We played a stronger team in the friendlies. That was no more a competitive game than they were. You were bleating on about the hypocrisy of people’s views on friendlies, yet for some reason you hold a Tuesday night game away to Newport in the Carabo cup as the pinnacle of sporting achievement. Odd.
I don’t really see the relevance of what other sides are doing. Nor is it about us being ‘different’. I think the line up and performance tonight reflects where we’re at right now. It’s a pretty abysmal situation to be in but it’s also obvious if you apply common sense there’s no quick way out of it. We all pretty much agree it’s a result of some really poor decision making over the last couple of seasons - maybe some us more with hindsight than others - and I don’t see any magic wand solution to make it all go away overnight. There are going to be more nights like this for a while to come yet. I still think right here, right now, the best thing for us is to be out of the cup. I completely agree with this bit though.
It's literally like talking to a brick wall, not just you, the majority of this forum. How much more clearly can I say things? It's not about being out of the cup. It's not even about the result. It's about the fact that we have a squad of subpar players who are clearly nowhere near good enough for this absolute bulls**t the club has tried to spin about challenging for the league.
Seriously, you can’t say that about the Pozzos. It’s sacrilege and you risk getting banned from any social media. They are our saviours, look where we’d be without them blah, blah blah.
Dawson on the club web page tonight....”We will learn from our mistakes”..... Now where have I heard or seen that before.....
Nothing to do with it not being "real football" - and who even said that it wasn't "real football"? It's just pretty pointless, worthless football. What does that have to do with a crappy league cup match which none of our top players would have played in anyway if fit? Also, I think the vast, vast majority of us on here have already recognised that Murray is 5hite and Pussetto is horrendous, so you're doing a lot of arguing with a strawman here. Even the happiest of your made-up fantasy "happy clappers" wouldn't be happy-clappy enough to say those two are both good enough. None of those who started today would be starting on Saturday, with the possible exceptions of Garner and sadly now Murray because of Perica's red (if no one else is back). Really, you're just having to invent a caricature of loads on this forum being "happy clappers", despite most taking a fairly balanced view at times, to try and justify the fact that you see everything as 100% negative.
Yet if we get another few cases of illness in the squad, some of these players who would only ever play in a 'meaningless' game would be thrust into games that matter. I'm sure there's a ready made excuse for that as well.
Who from tonight's XI is likely to play more than 10 games this season? Dawson, Garner, and maybe Murray if he doesn't have to self-isolate through being in a vulnerable category when the second wave comes along. The rest of the team were squad filler and youth players. We have Masina, Janmaat, Hughes, Femenia, Gray, Dele-Bashiru to come back from injury to boost the depth of the squad. Along with (fingers crossed) Sarr, Suarez, Capoue, although they may be linked away, nothing solid seems to be materialising just yet. Add to that we do seem to be looking to add another CB or two, and a LWB, and maybe another midfielder. And as lowerrous rightly mentioned, this cup means **** all. It's proved to be nothing more than an unwanted distraction and has lead to one of our few capable strikers being suspended. This could be the most jam-packed season ever with 2 league games most weeks, what we don't need is unnecessary trips to Wales/Newcastle etc, distracting Ivic and the team from a hugely important Championship season. 12/13 we got to the play-off final but we lost at home to Bradford in the LC 13/14 we flopped and came mid table we beat Bournemouth comfortably and then went out in the 3rd round to Norwich. 14/15 we went up we lost at home to Doncaster. 15/16 finished 13th in PL but went out to Preston. 16/17 stayed up (17th) but lost to Gillingham at home. 17/18 stayed up again (14th) but lost to Bristol City at home. 18/19 finished 11th but went out to Spurs in 3rd round. 19/20 relegated dismally but beat Coventry and Swansea and reached the 4th round. As you can see, no correlation, negative or positive. If we lose against Luton and there's no sign of Sarr or Suarez I'll be right there wetting my bed alongside you, don't worry about that. But if you're reading anything at all into this glorified friendly game (in the context of this season), you're wasting your time, imo. Ivic clearly feels the same judging by his line up. Not arsed.
Yeah, we should’ve taken the game seriously And fielded the strongest possible team in case some of the first team get Covid.
Am I the only person here that understands the concept of a squad? We have a squad of players who aren't good enough. We've looked poor in our opening two games with our "better players" and the players who should be challenging them/will have to step in for them at times are clearly absolutely awful. Again, it's not about the cup, it's about the fact that it again highlights how woefully short this squad is of being good enough to achieve the clubs supposed goals. You can point out that people are now turning on Murray, but let's not pretend there weren't a number of our fans across here and all of social media mindlessly rimming Pozzo over what an astute signing he is with all his Championship experience bla bla bla only a couple of weeks ago.
The concept of a squad has become conveniently lost on the usual suspects. It's easy to just dismiss it as "omg these player's won't even play!". Standard.
I think tonight is a matter of perception. If things were rosy and we were smashing the league early doors and enjoying seeing the likes of Sarr and Suarez and Capoue etc, most of us would probably laugh away tonight. It’s only the cup, the league’s all that counts etc. However...things don’t look so rosy, early days but so far in the league we look efficient but relatively toothless, the window has so far brought us strikers who can’t score and defenders who can’t defend, and worst of all we aren’t seeing many of our best assets and aren’t always being told the truth as to why not. So defeat tonight adds to the general air of malaise and many will feel it badly. String together three league wins in a row and finally see Sarr and a few others back on the pitch and none of us will remember tonight’s result. Lose the next few and continue to field a lesser eleven than we could be able to, and tonight assumes more significance. I’m not trying to put a positive spin tonight, because believe me I’m fed up with that showing. As a supporter of over 40 years I never watch us take to the field and think that I’m not bothered about the result. I want us to win every match we compete in. Tonight was awful. We can only now wait to see whether it was an inconsequential loss or the start of something worse. For my sins I was one who thought Murray would be a useful experienced addition, but I concede that so far he’s been awful. He could still change things of course, but it’s not been a good start.
I take your points and accept them. But broadly we will agree to disagree politely at this point. Let’s hope our viewpoints align sooner rather than later!
Sure, but a lot of that seemed reasonable given that he'd been playing at a high level until not so long ago. I don't think any of us could have reasonably foreseen the full extent of his decline as a player. I don't think any of us could even envisage a striker who has become less mobile than Deeney. I also would not be surprised if the extent and rapidity of Murray's decline has even come as a surprise to the club. Based on Ivic's comments post-match vs Wednesday and pre-match today about us lacking movement up front until the 50th minute (basically until Murray went off), I don't think he is very happy with Murray as an option at all and I reckon he'll be letting the club know. We haven't looked great in our opening two games, though still have 4 points. Many of our squad options also aren't great, but the transfer window isn't finished yet, and most the outgoings will be players who haven't even featured at all, and we should still get a few more players on top of those who have featured so far. A final thing to note, it's still very early in the season and many of the players still haven't been back in training for that long. Also, many will not have been able to have had the chance to train together as a group either. The large list of players training away from the group and the still open transfer window will also be unwelcome distractions. If the team still seems as disjointed, and the squad still as shallow, once the window is closed, then the concern will be a bit more justified. At the moment it seems panicky over-reacting.
How can you "disagree" with the evident lack of relationship between league cup performance and league performance? The details are literally listed right there.
Well saying that was dire is being polite. It's probably a saving grace that fans aren't allowed to travel.
And he said more than just listing the results in his post did he not? So I said we will ‘broadly’ agree to disagree. When we have lost in the cup in previous seasons, the squad and club hasn’t been in nearly as much of a mess as it is right now. Excuse me for looking a bit deeper. I have no desire to argue with you so wasting your time trying to start something.
I don't think you could put it more simply. You have made your points very clearly. Repeatedly. I doubt there is anybody on this forum who misunderstands your views. But they are simplistic views and there are plenty of people who think there is more to it than that. There are shades, as well as black and white, and there are plots and sub-plots running through this story. There are other things to discuss and other ways of looking at things. I'm not sure you are at your most persuasive when you effectively insult anybody who doesn't want to run with your line of thought. The superiority-complex-like and relentlessly angry strain to your numerous posts is probably considered by many on here, (including me), to be getting rather tiresome.
"I take your points and accept them. But broadly we will agree to disagree" That reads as you are disagreeing with his points.
Yes, I'm the one with simplistic views, as opposed to the mountains of people simply saying "the cup doesn't even matter!" and conveniently writing things off as if they don't exist. I'll continue to make the same points over and over when I have people replying to me who are either unable to or who purposely go out of their way to fail to comprehend my supposed "simplistic" views and when the club continues to be run in such a shambolic way. Let's also not pretend it's Nath against the world. I am far from the only one that holds the opinions that I do and who frequently airs them. It's a forum.
Every year we get knocked out of the Tin Pot Cup by some Tin Pot team, and every year without exception there is a meltdown about it . And looking through the previous years threads its generally the same people having a meltdown, followed by someone saying “ Every year we get knocked out of the Tin Pot Cup .....etc “ Repeat ad infinitum and then die . All you can do is try and find some joy and happiness in between .
https://www.watfordfc.com/news/dawson-well-learn-from-our-mistakes "We'll learn from our mistakes"........aaaagghhh. Where have I heard that line before??......oh yes, after nearly all our games last season.
By buying a Carabao energy drink? Not sure how the feelings this cup competition inspires as a Watford fan would ever push me towards consuming their product.
The only thing I took out of that game was how well Agyakwa did with the ball at his feet as the spare man in the defensive three in the 1st-half. He looked a different player to the one who hid against Oxford so I'm encouraged by that. Hungbo looked confused as to where his starting position should be from every re-start and didn't link up with Stevenson at all offensively or defensively. In fact I noticed he was still asking Murray what looked like tactical questions as the teams lined up before kick-off. Very poor. Phillips & Sinclair linked up well a couple of times in the 1st-half but the former has got to learn, and learn quickly, to not get caught dallying with the ball when in front of the defence. That was horrendous for their 3rd goal and it's made worse because he did exactly the same against Gillingham(?) in one of the U23 pre-season games. On the plus side he continued to play despite his clanger and generally did okay without taking the game away from Newport in any way. And no leg-breaking tackles tonight so I think he's beginning to settle to the faster pace of first team football. Garner faded badly and after looking spritely & eager early on, was unable to make simple 10 yard passes in the 2nd-half. For someone who came with so many plaudits I was underwhelmed by his first start for us. I'm sure it will have been said many times already but Dawson's passing and Murray's failure to control the ball were two of the main reasons we were having to defend for long periods in the 1st-half. Absolutely dire, the pair of them. Sierralta was okay and is another player we have who needs to play games after barely playing in the last year or so. The only problem now is when does he get to play to get any kind of match sharpness? My main concern is how naive we've looked as a team in all of the games so far. Newport, like Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, worked the referee well and bought free-kicks in the right areas. We play with next to no game awareness whatsoever and that has got to change almost as fast as Ivic needing to find partnerships throughout the side in the next half a dozen games or so.
That’s an excellent point actually. We give away far too many nothing free kicks, almost willingly walking into obvious traps. It’s so frustrating.
This is a copy and paste response to HB1 in another thread, but feel it's more relevant here. So by that reasoning, getting a win in the league cup would lead to more wins, right? Like last season, when we beat Coventry 3-0 then we... *checks notes* lost 8-0 2 games later. Or when we beat Swansea then we *checks notes* didn't win in our next 6 games. Or, to be fair, let's go back to the Championship, in the promotion season. We beat Stevenage in the League Cup then we...lost 3-0 to Norwich next game. Then we lost to Doncaster in the next round. Presumably that loss started a horrible spiral of bad form? Nope, we lost just once in the following 11 games. Almost like League Cup results mean **** all.
Very true. I'd say that's a result of our younger squad, but the worst culprit seems to be OAP Murray!
So when I said we can agree to disagree, you decided that we couldn’t? Yet it’s Nath that’s accused of hammering home a point to try and make others agree with him.
I'm not bothered if you agree with me or not, and you can disagree with facts until the cows come home!
