I think it's a fair comment - he didn't say he wants it to happen. Thinking we might lose matches doesn't mean you can't support the team. We're fans, not cheerleaders.
Nobody knows how the season will unfurl. The optimists think we'll go up. The pessimists fear we won't. I haven't got a clue. Up to Saturday I was sure we were going up. Now I'm a bit more nervous but still confident we at least have as good a chance as anybody else. Two things I do know...how exciting this all is and why you live to be a football fan. The tightest race in years and we're a big part of it. Brilliant. And also, if we do miss out, the foundations are being built for another push next season. It's not a one-off season. If we miss out, hopefully the experience of this season will serve us well.
Calm down FFS! If I was in Anya's shoes, I would of taken Chaplow 'out', before he had an opportunity to shoot. For what ever reason, Anya decided to do nothing, resulting in Ipswich scoring and winning the game.
Kelso is totally right imo to say stats are historical. They are. One that really encourages me though is the one about us following up our 5 most recent defeats (and 1 draw) with victories, most of them resounding ones. Of course it doesn't mean we'll beat Derby, but it does show we have the ability and mindset to bounce straight back from a loss.
But what's the purpose of negativity now? Would we see these comments if Watson would have cleared it? We only dropped 1 point. I don't understand why the pessimists can't save it until the end of the season, it helps nobody. What happens is you get a stale atmosphere in the ground and players arguing with fans for moaning again, like what happened with Gomes on Saturday.
I agree with regard to pessimists, but thinking we may lose games doesn't mean they're not going to cheer their loudest and get behind the team. Personally I think we will go up. We've got a great chance at automatics and if we miss out, we'll have a great chance in the playoffs. No one's being purposefully negative - HB1 made a fair comment. I don't think it'll be the case, and I'm sure he hopes it won't. When I talk about how great we're doing I'm making an observation, not trying to help the club out by being positive. The same goes for negativity after a disappointing loss.
This from Sherlock ... he's hit the nail. Arguments over, let's move on. Anyway, the loss was a masterpiece by Joka IMHO. He knew that with another win in March, nothing could have prevented him receiving the curse of the "manager of the month" exactly in the crucial April oncoming, so he skillfully avoided it. NOW we can win all the April matches.
I don't understand. We are second. It is still in ours hands. How have people got an issue with this? Never seen a group of Watford players try and get on the right side of the fans as much as the current group has (paying for the coaches) and it is perfectly clear to me that everyone at the club is giving everything to get into the Premier League. The only thing holding us back at the moment is a small minority who cannot find it in themselves to have faith and believe. How do these people get enjoyment from football?? What is the point in supporting a football club if in moments like these you are just going to naysay. Even if you do think the team is doing some things wrong we just need to have FAITH that they will get it right in the next game. That is all we can do, and the players will benefit from that. In two months we could be promoted, we should embrace and (try to) enjoy every bit of it! Always read comments on here and never usually post but some peoples attitude on here is really getting up my chuffer!
Yes, but what is said on here might effect our fortunes in a small way. While I'm sure none of the players follow this forum as avidly as we do, I also doubt that the squad is unaware of the general mood. Dave Brailsford, small margins eh?
I find looking at things in a slightly pessimistic/realistic way helps to not get my hopes up. After the 2012/13 season I don't want to get carried away.
Exactly this. Btw, thinking that there's a correlation between a pessimistic comment on here & the atmosphere on matchday is a rash judgement, it's simply our opinion and I still get right behind them. Like I've said many times, I'd love to confidently predict top 2 for us, but I'll give my honest appraisal, and it doesn't mean I don't rate us, I do.
To everyone saying "We're 2nd, stop being negative!": Really, who cares? We're 2nd, so what. We're all Watford fans, and will likely still be coming on here to talk about current affairs at the club, whatever the situation. Next season we might be in the Premier League, or we might be scrapping at the bottom of the championship - but anyone and everyone should still have the right to come and here and provide their constructive opinions, whether it be positive or negative. I don't particularly like the implication that league position reflects success, or more specifically, long term success. We've escaped this league before only for the club to be in absolute dire straits 12 months later. What is working well now might be in our best interests for the future, and vice versa. That isn't to say we haven't done well this season - we have. But that Ipswich loss for me was symptomatic of long standing problems, and lessons that were never learnt. I want us to get promotion as much as the next guy, but I can't just be endlessly positive when I see things that I don't think are right. League position, or trophies doesn't change this. I'd rather hear people's actual constructive thoughts other than "we're second, it's going so well! COYH!" Booing or just posting "s***!" on this forum is about as useful as unconditional positivity in my book.
Again, how is criticising our players in the middle of a game we are drawing, constructive? Same as the morons that boo
This is where I need someone to go back and collate all my posts from the last 6 months. I sure as hell ain't doing it.
The most important word in your post was 'constuctive' and you used it twice. It's quite possible to be pessimistic and still be constructive. To THT 81. Yep, I doubt if what is said on here bears much correlation to the level of support on match day. But I do reckon that negativity on here will transmit itself to the squad in one way or another. And they'll think that the tone on here broadly represents the wider fan-base at large who aren't active on here. And, they'll probably be right in that. So let's keep it constrictive eh? In fairness, I'd say most of it has been. Nothing like the moaning for moaning's sake exhibited after a defeat earlier in the season.
Our results against the top 6/8/delete as fits your argument are irrelevant because many of them happened before Joka came into the club, or before he had bedded in and weeded out the bad eggs in the squad. We've played 4 games since the off-field upheaval settled: Bournemouth 2-0 Watford (rescinded red card after 28 seconds) Brentford 1-2 Watford (Brentford down to 10 men) Watford 0-3 Norwich (game even until Norwich cheated, then we fell apart) Watford 0-1 Ipswich (Ipswich came to kill the game and get a 0-0 and sucker punched us at the death) Joka was in charge for other games we lost but he'd just come into the club and we hadn't removed the toxic elements from the dressing room. Looking over the four games above, we lost one directly because of an awful refereeing decision (Bournemouth) and had no chance, we lost a second because of blatent cheating (Norwich) which put us 2-0 down due to loss of composure after the awful penalty. The third loss was a game that the opposition set up to kill (Ipswich) in which we were unfortunate to lose in the 95th minute and probably should have been leading least 2-0 if we had taken earlier opportunities. The win was against 10 men. Looking at those games, it really doesn't seem that the picture is anywhere near as bad as people are trying to make out. Stats are nice but they lack context. Looking at our form including games before Joka found his feet is completely pointless because we didn't line up the same way then and he didn't know the squad. That's not the case anymore. While the four games since have produced 3 losses and 1 win, two of those losses were directly due to awful refereeing (we could have kept our heads better v Norwich, but the game was tightly balanced to the point that you knew a bad decision would decide it) and the third loss was rather undeserved given we were largely untroubled for the entire game. Exclude the pre-Joka games (irrelevant), the right-after-Joka-came-in games (he didn't know the squad, his approach wasn't established and the bad boys were still around) and the games in which the ref or red cards directly played a part and you have a sample size of 1: our last game v Ipswich. That sample size is far too small and nowhere near enough to draw conclusions from.
If people are predicting the future, nobody's opinions are more valid or less valid than anybody else! It's all guesswork. It's not happened yet. Some people are bound to be more optimistic than others because of their nature, others more pessimistic. But as we've not played Derby yet on Good Friday, or been able to see the final league table, it's all predictions. Myself, I'm in the Watford Talk camp of being more optimistic than pessimistic because we're 2nd and because we've tended to bounce back very well from annoying defeats this season. Any pessimism I occasionally show is more of a 'self-defence mechanism' to stop myself getting too upset when things go wrong. If I think we might lose a match and we don't, I end up happy, rather than the other way round! I'm lucky nobody noticed my confident prediction of 'staying unbeaten in the run-in' that I posted on Saturday morning! Doh!
I wonder if the current rash of attention deficit syndrome exhibited by everyone under the age of 30 is something to do with too many hormones in the drinking water ...
Stats are historical, but are very important to show trends in certain things. Stats should not be underestimated. After all, the league table is just a collection of results, which is a stat. But it's one that will determine our fate. Here's another interesting stat. We've played the top 8 12 times this season, with 2 more to play. We won 2, drew 3 and lost 7. Of those 12 games we've only scored the first goal once (Brentford at home) and have not recorded a clean sheet against anyone. Herein lies the problem. When you play a top side, it's imperative to take the lead. You can then control the game a great deal better, and this is where we've fallen down in the past. We're not given ourselves a chance because we seem to always find ourselves losing. We've managed to overturn a deficit once (Brentford away), and taken a point 3 times from losing positions (twice at Wolves in fact), but the other times we've gone on to lose.
A very interesting stat. It certainly shows the need to start on the front foot on Good Friday. I have another interesting stat for you, which backs up the point you're making a bit too. We've scored 78 league goals this season. How many do you think were in the first half as opposed to the second? The answer is quite interesting. We've scored 28 first-half goals but 50 after half-time. Taken as a season as a whole, this points to us being a side who often start slowly but finish matches much stronger. This is fine when you're coming back from 0-2 against Blackpool or whatever, but I guess your point would be we can't start so slowly against the top sides because by the time we 'wake up' the match might be over. To back you up about top 8 sides, we've only scored first half goals this season against Brentford (once) and Wolves (once).
Pure objective analysis of statistics loses its value unless all other factors remain the same. With four head coaches, significant departures, different tactical styles and player recruitment to rectify squad deficiencies, using results from our earlier games to predict the next few weeks is a colossal waste of time. The current Watford side under Jokanovic is not the same Watford side that Sannino took to Carrow Road, nor is it the same side that drew with Bournemouth under Garcia. Objective statistical analysis can only be applied in an environment with appropriate control variables. Even by the very volatile standard of football squads we've had a massive amount of upheaval this season. EDIT: for example, here is the lineup for Garcia's 1-1 game v Bournemouth: Gomes Ekstrand Tamas (Cathcart - 32' ) Paredes Pudil Tozser Booked Abdi Murray Anya Vydra Dyer (Forestieri - 57') Bit of a different lineup/tactical approach, to put it mildly.
Or alternatively it points at a side which plays consistently strong but comes into the game later as the opposition tire and can no longer keep up a technically better team contained through high pressing. Like it or not, most teams have had us marked as a threat since the latter part of Zola's season and tend to set up to stop us playing. It's only the media pundits who don't seem to realise we've got a very good side now; our opponents cottoned onto that a while back.
Blimey, didn't realise our lineup had changed that much this season. Only Gomes, Ekstrand and Tozser were still in the team for Ipswich, with Cathcart, Motta, Hoban, Guedioura, Layun, Watson, Deeney and Ighalo all coming in.
It's interesting though Arakel because it's a real change from last season where we tended to score more in the first half and conceed more in the second. I'd say this season is down to a number of factors. I think our fitness levels are much better than they have been in the past two seasons, and for that Beppe and his trainers get credit for the pre-season they gave us. I also agree with your point about us making our opponents tire. Again, I think your points backs up HB's in that the weaker opponents are more likely to tire easier (Blackpool for example when we scored 7 after h/t) whereas the top sides don't. I also think some of our second half successes owe much to Joka for his tactical changes and good substitutions. So there are a number of factors, but the 50-28 stat shows just how much stronger a side we are after h/t. I think that ratio would be above the league average. An early goal at Derby would be nice though!!
I'd argue that's simply a reflection of the fact that we're not playing the same tactical style as we did under Beppe/Zola. I'd agree that the cause of our late goals conceded was fitness, though...Beppe certainly did a lot to fix that over the summer and I fully agree he deserves a lot of credit for that. I think Joka's style seems to be a little more pragmatic than Zola's "score more than them" and Beppe's "score early then be happy to defend a 1 goal lead for the win" styles. Joka almost seems to like setting up to nullify/match the opponent initially, watch the unfolding game and then adjust our approach to exploit the weaknesses he sees in front of him while countering the opposition's strengths. As many have noted, I think the early Ekstrand injury restricted his options in that regard last game and we'd likely have seen Vydra on much earlier otherwise.
Quite! As another comparison point, here is the Sannino side which lost at Norwich: Gomes Tamas Ekstrand Angella Pudil Paredes Tozser Abdi (Andrews - 64' ) McGugan (Dyer - 45' ) Deeney Vydra (Forestieri - 63' ) Obviously we lost that due to the ridiculous early sending off, but that doesn't change how different that 14 was (in terms of both personnel and formation) to the current 14 Joka has been favouring.
My stats aren't ever meant to be critical. They're just provided for interest and hopefully discussion. What they do show is we score almost twice as many goals in the second half than the first. And, as HB1 is debating the top 8 issue, we don't score many versus the top sides in the first half! That said, other than Bornemouth away and Norwich away, both of when we went down to ten men very early on, in our other meetings with the top 8 few of them have scored against us before half-time either! Only Wolves and Derby I think. Both matches with Ipswich, Bournemouth at the Vic, Boro away, Brentford away and Norwich at home were all 0-0 at half-time. Brentford at home we led 1-0 having scored just before the interval. So what do all these stats mean is most likely at Derby? Answer..it'll be a tight first-half with no goals, unless we get a clown of a referee who sends off one of our defenders in the first 5 minutes!!!!!!
