The Championship 2020-21

Pedro probably had his worst game for us this season. I think he should have been replaced long before his miss. With the pace of the game it was clear that we were sitting on 1-0. That Boro side was there to be beaten by a superior team. It was obvious that we were going to concede playing that way. These things happen in football but it was our own doing.

 

Exactly. Other than Naaarch, I wouldn't swap places with anyone in the championship or even the bottom 4 of the Premier League right now.

If we don't go up from here it will be totally down to us and would be the most Watfordy thing of all time.

 

The fans make derbies not the players. Without fans it's not really a derby as shown in the previous game unless you have a team made up of players from the local area which I presume they don't

 

I know what you're trying to do with your posts over the last few days but surely you must think we're in a pretty good position or are are you just try to stop the hurt if we do completely implode

 

The ending to the Gracia season was so sad because while, with a good wind we could go on a Cup run again, no matter how smart we are, we aren't ever going to challenge for 7th again. The main thing I want to see us do now is win the Championship, I'm not holding out much hope on us doing it this season, but when we next get relegated (which if we go up, is surely a matter of time, whether we survive the first season or not), hopefully we'll be like Norwich and not a ramshackle squad with no left-back and **** players we can't get rid of no matter how much we want to

 

We just don't do happy endings to seasons, when we don't agonisingly miss out on the title/promotion/survival, we go to the beach in November

 

They needed 3 points in the end, and in hindsight a Stoke team who were looking like play-off contenders with Tyrese Campbell, and Barnsley were much tougher opponents than they seemed at the time. Not sure I'd call it a bottle job in fairness

 

I'm the same about Norwich. In fact getting promoted last time was tarnished for me by the way we blew the league. If I have the choice over who wins tonight, Norwich or Brentford, it's Norwich every day of the week. I don't care about the title, I just want to get promoted

 

"We"? You don't speak for all of us, fans and players included.

And it's funny how two points is the difference between being "out of sight" and "biting our nails" - that takes fine margins to a whole new level.

 

???

 

Pack it in Lloyd, your making it sound like we're in a decent position

 

The table following the Easter Monday 2-0 over Boro in the 14/15 promotion season. A great performance in that one with goals from Deeney and Ighalo.

Still, that table should provide some perspective. We’re 3 points better off from one match less. We have a buffer of somewhere between 4 and 10 points on the only other contender for the autos. We have a similar sort of gap as we had over Brentford then, when they were in 7th. Obviously we finished that season very strongly, and there were two spots in play, but I think this does provide some much-needed perspective.

 

I wouldn't quite call him the Championship van Dijk, but Ben Gibson being out for Norwich could be important, they still have more than enough quality to clunk along and win against most teams in the division and seal top spot, but it could make that game at Carrow Road easier for us

 

I don’t agree with them being brain dead, but I kind of get what they’re saying.

The way they approached the Wednesday and Boro games was always likely to yield only 3/4 points max. We have a great defence, but still concede more than a goal every other game, so being happy with 1-0 was always going to come back and bite us. We got away with Rhodes awful miss against Wednesday but our luck ran out against Boro, as was to be expected.

We have much harder games to come, it makes sense to get our points now while they’re on the table and winning 1-0 against Boro we shouldn’t have relied on that being enough. People keep saying Boro set up well, but we had a 10 minute spell in the second half where we upped the tempo, passed it quicker and created two great chances. We then slowed back down again and seemed to settle for the 1-0, which was clearly a mistake.

 

I wish I had your confidence but from what I’ve seen this season I’m still not convinced. I wouldn’t swap our position in the league with anyone but Norwich but the last two matches have been stressful. If you don’t think so fair enough you’re nerves are better than mine.
We could have been out of sight and we are definitely not now. Personally I think it will go to the Brentford game and it really doesn’t have to be if we play better in next 4 games.

 

Come on...2pts is hardly the difference between being out of sight or not.

 

We ARE in a pretty good position. It's ours to lose. Just pointing out the facts that it is still quite possible that we will lose it. It's a very difficult run in compared to our last dozen or so games and yesterday we dropped 2 points in our first game against a decent side in a while. Brentford have a much easier run-in and are too good for their recent run to continue. My own gut feel is that if Brentford win tonight, and we drop points on Friday and lose at Brentford, we will finish 3rd. "Quite possible" I think but maybe not yet "probable".

 

That Sema tackle was brain dead

 

What you've seen this season?

Our longest winning run in 10 years?
The best home record in the top 4 divisions in England?
Fewest goals conceded in the league?
Second best xG, and second best xGA?
Not losing 2 games in a row all season?
Not going more than 3 games without a win all season?

I understand tempering your expectations, but come on now

 

I know L*t*n only too well. I have lived there, worked there, have family & friends there, have other connections there. I can tell you that this game is all they have been on about for weeks, it's the ONLY game that matters in their run in.

The pressure is on Nathan Jones big-time to deliver a derby win. He felt the ire of their fans when he left for Stoke. He knows what it is like to be on the wrong end of their venom. Mick Harford knows only too well what this game is about as he has experienced it many times as player and coach over the years. They will have been watching every little detail of our games for months. To stop us going up (as their fans see it) will make them heroes.

You're right that the absence of fans in the 'stadium' will help a bit but this game will have more than the usual edge to it make no mistake!

 

Luton is the game left this season that i'm least worried about. They're ****. They're the kind of team we have easily beaten over our unbeaten run.

 

I think we’re in a great spot, but the fact we’ll be busto for the next decade if it doesn’t happen adds a bit of an edge to it!

 

Are 'we'? I'm not

 

It was the "best xG" and "second best xGA" that convinced me.

What are they?

 

If they win their games in hand and beat us.. Fair play to them.

 

*Second best xG

I'm not a massive fan of them but they seem to be used by most clubs and they've been discussed at length on this forum. If you're genuinely unsure, then Google is your friend.

 

Okay as you asked:
I’ve watched every game, the ones not on sky I’ve paid for on The Hive.
This season has for me been one of the most frustrating seasons that I can remember.
Not being there in person has obviously played a big part. I do think it has effected the way players play and teams seem to be more patient in their build up as there is no crowd urging them otherwise.
This patient approach and the new way of passing in the penalty area is to me, risky and tedious even though with Bachmann in goal we have a keeper who has good feet. There was an example at Boro when WTE and FS were passing it about for a while, WTE gave it away, cue immediate panic. So unnecessary.

Ivic was dreadful and had to go. What a waste of half the season. Munoz came in, somehow changed the mentality and here we are staring at promotion with only a few wins needed and we play like we have in the last couple of games.
Hopefully my fears are unwarranted and probably due to seeing us blow it too many times.
Relegation last season should never have happened, it was self inflicted as usual. Watford have a knack of making things harder than they should be and the last two games were a good example of that.
I also think that promotion this season is critical for us to avoid another 90s type of decline.

 

None of that seemed to make any difference in the home fixture, though. Without the crowd a derby seems to mean sod all, really (insofar as what happens on the pitch is concerned, at least).

 

Luton are absolute dog ****. They can plan and plot all they like, if we turn up and play our best football then they're going to lose. It's literally that simple.

 

Anyone know if the Brentford game is on the radio or anything?

 

Why put yourself through that? I'll check the scores later tonight when I update the prediction league.

 

Birmingham have just missed an absolute sitter.