Watford Fc 0-1 Cardiff - 05/12/2020

Any truth in the rumour the scarves are displayed next to a sign saying ‘all proceeds from the sale of these scarves goes to Udinese?’

 

That is part of the point of an alliance.

It's also a simple matter of bedwetter policy.

 

Collective moistness.

 

Yesterday was a great day for some

 

Given how quick you are to soil your sheets screaming ‘it’s not fair!’ after every game of Werewolf you lose, I think you’ve got the required skills to join us. Easier if you just admit it to yourself.

 

I’m not sure they’ve ever believed in Ivic’s approach. He got away with it at the start because he got a lift from young players just glad to be 1st team starters. But now even they are bored rigid and cynical of his ‘style’.

 

So another of my supposed prior actions which you now appear to condone - your internal logic is less coherent than a magnetic compass at the north pole.

 

You break forward with width at pace (Sarr, Pedro, Kiko) with an adequately mobile CF (Perica) getting into the box, along with the opposite wide man, with the CMs blocking the edge of the box. Any cross would then be dangerous if hit early enough, as the oppo defenders will not be set & even facing their own goal.
It’s not rocket science. It does run the risk of conceding possession mor e than Ivic wants, but the current slow tempo play has been shown to be SO easy for organized Champ teams to nullify. And I doubt the quality of the oppo will be able to surgically punish us from that high up the pitch that often. It is also the most effective way to get out of the Champ....Leeds, Norwich, us last time.

 

Playing with pace is just the most fundamental, basic requirement of the modern game - I remember Jamie Carragher going on a particularly noted rant about this a couple of years ago during punditry, I think aimed at Man Utd. You will get nowhere without playing with pace, and that doesn't necessarily mean 'with a lot of quick players', but of moving the ball quickly around and up the pitch. That is a coaching issue at least as much as it is anything else.

Have we had a counter attack this season that we haven't voluntarily relinquished by literally stopping 2/3rds of the way up the pitch, turning round and passing the ball sideways or even backwards, whilst the opposition are given as much time as they wish to get back and re-form their defensive shape? It's absolutely inexplicable.

 

Our defence is no longer that great, but off the top of my head I don’t think any team has scored more than one goal against us? *Edit, just remembered we had a couple of 3-2 games.

Plenty of slack there to risk losing possession more and being more attack minded, teams sit deep against us so we can afford to lose possession more without a huge magnitude more risk. At the moment the way we play is so easy for teams to defend against and probably not too energy consuming either.

If they sit too deep and we take more risks with possession they’ll probably tire quicker and also are more likely to be drawn out a bit more making it easy for us.

Ivic had his system, which after 16 games he must clearly be able to see it doesn’t work in this league and that isn’t going to change. Any decent manager will adapt to what’s in front of them, that’s literally their job, find out a way to beat the opposition.

We were also inevitably going to drop points at home at some stage, and that’s absolutely fine, but we need to be going for wins away from home to mitigate that.

Win one and lose one away from home and we can afford the odd draw or loss at home. Constantly draw away from home and once we lose at home we’re ****ed. If Ivic can’t work that out he’s a moron.

Edit to add, if you imagine a series of four home games and four away games, winning three of the four home games and then alternating the fourth game between a loss and a draw each time, and then winning then losing every away game, that would get you 90 points.

Swap the away wins/losses for all draws and you end up with 79.

 

We looked far better with Quina and Hughes on, they both move the ball quicker and look to make things happen, I am praying that is the last of Wills injuries now. I also thought we were better going forward with Kiko on the pitch. Troy never done anything I cannot remember him touching the ball, Perica needs to be starting ahead of him or start them together, I do wonder would Murray be any worse than Troy? As someone mentioned earlier I do get the impression that Joao Pedro don't know where he is supposed to be playing. I said this after Tuesdays game there is rarely any movement off the ball. I hope to see Capoue and Hughes start on Tuesday, I would like to see Quina as well maybe roaming in the midfield.

 

But are the players just ignoring the coach’s instructions, are the players stupid or not skilled enough or are they conforming to how Ivic wants them to play?
Whichever of these is correct, and it’s not the lack of skills, there’s something not right in the camp.

 

I'm out if he joins. I'll join COGclan. You only have to search 'lowerrous' on Twitter to see how well he'll be received. A poison from within. The beginning of the end of the bedwetters. A washer/dryer combo if you will.

 

That's basically it.

 

It's pretty clear that these players were never going to buy into anything that made them work hard. There were mutterings from the start that they hated the new training regime which were discounted as media lies.

I always go back to Boothroyd dumping off the Icelandic mafia when he joined the club. Ivic needed to do that here with the bad eggs. Clearly he wasn't strong enough to do that, not strong enough to keep players and not strong enough to have Deeney as a permanent sub.

 

Yes, I had the same thought.

 

Did anyone see the bot when used carries the ball forward towards the edge of the box, ended up having to play the ball square to the left, then threw his arms up in disgust and had a go at the players in front of him.

Literally no movement or intelligent life ahead of him what so ever.

 

Perica's goal vs Muff maybe counts.

That's the only one of our goals I can recall though which comes close. It helped significantly that we had a striker who had kept up with Sarr though.

 

That is more or less it.

 

But Quina was given the license to do that on Wednesday night - and he was as ponderous and slow in possession as the rest of them. I wasn’t surprised he was dropped. It’s definitely an instruction from the coach rather than our players natural inclinations.

 

True, but all of our players were ponderous in midweek. Did he not play left wing against Forest? We lack any sort of creativity and at least Quina attempts to make things happen, with the exception of Sema, Kiko and JP he is the only player that we have that is willing to beat a player which is essential to breaking teams that sit back down. We need to learn how to break teams down because otherwise every side that we play against will just sit in and know that we won't be able to do anything.

 

Usually the morning after the defeat before, I wake up feeling a bit more cheerful and optimistic and onto the next match etc. Especially on beautiful days like today, with the sun shining.

But today I haven’t.

So far this season is proving a chore, not a pleasure.

The summer recruitment stank, both in terms of arrivals and departures.

The players we all hoped would improve us once returning from injury have on the whole disappointed.

On paper our squad isn’t bad, in reality it’s disjointed and patently not all pulling in the same direction.

And then comes the icing on the cake. A Head Coach completely out of his depth in the league the incompetence of his superiors and predecessors put us in. Football so negative and dull that it’s more boring than a conversation after sex with somebody you neither know nor want to get to know.

I was quite optimistic about our chances at the start of the season. But here we are, 15 matches in. Deeney is playing up front. We don’t have a proper left-back. Half the side look like they can’t be arsed. It’s all so throughly depressing.

 

I would just leave the sex part out of the analogy as that suggests at least a couple of minutes of fun.

 

Yeah, I did wonder, but I've just rewatched and the ball comes straight to Sarr from a crossfield long-pass from Cathcart, with Sarr already advanced on the right wing and the whole team 'up' the pitch to some extent already - so it's not a counter, but it is a great and very rare example of that quick play/moving the ball quickly that we shoud be doing and almost uniformly aren't.

 

That was beating Spurs pre-season.

 

He was clearly never going to be good enuff m8. Did well to get a fee for him.

 

A lot of people were optimistic. The deranged among them thought things like Deulofeu would play in the Championship, that we wouldn't sell anyone, that Giraldi was just a scout now, that we'd sign stat leading players like Grimes.

Some of us called it that we wouldn't. That the decline from the start of last season would continue unabated. We were shouted down and called names and the usual stuff. Now those people are saying the same things and acting all shocked that it's happened or claiming they are some kind of expert that they've noticed. Same people claimed, and still do, that players like Suarez and Estupinan would have made no difference to the side yet suddenly decry that we have Deeney and Gray as attacking options and no natural left back.

Watching this all unfold is of no surprise to me. The rewriting of history by so-called fans is nothing new as is the strange gloating when we win the odd game.

I respect you for admitting you were wrong. Just as I was about Ivic. Real shame that we'll never really know whether the problem was really him or not.

 

Huh? I rarely use twitter and when I do I don't post on there as lowerrous.

 

It’s not about being right or wrong. We aren’t sitting an exam here. Nobody gets a certificate at the end of the season for the highest number of correct posts. It’s not even as if we meet up with others on this forum for a drink and a good chat about things. It’s just a vehicle for writing out how we feel at any given point in time. Our opinions. And as with most other things in life, our opinions change over time. Mine have. I liked the look of Ivic when we were linked with him. He seemed a serial winner. And a disciplinarian too, which seemed what we needed to finally sort out our dysfunctional squad. And in fairness, he’s not been an unmitigated disaster. For most of the season, we’ve sat in the top six. And maybe it’s a wrong sense of entitlement to moan about feeling bored, but I am this season. With the style of play. The lack of goals. And the fact that just a few months after this great new revolution and fightback was supposed to start, we are starting matches with Deeney up top and failing to score.

 

I come on here very sparingly but...

Just like you said, I shouldn't have lauded it over you when we won, you know because that's what we all wanted as Watford fans. But now you're doing the same as if you're happy we lost. So well done on making me look better, appreciate it.

Anyway, I will hold my hands up. I thought Preston would be a turning point as we looked really good. Two games later it clearly wasn't, and Ivic needs to sort things out fast as well as the players who have to take responsibility too.

 

Best moment of the game was probably Hughes having a go at Deeney about his total lack of movement. It was one of the few times we'd got someone between the lines, running at the defence in a three on three and Deeney just stood completely still with any pass blocked by the defender. I don't remember many of players having the guts to call Deeney out like that over the last few years, hopefully players like Hughes can become the leaders that we actually need.