall second half, showing great spirit and tenacity. Great to see that. Joka handled things well (I'd have kept Vydra on and removed Ighalo, so it shows what I know!!). Quite rightly, Guediorla got man of the match, but how immense was Gomes? He's close to my vote for Player of the Season actually (as it's hard to split Ig and Deeney). So 3 points became 1 point became 0 points became 1 very good point. What a match! I feel now to get top 2 we HAVE to win on Monday. If we're not too knackered and if we play like we did last night, bar the kamikaze moments, I feel we can produce the big performance against a top side we all crave, and go top for a few hours! I feel anything less than a win and it'll be hard to catch Norwich and Bmouth with just 5 games to come.
In respect of the 2 Angella "penalties" I was far more worried about the one where his arms were wrapped round Ince than the "handball". The ball was travelling fast and he withdrew his arm as much and as fast as he could. At they speed the only way to avoid it striking the arm would have involved amputation prior to the game! The cuddling incident was stupid defending. The actual penalty definitely was and we'd have been screaming for a red if it was the other way round. Given the refs position (which wasn't great all game) he obviously had no doubt. Most of us only had real doubt after 3 replays from other angles, which the ref doesn't have the luxury of.
Great points Malteser, totally agree, i also think we will have to win against Boro (certainly not lose) on Monday to keep our automatic hopes alive.
We would have won that with 11 men. You could tell Derby were a team who knew they blew it, their players and fans completely melted on multiple occasions. Absolutely fantastic point for us, I believe we can smash boro on Monday they're not THAT good after seeing them play a few times this season. People are slating Watson and sometimes he was sloppy but I also remember many occasions where he made good interceptions and tackles so its important not to discount that.
I said after Norwich scored their penalty that I wasn't too worried because we were finally looking like a team that wins in spite of refs. Obviously we know how that turned out. The spirit is immense for us. A loss last night would have been mentally devastating. Obviously you take the points but I bet that draw from the position we were in is more of a morale boost than an actual win would have been. We're going to do this. We've had enough. We could play: Angella Cathcart Hoban Paredes Toszer Abdi Munari Pudil (or Anya) Vydra (if fit, or FF) Deeney (or Ighalo) That's a prety fresh team despite playing 50 minutes with 10 men.
Watson does the dirty stuff so everyone else can play, no one appreciated Hogg either - until he left
Yeah, I know that, but he's not hopeless. Just not outstanding. We need to use all of our squad strength, especially over this weekend. He is a useful player, though not a nailed on starter every week. Joka had benched him and subbed him, so he's using him appropriately.
I appreciate him, but he has to do that dirty stuff without gifting the ball to the opposition in dangerous areas, like he did last night, to costly effect.
Yes, that ball he gave to Ince could have cost us dear, and he got mugged for the ball through for the pen
We're a Championship club (for a few more weeks at least hopefully!)...so we've got a fair proportion of players who are decent, but not quite 100% consistent enough yet to be real Premier League quality. I'd put Watson in that catagory. I like him and think he's been a good signing..just what we needed. But he makes the occasional mistake, as he did for the penalty. If he never made mistakes, we'd probably not have been able to have signed him. Our job is obviously to get him, and others, playing to as near 100% consistency as possible. Our achilles heel over the last few seasons has been our propensity for a kamikaze moment everytime you finally feel things are going well. How many times have we been dominating games only to have a total numbskull moment at the back? Even puting aside the argument that some of the decisions against us have been bad, we still have a defence that you can't feel fully confident in. We were playing so well last night until our kamikaze moment struck, and only Gomes kept us in the match at times in the second half. Get over that tendancy and will be be the REAL deal. Until we do, we'll still have moments like the penalty at Wembley, the careless giving away of possession so early on at Bmouth that led to the (unjust) red card, the lost point against Ipswich that may yet be so vital, and last night. Not a negative post btw as there were so many good things last night, not least our character and tenacity.
I've just watched the highlights, and I can quite easily see why Motta was sent off. It was a clear goal scoring opportunity and he went in incredibly rashly. Desperate (rather than stupid) defending, and I really can't blame the ref for deciding on a red. But for all those yellow tinted specs wearers who don't see what I do, at least you can console yourselves knowing that Derby fans are equally (if not more) pi$$ed off with the refereeing performance. They seem to think that Watson should have been sent off and that there were a few other cast iron penalties that we got away with.
a few random stats... Last night was the 20th consecutive time this season we've scored the first goal and not lost the match. (probably our biggest test of that statistic too!) We've now scored 2 or more goals in each of our last 6 away matches. Impressive eh, when you recall the dark days of away matches last season! In 2015 Ighalo has never gone more than one match without a goal. If he ever has a blank, he always scores the next match. Consistency. Connolly became our 31st different player of the season, and our 13th debutant of the campaign. By coincidence, he's now featured in 2 matches at Derby this season and both were 2-2 draws. Motta was our 7th sending off of the season. In my facts posted yesterday morning, I made a mistake and said we'd only won once at Derby since 2000. Sorry. Thanks to the poster who reminded me we'd won there under AB too. My mistake.
Great performance by the lads and the fans. My voice gone completely.Would have taken a draw before match but in the circumstances feels like a win. From where i was it looked like a pen but red harsh. Didn't get the Deeney booking it looked like our free kick as their player jumped at/over him and TD just had the strength to plough on and not go over. If we beat boro (MUST WIN) I think we can lose 1 of the remaining games and have to win the rest for auto. The players believe, the fans believe, I believe. COYH!
Its a red card that may not have been given. Motts is clearly last man, if russels touch is half decent theres no discussion. I'd expect red if it was ighalo getting scythed by forsyth. On to the game, great point if we win on Mon.
Deeney was looking at the man not the ball and simply positioned himself to block him. Maybe a harsh yellow, but was a foul.
Please forgive this slightly cruel comment but am I the only person that thought Mrs Inch was a drag act?
This is no word of a lie. When I found out last Wednesday,Kevin Friend was ref for the match last night, I wrote a sarcastic letter to the football league. I wrote in the email that Friend would either award Derby a penalty or send one of our players off, or both! Yes, it was a clear pen but never a sending off. The controversial sendings off are becoming ridiculous . I hope the football league have taken note of my email now. BTW. AG Vydra Deeney Gomes and Cathcart were immense last night as were our support. COYH
Ha ha! Probably over complimentary there! I always refer to them as Inch Major and Minor. Although b***s would be quicker.
