Afc Bournemouth Vs Watford Fc - 27/02 /2021

I still can't bring myself to watch the highlights of this one.

 

I think you forgot Cleverley (who scored the winner if I'm thinking of the same game).

 

I was fortunate enough to find a river that ran deep and silent. There was no fake crowd noise and (best of all) no commentators whittling over the top. All you could hear was the players and ref shouting and cursing. It was great and interesting under the circumstances.

Muff, including their bench and subs were up as one every time a white shirt came near a tackle "Aaaaaaaayyyyyy!!" and the ref responded immediately with a "peep!" on his whistle what seemed like every single bloody time. It went to such an extent that quite a few of the Watford players responded with their own shouts of "Ayyyy! Ayyyy!" at one point.

When the odious Lewis **** deliberately fired the ball straight at the lino after not getting a throw his way, Cleverley (I think) says "he's lucky again there ref isn't he? Very lucky." or something along those lines. You could tell how fed up they were getting.

As for the match itself, I said on the shoutbox at HT that I thought we were going to lose. We weren't really causing them too many really dangerous moments and they were threatening us in their usual scratty way. Their cheating lucky goal was the very definition of scratty.

Disappointing to see Battman beaten on his near post again. I reckon that getting beat that side shows that you've got your angles slightly wrong as a keeper. Your priority has to be near post because it's easy for the striker to punt it in there. You can't practically cover all the far post really, but at least it's more difficult for the striker to score there. It's something I'm sure can be worked on in training. Otherwise his distribution is a delight. I like the diagonals out to Kiko or Masina waiting on the touchline. I enjoyed the moment he sold a lovely dummy to the Muff forward and brought it out nearly to the halfway line before clearing.

He's got a good powerful kick too and very confident handling. About the only area he's suspect on is crosses and I thought we again looked very wobbly at set pieces. Perhaps Bachmann's reluctance to come for the ball is part of that.

At the start, we were slinging crosses over ourselves and the commentators noted that Muff don't like a cross up 'em and had conceded most in the division that way. Good, I thought. Someone's done their homework.

Then we barely did it anymore. Why?

Finally, just to say that all white kit does not suit poor Will Hughes. He looks positively ghostly.

 

?

 

Got him!

 

You see a little bit extra of the ‘fight’ with this angle - It’s the rat Smith saying something to Sarr that gets him riled up the 2nd time and Sarr then goes back in for more. Sarr a bit lucky because he puts his head next to Smiths when he squares up. Smith must have been riled up enough to forget the tactic of falling to the ground and rolling around for half an hour. That’s why you see Smith from the original view touch his forehead when speaking to the ref after the yellows are given out.

https://www.afcb.co.uk/videos/alternate-angle/alt-angle-huge-hornets-win/?autoplay=true

 

Id've been happy to see Zinc and Gray/Perica start against Muff. Not sure how Sarr can keep playing so many minutes. I'm glad JP is getting a rest against Wycombe even if it wasn't the ideal way to achieve it.

 

There was also the 2-2 at West Brom in early 2017/18 out of the top of my head when we got a point in the dying seconds after being 2-0 down, but yes, the Palace game in ‘19 was the only time in a league game since West Ham when we’ve come from behind to win an away game.

 

I have a good feeling about this one. Muff 0 WFC 4 (Sarr 2, Pedro, Deeney (pen)).

 

Amazing stats. I bet Leventhal won't do an article on that.

We'll be fine.

 

https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/sport/19129457.woodgate-watford-not-gone-pearson-stayed-charge/

Are they trying to bait us now? I can’t stand this totally ahistorical assessment that seems all too common now in assessments of Watford and Pearson. When we sacked Pearson we had just the two games left - City (H) and Arsenal (A). Given Villa’s results, we would have needed 3 points from those two. Is Woodgate (and everyone else) saying that he is confident that the side and system that produced that abject display at West Ham would have gone on to win one of those games? It’s just silly. Pearson made a good go of keeping us up, and is a fairly good manager particularly at this level and will do well at Bristol City. But when he was sacked we were all but down already.

 

Not true, keeping the scoreline down to 0-2 against City and getting a draw at Arsenal, something I maintain wasn’t beyond NP, was all we needed to do. Maybe even that was unlikely after West Ham, but who knows, Pearson might have inspired a passionate and determined response from the team?

 

Lovely stuff. Crank it up one more notch. I really hope it's a play-off final between us - good surely has to overcome bad in the end right?

 

I watched the whole match. There were no highlights.

 

I see we have both been charged with misconduct over the brawl,

let hope we don’t see:

Any points reduction (don’t think that can happen but who knows)
Any retrospective actions against players (apart from maybe Gray , but guess he is probably not governed by the EFL )

 

I mean, it's possible. But you're looking at something that was clearly unlikely - particularly given our trajectory and performances post-lockdown. We saw more application from the team against Arsenal under Mullins than under any post-resumption performance under Pearson.

Still, it's become this orthodoxy in certain circles that because we weren't mathematically relegated (and were actually just outside the relegation zone) at the time we sacked Pearson, that ergo we were relegated because we sacked him. Given the difficulty of those fixtures, once we lost to West Ham our fate was essentially in the hands of Villa and Bournemouth. I think your argument is fairly plausible, though I think the outcome is unlikely, but I doubt Woodgate is making that sort of informed assessment. These pundits seem incapable of anything beyond "Pearson's Watford beat Liverpool and were outside the relegation zone when he got sacked and then they sacked him and lost their next two games and went down." That's not very thoughtful, is it?

 

All that would have been announced today alongside the charge. But they aren’t going to start dishing out points deductions for a bit of handbags on the pitch regardless!

Think we should just admit it and move on. We stupidly allowed ourselves to get suckered into Bournemouth’s gameplan yet again, and while they should be thoroughly ashamed of the way they carry on, we should be embarrassed for not seeing it coming and avoiding it.

We are bang to rights so no point in contesting it - in the cold light of day, we have gotten away lightly really as we could have seen retrospective bans.

 

Not sure I worded my response as intended. When I talked about supporters who applaud I was referring to the Bournemouth supporters who think the way Bournemouth carried on should in anyway be applauded rather then Lerma's oh so clever tweet. Yep it set out to troll but by the default, can't be arsed to actually think of something clever, crying emoji/gif. Did not intend to come across as though you were applauding Bournemouth's actions.

 

No punishment announced today as I guess they're awaiting to see if we contest it or not. Seems like the standard punishment for the E20 charge (failure to control players) is a 5k fine or 7.5k if we contest (https://www.thefa.com/~/media/files/thefaportal/governance-docs/analysis/standard-penalties.ashx)

 

We’d be utterly mental to contest it. At worst, we should admit it and point out the causing factors/circumstances. And at best, admit it, move on.

 

So both teams charged with "failing to control their players". We will plead guilty and take our medicine I guess. But our South Coast friends will be outraged. Their defence is simple; their players carried out their spoiling, weaseling, squealing and play-acting throughout the 90 minutes and rounded this off in the final minute with their final oscar-winning dramatics to close proceedings.

If there was a team that obviously carried out their coaching instructions, imparted by Woody and his mates throughout the week, to the letter it was the Cherries. We cannot allow this outrage #freetheBournemouth11 !!

 

if it’s only a small fine can we go back and have another go , JP and Challobah can’t play t9morrow night so we could send them over , maybe send Deeney along as well

 

At one point we had form for this and they usually take that into account. Got up to £40k in 2016.

 

My bad. Completely in agreement!

 

Looking through what is shown on the twitter link you have posted, I cannot see any racial content? A couple of foul mothed comments yes, but nothing that would be considered racist.

Unless of course the racist comments have not been shown in that link?

 

Bournemouth playing the victim card... that doesn't sound like them.

 

Look at the comment by George in the picture

 

I missed that comment by George and now have seen it I get what assumptions are being made as to what the substance of the content actually is, however it is still a bit ambiguous as to what it actually means.

 

Think it's fairly obvious what it means

 

Cometh the hour.....