But how can a player allegedly signed to improve a struggling Premier League team not be able to make any progressive passes even in the division below? And while I’m well known for thinking he’s absolute droppings, I also commented in the Shoutbox halfway through the first half that I thought he was playing well. His standard and influence dropped rapidly with the rest of the team though and by the end he was back to his ineffective best.
Bad. Went to park in Cassiobury, which was mostly coned off for the fireworks, so no spaces. Drove to Sutton car park and got stuck behind a geriatric who had to do a 3 point turn to go up each floor. Ended up missing the first 10 minutes. First half hour was decent, but not clinical enough. Sarr had their full back Eccles on toast. Tailed off last 10 before half time. God knows what Bili* said at half time, but it had the opposite effect. Sloppy, ponderous and too much of what @reids calls "deep cycling". Gosling was neither good at defending or going forward, One Foot Kayembe and Chowder kept giving it away. Davis was anonymous and Ken seemed to disappear at half-time too. On comes our £5m man Bayo to add nothing, as did Gaspar. Hungbo at least made some effective contributions in his short time. Poor all round, but most annoying was that we got worse as the game went on.
Indeed. It was a poor performance from the whole team today, but our fans will all be looking for an escape goat, as usual.
Back to our lacklustre selves though thought Coventry were excellent. Just proves a well organised team who want to win a game will always beat a team of “superstars” who can’t be bothered on a separate note this, in my view, is the worst squad that the Pozzos have assembled since they owned the club. An annihilation vs our rivals doesn’t change that. And the largest debt that we’ve hit since they owned the club. Even the staunchest supporter of our owners should find that reason enough to raise questions about where it’s all going wrong..
Trouble is, we never change.... This just "what watford do" and we've got too many players with no heart. You can literally forecast the games we definitely won't turn up to.... (bottom half teams, tick.... Tough teams with no flair but good cloggers, tick.... Cold wet day, tick. (ESP Sarr!!)
Just got back . Very disappointing result today . It’s so often when your expectation is a bit higher that it’s more disappointing . I think it was still an improvement from some of our early season performances in many ways , admittedly though that’s a low bar but we mainly lacked cutting edge . On many occasions we worked the ball well and got in good positions but our final ball was poor. Sarr was particularly guilty of this. I think It was a great away performance from Coventry . They got men behind the ball and hit us on the break. I think they had the better of the chances in the first half but were guilty of poor finishing , so it wasn’t a shock when they got the goal . Thought there were also a few other nervous moments when Coventry broke forward . There probably wasn’t enough urgency towards the end though as the tempo was a bit slow at times .
Criticise the signing, criticise Pozzo & co, I’m here for it. None of that is Kayembe’s fault though, we’ve known since about 3 weeks into his signing he can’t play progressive passes. We’ve known without Louza that our midfield is unbalanced, I don’t see the point in repeating that. He played in a midfield three today with Choudhury & Pedro and did his job better than both of them.
Terrible game, terrible performance, terrible weather and an embarrassing atmosphere. Losing to a team without a stadium LMAO. Highlight of the day for me was seeing another member of the forum scrolling through this very thread on the train with the gentleman departing at KL. Always a pleasure to see another one of us in the wild and I enjoyed having a chuckle as he shook his head at certain posts. I’d have said hello but I can’t keep track of who hates me on here these days.
Did anyone see the 'silence is not an option' banner in the family stand before the game? Unfortunately nobody took notice of it because that was one of the quietest home games I've ever been to.
Bilic was asking for more positive support like at the Luton game .. Well that went well then . I mean the team do have to perform themselves.
forgive me if I’ve got this wrong but I think you mentioned that was the half time memory to your father. If so I thought it was warmly delivered and hope your family got some solace from it
One of those sh1t days. Watford never turn up when it’s a drizzling day. We’ve got far too many players who only play when the sun is on their backs. Not enough character in this team. Far too ponderous in midfield. Kayembe and Choudhury take an age to decide a pass. Time they do Coventry are all back in their places and the move invariably breaks down. Just when you think Watford have turned the corner and are putting together a promotion push, they let you down. They are just not good enough to have the consistency to gain promotion this season.
I know Burnsy has a big downer on him, but my take is that he just can't play deep midfield he looks rubbish there, but in the oppo half I see a different player (on a good day)... So I can sort of see him as a 10...... (maybe in div 1)??
It was thanks mate. My mum came to the first Watford game she's attended since my now 41 year old brother was a mascot against Crystal Palace.
The nearer to the World Cup we are getting the worse he is playing, quite a few players around Europe and beyond have been injured and will miss out on going and I think that is in his mind which sucks for us, but, from his point of view, is understandable.
I've been told it's a piddly league. How can teams have tight defences? We should be just marching through them?
I have to say almost certainly in a minority, but enjoyed today. Championship is such a competitive league and if your slightly off it, you get punished. Sarr should have scored and a point would have been above right. Hopefully we can go into the break on a high, and Bilic can get the fitness levels up. We look like a team that should make the playoffs, but no better.
We spent £5m on Bayo furnishing the Bayat brothers. For that amount of money you'd expect he'd be a starter, never mind we are questioning whether he is even an effective sub.
I think this is one of our biggest problems now (also pointed out by @Robert Peel ). Our buildup play is horrendously slow, it lets the opposition get in position and then when we lose the ball (since our build up play isn't that great either) splits us open for a counter attack. Sadly I'm not really sure what the answer is, Asprilla would add a bit of snap to our passing and would provide the bit of creativity we're lacking (as we saw for the fantastic ball for Kamara for our best chance of the game), but he's also probably not up to it defensively to play in a midfield 2 alongside Choudhury. It might be worth the tradeoff but is hard to gauge. That being said I was very impressed with Gyokeres today, he exploited the area between Gosling and WTE perfectly and the goal was well deserved.
Who was the Coventry player who made a sensational Guedioura-esque pass in the second half, cut us in half. Was it O’Hare? Absolute gem of a player. The sort we should have at this level.
ITK Platypus - the funnyman who strides into a pub for a night of "banter" while everyone in there desperately tries to avoid eye contact.
Returning Cov fan here. £5 million for that one player is about £2 million more than our whole matchday squad-doesn't seem like you've learned from your last time down here. Use the parachute payments to buy this league or below's most promising talent and develop them. You'll have plenty left over for a few already established quality players but you'll also have a squad of talented players with something to prove as opposed to a pay cheque to cash. As for ourselves today-we've now kept 5 away clean sheets in a row. Really just by working our ******** off to protect the goal, while hoping to nick something at the other end. With such a mismatch on paper, players missing and others still recovering from illness it made sense to play that way again today. A pity really-if our manager had even half of what yours does to work with and didn't have to work under farcical circumstances he'd have us in play off contention without doubt. All the best for the rest of the season folks.
Didn't get a chance to watch the game (lucky me!) but ironic that people are saying we approached the game too arrogantly, when Bilic specifically said in an interview this week that he want some arrogance in the squad. Hopefully Slav gets the message across that as poor as many teams are in this league, they're still capable of being organised, and we need to work as hard as them to win.
