So the personal first.... This will be my son's first ever away league game. His only away visits have been to Wembley and go as follows: FA Cup semi final v Palace - we were dreadful..... FA Cup semi final v Wolves - we left at 2-0 down and missed the comeback.... FA Cup final v Man City - we stayed until the end like idiots...... I owe him a proper away day as he's nearly 13 and getting to that age of enlightenment (AKA being a pain the arse), so I booked this away trip when it looked like Millwall would be a relatively tame experience. He thinks this is what he should be wearing for the trip... Then Millwall took a roll of the dice and sacked Joe Edwards. They have re-hired an old favourite in Neil Harris to bring back his Dog of War tactics. Harris then immediately guided them to a great away win at Southampton on Saturday while we bumbled and stumbled to a home loss to Huddersfield. The question now is whether Gino will also roll the dice with Val after Saturday's home shocker. We now go to The New Den with a reinvigorated fanbase baying for their team to fight, press and get stuck in. We go there with a team seemingly unwilling to do any of these things themselves. I wonder who will step up and be our Jon Snow against the marauders.... Livermore? Hoedt? Andrews? Kayembe? Rajovic? Asprilla? Sema? Lewis? Pollock? Dele Bashiru? It's looking tough to see anyone stepping up from this lot after the body language shown during the game, and the lack of care towards the fans foolish enough to stay and applaud them off on Saturday. Dennis went off after scoring on Saturday with what looked like a groin injury. That now leaves us with no first team level striker at the club.... Rajovic (bless him) was truly awful and the free header that he put into row H in the rookery summed up his current confidence and ability levels. The trouble is he's all we have unless we throw in a youngster - maybe Adu-Poku and/or Grieves. Sema had a mare on Saturday with some really sloppy backpasses getting us into trouble. He's looked off pace since his return from injury. The trouble is Martins looked even more uninterested when he came on. Tom Ince played well enough to get a start, but did miss chances. Jamal Lewis continues at left back despite offering little to nothing going forwards or in defence. Asprilla would be best suited off the bench for this one as he would be likely to be targeted early on by Millwalls cloggers. I would personally try three at the back with Andrews and "Anyone But Lewis" as wingbacks. This would see off the threat of the long ball while also covering the wingers Harris will deploy to get crosses into the box early. It has to be said that Andrews still not starting is baffling. There are rumours of an issue with focus. Either way we need a right back at right back so it should be him or Ngakia back in for Saturdays battle. Somehow we still sit 11th in the league with Millwall 20th. The away win at Southampton broke a 4 game losing streak for them. They haven't won a home game since a 1-0 win over Norwich on December 29th though. Step up Watford to help overcome that run of form...... Head to Head: Millwall links: https://www.millwallfc.co.uk/match/first-team/2023-24/g2370930 Millwall forums: https://millwallonline.com/forum/forums/football-talk-north-stand-banter.6/ Tache prediction - regardless of who is in charge for us I can't see our team having the stomach or the legs to see off a newly confident Millwall. 2-0 Millwall. Final footnote for me - Millwall spending nearly a million on Gerard Lavin in 1995 to then get relegated is still one of my favourite Watford transfer memories.
Since all 11 players who started against Huddersfield apparently were to blame for that farce of a game - according to our muppet of a manager - the line-up against Millwall pretty much picks itself: Bachmann; Ngakia, Porteous, Coyne, Morris; Sierralta, Ince, Chak; Andrews, Rajovic, Martins On the other hand, the squad selection, game plan and preparations for Huddersfield were apparently perfect, again according to VI, so why change anything at all? The players just need to "do well", "step up" and "be ruthless" and we're all good, yeah? What a dimwit.
Going to this one purely as the London away games are always good fun, and London Bridge is a nice place for a beer after. Fully expecting us to get battered.
Ben Hamer told it straight in his interview although it did seem like he let Val off the hook for any blame. If it wasn't Millwall away I'd say chuck all the kids in 100%
Millwall's players will fight for their new manager, whereas ours, having been hung out to dry and abused by Vi, will lay down like pussy cats. Hence it can only be an easy Millwall win.
TDB will be RB with fit and ready Andrews and Ngakia on the bench. Hamer will do his best to keep the score down as we fumble about at the back passing it sideways and backwards in a feeble attempt to hit them on the break. Raj will try to inspire our "attack" which will be powder puff with no Championship level striker on the pitch. Millwall will attack our right side for 90 mins until they finally score and then the heads will drop. Millwall 4 Watford 1
Moralee was too good for us. Our plodders could not comprehend his supreme footballing brain and made him look like a right twatt.
They beat Southampton away with a performance that Harris proudly described as ‘typically Millwall’, as he infused his players with belief in anti-football ‘no-one likes us and we don’t care’ belief - complete with the injuring of opposition players. They’ll be fully charged for this at the Den, with the crowd welcoming Harris back. This is the new manager effect on steroids. No chance of any kind of result here. 2-0 to them, with Hamer keeping the score down, and Asprilla stretchered off. Sorry. Absolutely nothing to anticipate with any joy here. Nothing. If you thought Saturday was bad…
We haven't been playing well, but we have been shafted a little bit with new managers coming in just before their clubs are due to play us, we ultimately got the job done in Rohl's first game in charge of Sheffield Wednesday, but I'd much rather have taken our chances against Huddersfield before the managerial change, and the same here. Then again, with so many managers coming and going, it's an inevitability that the ol' New Manager Bounce is going to work against you from time to time!
It’s almost as if other clubs’ boards look at the fixtures and ask ‘when are we playing Watford? Then we’ll sack the current manager the week before.’
I would love to see some reaction in this game, but I am not sure we will. The Millwall players will likely kick the **** out of our players. Millwall got a freak result on Saturday, having only 19% possession and scoring from a mistake from the Southampton goalkeeper and a penalty. Before Saturday, they only had 1 point from 8 games, including a 2-0 loss to Sheffield Wednesday. Despite all the hype, The New Den isn't even that intimidating for away teams. Millwall has a worse home record than we do, which is saying something.
It's so infuriating, isn't it, because the only one who won't see it coming is Ismael. Before Huddersfield he basically gave the "plan" away in the media, saying that we want to take control of the game and spend the first 15-20 minutes to see how things play out and what the opposition is doing. Breitenreiter must have been licking his lips. It's no secret that he likes a gegenpress approach and playing against a passive "keep possesssion in our own half" team with no target man is just perfect. Our players were clearly not prepared for this, they expected Huddersfield to sit back while we moved the ball side to side under no pressure until we found their weaknesses. Instead, Huddersfield pressed us high up the pitch and every time we played a backwards pass they moved their press further up, to the point where we would either lose the ball in a dangerous position or hoof it away in panic towards Dennis, which they would utilize to immediately start an attack on us. He did a similar thing earlier in the season against Middlesbrough, when he completely mis-read the opposition, gave away the game plan in the media and they slaughtered us. At least that time he held his hands up and said he got it completely wrong. This time he just threw the players under the bus, claiming that the game plan was perfect and that the players just didn't do what they're told. What a load of ****. The players clearly weren't prepared and the total confusion was plain to see. One of many examples - there was a moment in the first half when Sema ran with the ball backwards and in-field deep into our own half before passing it straight to one of their forwards. That's what unprepared and confused players do. If you don't recognise the situation in front of you you make stupid mistakes and the blame for that lies squarely on the head coach. VI is simply not very good at his job.
Huddersfield sacked Moore weeks ago, but it wouldn't surprise me one jot if Millwall looked at our fixture coming up when they decided to sack Joe Edwards, they know we don't like it up 'em...
But this implies the players have no responsibility themselves for sorting things out. A lot of what went wrong on Saturday echoed the mental midget football we saw often last season. Players hiding or immediately getting rid of the ball like it's going to explode. Or wanting to take 2-3 touches when 1 would get things moving quicker. Sema's pass was ridiculous. He didn't have to pass in that way or even then at all, and I'll grant him the central midfielders were hiding and giving him no easy options, but like all his teammates he had zero desire to do anything difficult either (like hold the ball up). Not sure I agree about the media side of things too. I don't think his comments are exceptional given their vague banal generality. Far more worrying was he talked up a fast start and the XI on the pitch seemed intent on doing the polar opposite. And personally I don't think that was anything to do with Huddersfield, who didn't noticeably do anything different to most teams I've seen at the Vic this year in deploying a simplistic 'pressing for dummies' tactic.
What was it the banner said last year - something about it being the players, not the manager. What you have said is spot on. VI isn't blameless, but the lack of effort on Saturday was staggering particularly from Kone. The general crapness and all round stupidity of some of Sema's passing was stuff you'd laugh at if you saw it in pub football. VI didn't get it all right on Saturday, but at least he had the balls to make a change early. The players have to take a huge amount of responsibility for the performance. I can't see anything other than our bunch of princesses getting overrun at Millwall.
Except that's not what he said. On a direct question from AF in the WO on Friday - "is now the time to let the handbrake off right from the start?" he answered: “It could be, but you also always have an opponent who has their own game plan. It’s more, at the beginning, to see what is happening with the opponent and what is the picture. In that first 10 or 15 minutes, as soon as you get the picture right in your mind, then you can give yourself the better chance to perform." Which is mumbo jumbo for - "no, we're going to keep possession until we figure out a way to break them down", which is an invitation to the opposition to impose whatever game plan they have onto us. And that's exactly what happened.
A weak attitude that sums up the man. Rather than impose ourselves on a team, at home, who have a brand new manager, we sit back and let them be comfortable and allow them into the game. Then he berates the team afterwards. If you’re still preparing for the opposition 10 minutes after the game has started, no wonder our players look lost.
Millwall away last season was probably the biggest shirkers performance I have ever seen a Watford side put in. 1/10 all round.
Yeah it was the lowest of lows. So bad that people were even singing "Gino Pozzo, get out of our club". I don't see much of a different result this Saturday. Be interesting to see if a similar result would get the same chant going.
Don't worry, when Watford are in their cba mode you can expect them to deliver something much worse than last seasons debacle at the New Den. It depends on how motivated they are to turn things around. That starts with VI picking the right sort of side who want to fight for the shirt. Going by last weekend, that's none of the starting XI. Should be a fun game.
Play like we did on Saturday and this could be really ugly. I mean, it's going to be ugly anyway as Millwall fans will be there but on the pitch it could be a mullering.
It's remarkable the amnesia people have when it comes to chants like this, I remember Bilic's debut started with the Pozzo Out chants for not giving Edwards time, 4 goals later and we're singing that 'we sack who we want'...
Even worse than QPR away the same season, taking into account the quality of the opponents (Millwall nearly reached the play-offs last season)?
I didn’t see last Saturday’s debacle (by all accounts) and having hoped rather than expected that it was one of those games where we were on top and played well but got hit by a couple of sucker punches (even though the match stats certainly don’t reflect that) and it’s only the attack that needs major reinforcement, it was concerning to read how poor we were, despite starting with pretty much a full strength team. Clearly there are a lot of problems with this team, and even the previously heralded commitment may be one of them. You’d think the return of Dennis and his putting us ahead would be enough to really lift the crowd and in turn galvanise the team for a final push for the play-offs (with every team from Boro to West Brom dropping points this would have been a perfect opportunity) but it seems despite going 1-0 up, the team didn’t play well enough to get us excited. You could make the flimsiest of excuses (if it even qualifies as one) that Huddersfield needed the points more than we did, but the Championship this season is so competitive that apart from Rotherham who are dead and buried, and probably Bristol and Cardiff, every team has something to play for and we’ve played all those three twice. So even a few more performances like Saturday’s, we could end up with a disappointingly (if not concerningly) low points total.
Because the football on Saturday was so poor and unattractive I think people overlook that Watford actually did enough to win it: Rajovic (x2 or was it 3?), Ince (x2) both missed chances in front of goal. (Ince, I thought was a bit unlucky - both attempts were close). A besetting sin of the majority of Watford players is lack of confidence and therefore hesitancy - Asprilla take note, he had the beating of the fullback. Huddersfield were a bunch of journeymen who played to their limited strengths. They scored with virtually their only two attacks, Pollock being too slow on the uptake on both occasions. Millwall should be overjoyed that we are up next - If they play anything like the way their new manager prefers then I think it could be really ugly for Watford.
