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

The only thing that matters is league survival. I’ve forgotten this match already.

 

You say FA Cup wins have zero correlation with league form then go on blame the FA Cup semi-final win with a bad league run!!

Can you see the contradiction in that?

 

Maybe someone who was there would have a different opinion, but from what I heard on the radio of last night (and based on the first leg), it sounds as if Spencer-Adams did pretty well overall (especially considering he's just 18).

Given his age and being a CB he'll still be a long way from the first team, but on this evidence I reckon he has a future at the club in the first team squad at least.

 

Which is why I actually said " have zero correlation with league performances (or if anything an inverse correlation with them".

The point is that there is absolutely nothing to suggest that positive results in the Cup have any kind of knock-on effect in boosting confidence for league matches.

But it was certainly noteworthy that the whole team crashed and burned after the peak/high of the cup semi last year - it was as if they had burned themselves out in that match, thus potentially negatively impacting the following games.

 

We needed VAR tonight.

 

Please point it out then oh wise one.

If you really want to get in to semantics with regards to correlations, typically in order for it to be valid to say a correlation exists there needs to be an r2 of >0.5 or <-0.5, and the amount of available data also needs to be considered (ideally you'd want an r2 of >0.8 or <-0.8 though).

Say we were to plot FA Cup results vs subsequent PL results and the r2 came out as just -0.1, you would have to conclude that there is no correlation between the two, but where any direction can be observed it is going in an inverse direction. It can also be that you can observe a correlation of -0.6 but not have enough data-points, or have too large a confidence interval, in order to still be able to validly say that a correlation exists.

 

I hate losing and will certainly not celebrate the fact we are out of the FA Cup but I fully understand why the decision was made to put out the team we did. If you look at the cup involving the bottom two divisions, there are 16 under 23 teams from the top two divisions invited in to the competition. It is now at the quarter final stage and only one of those invited have made it through. Man Utd lost to Tranmere, Man City lost to Scunthorpe, Wolves lost to Salford, Chelsea lost to Walsall and most of them never made it out of the group stage. It is not that surprising they lost and it does sound as though that one or two of them did reasonably well.
I'm interested to know what first team players one person on here feels we should have played considering we have just played two Premier League games in 4 days and also just had the hectic Christmas schedule? The pitch was awful so you are not going to risk any of the players coming back from injury. Success is going out on loan it seems. Not sure who else could have played?
I still love the cup and would have been nice to have another run but we have bigger fish to fry this season and last nights result will have absolutely no bearing on morale in the squad.

 

What a bizarre post.

You say there is zero correlation between FA Cup results and league form, yet blame the FA Cup semi-final win for our dip in form last season. Hence the contradiction.

 

I never want to lose at anything so I was sad that we lost last night but I'm more concerned with Freddie's well being at present.
Good luck to Tranmere against Man U. I just hope none of our players were injured on that bog. Whatever we may think of them,whether they ever kick another ball for the senior side again,playing on that must have been alarming.

 

I said that there appears to be zero correlation, or if one were able to ascertain one (which is difficult to do given the lack of data), then the evidence may point to it being negative (and as I just pointed out before, it is actually possible for no correlation to exist at the same time as one infers that the relationship were to go in a negative direction rather than a positive were it to be able to be further substantiated).

Whichever it is, it is certainly not the positive relationship between FA Cup results and league results which you have claimed.

 

Who's that team that won the FA Cup and then got relegated? Plymouth or something?

League form took a proper boost from that run.

 

I log on to the forums after one of the most humiliating defeats in our recent history and see our own fans actually celebrating the result. Only watford fans. Thank god most of you never actually go to the match you sorry shower of ****s.

Make no mistake about it, we were woeful last night. It was a miracle it went to extra time. I tell you now not one of those kids is going to make it. Bachmann is shye too, unless dahlberg is any good you can add GK to a position where we are in a lot of trouble next season. I dunno what has happened to Quina but his handful of decent games last year were clearly the exception not the rule. He's rubbish. Pedro is miles away from being ready for the first game. Gray was gray. Whelan impressed me more than his appearance last time but he'll never make the first team.

I was at least expecting to see my beloved masina and pereyra. On the bench at least. Pathetic disrespect to the fans who travelled up.

From finalists to abject failure. Yet another season goes by without a trophy and you bell ends are cheering? We've got a first eleven that could have won the cup this year. The first cup in our history, but no, we throw it down the chitter. We're an embarrassment.

Even if we win the next 14 games this season has seen been a total embarrassing failure. But we wont. We are a club with a loser mentality, which is reflected in you maggots on here.

God bless you hornetboy1 for understanding the importance of winning every match at all costs.

 

Wigan.

Portsmouth also reached the final in 2010 while getting relegated.

 

Pearson

"Looking at the players who've played for us tonight, not all of them are going to make it in the Premier League, so it's a bit of a reality check"

I wonder who he was thinking about when he said this.

 

I guess this is the crux of it and where the different viewpoints stem from. Clearly Pearson felt that the "at all costs" was too risky to the potential survival in the Premier League. We have already seen the impact of losing Sarr to injury - what if others first team player got injured?

A perfectly valid counter argument is to play a strong team in every game - focus on the next game and not prioritise one competition over another.

Most on here appear to be erring towards the first of those viewpoints.

 

I'm not suggesting we play our first 11 but that team was an outrage. I've never seen anything like it. Not even some players on the bench to try and win it if we fell behind! Pearson must know by now how shyt our reserves our. Players like zeegelaar would have been a much better option.

Also pearsons outlook should be totally different to the fans. It's just a job for him. Surely as fans we want to win every game?

 

I'd be amazed if any of them make it in league 1.

 

All of them.
That was our best 11 outside the starting 11 against AV and the injured players. They were shockingly poor.
A couple of injuries to key first team players and we are as good as down. Foster, Capoue, Doucoure, Deeney, GD, Sarr. We don't have the quality to replace them without a serious impact on our prospects. That's the take away from last night's game. Our reserve 11 would not be capable of surviving in League 1. That is worrying.

 

Are they reserves, or reserves to reserves?

 

All of them.

Pedro is another dud, destined for Udinese and Timbuktu loans.

 

Its the same for literally any side outside of the top 6. It seems like people expect us to have 30+ players capable of playing in the Premiership at any given time, and for those players to all accept low wages for the privilege of being backup at a middling Premiership club.

 

*Premier League

 

Mainly reserves. Every squad expects to have 2-3 injured players at any time but I'm not sure how that 11 could be strengthened without using players who played on Tuesday.

 

I had to look that up to see my error, how have I been getting that wrong for so long?!

 

You may be right, but let's look into that further.

I know it's not the done thing, but I think Pearson went a little weaker than he needed to for this line-up. He selected 4 complete U23's, who were nowhere in and around the first team. These were Barrett, Spencer-Adams, Whelan and Hungbo. Of course apart from Dahlberg the bench was total U23's.

The other players are part of the first team squad. Quina, Dele-Bashiru, Gray, Pedro, Kabasele, Bachmann and Holebas.

So the first thing is, why have we had to use so many U23's this season? Last season this did not occur at all, we stayed up comfortably and got to the cup final.

Do we really have an injury crisis? If so, is it really much worse than other seasons?

I get he's had to rest players that played on Tuesday, but he could have played Gomes in goal and Success. Welbeck could have been part of things, from the bench at least. Cleverley and Hughes seem to be on the fringes. I take the point about the pitch and I do understand Pearson's predicament. I'm not suggesting he did too much wrong, but I feel the team could have been stronger, certainly with options from the bench.

But my main point is, that it wasn't extraordinarily weak, like we played 7 or 8 U23's and were asking for it. That team, although much weaker than we're used to seeing, should have been more than capable of beating a side struggling in 21st place in League One. They have all the issues of a team in League One. Imagine if we were having a season like them (in League One of course)? Would we expect to even get close to beating a Premier League side. They have only won 5 games all season.

 

Not convinced by this.

Take Pedro, who is much closer to the first team than many in that team. Are you saying he is our third choice striker after Deeney, and - let's say - Welbeck?

I would suggest that Gray is next line (or swap Gray for Welbeck as #2 choice), and possibly then Success. 4th or even 5th, for me.

 

I think we are broadly agreeing aren't we ? I'm not sure who he could have picked other than the "4 complete U23's". I think it was as strong a team as he could play if accepting that he wasn't going to use the players who played at AV and those injured.
I agree we should have been good enough to beat Tranmere and it was a terrible result and performance but it may help us in the longer run. I don't think morale will be affected given the first team weren't playing and we now have 100% focus on the league and no further injuries plus a decent rest.

 

Wigan? Norwich won league cup and got relegated in 80s as well I think.

 

I think you are analysing this game far more than anyone at the club will be.

We took zero risks and only narrowly lost. We know the cup is low priority and that we've had a lot of games in the past month and can't avoid further injuries/suspensions.

We now have a 9 day break until the next must-win game.

Move on.

 

Holebas and kabasele were not awful.

 

My point is which better striker should we have played last night instead of Pedro to strengthen the team given Welbeck is injured ? I think Success has been written off by the club, hopefully to be loaned out or just shot. So Pearson played his strongest reserve team available.

 

We're not going to win the cup though are we? We made the final last year and the chances of Watford doing that twice in a row are minimal.

Plus, we'll get to the final and just get humiliated by City or Liverpool anyway, they are far too strong.

I was much more disappointed by the Everton result, if QSF wasn't so useless we could've made it to the quarter-finals considering Silva was one result away from the sack at that point. We didn't even turn up in the end.

 

Last season we had a more in depth squad. Britos, Wilmot, Navarro and Masina didn’t get a look in for league games so were the defence. Success and Gray were back up forward line. Chalobah couldn’t get in league team so played in cups each time. Even Peneranda.

A combination of long term injuries and sending players out on loan has left us looking at the U21s for the cup games.

 

We're a better team with a better manager than last year. What a ridiculous attitude.