This is the first game of the season that I will not watch live, as I'm off to Barbados. Boxing Day and New Years games have a habit of being at home, annoyingly. Still, can't complain too much. I've put 1-1 as my prediction, but I wouldn't be surprised with any result.
Things can only get better, because right now I am very pessimistic about our next three games; my expectation is "Nul Point" for our Christmas/New Year games :frown:
I'm enjoying the coverage leading up to this game. I know Palace are playing and their manager is called Big Fat Sam, but I'm not quite sure who or what they are playing? Some small non-league team probably.
Are we having a minute's applause in the 67th minute to mark the 67 days Allardyce lasted as England manager?
I'm starting to find the relaying of news surrounding injuries rather slack. I know Okaka was facing a fitness test which effectively rules him out with the depth of our squad, but what has Success done now? Unless I've just missed something (which is entirely possible)
Watford v Crystal Palace - 26th December 12:30pm KO What a uninspiring line up. Not that he has much choice. £10 on an Ighalo hat trick now.
Watford v Crystal Palace - 26th December 12:30pm KO Also, Success gets in 20 minutes then completely dropped? Okaka vanishes from the face of the earth after scoring two goals. Why can't the medical team update us properly.
That Palace team looks frightening. Neither Janmaat or Holebas are particularly defensively disciplined so expecting Zaha & Townsend to have a field day.
Bizarre line up but rather he tried something different than carry on with the Deeney/Ighalo axis of dung. Watson's clearly on his way out in Jan. Oh and we have no Brits in the starting line-up, back to being "everything wrong with modern football".
Strangely satisfied that we picked up a point. Deeney has got the monkey off his back. Dreadful first half, much better 2nd. I dislike Palace, Zaha and their new boss. Poor Ighalo looks like a lost child. We need better injury prevention programs.
Still hating this team at the moment. Awful game, Palarse were awful, we were worse and Zaha does what he does best... Gueds...ugh... Not looking foward to Spurs...
An exciting game - nobody could deny that - although severely lacking in quality at times. There was a period towards the end of hoof one way, hoof the other, hoof it back again that would shame the conference. Fortunately Zaha, as usual, faded after a bright start. I was very worried about him against Zuniga for pace after the substitution, but Wally saw it and moved him inside which worked to some extent. Zuniga played very well though in the 2nd half and won us several corners. He has some decent trickery in him. We looked very disorganised, even before the injuries. Deeney coming on really started turning things around. His first touch on to Ighalo was beautiful -unfortunately the latter was caught by surprise. The new plan seemed to be Britos or Prodl hacking it forwards towards Deeney's head. It's hard to see us scoring if it weren't for the penalty. So many balls in their area where the Palace player could have two or three touches because there were none of ours within 10 yards for some reason. Ighalo was still not much good. His thinking seems so slow. There were a couple of occasions where balls were played through to him and he stood there and watched. He always seems half a second or half a yard slow. Prodl played a terrible backpass to give away the penalty against us. Fortunately it ended up not costing us. If we'd gone 0-2 down there, I doubt we would have come back from that.
That summed up our season so far. Poor, stuttering play, few chances created, discipline issues and injuries but yet we still ended up with a point. Hopefully the new year will see some new faces, some confidence returning up front in particular and some consistancy.
This is as bad a Watford side as I have seen in the premier league - complete gash Without Pereyra, Okaka and Success we are devoid of ideas Gino needs to get his cheque book out
Given all the things that could've gone against us (bogey team Palace, on Sky, early KO, new manager), I'd take that point. We looked much better in the second half (although stringing together more than 3 successful forward passes would count as significantly better) and pressured them as they fell back. A very good chance was coming roughly at the time we scored, especially as we stepped it up in the few mins before the pen. Zaha getting a yellow for diving and Harry the Hornet taking the **** out of him topped it off. Make no mistakes though, we are woeful going forward bar Amrabat and we need something else, at least to give Deeney and Iggy some competition because Success won't do that on crutches. Speaking of, we need to sort out our fitness. The amount of players we've had out due to injuries is just unacceptable now. Whether it's down to the medical team, the fact that our players are old, a mix of both, I don't know. But it does need to be sorted out now.
