Watford Fc 1-1 Southampton - 28/02/2024 - Fac4

Can confirm my friends who are a family of Saints fans said they were actually fuming when they scored, they’d have preferred to have gone out than had a replay.

As you've alluded to above already, it doesn’t have to be a binary situation that unless you win a cup it’s a waste of time, a cup run can still be fun and beneficial. Most competitions in life are a waste of time, but then every now and then they aren’t.

 

Internationals or not, Sierralta and Porteous are crap.

 

I would like to see that again but from where I was it looked like Bayo was standing still ball watching.
A fox in the box would have had a tap in as they would have followed the shot in

 

Pollack was very shaky during the first 15 minutes. There was a break in play and Ishmael hauled him over for a chat. Those 90 seconds of coaching improved his performance. Overal until each side made a raft of substitutions, I thought we looked comfortable and on course for the victory.

 

Our recent run now is only 3 defeats in our last 20 matches

Too many draws but still, that’s fairly impressive. Tough to beat

 

This will do nicely for the replay.

 

God I'm enjoying this season! A great game and frustrating that we couldn't hold on to the win. But who cares! It was fun again.
On the debit side, it was bitterly disappointing not to see a single child with a tin foil FA cup. I blame the parents. If you went with your son or daughter today and if they're aged 10 or under and they hadn't made a cardboard and bacofoil cup you need to take a bloody good look at yourself

 

I’m fuming too. I had £200 on Southampton.

 

I went with a cardboard cutout of Saint Jurgen, resplendent with tin foil teeth.

 

Val says it was cramp, which matches what it looked like live to be honest. No injury.

 

Especially one with " **** the Tories" like the little Welsh lad had last season!

 

Aneurin Bevan?

Neil Kinnock?

“Sunny” Jim Callaghan?

 

Few.

But I'm really surprised at people saying he was very good today. In basically every single game where he and Chak have played together Kone bas been the more energetic and imposing player, whereas today for once Chak did more and Kone often went missing.

The fact that Kone did end up getting cramp at around 75 minutes just reinforced that for some reason he wasn't his usual self today - usually this season he's been one of our players with the best stamina able to keep running constantly until the final whistle. Even if it was just cramp it's surely a concern that his energy levels were so low today.

 

Maybe put Dennis in for Rajovic at the start - he could probably do with more minutes to get up to speed while we'll be needing to conserve Rajovic's energy given his stamina isn't the best already.

 

What's wrong with people?

A tie away at Liverpool has to be fun? There's only a small chance we get anywhere, but still a chance, especially as they will field a weak team and have bigger fish to fry. It will be good to pitt our wits against a top premier League team too.

I can't believe the FA cup holds such little interest for some. I love it.

Today's game was as most have written already, a case of subs. Theirs worked. Our didn't for a a variety of reasons. Asprilla, Hoedt, Martin's, Andrews and Chakvetadze were terrific. Chak my MOTM. Asprilla could have done more from the positions he made for himself, I said when Ken came on I hope he gets into those positions too, but he rarely did.

Bayo was just off the pace all game, really odd performance and I'd have put Dennis there or given Raj at least 10 minutes.

Southampton played very slowly, too deliberate and it was easy to defend against even when they had the edge in the last 30 min.

 

My only gripe is that if Livermore was never going to play then why was he on the bench ?

 

Very enjoyable game, though if you don't put your chances away when you're on top.....

There's no comparison between the football we've enjoyed this season and the turgid drivel which was spewed up last year.

 

I'd take a game against Liverpool any time.

Can't believe anyone isn't up for it - we're going to be odds on to lose any time in our history but who cares? This is what football is all about, the hope of a big win

 

#ImagineIf

 

Ooh, I can feel a BBC montage coming already. Some northern poet, black and white, grainy footage of downtrodden Watford fans, daring to dream..... isn't it? Hmm?

 

This is a Manchester City forum now

 

Arsenal, no?

 

Just watched that back, Bachmann needs to just catch that shot. What’s with the dramatic two hand punch? Such a **** goalkeeper.

 

Oh my bad I thought this was FoxesTalk

 

Said that in the shoutbox…what’s happened to keepers catching a ball

 

Bachmann as much of a liability as usual I see.

Really, really hope there’s a club stupid enough to take him off our hands.

 

The only club stupid enough to take him off our hands is probably ourselves given the contract extension and captaincy.

 

Why get rid ? He's not great but adequate as a champ reserve keeper.

 

Unfortunately once, the subs were made, we were worse and they were better, we went backwards and they went forwards, it was rabbits in the headlights stuff and no surprise they scored. Livermore should have come on for Kone instead of Ince, and Dennis for Bayo instead of Martins.

The crowd at 16.7k seemed about the same as most home games which are always given as 2-3k more shows what difference not counting missing Season Ticket holders makes. A good game, shame we didn’t hold on but onto Wednesday in more than one sense!

 

Think he set himself for a cross and then got caught unawares slightly by it being a shot. I'd happily see the back of Bachmann, really don't rate him, but don't think there's an awful lot he did wrong there. The punch went a long way away. If anything it was Dennis not covering the near post angle that contributed most to the goal. If he'd have just held his ground rather than moving inside Armstrong has no clear sight of goal due to others covering.

 

Hamer was adequate for a backup but is now our first choice, Bachman is on about 4x his wages now (according to the capology data) so a bit expensive merely to be a backup to what was meant to be the backup.

And he’s crap.

 

Yes Hamer was the cheap crap back up, and as it turns out is not bad at all.
We are never going to get a decent championship standard keeper as back up who's happy to play a couple of games a season unless there is an injury or suspension (unless Bachmann is #1 !!).
The wages are an issue but there is no way he will be here next season as #2 given how highly he rates himself so I'm sure he will find a taker even if he has to accept lower wages than he'd get rotting on the bench here.

 

Positives…we were just a few minutes away from beating a team unbeaten in something like 22 matches. We are still in the cup, although we won’t be favourites to get through now. However, we’ve only lost one of our last 10 away matches. So who knows?

Negatives…a 13th consecutive game without a clean sheet (that’s becoming a real issue now). Possible injury to Kone. And an unneeded replay that runs the risk of further injuries and fatigue (although it gives us another match to get Dennis and any other January signings up to speed)

I get the criticism of VI about the subs, and personally I wish we’d gone for the jugular and taken the ‘attack is the best form of defence’ approach, but can’t really blame him for his changes. Southampton had to make offensive changes as they were losing, we weren’t so we didn’t and thus we tried to protect our lead. It almost worked. If there’s a moan, it’s that we didn’t take more advantage of being on top and increase our lead. We should have, and ultimately we paid for that failure.

So overall a sense of disappointment but as I said earlier, only 3 defeats out of 20 now, which is an incredible run considering where we were in October.

And ps I don’t take the ‘hope we lose the replay so we won’t have to get a mauling on Merseyside’ line. A trip to Anfield would be a chance to see how far we are have progressed this season, if at all. A day in the limelight for us. I’d love it, and that’s why I feel very frustrated we couldn’t hold on yesterday.

 

He may be adequate as a champ reserve keeper, but imo we'd be better to keep Hamer on to play that role and look to bring in someone to replace Bachmann as first choice. I do think Hamer is solid but he's clearly happy to play backup seeing as those are the terms he joined on. Bachmann I can just see causing too many issues as a backup. Obviously will be tough to get rid of him with 4 years left on his contract, but maybe he can have a little holiday to North-East Italy...

 

To be fair, nobody could have predicted that making Bachman captain and handing him a 5 year extension was a bad idea. IIRC at the time, we were all unified in favour of it as a fanbase.