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

He was close to getting in the Belgian national team when he joined us wasn't he ? Made 2 appearances in 2016/17, as you say, distant memories now...

 

TBF they had done fantastically well as an exec team results and progress-wise from 2013 - until about 21 months ago. Then utter **** since....

 

Chalobah has always been overrated by our fans since he returned.

He had an amazing season under Zola as a 17/18 year old and hasn't had a single good season since. He failed to make an impact in loan spells at Forest, Boro, Burnley, Reading, Napoli. He scored five league goals that first season with us, it's taken him a further nine seasons to score another five.

Even his good start to the season under Silva has been overblown. It was only about 4/5 games. Since the injury he has had chance after chance but whatever talent he did have has been extinguished. No amount of wishful thinking is going to make him a good player.

 

Granted it was similar, but this particular post was in response to #429

 

I agree, most teams would look good the way that we played in the first half. The minute we put any sort of pressure on them they were passing it out for a throwing or smashing it down the pitch to Foster. They were never going to score in the second half if it wasn't for Kabasele's stupidity. They are supposedly one of the beter sides in the league and the minute we put any kind of pressure on them they looked average at best, we really need to start getting on the front foot and taking the game to the opposition.

 

Where was Pedro and Quina last night?

 

He's not the same player as 5 years ago, true. Nobody is. But he is playing well at the moment. Some people find that hard to accept and will try and pick holes in it but he is doing ok, even more so considering he is playing a slightly deeper role.

If we played Deeney and Perica as a partnership and had some quality in midfield we would have a very good season. Deeney playing alone with cloggers like Chalobah behind him isn't going to really get us anywhere.

 

Looking on the bright side, maybe they're both taking a long time to make a full recovery from Covid.

 

Ivic go now you vile negative joyless man. Do the honourable thing, admit you are out of your depth and walk away. There’s a good reason you always look so miserable. You’ve had to watch every minute of our season so far.

Those in charge of our recruitment, you should be fired on the spot and taken to court and sued for every penny you’ve stolen from the club under the presence of signing us decent and needed players.

Duxbury, your time is up too. You’ve turned us into a shambles of a club.

Pozzo, fix an urgent meeting with Eddie Howe and offer him what ever it takes. You’ve messed up your last three Head Coach appointments, now is your chance to put it right.

What a joyless, pitiful, negative mess of a football club we’ve become.

 

I waited 9 months to watch us live, and if Ivic stays in charge I could quite happily wait another 9. That first half was so disgusting it can't just be swept under the carpet - worst I've seen us in terms of organisation or application. The guy literally doesn't talk to his players during the game either. Truly believe we have an absolute dud in Vlad.

 

Did any journalist ask why Ivic had two keepers on the bench again? Or they all cowards?

 

Prediction:
We are told Hughes has recovered fully.
Then we are told he's fit and under consideration.

Saturday, 2pm:
Hughes has a minor knock. Nowhere to be seen.

Capoue must start now. Showed more in 15 minutes that Garner has done for weeks.

 

Hughes won't be playing until well into the new year. Any injured player with a slight knock or Covid requires a month or two of reintegration to our squad.

 

I predicted our strategy before the game. Try to keep them out in the first half (we did, but were lucky to get away with it), improve a bit after half time (we improved a lot) and bring on Perica after 60 minutes (in fact it was 70) to score the only goal of the game (well, the only goal from open play, if it had counted).

Kiko only crossed the halfway line once in the first half, but after the interval was one of many who showed so much energy going forward until Troy's goal. When Brentford were down to ten men we seemed to lose that drive, maybe because the visitors were focusing on defence, but the ten still seemed as likely to score as we did.

 

Don't know how many times this needs to be said but Eddie Howe is not going to be interested in the Watford job. He will get a Premier League job soon enough but even if he wasn't going to, he's not going to come to our trigger happy club.

 

Find it a bit odd that @Burnsy liked this post - he's been arguing with me for weeks that Toney wouldn't look anywhere near as good in our team because supposedly he wouldn't have got enough decent service.

But as we've seen even with Perica, who is better than Troy but not as good as Toney, having even a half-decent striker means that even average crosses in to the box can lead to goals, and even aimless hoofs upfield to the striker can cause panic in opposition defences.

 

No. Troy was winning all the knock downs, but had nobody on hand to knock them down to. Play them both.

 

Poster 470 you don’t know this, so would you kindly stop your belittling of my posts and my opinions. You may well be right, you may well be wrong but I don’t appreciate you putting me down, so kindly stop it. Go and find somebody else to patronise.

 

6:45, you miserable sod.

 

Also the fact we never went for Toney is criminal, given Deeney's closest friend is his agent - he's absolutely brilliant.

 

I was in the Rookery. Great to hear the roar when Z-Cars struck up. Lots of booing at half time, which can't all have come from Moog and his inventions. And lots of yelling at the officials.

 

I can't disagree with this, however, I will defend the owners in general. We have transformed for the better under them. We were in a right mess before they purchased the club and they transformed us into a really exciting Championship team, which managed promotion within 3 years. They then defied the odds again by keeping us up for 5 years. That is a remarkable achievement, with an FA Cup final appearance to boot. We've consistently punched above our weight under them, but now things are levelling off and the way the club has been managed over the past 18-24 months has been well under their very high standards.

Not sure what is the cause of this. They were smarter than the rest, always finding clever ways to ensure Watford were beating the odds, but whether it's complacency, bad luck, poor decisions or a combo of all three, why we were relegated and look really poor now. Ok, we are still third in the league, but I think we can all see things are not as rosy as they should be.

I still have faith in the ownership, that they will find a way. For me, they have a lot of credit left in the bank, but they have messed up consistently for quite a while now.....there's no hiding away from that.

However, having an owner who owns an EU based club, is still a huge advantage for us post-Brexit.

Even though we've probably not got a lot of money right now, we still have to invest in the squad in January if at all possible. It seems it's vital we go up this season, hence the directive Ivic had pre-season. The board have to help him achieve this though. For me, the most important thing is to sign a decent striker. Whether that will be Cucho coming in, getting Geri back, using Toure or signing someone like Watters. Whatever it is, it needs to be done. Carry on as we are we're going to fall short, I think that's obvious.

We're nearly half way through the season, and we've hardly spent any time occupying the top two positions. This is a big indicator for me. At this stage, the table doesn't lie too much, although I do believe the halfway mark is the perfect time to review fairly as everyone would have played each other once by then.

I think Ivic will be given the next 4 games, and depending on what shape we're in after the Swansea game, will be make or break for him. Changes do have to be made though if we are to get promoted this season.

 

Um, no, he wasn't.

 

Got to agree with this. Now I've seen him play live, it was a no-brainer. Another indicator that we're not quite as smart as we like to think we are as a club...at this moment in time at least.

 

Comfortably will be a Premier League striker - just has everything. Absolutely bullied us. At minimum we'd of doubled our money and probably got promoted. Sikiri Dembele is the next star coming from Peterborough, sure we'll find a better option from Udinese's reserves or Belgium.

 

No I haven't. Thats disingenuous. I've suggested that it isn't a cast iron guarantee he would have been AS successful with us as he's been for Brentford. He'd be more successful than what we have for sure...but I have doubts about him replicating the amount he has scored. And I stand by that. I also argued that I think he may well have chosen Brentford over us even if we had matched their bid - which I think we had no chance of doing without selling Sarr. You don't and think its a certainty he would have picked us. Fair enough.

I don't think our style of play is determined because of who we play up front. I just think it's Ivic's preferred style full stop. I do have doubts that Toney would see decent service with us - our style largely this season proves that...but Toney would at least create more for himself than our lot do, I accept that.

Would I love Toney? Yes. Would he make us better? Undoubtedly. I've never ever denied that.

I just find the constant references to him a bit silly given we never placed a bid for him and it was only their local rag who linked us to him a couple of times. Frustrating all the same that we never seem interested in obvious upgrades to the squad - I said the same re. Gary Cahill at the start of last season.

I get more annoyed at the fact that our owner and recruitment always seem more interested in unearthing the next gem that no-ones heard of rather than be in the market for the obvious choice right under their noses.

 

We couldn’t afford Toney, simple as that.

Ditto Grimes.

Our summer recruitment consisted of three free transfers from our parent club, a free from West Ham, a loan from Man U, a loan from Brighton and a free from Charlton.

We have been so badly mismanaged off the field, and sadly now on it as well.

 

Hmmm, sounds like someone close to any possible negotiations didn't like the idea of being usurped...

 

Seemed from the Sky coverage that the fans booed Gray when he came on?

 

Toney would’ve been absolutely bonkers to have joined us over Brentford, a club with a consistent and proven track record of providing their players with a clear pathway to the Premier League.

We would’ve probably had to have paid about £8m to get him to us over Brentford, so it was a non starter not withstanding the fact weren’t even in for him.

I think it’s just frustrating to see the difference a player like that makes to a team, when you contrast an isolated Troy playing in a team with 11 men vs an isolated Toney playing in a team with 10 men.

Toney could’ve got both of our centre back red cards in that second half, that’s how much of a handful he is.

 

I was also a Sky viewer, but Leventhal confirmed this in his post-post-match-presser video - also said himself that he 'didn't have much time for Gray at the moment'.

No word on whether that meant he joined in the boos.

Questioners at least once also touched on the idea of Gray leaving in January, and from his reaction he seemed both in support of that, and hinting that it might actually be a possibility. Oh yeah, and I just remembered, as part of his 'not got much time' section, he also said something along the lines of how he didn't see what Gray offered us at this moment on the pitch.

 

Had to view ignored content to see who you were talking about, because apart from scoring penalties, I can't think of any players in our squad who are 'scoring goals and creating chances for others.'

That's the problem. That's literally Troy's job and apart from hitting a static ball from 12 yards with power, he offers us nothing.

 

Exactly this.

And we seem to have brow-beaten Sarr and Joao Pedro's natural attacking flair/ability from them - had we by some miracle have signed Toney, I think there's just as much chance that he would have been misused, swapped around and be on 3 or 4 goals by now.

 

I couldn't really disagree more with your assessment of Deeney. I think we have become so used to useless strikers over the past 3 seasons that a player making 2 or 3 link up passes outside the opponent's box per game is considered good enough. It isn't. Deeney is slow, immobile and ineffective. Our shots and chances stats bear that out. We can't have 'good' forwards if we are having 0-2 shots per game.

We aren't investing in any quality in the near future, so hopes of strengthening the midfield are forlorn. Just have to hope Philips comes in and fouls his way to giving us some sort of solidity or that Capoue decides to care for a bit.