Whose fault is it?

I don't think it is anyone's fault. It is all part of life's great tapestry.

 

They also didn’t look as fit as at the start of last season when we overcame many teams with our fitness in the last 10 minutes. Only four pre season games. Backroom staff under Javi got the preparation very wrong. And it to pick up on Deeney injury earlier with all this red zone mullarkey and science.

 

I like the idea of blaming the French. Let’s go with that.

 

Fewer

 

I'm inclined to lean towards those going with the 'attitude' explanation; I think for a long time, we've been a team with quite a disparate bunch of weirdos and eccentrics, shall we say, and it's been tolerated because it's broadly worked/been fine thanks to the efforts of hierarchy, management and some of those playing staff.

We have this combo of players including Troy, the supreme 'Mr Watford' figure who calls it as he sees it and is more powerful than the head coach; Capoue, who doesn't give a **** about football at all and for large stretches of his career here has been extremely louche on and off the pitch; Holebas, who has one of the worst attitudes ever displayed and hides it behind what is basically a 'pashun' defence, and multiple fancy dan attackers who often think themselves too good to involve themselves in mucky things like defending as a team.

This delicate balance was rather similar to the condition of Mr Burns, in which he is infected by every disease known to man but they are in perfect equilibrium and therefore cancel each other out; the problem being that a slight breeze could destroy that equilibrium and open pandora's box. That seems to be essentially what has happened this season; that equilibrium has been upset by the breeze of Holebas suddenly hitting his wall and falling off a cliff, or by Troy deciding to start the season injured before realising that wasn't a good idea and having to stop playing to remedy the situation, or Caps just not quite being able to keep up the being bothered enough act any longer. In being upset, the box has been opened and havoc has ensued; when was the last time a seemingly well-run team, coming off the most successful season they've had in the modern era, has fallen apart to this level before?

Essentially, in my ramblings, I'm not seeking to blame any single player, or in particular any of the individuals I've mentioned directly above. What I'm saying is that for a long time, one way or another we've supported and managed to gel (enough) a team comprised of odd, ornery and tempestuous players into a unit, and so papered over their collective cracks. But that approach has finally stopped working, either because they stopped believing in Gracia, or they saw the lack of defensive investment and read the writing on the wall, or they just got comfortable and gave in to their inner urges. Who knows. Essentially, I believe there is truth that this has been building for quite a while, and we are reaping some of what we have sown the minute our senior players/leaders can't keep up and cash the cheques their mouths are particularly insistent on writing.

In the meantime, we have almost no youth to speak of to call upon. Other teams have injury crises and draft in a young player; it may not be ideal, but they are capable of playing a game and filling a hole, whilst end up some even thriving. With us, on the other hand, you have to ask if we have a single youth/young player who we'd be prepared to give a senior game to, and the answer appears to be a resounding 'no'. We don't have great options for change in that regard, and that contributes to making our senior players feel all the safer and all the more in control. It's not an ideal situation, and adds to the flavour of the cauldron.

 

Crystal Palace.

 

I'm talking about effort. Ok ability/performances not the best but he tries.

 

The boogie.

 

You were explicitly warned not to do this.

 

Half-time entertainment. Dance off with HtH.

 

It's all right. At least we know the French won't surrender...

 

That's why we are struggling this season. The defensive side was going to bite us in the b*m eventually.

 

To me, this is the great disappointment of the Pozzo era. Our longstanding tradition of bringing young players through to the first team has come to an almost complete halt since 2012. In fact it seems that our youth players are automatically deemed not good enough and get farmed out on loan never to return to challenge the first team squad. You would have thought one of them would have made it by now.

 

We’ve done a bad job of regenerating the squad and bringing through young players to replace the aging members of our squad.

I think the blame for this comes partly from changing managers so often. It doesn’t necessarily lend itself to coaches giving young players a chance, because they operate with a short-term mentality.

I’d love for us to have a charismatic coach, on the way up, who can rally the club and put faith in the younger players we have, most of whom have arrived with good reputations.

 

Plundering of academy makes bringing through talent difficult ....... Jadon Sancho

 

That was Silva. Since getting burned on that one (both through infidelity and giving Pozzo sh*t about his garbage recruitment) Pozzo is journeyman manager all the way.

 

It’s been obvious for years and they signed Dawson. Would be laughable if not so obvious.
Absolutely awful squad management. Anyone who defends it is lacking. (Clap clap clap)

 

Its simple;

Complacency
Attitude
Aging (slowing) defenders.
No prolific goalscorer. Not even Wellbeck fit scored that many.

Gracia was also a smiley happy yes man who didnt seem to mind Dawson being it for defence reinforcement.

By all means we have a decent team who shouldn't be close to bottom. But we've a soft underbelly that has left us exposed to the scavengers. Picked apart by wolves and seagulls etc.

 

what’s the answer to get to say , 16 points by the time
the Jan window opens?

 

Could it be that too many players are given too long contracts especially on renewal because the owner hopes that they can be sold further down the line with a contract that means we get good money for them?, all very well but we then end up with overpaid players not capable of holding down a regular place in the premier league! Then the only way to ship them out is to loan then as long as someone will,pay the fees involved!

I think Gino has taken his eye of the ball, spending to much of his energy “ player trading “ which has left us with a significantly weaker squad than needed to survive comfortably in the P.L. Palace had an awful start a couple of seasons ago and survived, but they had a strong UK backbone which helped them survive, we have 8 Uk players, Foster, Dawson, Cathcart, Cleverley, Hughes, Deeney, Gray and Welbeck however when push comes to shove, it’s hard to imagine our team getting stuck in and giving their all in the name of WFC!

Next Saturday is extremely important I don”t feel we can afford to lose, (if we can’t take points from the likes of Sheff united or Wolves/Brighton, we certainly won’t get them off the likes of Spurs/Chelsea)

 

We could pick our best side, most attacking players and hope we score 3 or 4? No chance as our attacking confidence is shot.

Or go defensive and try and pick up 0-0's, 1-1's or the odd victory 1-0. No chance as our defensive confidence is shot. However as a team this might be the better option.

 

I don’t think the latter is the better option. Our attackers are playing with no confidence - but I back them to discover their best before I back our defenders to suddenly improve in ability.

 

that's irrelevant

 

The pozzos buy and sell players hoping to make a profit on that line of business that can then be used elsewhere in the business. It's not necessarily just to grow players for our 11 though that would of course be convenient. However I'm not sure they have been successful at generating profits from that line of business either. I think the issue is that the quality young players need to reach to get a starting place in our 11 is now so much higher than it was 5 years ago. Success, Penaranda, Wilmott, Oulare, the 87 Sth Americans playing in Spain, none of them are good enough to start for us in a mid-table prem team, but we aren't making money by developing and selling these players either.

 

I think the Premiership is proving to be a challenging new deal for the Pozzos. After 25 years or whatever in Italy and Spain they were pretty clued up about European football. Coming over and taking a club in the Championship enabled them to learn a bit about English football - and they learnt quickly. However the enormous sums of money in the Premiership and the players fees and wages must be new to them to an extent. I think they thought they could simply buy quality players each year and we would just do better. It is much more complicated than that.

 

The Pozzos are supposedly well know for having their next manager lined up etc. At a high level I think the root cause of our problems is not having a decent long term manager lined up with an actual philosophy since Mazzarri.

Mazzarri was the guy they always wanted, he was somebody they thought could implement a more attacking style and take us to the next level.

He was obviously a disaster so they went for Silva, this was based on a short spell with Hull were he did ok but ultimately failed. He wouldn’t have been a long term target, he was just flavour of the month at the time. He has turned out to be a distinctly average manager since leaving.

Then Gracia was appointed, he was appointed because we were in a death spin and he had shown with Malaga that he could do well with a mid table team and grind out unexpected results, which is what we needed to avoid slipping into danger after losing about 10 games in a row.

Then obviously QSF speaks for itself.

They talk openly about managers having a two year cycle etc, personally I think that’s a bit of a smokescreen and ultimately with that approach inevitably you’ll come unstuck eventually with a bad appointment, you’re always rolling the dice every season or two.

So ultimately I think it’s been the inability to identify a genuine long term manager that they can see taking us past simply the short term. Maybe they got burnt with Mazzarri and that changed their outlook, who knows.

 

Look at the managers they hire. Every single one of them has been a journeyman manager who moves/leaves within 2 years - even Mazzarri. I don’t think it’s an ‘inability’ to identify someone more long-term...I’d say it’s fairly clear they really don’t want to.

I just think that they don’t see the Head Coach role as a particularly important one in their ‘model’. Giraldi seems to have more power and sway with the owner than any coach we have had.

Any manager coming in with the remit of being here long-term would not be given the autonomy to do so. I fully expect QSF to move on at the end of the season, if not before.

A manager/coach wouldn’t be allowed to come with a ‘philosophy’ - that’s set by Gino/Duxbury/Giraldi, and any coach has to work with it.

 

I don't think they ever want a manager with a long term philosophy. A manager is as good as his last 10-15 results. At some point over a 2 yr period every manager at a small club like ours in the prem will hit such a run. The players will stop listening and stop believing whoever that manager is. Look at how effective Gracia had been up to the FAC SF. Incredibly successful, 7th place in the prem and a cup final coming up. He had the trust of the players and the team believing in itself. 10 defeats or so later and the belief and respect has gone and there is no option but to replace him despite how successful he had been up to 15 games or so ago. That's the way they think. A manager can stay until he hits that sort of run, which they all inevitably will do with WFC in the prem. Then you need a new voice, face and ideas as a shot in the arm. Rarely will a manager stay as long as 2 years.

 

Managers in general don't last that long these days with the odd exception. If you look at the managers in the Premier League today, how many will still be in that same job in two years time? Two, maybe three?

 

Indeed. Who amongst the smaller clubs has a different philosophy to us?

Well Burnley who stuck with Dyche even when relegated and Muff, although they haven't hit a really 'bad patch' yet. The Blades and Wolves might beg to differ with us. Otherwise they 'hire and fire' just like us. Even amongst the top six the Manure and Chelski 'hire and fire' at will too.

Which makes us the 'norm'.

 

How long do you give Poch? When we beat them he is gone. No manager should survive a defeat by Watford.

 

Unfortunately we are yet to find that out this season!

 

You're part of life's great tapestry.

 

Yes, everybody hires and fires these days (aka the European model), even most of the big clubs. Players cost too much money and agents have too much power for clubs to do otherwise. You have to have a system where the club has a generally well understood recruitment philosophy, investment approach, pay scale and (within some boundaries) playing style. Head Coaches have to come in and work within that framework. If you try it the "old fashioned" way, you end up buying a raft of new players every year, then when managers change, you throw out half of them. All the while you bleed money in huge amounts. Small clubs can't do that or they end up in Administration. This is precisely what's happening at ManU, although of course they can afford it - FFP concerns notwithstanding. Now obviously ManU is in no danger of relegation, but they went from a "one man is God" model to a revolving door one and they are rudderless.