Oh no. That's brought tears to my eyes. Commiserations KGT and family. A horrid thing,as I know from experience. Buck up Bassett.
It wasn't. To my eyes he was dead in line and official guidance is that you give the benefit of any doubt to the attacker
Exactly my point. Forwards can't all wait at the far post for a perfect cross that happens to find their head whilst surrounded by defenders. They need to spread the threat, take chances, and go to the near post in expectation of a less than perfect cross. That is what good forwards do, they create chances, they anticipate an inaccurate cross and defensive errors.
If you freeze it when the ball is headed forward he is, at worst, level with last defender. The sort of decision that tends to go in favour of the home team. Might be a blessing in disguise though!
Well i was going to post an in-depth review of the Prince of Punjab pub and grill in Leicester, but i suppose no-one gives a **** now. Thanks a bunch Silva.
Did you go? I'd be interested to know what it was like. I'll no doubt be going back to Leicester from time to time with our Aethel living up there now. The Firebug bar was mighty fine. The food was cheap and huge portions. There were a few other reflections I have on this trip:- Leicester Fans After about 60 mins we sang "Did you cry when Deeney scored?". Immediately afterwards and for the remainder of the game, the Leics fans were giving it "Deeney Deeney what's the score?" and similar Deeney-themed abuse, having not mentioned him previously. I think we can infer therefore that the answer to our question was a categorical "yes". Janmaat's 'defending' It's not really news that Janmaat is an incompetent defender, but just how poor was emphasised by one passage of play in this game. Ball gets played down the outside and despite having a head start, Daryll gets completely skinned for pace. No surprise - everyone skins Janmaat. However he's still in a position to try to block the cross, but doesn't bother. Not so much as a symbolic foot stuck out. Just allows him to get on with it. Fortunately we manage to half clear it and it deflects out to Janmaat who is sort of hanging around the penalty spot area not doing anything in particular. However a dreadful clumsy first touch presents it straight back to Leics again. The Leics player goes past Darryl without really trying and as he does so, Janmaat jumps about 5 feet in the air and collapses in a heap, despite not being touched. Fortunately the ref didn't book him for the embarrassing dive and the danger was cleared by Zeegalaar. I've rarely seen such rubbish 'defending' from a professional football player, never mind in the Premier League. I reckon I could do as good as that...
For some reason Leicester is a team a someties compare us. Maeby they have more quality in they team, but apart from Mahrez, Vardy and just lately Maquire, there is not that much more in my opinion. Vardy has so much in his game. Speed obviously, but also the fact that he can come towards the ball and offer a chance for a pass and on top of that he can hold the ball or play it straight to a better positioned player. That is something we are and have been missing. But in this game I was desperate to see a Watford player to copy Okazaki: numerous occasions he was free in between the lines and he allowed they game to go forward. I don`t think we have done that proberly just lately. So 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-2? With the current squad the latter one and maeby with the strongest possible midfield the former one. Basically I prefer two strikers to play together but how would it allow to use our best players at the moment when fit (Cha, Doc, Hug)? Now that they are not playing together it leaves us too open in the back and fullbacks seem to be without prober cover and help. Will be interesting to see what the new man does and how he solves our problems.
Don't think anyone's mentioned it but I thought the ref had a very good game. Whenever anyone (from either side) fell over and started rolling around on the ground he generally just waved play on and ignored them. No cards whipped out either which makes a welcome change.
Here is a chart of our progress so far compared to previous games in the top flight. I guess the question is... is this the best start we've had and been relegated, or the worse start we've ever had but survived... Time will tell
