Watford have kept three clean sheets in their last five Premier League games, having kept none in their 19 games prior to this. Give the guy a lengthy contract. 10 years will do.
It’s “amazing”. Who’d have thought playing 5 at the back, 2 DMF’s and a keeper would have made any difference. The bloke’s a genius. He’s missed a trick though. What if we play with two keepers and stick Gomes alongside Foster, I’m sure we’d be even better.
He’s certainly tightened us up but at the expense of all attacking threat. It may well be what is needed right now but nonetheless I’ll be horrified if he is our manager next season irrespective of which division we end up in.
Anyone who even questions QSF needs to give their head a wobble. He is building a great platform to build from and last night was a great step along that road. Some on here are utterly clueless about football, it’s so sad.
He's tightened us up allright it was like the first year back 0-2 away and solid, whilst not a defensive masterclass it wasn't bad given I think he'd like at least four new defs in the transfer window. I'd be happy to see this solidity continue. Gracia was more exciting but so was those vast open spaces for the opposition each game. As fans we need to ask ourselves do we want jumpers for goalposts in a lower league or less attractive more organised and dare I say professional top flight football
We have been better defensively, to be any worse would be impossible. But last night was a shambles at times. Janmaat and Kabasele couldn't work out Hernandez, there were countless last ditch tackles which look great but just mean sh!te defending and you could park several rows of buses in the space left by our midfield. I do like Quique but I don't like his style. Anyone other than Norwich last night and it could have been another defeat. It looks like he'll get the next two weeks now to either work on the 532 still or implement his preferred 442/4231. Whatever we play it's still going to take some genius from Deulofeu or someone to win us games because we looked clueless going forward.
From the moment he was appointed I assumed he had been brought in to do a specific job for this season only. We have seen this so many times under the Pozzos.
And that job is to punish us as fans for getting above our station and thinking we deserve nice things.
Bizarre post. He’s building a platform and may dig us out yes. Needs must. But I want to enjoy watching football in the longer term so I don’t want him here next season irrespective of if he keeps us up. Is that such a difficult concept for you to understand?
Think people have been so enamoured with the more flamboyant styles of Gracia & Silva in recent times, people now see QSF style as retrograde. I am not totally sold either but he certainly deserves the next 2 games regardless.
How people can even contemplate criticising him is beyond me. We had not kept a clean sheet for months. Exactly what we need - it may be dull but let’s just try and dig ourselves out of this hole until January. We may have other options then - Deeney, Pedro etc
I completely agree with some of the above posters. What did everyone expect? We don't have a prolific goalscorer in the club. We all knew we needed atleast a striker, 2 CBs and 2Wbs to push us on this season. It didn't happen. That sits solely with the Pozzos and the recruitment team! QSF has come in with what is arguably a top half championship defense and sorted us out. That takes time, his first job was to stop the slide. He has done that. We are now on an upwards curve. Having managed senior football a side that is on the slide needs to stop conceding first. It's a lot easier to get points on the board if your not shipping 3 goals a game. If he gets in a striker in Jan that can bag 10 goals we will push on. Get Ollie Watkins in... 5 years in the Prem and I'm sorry to say it most of our fan base needs a reality check. What do you expect Watford to achieve? Last season is probably as good as we can hope for. Enjoy it. I'm.surpsied how quickly people forget we nearly didn't have a club to support! Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk
What’s so irritating are the usual comments like ‘if it was anyone but Norwich we would have lost’ etc. It’s akin to the nauseating commentators saying ‘he doesn’t miss those’ after someone’s scored a decent strike when in fact they miss them all the time. We almost beat Spurs and Arsenal so should we say ‘if it was anyone but Spurs/Arsenal we would have won/lost that’ (delete as you feel appropriate) This win will bring confidence back. We’ve got some good technical players. Confident teams knock the ball around with faster flowing football. So the dry turgid football so many are moaning about that has shut up shop and given us a platform hopefully will slowly morph into more confident, attractive football with the right results, starting last night with a clean sheet away from home two goal WIN ffs. #givequiqueabreak
The problem with our defense is we struggle against any player with pace and look totally unorganised against it. I've said it before. Zaha. Son. All the Liverpool attack. Any team with one pacey attacker always tears us a new one. Same with Hernandez last night. There attack was absolutely nothing without him.
Oh I'm not blaming him. It was almost just a bit of a defense of one of the posts above saying it was a shambles last night. I'm in the Quique in camp. But I do think we need to work out a way to defend against pace. Other teams manage it with slow defenders.
Tightening up our defence has been pretty impressive with the terrible defenders we have. Other than Cathcart we don't have a single premier league standard defender. Our FB options are utterly dreadful.
Yes, and to expand on that people keep saying how we only had two shots and much less possession than Norwich as if to say we were lucky. Arsenal conceded the most shots on their goal in Premier league history against us, yet we still didn’t win and still scored the same amount of goals, that’s football.
I think that he was parachuted into a difficult situation with probably some very ambitious goals set by the pozzos. But, he knew the expectations when he took the job, so you cant have too much sympathy there. We needed results. Now we have stopped hemorrhaging goals there is a base but he has to make our attack more potent and there is no more time to give. If he can get a few wins this month then I think the pozzos will be pretty happy with him all things considered
I think the Norwich win is a stay of execution in all honesty. It means nothing if we do not follow it up with victories against Burnley and Southampton. Because of the position we are in we are beyond "must win" games....we are now in the realms of "must win" runs.
Burnley are not a bad side, it’s never easy to play against them. I think 4 points from those two games would be a reasonable expectation.
You could be right, but it's not enough. We need 6 points. We do not have the luxury to carry on the season just "ticking over". We need wins now and we need to get them against the sides we should be able to beat. We've regressed so much as a side that there are now games where we just cannot expect anything from. I always felt, apart from City and Liverpool, we were in with a shout against most of the other teams, especially at home. That's no longer the case sadly.
We have a bad record against them irrespective of our league position and what sort of form we're in. Obviously we’re desperate for points but we’ve never been able to bank in beating Burnley. On the flip side we’re net one goal down against Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal. Surely that’s better than any other season we’ve had, and this season seems like the year it will be easier to get points of of those type of sides than ever.
I don't think the Norwich result will have made any difference to Gino regarding Flores' future, and it wouldn't surprise me if his replacement is in place by the time we play Burnley. He was a panic appointment at a time when we were shipping goals. Gino knows he's not the man to get us firing on all cylinders. A number of sources are saying we're actively looking at replacements. I'd say Flores has only got until Gino sees someone with the attributes he's after. That could be tomorrow. I hope it is.
To be honest, even if I think Flores is a sticking plaster appointment, on a human level I'd be sorry for him if he was sacked. He doesn't deserve that seeing as he has sorted out the defensive issues. Will we stay up under him? Personally I don't think so, but that's just my opinion. All the rumour before Norwich was that he was gone regardless of result, but the way he celebrated and comments from senior players, seem to suggest that rumour is totally unfounded. Again today, more rumours over Joka coming back, but honestly I can't see that happening, but who knows. The hierarchy have made so many bad judgement calls this season, it certainly wouldn't surprise me if they make another one.
Eh? Our last 6 games v Burnley have been 2 wins, 1 draw, 3 defeats. The 6 before that were 1 win and 5 draws. Not exactly City are they?
You claimed we had a bad record against them. I've just shown you that we've taken points in 9 0f our last 12 games against them and have an identical win/lose/draw record. Sorry if I was going too fast. Clearly you have very exacting standards if you think that's a bad record.
We definitely DIDN'T look clueless going forwards at all! We wasted 4 or 5 very good chances/openings by taking too many touches, shooting wide or a poor final ball. We've missed a lot of chances under Quique purely because we DON'T have a natural finisher in our squad, let alone first 11. Joao Pedro coming in could be the answer as a natural goalscoring forward, but who knows. Deeney has been out, Gray is very very erratic and both Deulofeu and Pereyra are wingers/attacking midfielders. They're both there to create chances not put them away. Stick someone like a Vardy or Wilson in this Quique side and we'd have beaten Sheff Utd, Bournemouth and Tottenham in recent weeks.
People hated QSF's style when her was here the first time too, which was before both Gracia and Silva. The comments on our style aren't new. We're seeing vintage Flores. If we were to go back through the match threads from his first era, we'd see an evolution of comments that already mirror what we're seeing this time around. We're currently at "he's creating a platform to build from." I remember that from the last time around; indeed, I was one of the people saying it. The attacking evolution will never come. The way we are set up is the way we will continue to play. History doesn't lie; QSF does the same thing at every club. Luckily for us we have a mercurial player (albeit an inconsistent one) in GD, who can actually force things to happen.
Read both my posts properly. I said 4 points from Burnley and Southampton would be a good return, and by no means should we be expecting to beat Burnley. You posted stats to say we’ve beaten them 3 out of 12 times which perfectly validates everything I was trying to say. Again your point is?
Yeah, I mean this is a really good point. We don’t actually have any strikers other than Andre Gray. There really isn’t anyone to put the ball in the net other than relying on a piece of magic from Gerry, Bobby or maybe every now and then Doucoure. QSF deserves a bit of slack for that.
For those that did not see it Sky Sports shown a list of our stats this season, which included things such as shots, and big chances created. Surprisingly we have had the 8th most shots in the league, and are 12th in big chances missed. 11th in Clean sheets and 6th in tackles won which Quique has to receive credit for. However we are 20th in conversion rate so it is clear where our problem is.