The Championship is much more fun than the Premier League I was told! Anybody enjoying it at the moment? Glad VI is fuming because he blooming well should be Bachmann - I hate keepers as captain. Too far from the action and why on earth did he get involved in the Louza foul. Possibly at fault for second goal Lewis - **** off if you don't fancy it. Seemed to play at 50% at least I hope he did otherwise he's ******* awful Ngakia - Dreadful and has been most of the season Hoedt - Pathetic attempt at a challenge for first goal, Stood and watched the goal scorer for the second, nearly gave away another goal with another dreadful back pass. Porteous - I think he's gets frustrated with some of the other players lack of effort. Another booking Sierralta - Too slow, no passing ability, constantly caught out. This one is on VI as he will never be a midfielder as long as I have a hole in my ar5e Louza - Simply can't be ar5ed TDB - What is he good at? Never seems to challenge, jogs back when his man goes past him, doesn't get forward, doesn't create anything, does nothing The Georgian fella - At least he tries to be positive but god needs some end product Ince - Again tries to be positive but the lack of support and ability does not help Bayo - Has the brains of a gnat and the shooting ability of John Wayne Bobbit. He does try but is absolutely awful Andrews - Silly challenge and wasn't great but the effort is there which is more than can be said for most of the rest of the team Asprilla - I cannot imagine how frustrated he is watching the rest of the team. Needs to play more Kone - There is a player in there and shows it but just not enough. He tried last night when he came on but got very little support Healey - Looks the best of the three strikers but that is fairly low bar. Seems to struggle to run! Rajovic - Has three goals but is pi55 poor. Looks like the player in the youtube video I saw before he joined. Hopefully will improve but not holding out much hope Cardiff away - Bring in Pollock (that's how bad it currently is) Asprilla, Kone, Kayemebe. Drop Louza, Sierallta, TDB and Hoedt. Kick Lewis up the ar5e. Get Bayo to pass rather than shoot from anywhere What a complete and utter ******* mess
A lot of squads start the season brightly. The surprise was QPR's attitude: They gave Watford the freedom of the pitch. Why they did that, given their coach, was a mystery to me. And they obviously have sharpened up since then, to an extent. I would be very surprised if WFC are presented with as weak a competition again this season.
Err, how does "a midfield of Asprilla, TDB & Kone" fit in with a 4132 or 442? Also, given how absurdly porous our midfield of Asprilla, TDB and Louza was vs. Boro, I'm not sure Asprilla, TDB and Kone would be a significant enough improvement on that anyway.
When is Sema back? I was hoping Lewis would improve the team but we've got worse since he came in. If he continues then based on performances so far this season Sema would seem to be our best current LB and I'd drop Lewis for him.
Yes Lewis has been very very weak/poor and has rarely looked interested. At least Sema, limited though he was, gave 100% effort every game.
Look at Hoedts body shape, his already squared up rather than on the turn like Ngakia and Portious. As soon as TDB went with the runner, as he should have done, Lewis should have come inside - basic, you don't hand someone over if you are tracking a runner, the man facing the ball goes to close down. The second caption caption for the 2nd goal shows Lewis spotting the danger behind Portious but thee is a bigger danger right in front of him, with two players right in the center of the goal. Why has he run to the back post? You always cover the most dangerous percentage first - basic
This is why I don't think we can get anyone better for our situation. What he's saying is absolutely spot on here and very damning. The players we have just fall into old habits and expect the change of head coach. That said, VI needs to take responsibility for not adapting his football approach I think to this set of players now.
I agree. We have to stick with VI, but I don’t think we will. Our players are not that great, but certainly good enough to be rattling around above the drop zone if they have the right attitude, but sadly they don’t. Not sure there is a solution to this anymore. Only so many team meetings, rollickings, arm around the shoulder, honest talks you can have. Nothing seems to be working. The players don’t want to know. It’s a huge problem but one made by Gino and his recruitment team. I feel sorry for Ismael. He’s doing all he can to make it work but those above him want to just bleed the club dry of funds, and those below him just want to take a decent wage for a bare minimum amount of work. This is why dysfunctional clubs get relegated, and we are as dysfunctional as they come.
VI has to turn round years of bad habits at this club. It's not going to happen in a few months. Of course the buck stops with the owners, but it's pointless crying Gino out because no one is going to buy this club! (they have been open for a sale for years) It's not going to be easy, we will have more nights like last night, but if we are ever going to turn this around we need to stick with the manager while recruiting players wisely.
I think it was poorly executed that time and that’s put the manager off but could work in some cases. We have two dud strikers but Bayo certainly looked better in a 2 than he did as a lone striker. Asprilla looked far better in the middle on the half turn than he does out wide. It may leave us a bit more compromised but that was a bonkers 10 minute period. I just can’t see Sierralta in the 6 anymore, it hurts.
Could not agree more. No one else at this level would sign some of the players we have over the years, bearing in mind some of these were signed to make us competitive at Premier League level.
Sunderland fan in peace here. Signed up because I dropped by to read your forum (as I do after most games to see what fans of the opposition have to say). I think what you saw from us was Sunderland still in first gear really. We seem to be breezing through most games at the minute, winning by two or three goals without seemingly trying. To me these are the hallmarks of a team that can get promoted - if you keep winning games like this clinically and ruthlessly you'll end up at the top end of the table eventually. That we're doing this with 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 year olds seems bizarre to me but I'm learning to just enjoy the ride. On Watford... I totally sympathise with your current position. Feel for the fans who travelled up for the game, I know it wasn't the biggest away crowd but given your form away from home I don't blame people for staying away. You probably won't like hearing this but everything I've read in this thread is bringing back horrible memories of the Sunderland team who got relegated from the Championship in 2018. We'd just dropped out of the Premier League, sold off all of the valuable mercenaries and were left with the rubbish mercenaries that ultimately hated being at the club and didn't want to really be there, mixed with a bunch of inexperienced kids not ready to be thrown into the cauldron and a smattering of lower league crap that wasn't good enough to wear a Sunderland shirt. We had a good start - drew with derby, beat Norwich, won v Bury in the cup - but then it just capitulated. We were hanging around the relegation zone around this point in the season too and despite deluding ourselves into thinking we weren't possibly in a relegation battle, that's where we ended up and ultimately our squad was not prepared or built for a scrap at the bottom of the table. All with an owner who had given up and needed to sod off, and a manager who just wasn't up to the task. I see this reflected in Watford. I hope for your sake something changes soon. It was a long road back for us but the journey we've been on makes me thankful for the club we have now. Good luck for the rest of the season.
Cheers. Yes it feels like a carbon copy of what happened to Sunderland, except we had a season of mediocre nothingness before the one where the wheels came fully off. Trouble is that Pozzo las loaned huge amounts to the club and won't get it back unless he sells up for a price that no one would be willing to pay.
We only escaped Ellis Short's clutches in the end because he wrote off a massive amount of debt that I don't think many other owners would be prepared to do.
He will never get back what he's invested. Few owners do. Should have sold when we were an established prem side, I doubt he would consider selling now when we are worth less than when they bought us, .....unless he finds another Bassini-sized fool.
Unless that’s why they are so desperate to tell everyone that we’ll be external debt free by the ‘end of the season’. Is the club worth more than the owner outstanding debt? Wasn’t the rumour that a buyer wanted both clubs? Might be why Udinese haven’t exactly splashed the cash either.
He should be sacked, but there is no one else or what would change? Pozzo knew what he was doing when he appointed VI. There were no promotion hopes, no money no decent players. Gino and Duxbury knew all this. Only really die hard fans couldn't see it. We have only played two decent teams so far, so relegation is a possiblity if we continue to play so poorly. Problem is that our squad is seriously weak and very limited. No parachute payment next season, so it will be grim if the Pozzo Family remain in charge. Budget cuts/job losses in all sectors of Watford FC will be seen. Gino to be open to offers for the club after the New Year.
A fair and truthful post about how far you have come and how much further we could fall. Our club has had an air if "toxicity" about it for a long time, but these past five seasons have been the worst of the lot. Everyone is fed up with our ownership, our players we currently have are not good enough for even this level, and even if they are, they don't try hard enough. We have an honest coach who obviously wants to build something with them but god knows how long he has left with our trigger happy owner. I remember when Sunderland went down, I was shocked and you are right it did take you a while to finally come back up. Other sides who went down from this level like Ipswich, Plymouth, Bolton etc. seem to have been rejuvinated in some way. Your first season back you did really well. This season you have built on that and are going for a possible promotion push. Ipswich just cannot stop winning. I don't want us to go down, but at the moment it looks like there is more despair around our club than hope right now. One of the worst ownerships was the Blackpool bloke who the fans' spent years to finally get rid of. Gino has been around here way past his prime, but he is stubborn and won't change his ways (despite the mouth piece we got in July). You could be right, it might make us a better club if we did get relegated, but every club works differently with different circumstances. We know financially relegation would/could end the club or put us right on the brink. For that reason alone. just staying where we are now would be ideal but when the players' seemly don't care and the ownership has had his day in the sun, it gets harder and harder to justify. However, like many of us have said, Watford is our club and we won't see it tarnished forever. Graham Taylor and Elton John did massive and brilliant things to being Watford from the outskirts of football to where we are now. 1881 is our birth year, but we still want a club in 21881.
Don’t worry we have an excellent squad apparently most teams would envy . https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/s...s-kept-players-dressing-hour/#comments-anchor Maybe the players and management have the same attitude so get complacent and think they don’t need to perform.
I don’t think any of us are looking as far as 19,858 years, let’s get the next few years out of the way first!
Just out of interest, where is Ben Manga? When he came in I was pleased. He seemed just what we needed. An experienced guy with a good track record of searching out "hidden gems". I don't see much sign of that in our recent singings. So I wonder how many of these are his. Has he been sidelined, is it too soon to see any real improvement, is he actually working for Udine, has he lost his touch? I've no idea. Maybe the guys that have come in will come good, maybe they weren't his signing, maybe they were all we could afford, but frankly its very disappointing. My fault for being an optimist I suppose.
@SkylaRose @Teide1 I’m quietly confident we might have had an away win by then too! @Vanhorn17 I believe I saw him playing in our back four last night, but my eyesight isn’t great these days!
He’s crawling around the Albanian backwaters trying to find the next Rajovic to utilise his £250k January transfer window budget.
Can't blame the players they are clearly struggling because they are not good enough Can't blame the manager, Pep Guadiola couldn't get a game out of this lot. The owner and his cohort of "advisors" (what do they actually all do?).... that's where the blame lies Yes he promised us a new stadium, a new pitch and we would get to the premiership, and yes he delivered on that, but that's where we should have taken stock and built a better squad, with every new signing being an upgrade on the one that they replaced, instead there have been £millions spent on utter dross, the squad filled with rubbish players with allegedly bad attitudes, but even they were sold, shipped out on loan. We made big profits on the sales of Dacoure, Dennis, and JP, (they can't be the only ones) so I honestly don't get how we have gone from a team that can spend £30 million on Sarr to a team that has a transfer budget of 50p and a button. So fugging pished off with the whole ****** setup at the moment.
