It's a fair point. If we could only change the attack OR defence, it would have to be the attack. We have Kabasele, Wague and Kaboul to come back in defence but are playing with all our first choice attackers.
I see Gracia is saying the game is being cruel to Watford. Well that’s quite a weak statement. It’s not the first time we’ve lost a game like this. It’s occurred on many occasions this season. It’s not some kind of fluke. It’s down to game management. I suspect we all were thinking last minute goal when we got to the final few minutes. It’s all about reacting to the changes the opposition are making during the game. Gracia has been found wanting in this area. Defoe comes on and scores, Vokes comes on and scores, so does Ince today. We are not counteracting the changes very well. I think his reading of the game or knowledge of our player’s ability is not that good. It’s not cruel, it’s not bad luck, it’s totally within Watford’s control to stop this from occurring. As soon as the opposition assert some pressure on us we fold. We are just to easy to play against. No threat going forward and weak at the back. It’s a hopeless situation and I would have thought he’d have a plan to improve at least one of these defects by now.
So far we’ve lost more than half of Gracia’s 11 games in charge. We’ve failed to score in more than half of his matches. Not a single goal in his six away matches. Just 3 clean sheets. Knocked out of the cup to lower-ranked opponents, when we would have had West Brom and Wigan after that. Humiliated at Anfield. Poor at West Ham and Arsenal. Very limited at Stoke and Huddersfield. Wasteful against Burnley and Bournemouth, losing five points from winning positions. A distinctively average record so far by somebody who comes across as a very average appointment. If you’re happy with such mediocrity, feel free to criticise those of us who’ve questioned his appointment since day one.
For someone who is normally v positive it was interesting that you weren’t convinced about the Gracia appointment from the start and as every week goes on it’s looks increasingly likely you were correct... Gracia has hopefully achieved the short term objective of survival but his capabilities beyond that look very limited.
18 months but that doesn't mean anything really...just we have to pay off all the coaches when we dump them. Just a minor point - would we have defiantly been the same number as Southampton were in the Cup draw if we'd got through because is it not done in team name order?
Yes because your number is the number of the match in the previous round. So if Southampton v Watford was the first tie to be pulled out, the winners are Number 1 in the hat for the following round.
Although 18 months I agree doesn't mean anything, if we managed to keep a coach longer than a year it would mean a huge bonus for the bottom line!
The difference between finishing 11th or 17th in the premiership is £10m. The cost of the wrong manager needs to be set against that.
He's a gurning imbecile who is massively out of his depth. The worst manager of our premier league era, I genuinely believe that. A clueless individual. It is devastating to think where we might have been had Everton not wrecked Silva's head and had he been backed in the Jan transfer window. But that's ancient history, the priority now is to get rid of this fool and start again.
Given that we've conceded at least 13 goals (by my schoolboy maths) in 80+ minutes it seems a peculiar decision to bring on two strikers, one of whom rarely hits a cow's arse with a banjo, the other who's never actually scored in senior football, in the last ten minutes. More so given that Britos and Kanbasele were both on the bench.
This is my issue. Results are obviously key, but if we'd seen Javi make good selections, tactically line up the team, coach them to perform as a unit and motivate them to go out and leave nothing on the field, but we still lose, then you can just say it's a good coach dealing with a bad squad. Don't get me wrong, our defence is appalling, with terrible full backs and a plethora of bang average centre backs, whilst our strikers are all a disgrace to their trade. However, we've seen that the team and individual players are capable of more. We have won games this season with style and panache as well as grit and determination, but all too often we've lost games before kick off. The squad does need improving, no doubt. Most of our defence are the wrong side of 30, yet show no sign of guile or experience, however there's no point wasting better players on a coach who either won't use them or won't get the most out of them. I've seen nothing from Javi over the past 5 or 6 games to suggest he's tactically smart, using his players wisely or making the most of what he's got available. It's horribly frustrating because every single one of the poor hornets who travelled up yesterday would've known we would struggle for goals with Deeney up front alone and that our back line had a mistake in them, yet the only man who mattered and who gets paid handsomely for making the decisions wad the only one seemingly surprised by the outcome. I don't think it's too much to expect the head coach to not be the dumbest person at tactics and team selection in the whole stadium each week and at the moment, Javi is the only person stupid enough to make the decisions he's making which are giving us the results we're enduring.
Plus we'll have Chalobah back to sit in front of the back 4 playing that role, the name of which escapes me.
Watching Newcastle today sums up the difference between a great coach with a limited set of players and a clueless one. Rafa plays the quick but **** striker up front on his own with pacey wide men, tiring the second string Arsenal defenders out with long balls into space that they have to chase. He brings on the bigger, more lumbering striker who sets up the winning goal when the defenders switch off. Masterful tactics. Our coach? Play the slow, big man up front on his own with slow players around him and lump the ball towards him. Substitute the bloke for another slow, big man after about 70 minutes. Leave the quick but **** striker on the bench. But Gracia knows how to beat the big boys.
It's such a shame, as initially I thought he could be a long term option. The worry is that yesterday's performance was utterly predictable, and I thought the players looked both disinterested and low on confidence. We're a team devoid of leaders, and unfortunately the only way to get a tune out of them is to have a coach who can properly motivate them. I really hate being stuck in an endless loop of hiring and firing, but we have little alternative really. Javi isn't the right person to lead the side, but we're kind of running out of candidates
He should stay until the end of the season, he deserves that dignity at the very least for keeping us up, but unless we see reasonable all round improvements in the next 4 games, on balance I don't believe he should. Problem is you can see he's the quintessential yes man & Mr P likes that kind of manager, especially after the Silva episode. I'd love to see what an established PL manager like Rafa B could do with this squad. Then we really would know where the issues are. I would also like to see Tom C made captain whether Deeney leaves in the summer, or not. Think it would be good for all parties concerned to have a shift change.
We were sliding badly when Silva went, and Gracia deserves some credit and appreciation for the way he stopped the rot. Chelsea was our best win of the season, and those narrow victories against Everton and Brom will probably keep us up. His smiling positive demeanour was a breath of fresh air at first after the scowls of the dying days of the Silva regime. And he was very unfortunate to lose our Barca loanee so soon through injury. So there’s some balance in this debate from me. He’s not been a total disaster, far from it. However, I don’t see him as a strong enough candidate to really take us forward. I know nobody agreed at the time of me saying this a couple of weeks ago but he reminds me of Beppe. A coach with lots of short-term appointments on his CV, parachuted in to stop the rot, strong at home and awful away, a breath of fresh air at first that soon turned sour when his limitations were exposed and realised. As I felt with Beppe, I don’t believe Gracia is the right man to take us forward either. Our recruitment team must also take a long hard look at themselves too. I was heartened last summer by our seemingly change of policy in favour of British talent, and the signings of Chalobah, Cleverley and Hughes should be applauded. Femenia and Deulofeu were decent captures too. But there have still been too many duds, and at our level while you can get away with one or two, you can’t keep getting away with mistake after mistake. We wasted the January window by bringing in the likes of Zeeglaar and Wague. Ndong hasn’t played a single second for us. For me Carrillo just sums up the stupid kind of transfer our recruiters seem to love making. We wasted a ridiculous sum of money on a striker who didn’t set the world alight in the PL last season. Too many players join us with iffy injury records. We sign exotic sounding players as if we are playing Fantasy Football, and end each season with an unbalanced squad and everybody calling for a massive summer clearout.
The style of play we adopted under Silva was clearly one that our attacking players enjoyed, and we played some wonderful stuff. I expect us to go down the same route this summer. I’m hoping we have our eyes on a young, progressive manager, likely from abroad because I don’t see anybody who fits that mold at home. I expect us to add to the squad again this summer, continuing to target young players in the way we went after Hughes and Chalobah. While the Silva era ended far too abruptly, its the way we should be looking to go. Given his current lack of work, you would hope that our next manager in such a situation will be wise enough to wait the year out.
The last game of the 2015/16 season against Sunderland had a backline of Gomes, Ake, Pr*dl, Britos and Cathcart. On the one had it shows that we haven't invested wisely in our defence since then, but also that our backline is basically the same now and yet they conceded the third-lowest goals in the division, or something? It is all very strange. We have stuffed the squad players with zero commitment who are just marking time until they can leave, and our managers have been equally eager to **** off at the first opportunity. If Javi is genuinely committed, that in itself is worth something even if he isn't that great. We need somebody who doesn't want to activate a break clause asap or leave after six games. I am wondering if the long contracts handed out recently are the club attempting to sew some form of commitment into a squad and management team who are always looking up the next flight home. A committed manager might just bond a committed squad, as long as we actually shift the bloated crap we have accumulated over the last few years. Let Doucoure and Richardlison **** off if they want to, get any bad influences out of the dressing room. Build a team and manager that might be more limited on paper but have the commitment to actually win games of football.
Newcastle now have more wins than us this season and have hit 40 points before us WITH a game in hand. That is utterly pathetic considering their squad is no way better than ours. Dubravka Yedlin Lascelles Lejeune Ritchie Diamé Shelvey Kenedy Pérez Pérez For me Lascelles is the only player that would walk into our team, so the squad isn't better, they spent less money than us yet due to a good manager are above us in the Prem. Embarrassing.
Kenedy walks in over Holebas at LB and any LM we have at the moment on form. Lascelles and Lejeune would walk in ahead of our CB’s. Shelvey walks in over Capoue. Perez and even Gayle walk in over our strikers at the moment. Dubravka walks in over Karnezis. When everyone is fit and firing, you may have a point but right now, no way.
It would depend on how they are coached too - clearly Benítez has got the best out of them whereas not many of ours have.
I reckon Kaboul was signed to be a first choice, and when fit he looked like he deserved to be. His injury problems are a big and constant worry though and would be the main reason why we might decide to get rid of him already, rather than ability; at his age the injury problems are a particular concern.