Charlie Nicholas on Sky has this to say This is the turnaround. Watford are finally starting to get going. Troy Deeney is back, Abdoulaye Doucoure and Gerard Deulofeu are doing well too. I was surprised Watford never got going earlier. Aston Villa are a clumsy team and they have let too many goals in this season and for that reason I think Watford will get their first win under Nigel Pearson. I guess our win against United has been chalked off. Typical FA, always favour the big clubs.
Hughes, much like Mariappa, has been appalling bar the games against Liverpool and Man Utd for well over a year, and was back to that yesterday. When he has 10+ good games in a row then fair enough, but for now he hasn't done anywhere near enough for long enough to be undroppable. Give Quina a chance.
I like Hughes but he needs to rest somewhere, I think Quina may actually be better with moving the ball. Doucoure and Capoue work best next to each other and we need a goal-scoring midfielder. Quina feels like our best-= attacking option from midfield, play him behind the striker and hope he can score a long shot. He's also great and getting stuck in so I would give him the chance. Villa at home is exactly the type of game he needs to play to get the level of experience that will make him as good as he can be. He will make mistakes but if we get relegated he could be huge for us next season.
With West ham playing Leicester and Brighton and Bournemouth playing each other, what an almighty boost it would be if we could be just 1 win off 17th and 4 points off 16th (disregarding the GD) after being 9 points off before we played Man Utd. A few ifs and buts in there but the belief in the squad would surely be immense.
Lots of endevour and fight but we'll labour to a disapointing 1-1 draw. Backs to the wall stuff late in the game again as we can never hold on to the ball and give it away in dangerous postions. Deeney/Gray/Pereya will offer nothing when any/all of the them are on the pitch. GD will be are only geniune threat and the crowd will get on his back when he takes a breather after 2 lung busting dribbles to try and create something. Hoping to be proved wrong of course and we smash them 4-0 with a footballing masterclass.
Not sure if you’ve called the ticket office, but I bought one today Over the phone, even though it shows sold out online.
I've run the potential results through my geeky spreadsheet and whilst this is not a must win game (unlike a couple early this season that we didn't win), this game really does swing the odds of staying up. It assumes we have the form of a team 11-13th. If we win, we have a 52% chance of survival If we draw we have a 39% chance of survival. If we lose, we have a 30% chance of survival (and you would suggest it unlikely we could hit 11-13th team form) At only half of the way through the season this is massive swing on one result. I'm more nervous now than before!
Down to 7 men after 10 minutes Second coming of jesus Armageddon Sudden onset hapsburg jaw Collective amnesia Alien invasion Plague, bubonic or biblical Explosive diarrhoea None of these are acceptable reasons for not coming away with 3 points
Strenuous calls for straining every sinew, smashing into them, chasing every lost ball, etc, etc. Then, in the same post suggesting Hughes is replaced by Quina. I'd have Quina playing well forward in many matches, but not as an experiment in this of all matches., and certainly not as a replacement for Hughes. BTW, is Pereyra coming towards the end of his time with us? I can't think that I've seen him achieve anything of note for a long time now. (Perhaps even replace him with Quina - yes, I know he's not quite the same type of player, but he has good ball skills and could hardly be more lightweight than RP.)
Sarr has shown himself to be a winger who is good at getting down the right wing and putting in near-post crosses, in more than one match. At first there was no one arriving there to turn it into a goal attempt. I thought the Sheffield match exposed Deeney's weaknesses more than usual: Perhaps he had specific instructions to make near-post runs, perhaps he decided for himself. He just couldn't get there. He is not particularly slow across long stretches of grass but he is slow in acceleration and agility (not surprisingly). In a sense he has been hiding by not even attempting these runs. The much derided Gray is willing and able to make those runs. Perhaps Gray should be picked ahead of Deeney (instead of with him). The lack of meaningful mobility in the Watford attack has been a long-term problem. Compare them with Sheffield's approach. The latter team is composed of supposedly inferior players who gave Watford a masterclass on mobility. Do I detect glimmers of Pearson trying to address the problem?
Agree with this 100%. I rewatched these balls into the box a few times, and mentioned on the Sheff Utd thread that both times Sarr put dangerous balls in, Deeney showed no real desire to get on the end of a ball into the box. His run into the box was no more than a token effort and there was clearly no belief or determination to be the man that got on the end of it and put the ball in the net. It was a really poor showing.
This is spot on. Sarr’s instinct is to fizz it hard and low across the face of goal unless there is an obvious cut back on. Deeney was miles away from any sort of run but this is because his purpose is almost 2nd strikeresque by winning flick ons yet he is our main striker?
The trouble with picking Gray as a lone centre-forward (as per Squibba’s team) is that, as we’ve seen many times, our attacks will frequently break down when the ball comes to him because of his lack of basic ball control.
Deeney to come off the bench and turn into prime R9 instead of his usual latter career self for one game.
