Watford FC 3-0 Aston Villa - 28/12/2019

My only criticism of yesterday was that we had a number of breaks on in the second half when we had gone down to ten men and they were pressing us but didn't convert most of them into a real goal-scoring opportunity.

Doucs in particular was excellent in breaking across the h.w. line and finding Sarr or Del Boy but most of those breaks petered out (with the exception of the pen. and magnificent third goal obviously).

It's not so much the decision-making, although both Sarr and Del Boy might simply run at their opponent with pace a bit more often as encouraged by the crowd, but that Del Boy in particular isn't the best at picking a pass. He falls down in the execution. Sarr is much better at it and plays some excellent cross field balls.

 

Quite. The goal was very much the cherry on top of a storming overall performance.

The reason he had to sprint so far up the pitch in the first place is because he was back defending. If anyone had any questions about his stomach for a relegation battle, today's showing should put those to rest.

Now that he's settled a bit I think we're finally seeing why the Pozzos thought he was worth really splashing out on. We're going to sell the kid for a bloody fortune and in the interim, he's going to be excellent to watch.

If Pedro is even half as good as Sarr looks to be it could be an interesting second half of the season.

 

Agreed; that was shocking behavior.

 

Re Deeney, he has come back from injury early and is still working his way back to full fitness whilst giving his all on the pitch for the club. If he didn't care he would still be on the physio table.

Out of all EPL teams, he is top for 2019 (despite injuries & suspensions) for winning aerial duels as a striker & 4th overall including defenders & all other players. It is noticeable that since Pearson arrived they have developed a ploy of Deeney moving deeper to meet balls and get uncontested flick-ons to bring others in to play. Apart from heading, his overall link-up play is excellent. His Captain's abilities have already been discussed and probably 14 other teams in the EPL would love to have someone like him in their squad.

 

To call his return in the Championship as reasonable is stingy to say the least. How many would be a good return? 30 goals a season? Whether he is a good striker now is up for debate. To suggest his not a striker, and that he wasn’t great for us in the championship as a striker with instinct is surely too much of a stretch?

 

If you watch montages of Deeneys goals in the championship, you'll see some crackers in there, the likes of which he just don't score these days.

The penalty he won was a result I think of getting the defenders involved in a physical dual, defender decides barging into him is his best option. There's no way the same defender does that on Sarr.

 

False 9?

 

Your positivity must be based on a very small sample size of our last four performances since Pearson took over.

If you were to look at the much larger sample size of the whole season thus far it would tell you that we have no chance and are definitely still getting relegated.

 

Sarr rightly gets a lot of praise for his work rate and pace but definitely doesnt get enough praise for his crossing, constantly plays great balls from out wide, but nobody ever gets on the end of them.

 

What a Christmas! Effortlessly spanked the mancs, pissed as a fart in Sheffield but I'm 100% sure we deserved to beat those cloggers and should have slotted 5 past abysmal villa.

The table still looks terrifying and my gut feeling is we'll go down, but we've given ourselves a ghost of a chance now.

A win against wolves followed by handing tranmere a frightful hiding at the weekend would see us go to bournemouth brimming with confidence. Win that and maybe, just maybe we've got a chance of staying up.

But the biggest question is, can this level of drinking be maintained right through to the tranmere match...

 

I think that is what managers are supposed to do. With every player.

 

No you

 

We’re all behind you RC. Do you want me to set up a gofundme to see you across the line?

 

They count for that game. They're on the board, in bag etc. It still does nothing to allay the fear, for me at least, that Deeney will not score the goals from open play to keep us up.

There were other contributions from him and this was very much him at his best, against a team for whom he's pretty much a bogey player, but looking at the remaining 19 games, one has to wonder how many goalkeepers will let one trickle under them and how many penalties we will be awarded.

This isn't a criticism of the performance yesterday, more a realistic assessment of our requirements going forward.

 

Can I just mention, without taking away from, Nige, that we looked to start this process under Mullins, though clearly he was not a long term appointment and not as respected or experienced as Pearson, but there was grit and determination in the two games that Mullins took over from, which look to have laid the platform. Glad he's still around.

 

I especially enjoyed them saying Capoue fouled the guy before the 3rd, whilst a replay in the background was clearly showing, over and over again, that he didn't touch him and that both the Ref and VAR were spot on.

 

The point is that goal scoring is not Deeney’s best asset and never has been and yet that is all some people judge him on, just by looking at his goal return. It doesn’t mean that he can’t score goals or that we shouldn’t expect him to.

 

Even better was just as Lineker started to talk himself out of saying it was a foul the director binned the replays.

 

I actually think Del has shown a marked improvement in decision making. The execution is still not always there, but he is trying to put others in, rather than go it alone. This is probably partially the Pearson effect and also partially the benefit of having Sarr as a viable option to pass to, to continue to make things happen. When he would look up and see Gray tangling his legs together on the edge of the box, who could have blamed him for not passing?

Other noted improvements, throw ins - more purposeful and quickly taken. Dead balls, ok not scoring yet but there's clearly been work and an improvement.

Little things are being improved all over.

 

Am I alone in thinking that Dean Smith looks like and aged Tommy Robinson?

 

As was the behaviour of the defender who gave away the penalty shouting and getting in the face of the lino.

Very weak reffing.

 

Plus Elmohamady getting involved with, and in the face of, the Rookery around the pen. award. How pathetic given that the pen. was at the time being considered by VAR and concluded to be a pen.

 

At the expense of who though? Surely we’ve got players that are significantly better technically to fulfil that role much better already?

 

He's played most of his time with us as basically a 10/second striker already anyway, e.g. principally given the task of setting up Ighalo and later Deulofeu. The main problem with using him that way around lately was that Delboy just isn't clinical enough in front of goal to lead the line, so we ended up with 2 forwards still who rarely scored.

 

Well I have seen stranger things, we only got out of the championship because Stu was brave enough to have a **** live on shout box 3/4 way through most matches

 

that penalty was funny as ****, we moaned about Hughes last week , but that was insane , It was so obvious I assumed the defender had a bet on Deeney to score a penalty

 

the problem seems to be that we have a couple of players that can absolutely run like **** and a few who are shall we say somewhat slower , result is we run like **** down the wing, look to cross in only to find the box is empty , then have to wait for 5 seconds for the cavalry to arrive, by which time the defence is in place.

however after Sarr’s goal I am hopeful he is going to play the role of running into the box and smashing it into the net

 

Good use of the full stop to denote a shortened word - a rarity these days.

 

It would also be good if Sarr could take down more of the cross field passes and cut inside more often. He did it in the first half yesterday and nearly worked a decent shooting opportunity. Mixing it up like that would keep the full back guessing.

 

I tend to be a reader rather than poster on this board but am posting now as I am very surprised by some of the comments after yesterday . I thought that it was a season defining game and it was very important to back up the Manure win . We did that in spades and I have rarely seen us look more comfortable with 10 men. For me that was Doucs and Caps combined doing the work of three men. I am astounded by some of the a Deeney comments . Yes he has his faults but brings far more to the team than just his play. Successful teams need leaders . Pearson and Shakespeare have turned a corner and we have a very realistic chance of staying up now . There will be trials and tribulations along the way . What price Foster scoring in injury time at Arsenal to save us ! And yes what a tool Grealish is .

 

Notice how we cut down on most of the silly mistakes yesterday, makes all the difference?

Granted a better opposition forces you to make mistakes.