Most probably Ismael is not outright lying to us, but it may well be we are not getting the full truth. But it's an absolute puzzle why TDB gets right back instead of Andrews.
Yeah, players him aren't going to tackle and charge up the field to lay on a killer ball, and you can criticise his overall performances of late (goals aside), but that would be harsh today, albeit he was poor overall in the first half, but he was much more threatening in the second half and ended the game having created at least 3 good chances. My biggest concern about him today is that he finally had Dennis to play in, unfortunately unless you plonk the ball right on Rajovic's head with no pressure on him, he's not going to score...
We are dobbins. I feel sorry for Grieves, sitting on the bench match after match and not trusted to play any minutes no matter how bad the midfielders on the pitch are performing.
As well as Asprilla ends up playing three or four different positions a game. Ludicrous way to use the closest thing we have to a game changer.
Of course, people will frown at me as they think I'm making excuses, but I thought the ref was abysmal, right from the first minute when he should have yellow-carded the Huddersfield player for his tackle on Hoedt. Huddersfield clearly got the message and fouled Watford repeatedly, with impunity. Watford clearly did not get the idea and looked like they didn't fancy it.
Yeah I don’t doubt they’ve assessed him as being fatigued. I just can’t recall it being managed this way before with another player.
I get the Aussie league is below the Championship in terms of quality and he was hardly a key player for Perth, but I'm surprised Coyne hasn't got a game yet this season, must be a higher level than U18/U23 stuff here
Actually Grieves will be receiving a bonus for being picked for the bench, which if you member the figure Jack Bonham mentioned he received as a sub all those years ago, will be a nice bonus for him, I’m sure he will get a decent career starting if not here somewhere else sooner or later.
You give him pelters every week mate, not sure what you want from your team. He scored the winner last week and you said he was particularly poor! He played a fantastic through-ball to Ince, which he failed to finish. He then done brilliantly for Dennis’ goal. He then laid one on for Rajovic who managed to miss. More talent in his left toe than Sema has, Sema’s best attribute is hard work, which you can often accuse Asprilla of lacking but he ran his socks off today.
My theory is that we either already have a buyer for Andrews, or Pozzo has at least earmarked him for sale in the summer to generate funds to keep the club solvent. Either way they want to minimise the risk of a bad injury stopping that happening.
His performance was poor last week like so many others in the team. As I mentioned above he is a player of moments rather than dominating games. A minute after the goal today he was in an identical position. Instead of going for goal again he worked it back to TDB and pointed to Hamer, and TDB obliged. Waste of an opportunity. Bags of talent but his decision making is poor. Yes I’m aware he’s young but he can be criticised.
But why just him? Why aren't we doing the same with other other saleable assets, especially those that are more ready for a big move?
You have taken dogs abuse on here, but don’t expect anyone to give you credit for it mate. The clowns just stop arguing in my experience and move on (“reset”, “found our natural place” etc). Our fans are weirdos.
No, he really wasn't that bad. I agree the first minute yellow was a mistake but other than that I thought he was one of the better refs this season.
What made that worse was the Huddersfield full back was wheeling his arms around gesturing and screaming at his team mates to come and help him out. He’d just been absolutes rinsed by Asprilla for the goal and could see the same thing unfolding again. I thought it was really bizarre that Asprilla let him off the hook by doing as you describe.
Not impossible but in the porous world of football chatter you’d have to think if that was the case word would have leaked.
Thank you. I just say it as I see it in an honest way, whether it’s good or bad. If it’s bad, people get seriously offended and try to ridicule or undermine your view. For me, it’s clear we’re just crap and are a bottom 8 team. I’m surprised so many others could not see this as I thought it is so obvious.
Perhaps, but I'd be surprised if Andrews is the first one out the door, we have other players who are, if not oven-ready, but certainly more ready for the upper echelons of the game than Andrews
We prefer to keep the ball than take a chance to score. The problem is this goes back to the keeper who plays it to a centre back still in the box, who plays it to the full back who plays it back to the centre back who plays it to midfield where we lose it. This happens 90% of the time. If we lose the ball in the final third so be it. But we consciously go backwards before losing the ball. It's been awful football all season masked by some decent team spirit (now missing?), some industrious performances and some terrific goals.
Our fall from the higher level is a steep one and we look like we will do well to avoid relegation to league one over the next number of years. Our level, without State or super fan crazy money, is mid table championship. Our current team/form is league one standard, probably because of our financial circumstances.
Ultimately a team's relative position in the league is no longer based on the size of the fan base or town their in, but the wealth of the owners. If position is dictated by our owners ability to fund the team or absorb a significant loss every year, as most Championship clubs suffer, I'm not sure mid table is going to be Watford's position going forward. The Pozzo's have done fantastically with their model in the past, but I can't see player trading being enough to maintain our position, it'll take deeper pockets in the long run unfortunately.
I don't suppose you or anyone else has Rajovic's exact comments from the programme they can post on here? Just a photo or scan of the page.
I've not read through all the comments but did anyone mention that barely any of our team celebrated our goal much. Asprilla with a decent bit of magic barely celebrated and not one single player ran over to him to say well done for setting up the goal. It was a bit surreal.
It wasn't them claiming they were better which wound me up - it was the other poster(s) butting in afterwards who tried to claim that the first poster was just joking, despite him having said nothing of the sort himself and rather saying they were being genuine.
That would explain at the end of the game how 75% of the team buggered off down the tunnel. Credit to Heodt for trying to get some back to clap the fans' but they were not interested at all. Not caring about scoring can be red flag, perhaps they thought, as we did that it was undeserved. I watched a five minute post match interview with Hamer and he more or less ripped the performance to pieces. Said we were slow, not on it and gave them way to much respect. He was pretty livid.
Again, mate, your inability to fully discern the subtext of normal human interaction and regular rude responses as a result doesn't make you a victim/martyr - quite the opposite, in fact.
Too easy to let those goals in from throw ins . We clearly weren’t marking up and concentrating. First throw seemed to come from Pollock being too slow to reach a loose ball so had to knock it off quickly and straight rather than down the line .