Watford FC 3-3 Tranmere Rovers - 04/01/2020 & 1-2 AET 23/01/2020

According to Sky, our game no longer exists. I guess we have a bye to the final. Well played lads.

 

Michael Folivi is back from Wimbledon too - could be a spot on the bench for him?

 

Perhaps, though I'd be surprised if he gets a chance ahead of Gray, Success, JP and Dalby.

 

Yeah. Just before he retired from football and got a job working with Racing Cars.

 

Just to say thanks to those of you (often you HB1) who post these. I don’t do most social media and appreciate the Watford content being put on here.

Actually, maybe there could be a thread for it?

 

Ishmael Miller injured. He used to enjoy scoring against us I seem to remember!

 

Thats right. I think he started in Del boy's position in Brazil and was then switched to Troy's, always in a 4231. I assume his first few PL games will b coming off the bench to replace Del boy. Given that Del boy is now tracking back, he'll probably need oxygen at the 70 minute mark of games! Does anyone know how JP's been doing in training? When I saw Jurado's first PL game against Everton my instinctive reaction was 'this can't be right'. I have the exact opposite feeling with JP. The exact opposite.

 

When I first saw Jurado I thought we had signed a 12 year old schoolboy - He couldn't hit the ball further than a 5 yard pass, no power at all.

 

You haven't seen JP play yet so can't compare to Jurado's first game......

 

Just thinking about Jurado makes me laugh. The King of 'Neat & Tidy". Never, ever actually did anything.

 

Destroyed Joel Ekstrand in the nadir of the Pozzo era, the 0-3 at home to Yeovil.

 

Oh I feel quite unwell remembering that match.

 

Seen footage of him playing for Fluminense. The big questions are can he transfer his ability onto the pitch in a major league, does he have the right attitude/temperment to fulfill his potential and can he avoid getting his legs broken. His talent is off the scale, there are no question marks whatsoever about his talent.

 

Beloved by WDSport and a few on here who simply couldn't accept that he was in fact bobbins.

I remember someone claiming that he'd had a key part in a goal at West Brom(?) as he'd rolled it sideways about 35 yards out and someone else had a speculative shot deflected behind and we scored from the subsequent corner that he wasn't involved in. A kind of assist to the assist to the assist, if you will.

 

Funny, I thought during his early games Jurado looked just the player we needed to provide that extra bit of class you need to survive in the top flight - much better than any of our players during the two ill-fated Prem seasons, and arguably better (technically, at least) than any of the players surrounding him, and I can't be the only fan who held that opinion - he was BBC's man of the match against West Brom! But he never really lived up to that promise.

But as for what he did, well he was our best passer of the ball and the team generally looked in better shape defensively when he was playing than when he wasn't. He contributed one assist to Deeney in the FA Cup semi (it's not his fault that the rest of the team didn't do their job and Flores didn't motivate the team to play with more dynamism than they did that day) and a couple of key passes vs Liverpool home and West Brom away - admittedly slim pickings.

But he suffered by being played most of the time out of position and in a defensive system that made players seemingly scared to make forward passes, I'm pretty sure in his right position in attacking central midfield, either of Silva, Gracia and Pearson would have got more out of him, with more grit and tracking back under Pearson.

 

Jurado was crap defo not prem standard ,backed up by the fact no other prem side has gone in for him since.

 

I can't remember a year when club's have had to play 4 games quite so close together as this year and then the cup within 3 days. It means that every EPL & Championship team as well as any promotion/relegation fighting teams in the 1st & 2nd divisions will all rotate as much as they can.
We certainly will be much changed and I'm hoping that we pick 2 or 3 of the u23's so we can see their potential.

 

Hope we get to Pedro unleashed tomorrow.

 

He effectively took Almen's place in the team. Unforgivable.

 

You use the word “effectively” quite wrongly there.

 

They won't like that!
They're very insistent that they're from the Wirral I believe.
Club have had a late demand for tickets and have said they haven't managed to post all tickets.
Expect a 45 minute queue apparently at the ticket office.
It was long enough on Wednesday,so I'd better leave now!

 

By the way, with Bury's demise and Southend and Bolton looking already gone, that's only one relegation place in League 1 to avoid. Interesting to see the teams immediately above Tranmere that they will be competing against:

 

Yep agreed, Flores is such a horrid manager. I man who regresses players and sucks the life out of morale. It is absolutely incredible that we re-hired him this season. Disgraceful decision which we may yet not recover from.

 

I assume people eulogizing about Joao Pedro have seen the YouTube clips of him, presumably chosen by his agent. Maybe these are out of date. They remind me of youth matches and perhaps that's what they are.
Bold, tricky player with a good striker's reactions.
But not, I would have thought, anywhere near first team level. Of course, he can't pick his opponents, but if he thinks he going to waltz through Premier defences and be confronted by goalkeepers doing passable impressions of trees he is in for a shock. As I say, perhaps the videos are old ones.

 

Good point, it's unheard of for someone to come from Fluminense to Watford and hit the ground running.

 

He may not be ready for 1st team but you realise he had a great burst in the first team scoring a fair few goals right?

 

OK - As I say: 'bold, tricky player with good striker's reactions'. Keep your hair on.

 

Amazing how Jurado has came up in discussion on this post. He was absolutely woeful and offered us nothing.

3-1 Home win tomorrow, they'll get a goal so they'll go home happy. Pedro with a brace.

 

If you watch André Grays instagram, you will see a bunch of the u23’s doing their initiation songs. So I guess we are playing a lot of them tomorrow.

 

lack of organization in the WFC ticket office - shuurrrreellly notttt LOL

 

You are talking about the footage of him playing youth football when we signed him. This footage is quite frankly insane. After we signed him he ended up in the first team and exploded onto the scene with goals galore in his first few games including winning the award for the best goal in the Brazillian version of the FA cup. Plenty of footage available. This is when Man city and Liverpool started sniffing around. He then stopped scoring, picked up an injury and played with injections. He also got a lot of abuse from Fluminense fans for a photo of him (not drinking) with his girlfriend at a major music event that all kids in Rio his age wanna go to. Brazillian fans are notoriously fickle and get really angry when their team does badly. When Fluminense (one of the biggest clubs in Brazil) were in the relegation zone the fans gave the players a lot of grief and JP got it too. He was accused of not caring about the club which was an outrageous way to treat a 17 year old craque (protege) who totally loves the club and viewed it as his 2nd family. One of his biggest fears when we signed him was that would never get to play for the Fluminense 1st team which was his dream. A minor altercation between some of his family/entourage and some drunk fans also made it into the media. So for a 17 year old playing with an injury, leading the line for the club he loves in the relegation zone in front of an unforgiving crowd in the Maracana it really cant have been easy. In the end Fluminense stopped playing him and that coincided with them pulling clear of the relegation zone. I assume one reason he was left out was due to his ankle injury. But their results improved significantly after JP was dropped. So really there is evidence for and against. If he does for us what he did in his first 10 games in Brazil he'll be worth astronomical money very soon. If his last 10 games are more representative, we have a talented teenager who we need to nurture to be successful in the medium term. Perhaps one of the most reassuring things is that he comes accross as a level headed kid and has strong family support behind him. When Gomes interviewed JP recently Gomes, an experienced Brazilian international, asked this 18 year old kid to help us in our situation. That suggests the old octopus believes JP has the potential to do that. We are gonna find out soon enough.

 

As much too small an office and a lack of staff in cup situations like this.