I’d genuinely play 5-3-2 against Stoke. And with the wide players in defence still being full-backs, not wing-backs. Keep it tight and packed at the back. Drop Richarlison and Carrillo. Midfield of Doucoure, Pereyra and Cleverley with Deeney and Gray up front. Make ourselves hard to beat, difficult to get round down the sides and play on the break. Have two pacy players to bring off the bench when the leg work has been done and the game gets stretched. Edit: At the moment too, happy for Pereyra to come out for Capoue in that line-up. Is that the best line-up available? No. Is it the formation we want to see? No. But I feel it would be our best way of getting a point or 3 if we aren’t getting players back from injury or signing anyone.
Its the first time since March 2005 that I have felt that we will get relegated. It's not that we we looked out of our depth against Leicester, but I just can't see where a run of form will come from to get the 4 or 5 wins required from the remaining 14 games. All I can see that Silva has done is cancel his Dry cleaning contract with the move to wearing a tracksuit on the touch line. He looks more dejected and lacklustre than Richarlison. The team look flat. Plenty try hard but are either full of mistakes or aren't good enough. Its a shame, but unless something very drastic happens, we will be in the bottom six before pancake day and probably bottom three by Easter.
As always - huge respect for all those that made the journey today. I don't think anybody really expected us to get a win. Maybe a point if we were lucky.......... In isolation - a 2 nil defeat to Leicester away from home isn't a terrible result. They'll likely end up finishing top 8 so it's certainly not a fixture where you'd expect 3 points. But when you consider it's now only one win in eleven - of which nine are defeats - it makes the fact we've come away empty handed again so much worse. Performance-wise, it wasn't terrible. But as everybody has noticed, we're lacking quality in areas all over the pitch. Had Giraldi stated we are extremely happy with our best eleven, I think we'd all have agreed with him. But I refuse to believe they're being totally honest with us when they say the whole squad. It does seem as though it's a riposte from the board aimed at the coach. It can only be a combination of the bizarre anomaly of still being tenth in the table, and not having somebody lined up to take over that has prevented Silva from being replaced. Having spent £50m + in the summer, I'd imagine Gino is seething seeing the team hurtle towards the drop zone. We're in a relegation battle, regardless of what the table amazingly still says. That Huddersfield stat posted above really hits home how poor we've been. Fair play to Karnezis though. I feared the worst when I saw he was playing; maybe he's better than we thought? Hopefully he's doing a reverse Zeegelaar/Paredes - instead of being brilliant on debut and then turning to cack, he's going for the lesser known cack on debut before turning brilliant! I suspect Gino is looking for Marco's replacement as we speak. The refusal to sign anybody whilst we're in free-fall and have the most absurd amount of injuries ever (another today, of course) speaks volumes. They need to get somebody else in asap. And yes - I believe somebody else (has to be the right man obviously) can make a better defensive job of the players we have available. They'll never be world beaters, but we only need to get 3 wins and a few draws out of them. I cannot see Silva achieving even that. Does anyone think we'll beat Southampton and Stoke?? Sadly, the days of posting incredible pictures from our magnificent wins are now a thing of the past. Instead, I'm left with sarcy images and gifs.....
It is starting to feel quite like our 99/00 and 06/07 Premier League seasons. Back then I was never quite sure of when or where our next win was going to come from.
Re Remember at the end of the 04/05 season most of us were certain we were going down... Then Boothroyd appears out of nowhere and leads us to two back to back wins against Stoke and Rotherham? Sort of need that brilliance again. But we do not have a Boothroyd Esq. in the back room... do we?
Just admit you were wrong about us being the worst team and we'll forget all of this unpleasantness. Oh and I've never been banned from this site so wrong again I'm afraid JB.
Why don't you just cut out out the middle man and do what you've done with every other post I've made in this thread and imagine that I've said exactly what you want me to say?
Great observation and analysis. I wish other posters could pay more attention to the brevity of their posts . Basic theory of competitive sport applies across many if not most disciplines .
Sorry to echo everything that’s been said but for the first time this season I am convinced we will be relegated. The team look like they have completely given up. Push came to shove weeks ago and we have got worse. Marco Silva has the potential to be the most hated Watford manager of all time.
Silva just isn't playing a very smart game of career chess right now. Worryngly neither is Gino. This ego clash is the thing that needs fixing or removing.
Not coming on here to be a Wum. Didn’t think there was much in the game today other than we carried a lot more of a threat when we broke. You need forwards badly from what I saw yesterday, whilst people don’t rate it like Vardy he is threat all game whereas Deeney offered next to nothing for you and our defenders never looked under pressure. You won’t go down as I’ve seen several sides worse this season, Huddersfield, Brighton, Burnley and Everton were awful. What is it that Silva does so badly in your opinion because of course fans on the outside only see what’s in the media
As I can't think of another one at that end of the game, I can only presume you're talking about the cross Carrillo absolutely shanked to no one. He had quite a bit of time and scuffed it with little power behind it. It offered no danger at all except if a Leicester defender totally miscued. Carrillo was really angry with himself after he crossed it and it was right in front of the away end so clear for all to see. The point about attacker positioning is fair but like so many times over recent reasons if the delivery is poor its pretty secondary.
This is why I asked about the actual performance earlier. I was under the impression that on another day and with a bit of luck, we would have got something from the game. Taken in isolation it probably wasn't that bad. Unfortunately it follows over two months of terrible form.
The performance wasn’t that bad, but it followed a depressingly similar pattern. Play ok for first 20 minutes or so, knock it about a bit without looking like scoring, then comes the inevitable, avoidable text book error from one of our clots in defence. Give it a little bit longer, play ok for a bit again without really threatening, chuck all our strikers on and look slightly better as we go gung-ho, lose. It’s a match report that could apply to most of our games since October. Except of course the ones that we chucked the lead away at the end, rather than our ‘defence’ just handing it to the opposition much earlier.
I’m not sure luck comes into it, defeat was certainly completely avoidable, unfortunately our defence is guaranteed to make at least one or two catastrophic errors per game, and this time Wague did the business for us. If you lunge in aimlessly in the box against one of the cleverest strikers in the league, you will give awaya penalty and he will score it. Luck has nothing do with blind stupidity and the woeful lack of investment in our defence.
Nice that Mr Wague decided to cancel out his goal against his old team in the reverse fixture, by lunging in like a simpleton yesterday, though.
I would put having a perfectly good goal disallowed down to bad luck tbf. Go 1-0 up, then it could have played out differently.
I’ve seen a replay and to me he looked marginally off, it was close, but we were definitely not robbed.
We probably won't go down but like last season we will probably have to rely on other teams not picking up any more points. Sad.
Yep marginally offside. Less than the Man City/Swansea/Huddersfield goals against us but that’s the way it had gone this year.
He looked level to me. Either way it was close enough for the lino to be pretty much guessing. Definitely goes into the 'unlucky' category.
Vialli was madness but it was the fault of the board. GT told me,on the Circle Line (on my way to Queen's Club,not sure where he was going!) that the club were star struck and didn't even interview GV. However let us not forget my user name,Silva has a fair way to go yet to equal dear old Harry! This is my main concern at present. Silva has lost too many players to injury.Is this overtraining,bad luck (again?!) or poor medical rehabilitation? We have lost too many matches in the same manner and Silva seems unable to correct these failings. There is a real possibility of a disconnect between board and coach and certainly fans and coach. One would think this week we will see either new arrivals or Silva's departure. If neither occurs the remainder of the season will be very unpleasant,although even if one of these possibilities happens it may still be horrid! And it's snowing! And I have a tax bill to pay! Gino I have enormous faith in you,for us all and for the memory of GT,please act swiftly to rectify this mess.
I have never been a Vardy fan, but watching yesterday have changed my mind, continually looked like he could pop up anywhere , didn’t seem to get involved in any of the normal footballer ******** and just got on with it. Why do we all hate Silva, 3 months into the job he decides there is a better job somewhere else, he is contracted to the club for 2 years without a get out clause, rather than just getting on with it he sulks refuses to say that he is committed to our club and leaks that he would like to move. Our current run of form is probably more to do with injuries than Silva, however demonstrates his inability to get creative. Will we go down, realistically we need 36 ish points , 3 wins and a draw, there are a lot of really bad teams in the prem but currently we are one of them. If key players come back within the next month we have a chance of staying up. If we don’t see Chaallobah / Hughes this season their next game for us will be in the championship
