Watford Fc 1-1 Brentford - 15/12/2020

Toney was hardly swimming in support in the first half either. But he made space for himself, harried defenders and at times his midfield stepped up and closed the spaces. We didn’t do that. And Deeney didn’t do ANYTHING Toney did.

 

Tactically out of his depth? This is what is really happening at the moment --> Managing a team in his first year in England, starting the day in a playoff spot, having not had all of his players available, and knowing there are areas to improve upon.

Wonder how you would describe a manager who managed a team in the bottom 6

 

Think we have a separate thread for that.

 

I can understand why you re so angry because your boys had to play with 10 men and you must feel angry about the sending off, but all the pundits said it was a red card and pen. That’s football I guess !!!!

Your guy Toney is good though . You ll
Have trouble holding onto him in Jan.

Think you ll be ok this season though , there’s defo 3 worst teams in the league this year .

Good luck for the rest of the season .

 

Just got back. It's good to be back, but I was wondering what all the fuss was about by half time. That was a dire 45 minutes, totally bossed by Brentford. When you're at the game you see it differently. We were so isolated up front. No one supported the attacks. They all held back waiting for the next Brentford attack. We played like a team rooted at the bottom of the table, knowing that the team was utterly hopeless and trying to hold out for a 0-0 draw.

Ivan Toney, to see him live, and even though he had a quiet game, he looked quality. Great strength and movement. Won loads of headers and gets a shot off even in tight areas. It's a serious question to the club, but why were we either unaware or not interested in this player? He hit the post and that would have been a great goal.

Second half we were better, but it was still was not good enough. We got a big break with the penalty, even though the referee took about 5 minutes before he decided to give it. Red card was a bonus too. Could we go on and dominate? Of course not, we went back into our shell and gave Brentford a lifeline, although I thought that was harsh to give a penalty for that. Point blank range, but you cannot rely on the officials giving you a favour. We've had enough of those handouts already this season.

We could have snatched an underserved win, and would have had Perica's goal stood. It was incorrectly disallowed, but we have to be so much better than this. Apart from a couple of decent performances, we've been dreadful this season. I just don't see any improvement as we go along. Ivic's luck will run out soon enough and I think the board surely have to be looking at someone else by now.

We're lucky but not convincing. With the money spent on accumulating this squad, we have to be a lot better than we are by now. Excuses are running out.

 

You need to realise, it’s VERY rare a manager can pick from all his players available. Injuries happen to every club and every manager. It’s not an excuse.

I don’t give him leeway because he’s new to England. If that’s an excuse he starts off with and a given drawback he begins with, don’t hire him. He’s been successful elsewhere and I don’t think he’s a bad manager - I just don’t think he’s suited for what our goals are as a club...promotion and PL survival. I don’t think his chances of success in those areas are high enough for him to continue.

Yes. Tactically out of his depth.
Terrified to be on the front foot for long periods.
Refusal to take advantage of being VS 10 men.
Sarr playing so far within himself it’s unreal.
Subs too late.
Complete apathy on the touchline.

Can’t see how any of the above can be disputed.

 

Agree with every word - but Kabasele wasn’t point blank range. He was an acceptable distance away from the shot to get his arms out of the way. They were inexplicably away from his body in the path of the ball - was a clear penalty, even if I’ve seen poor refs not give them.

 

I'm sure we'd have loved to have bought Toney, but unfortunately by the time he became anything more than a punt, we ended up without a pot to piss in. Would love to know the stark contrast between our first half performance and the first 15 of the second half, for better or worse, we see a lot of games where we come out a completely different team after half time

 

Yep, his arms should not have been up where they were, waving around like that. The fact that such a terrible ref could give it with such ease, and without the need for 10 angles of VAR to spot it like most handballs that are given says it all.

 

I just don't see how this is a fair criticism. He hasn't refused to take advantage. We were on top when we got the penalty so can understand why he wouldn't immediately change it because they had a red. Then they equalised pretty quickly and within ten minutes he'd changed it to bring Perica on and go 4-4-2. Then he took a full back off and gave Gray ten minutes, shuffling the back four. It was almost 4-2-4 with Gray, Perica, Deeney and Sarr on, Sema pushing on from left back too!

I don't think Ivic could've done anything else to make us more offensive. The players messed that up with terrible decision making time and again.

 

Were you in the VRE? If so, did you also see the group of three blokes who shouted 'I've had enough of this ****, I'm going home' just before half time and left?

Made me laugh up through the nose/mask.

 

He is just another victim of anti-social media and the discord sowed upon it. Probably has facebook and twitter alerts going off on his phone all the time, you know the type.

 

I agree with some of your points, but not as convinced as you are about our squad being a lot better than they are doing. I guess its about individual expectations at the start of the season from folk. We have had expectations across the whole spectrum...

"We should p*** this league"
"We should be top 6 at least"
"Mid table mediocrity"
"We are going to struggle"
"We will be relegated"

Historically its never been easy for teams to go back up straight after going back down. And the transfer window didn't excite me too much. Which was partly why my own expectations were to be hopefully somewhere in the top 6 end of the season and if its the playoffs see how we go thereafter.

 

Unfortunately, if the ref gives it as offside then it's offside. Even when it's not.

 

This season more than ever is sure to bring swings and roundabouts, it wouldn't shock me if a team overcame a bit of a deficit to get promoted/win the league, but as it stands, Brentford and us certainly have the look of play-off teams, certainly good in spells, but overall a bit underwhelming, but definitely with more in the tank than three quarters of the league

 

I was in the VRE, but didn't see or hear any of that. The group around me were fairly supportive but towards half time I think the general mood was not the best amongst the majority.

 

They are your own opinions, which is fine. He will not be sacked because of them, unless it does damage to the results in a significant way. And the results overall in relation to the other teams in the division haven't been poor enough so far for him to be shown the door.

 

We have a really good squad, but it's being restricted and stifled. This is by and large the same team that destroyed Liverpool. It can play to a much higher level than we're seeing. Even though we were relegated last season, we were a lot better as a team than we are now.

We are now just a disjointed collection of individuals who are scared stiff of conceding goals.

 

You make a good point there about a deficit team making ground up, historically I've known teams mid table or just below get on a run and get into the playoffs. May have even been us one time but I could be wrong about that.

 

Fair enough, people see it differently. But I saw a team that wasn’t pro-active quick enough in bringing Perica on and weren’t drilled to make use of the ball. We didn’t look like a team with an extra player and didn’t give their GK a save to make (beyond the farcical offside decision).

Think we were far too naive once they had been shown the red card and gave them far too much respect. Personally, I want a manager who jumps on top of a weakened team when we are the home side and pro-actively seeks to punish them. We just continued to play around the fringes with little motivation coming from the sidelines.

 

I mean, sure, but I'd definitely say we've had a worse injury list than most teams, Hughes has played, what, half an hour of football all season? We've had about half the season without any proper strikers, and still don't have a proper left-back (Femenia has done an admirable job, but you can tell it's not his natural position. Mind you, if we don't improve with Hughes, Masina and Perica all playing regularly, we really have no ******* hope do we?

 

It may or may not be a similar team that beat Liverpool I can't remember the whole side but either way don't you think that was a one off crazy result that can happen, bearing in mind what happened to both the teams for the rest of the season.

 

I accept the Hughes issue. Femenia played plenty of games at LB when Masina was fit in the PL - that’s a recruitment issue, not a fitness issue. And the striker issue again is a recruitment problem - we have had strikers available all season. They’ve either been played on the wrong shape and/or are substandard.

I really don’t think we have suffered more than others because of injuries - not to a level outfield the norm for a football club anyway.

 

Technical question. Does an offside goal count as a shot on target in the stats?

 

This really isn't true at all and quite a bizarre claim to make.

That team had a midfield three of Hughes, Capoue and Doucoure. One has left, one has started no games and the other only five. There is no Deulofeu or Pereyra. Masina hasn't started a game.

We certainly wouldn't have destroyed Liverpool with Chalobah, Cleverley and Garner in the middle of the pitch.

 

No.

 

The subs thing isn't unusual, i've complained about that with every manager I can think off lol. Ivic been slower than I would like with subs in some other games I've seen. But I said the same with Pearson, QSF, Gracia, and so on and so on. Tbf he did bring Perica on to try and win it tonight and even went 3 strikers near the end.

 

Without a doubt were very lucky to be all square at half time, but at the end of the day.........................

WE WOZ ROBBED​

Brentford really gave us the runaround in the 1st half and played some great football. In fact their manager said in his interview on Sky that it was his teams best performance of the season so far, therefore you have to ask were we as **** as many of you are saying or was it just that Brentford were brilliant? I would say we were not as bad as many of you have said, though we were certainly not all that good either, the fact of the matter was that Brentford were just by far the better team in the 1st half.

We came out fighting in the 2nd half and were already on top before the sending off and resulting penalty kick, as for the penalty and red card, both decisions were correct according to the after match analysis on Sky. Sarr was not offside when he broke clear as has been suggested by some, and the double jeopardy law was correctly implemented, as the defender did not make an attempt to play the ball. Sky put the actual "Double Jeopardy" law up on the screen and it clearly showed that the correct decision had been taken by the ref in sending the Brentford player off.

As for the Kabaselle handball it was a clear penalty and a definite Kabs brain fart. Having said that I do not feel that Kabs deserves the slagging that some of you have been giving him as he has been our best CB this season without a doubt and has saved us on far more occasions than he has cost us, even though he did cost us the goal today.

Again many of you are slagging off Ivic, but overall he is doing a good job for WFC IMO, and today you cannot say he was being overly defensive, as he had THREE strikers on at the end of the game. I have to say I do wonder at some of his team selections, especially playing Deeney as a lone striker, that does not compute for me. Having said that he is the one who sees the players in training and presumably makes his decisions accordingly from the players he has available and how they are performing on the training pitch, and I don't forget he has not had a fully fit squad to choose from as yet this season.

As for Deeney he seemed more interested in telling all the other players what to do rather than concentrating on his own game, which was supposed to be as our lone striker, but more often than not he was hardly in the Brentford half let alone their penalty box, and we wonder why we are not scoring goals from open play?

Finally, as I said above "WE WOZ ROBBED" Because Perica was not off side and neither was any other of our players, therefore we had a perfectly good goal wrongly disallowed. This was shown on the Sky analysis show and it was unanimously agreed by the pundits that the goal should have stood.

I would have taken a draw before the game, and was unbelievably grateful we survived Brentford's 1st half onslaught, but at the end of the day we should have taken all 3 points.

 

The team that's playing now is not capable of reaching those heights because it's not allowed to do so. We just sit back, static and stale. Our attacks are ponderous and obvious. Because of the league we're in we're always going to come across a team who is off colour now and then, such as Preston, but that is likely to be our Liverpool this season. A freak where everything came together on the night.

Unless something changes, we are going to get bogged down with draws and narrow defeats. Which will destroy any chance of a top two placement. I walked home tonight with the realisation that if nothing changes, we're only going to be play off at best. We're just 4 games away from the halfway point this season!!

We should be the major force in this league. When I saw Toney tonight, I knew we've got nothing of that type of quality in our front line, but then nor has anyone else (apart from Brentford of course). But we do have a lot of players who should be good enough to carry a promotion charge. We're just not seeing it and I think it's because the players are frightened to express themselves. They are drilled into a military way of thinking of "do not concede", rather than force a goal.

This is why we're just passing the ball across the backline, trying to run the clock down, hoping for a clean sheet which will give us a 0-0 draw or even a 1-0 win on a good night. This type of philosophy is too fragile, as if we concede the first goal, we're in big trouble for the rest of the match.

 

Again, you’re using others poor traits to defend him. What others did badly is irrelevant as they are no longer employed by us.

Bringing on a second striker to try and win a home game is what a manager should do in any home game they aren’t winning in my opinion, unless you are a lowly team against higher opposition - tonight we were the higher placed team against ten men. It was a no brainer to bring Perica on, yet he left it too late after they equalised. He was too slow and stale against 10 men and sadly that plays into the whole demeanour of him as a coach.

I’ll leave it at that. We have laboured our points enough.

But Ivic is not the manager for us. He won’t achieve our goals. I’m convinced of it. Utterly convinced.

 

Geri went off with the score at 0-0. I said by and large, meaning it's a similar team. Deeney, Sarr, Foster, Kabsele, Kiko, Chalobah and Capoue all played in that game. That's 7 with Masina and Gray on the bench, who also was in the team that day too.

I really don't think it's a bizarre claim to make at all.

 

What I was getting at is that most of us are all armchair managers from time to time and say what we would've done in particular matches. They aren't sackable offences unless the results go bad compared to the rest of the division.

 

You make some good points.

 

Firstly I want to say just how good it was to be back in The Vic! Didn't realise how much I missed the little things, walking up and down Occupation Road, hearing a roar, the music, all things you might put secondary to the football but actually once taken away, realised just how important they are to the experience.

Now, to football. I'm convinced Ivic is a terrorist.

The first half was TERRIBLE. Yet we manage to retrieve the ball to which the manager must be given some credit, we are solid and don't give away many clear cut chances but when we get the ball back there are 11 men in our half.

Came out the second half firing though.

When Ngakia or Femenia get the ball, there's nothing to do but wait for Deeney to get back up there and by then the opposition have reset and we've lost any chance of quick build up.

Deeney actually didn't have a bad game, for a CDM! For the love of Christ he cannot play the lone striker role anymore that much is blaringly obvious. He's never bloody there! He, must, has, needs to play with a PARTNER. PLEASE.

Kabasele, meh, used to his 1 in 6 brain fart performance. Today was one of them.

Cleverley is irritating, does nothing, doesn't come to collect the ball, doesn't play any killer passes, horrible footballer.

Femenia was fantastic and Sarr a constant threat.

But yeah, no more inspecting any more individual performances having seen us live it's clear as day to me it's a tactical thing. If we can't get the ball to Sarr we have absolutely not threat in behind, Deeney is barely up front so more often than not the opposition have four defenders to worry about two attacking players who are both out wide, there's no runs being made through the middle to give the centre backs any issues.

Garner, Chalobah & Clevs all do pretty much the same thing, no drive, no leadership, no URGH (for lack of any word for the feeling) from midfield you know?

We are not playing good enough right now to go up automatically, tactically or mentally. All hope is not lost, the individuals in our team can play better I believe but they have to be given better instruction and better leadership. Poor from Ivic again IMO. Sarr looks totally bored and disinterested in our current style.

Pretty concerning performance despite what was a point you'd probably take before kick off.