Nottingham Forest 0-1 Watford FC - FA Cup Fourth Round

A small footnote to the game. I had the misfortune of standing in front of Mr Burpy. For the full ninety minutes at regular intervals (approx every 60 seconds) he released an enormous belch, reminiscent of a cow on cud-chewing duty. It seriously impeded and detracted from my enjoyment of the game, as I was concerned there might be a full on explosion, liquid, solid or otherwise. If this is a medical condition, Mr B, then I apologise. However I would imagine it is the result of a combination of beer and what whiffed suspiciously of pickled eggs. If so IT IS DISGUSTING.

Get some tablets or watch what you consume, or both.

 

Hmm, yesterdays game. Well it was bloody cold. "Mists rolling in from the Trent" - more like an icy blast blowing into your face from the Trent. I seemed to have a permanent stream of tears running down my face, but that could have been due to the turgid match and poor quality on display, rather than the conditions. That said, a wins a win, and we're in the hat for the draw tonight and that's all that matters.
If you have a cup run there's always one or two stinkers in that run, where you sneak through. The Plymouth semi in 84, and Chelsea in 87, when we got to the semi's spring to mind. Pants looked very solid, and I feel he will be a good acquisition who will challenge Gomes, which can only be a good thing. The defence looked fairly solid, but Nyom's passing and delivery again when he goes forward was shocking. At the moment I would stick with Paredes at right back. Perhaps that's a position that needs looking at. Ambarat looked good, and was unlucky not to score with that volley. Apart from that we dominated possession but offered virtually nothing going forward, which is worrying. Abdi did not shine, neither did Gueds. Watson, and his midfield pals did their usual of giving the ball away consistently. I think it shows how important Capoue is to the midfield, and Saurez should come in and hopefully sort this issue out. Which brings me onto Anya. Once again he was caught in possession, which this time, fortunately did not result in catastrophe. Now I've always liked him. He's a lovely bloke, but he just simply is not good enough anymore. I think it's time to move him on.
Fair play to Forest for charging a tenner and a quid for children. Their gates have mainly been around the 18K mark, so it did the job and brought people in. All in all a poor performance, but on the balance of play, a game we just about deserved to win.

Next round: My hope is MK Dons away - although I doubt very much they'll beat Chelsea. Winkleman is such a ******* he'd give us about 8000 tickets. As that draw is unlikely to happen, Shrewsbury away.

 

Not sure what people are grumbling about. Forest made it hard for us. We didn't play great, but we won and are in the next round. Superb turn out from fans. Gueds and Anya both past their sell by dates. Everyone else did OK. Amrabat looked decent in flashes. Nottingham very good away day. Wembley beckons. None PL team in next round - home or away, I don't care

 

Very strange people. Anyway, onto the 5th round as we sit in 10th.

 

Pleased to get through without replay.

We are definitely getting Bournemouth next round aren't we.

 

By Josh King logic, we should be hoping for three points and a place in the Quarter Finals.

 

I think Highgrade's family were all at the City ground yesterday, there were a fair few of the Stone Island brigade on their phones, giving it large. They make me chuckle coz they're hard.

 

What do you suggest we should have done instead, against a side obviously set up to stop us playing? If we'd rushed things too much and/or lumped the ball forward aimlessly, then that would have lost us possession easily and played into Forest's hands and at best we'd be looking at a replay.

I may be in the minority but I was pleased that we took the patient passing approach with less hoofing that we've seen in recent games to try and carve open a packed midfield/defense. It may not have been very entertaining but entertainment is by no means always the best tactic to win matches, and yesterday was about a means to an end. Criticise individual players all you want, but I don't see how anyone can say as a team our overall approach was fundamentally wrong.

 

Sunday mornings are Smudger's time to shine. Merge-tastic!

 

First of all, I was just giving my explanation for our fans being quiet, that was all. A win in the FA Cup, is more important than an entertaining loss, I understand that.

But how anyone can get excited over our boys passing square or backwards for most of the match against a mid-table side in the division below, is beyond me.

But you are right, passing square is better than lumping it upfield hopefully, or passing it forward to one of their players, which is what happened when we tried to get it forward. We just ended up giving it away.

We seem to have no-one who could run forward with the ball, and there is very little movement into space ahead of the ball, leaving very little option but passing sideways or back.

I find that slightly worrying more than I find that exciting.

 

Dogturd game not really helped by Forest setting up not to lose which is very strange for an in form home side. Always felt it was gonna be decided by a mistake and fortunately we got away with ours at the end of the first half and Iggy capitalised on theirs at the end. Thought Gueds, Watson and Abdi really struggled in the middle but I think a lot of that was down to Forest packing the midfield so space to pick a pass was at a premium. Impressed with Amrabat, looked good down the middle but reckon he'd cause teams problems if played out wide too. Cathcart my MoM, won every header and covered superbly every time Forest looked to spring a rare attack.

Just looked and that is the first time since Sunderland away in 2003 that I've seen us win away in an FA Cup tie(mind, we've only won twice away in between that time). Shrewsbury at home next please!

 

The crowd was awful yesterday. Perhaps it was just the area I was in.

Everyone is a manager apparently, despite clearly knowing bugger all about the game. The sort of people who shout "SWITCH IT!", "MAN ON!" and "WIDTH!!!", as if they feel they have any input into the game at all. The sort of people who foam with anger both when the team patiently keep possession and when they lose the ball playing risky passes, with no idea of the irony in that.

Unfortunately, they're also the sort of people who swear incessantly in my ear from behind, calling Amrabat a 'little pr*ck' and Jurado a 'total c**t'.

So, whoever it was who stood behind my in seat 57, row K or I: You are a miserable simpleton with severe small man syndrome, who is in desperate need of a hug from his mum.

 

Pretty crap game, Amrabat looked decent, Pantillimon looks good, Guedioura misplaced passes, someone easy in the next round please.

 

Very strong Chelsea line-up this afternoon. Virtually full strength bar Zouma, Azpilicueta and William.

Interesting, coming just 3 days before we play them.

 

Same thought crossed my mind during the game - but then I watched Forest players running half the length of the pitch with the ball when a simple kick forward would have resulted in the the ball being in exactly the same position, only a few seconds earlier. Might not look as industrious/exciting as a winger in full flow, but really - so what?
We retained the ball fairly well, prefering to be patint than risk losing it. The fact that by and large we managed this despite fielding a Championship standard midfield and Deeney seemingly playing the Jurado role (I happened to think our best work coincided with the introduction of Jurado) shows how well the whole squad have been drilled.

 

Always was going to be the case in my opinion. It's unlikely they will make the Champions League, win the Champions League, and are out of the League Cup, therefore this is their only chance of silverware to appease their success hungry fans. The Cup is now a priority to them.

 

Just by way of an odd footnote, I wasn't the only non-Forest fan in the home stands. A couple of seats up from me was a Millwall fan, complete with scarf, hat and crested coat.

No one said a word to him.

 

No one liked him.

He didn't care.

 

Yes and of course it was at this stage last year they lost to Bradford.

Like many others here, I'm starting to wonder if we are going to have a good run this year, but if so its a slight worry that just about all the big boys have reached Round 5. We could have done with a similar scenario to last year when Round 4 was full of upsets with Chelsea, Man City etc crashing out.

 

We are one of the big boys now.

 

Cathcart was sublime yesterday.

 

Yeah but if we drew City, United, Arsenal, Spurs (all of whom have beaten us this season) we would start as underdogs

 

Bunch of 50ish year old fans at HT slagging off Amrabat saying we should never have loaned Vydra. I hate our fans at times.

 

How desperately depressing that is!

There is no doubt some fans have the IQ of a cheese roll.:dismay:

 

I thought he was good.

But he didn't play how I expected him to. Not sure why, but I was expecting him to get the ball slightly deeper and run at their defence, yet he mostly seemed to get it with his back to goal and a defender up his arse. Showed strength and excellent ball control though and had our best effort on goal over the whole game (bar the goal).

 

Same old story, a little team battles bravely for 89 minutes and then the the big boys undeservedly swat them away. So often the story of Watford.

 

Change 'our' to 'football' and I would agree with you.

These fans you speak of aren't unique to our club you know. Those types of fans exist at every other club up and down the country.

 

Were Chelski really bloody amazing today, or were MK ***** utterly s***?

I can't be sure but I think probably the latter

 

The latter. MK just stood off Chelsea and let them dictate.

 

Let's ask MK Donny.

MK Donny? Yoohoo!!

Where is he?

 

He's still logged in as 'Moog'.

 

I thought our MOTM was Watson. In a game where keeping the ball was very tricky, he just oozed class the whole way through. Barely lost the ball.

The Ginger Pirlo.

 

The MK Dons were appalling. Northampton would have given Chelsea more of a game.