Expectation For The Season

I can't see a a similar thread posted, at least not lately so I wanted to see how people are feeling.

With just a week and a half until Vicarage Road sees Premier League football in front of a capacity crowd, how do people think we will do?

I'm torn between the optimistic vision of our lightning fast front three backed up by a rock solid defence and a good home record giving us a memorable season and the nightmarish vision of us not being good enough and everyone arguing.

What will it be?

 

Nothing but a Champions league qualifying spot will do.

 

I went with the second option. I don't think we have a bad group overall, we managed to put up half a fight a couple of seasons ago but unfortunately we just don't have the quality. Can't see us being Sheff Utd bad this season but I think we'll be down with a few games to go.

 

We all know deep down it's going to be a dog dirt season. There's a few clubs battling for 17th. We could scrape it, just.

 

HMS Relegation

 

I am concerned.

Need a couple of quality over quantity signings who can cut it in the Prem.

Otherwise I think we'll struggle.

Not impossible to stay up but will need mental strength and endurance to bounce back from any runs of defeats and the inevitable shellacking by Man City.

 

A lot hinges on how we start. Get a good number of points on the board from the first 7 up until Liverpool and we'll be well set. We can't afford a start like 19/20 though and if we copy that we'll be sunk by Xmas.

 

Money talks in football. Haven’t looked at the other clubs ins and outs yet but it looks likely our squad will have been put together (transfer fees plus wages) as one of the 3 to 4 lowest. Therefore I’m expecting nothing more than a bottom 6 scrap for survival. Very hard to tell what our squad will do, we have a couple of exciting possibilities- but if I was saying so now I’d go with a good spirited relegation.

 

I'll go for relegation with a fight, certainly unlike any of our other relegations from the top flight. We have a core of a lower midtable team but our squad depth is poor.

 

Clubs that I've earmarked as getting results off of have been recruiting reasonably well like Palarse, Brighton, Villa etc. It is going to be a tough ask given our financial plight. My expectations are low but that's usually when we are at our best.

 

Unfortunately our financial situation just means we haven't been able to invest in the squad anywhere near enough necessary to make any real sort of attempt of staying up. The signings are mostly wild punts that may have been ok in the Championship but will really struggle in the Prem. Signing the likes of Fletcher on long term deals when we were already full of crap strikers is an equally baffling use of resources.

Hopefully the club will be in a position to really start again next year in the Championship without the contracts of Deeney and Gray and hopefully pocketing some money from this season. I think realistically you have to look at the midfield in particular, and lack of any sort of depth in the defence and wonder where 40 points would ever come from. When we first came up under the Pozzo's it felt like the start of an amazing journey, this time it just feels like a get out of jail free card. If Sarr + one of the starting CB's was to get injured it could probably be a Shef Utd/Derby kind of season! Not to mentioned we lose a ridiculous amount of first team players for a whole month in the middle of the season.

All of this and an incredibly inexperienced coach means it will probably be a season full of pastings.

If we battle hard we may finish 19th. This isn't a criticism of the club either, just a painful reality of the current situation.

 

I say it every year... we need to make a good start.

Javi Gracia won the first 4 games and did largely nothing else of note in the league and we stayed up comfortably. When he didn't, he was fired and we were relegated.

So I'll say, good start (7+ points) = survive in 16th.
Bad start (less than 3 points) = relegated 19th.

 

Yes we did have a record breaking defence last season but some of the oppositions finishing was effin shocking. That ain't going to happen this season.

 

Tend to agree. Get off to a ropey start and I think this season will go along quite similar to 99/00 and 06/07 relegation seasons. At the moment I'm getting a similar feeling to the build up to those ultimately unsuccessful seasons, where I had a little optimistic hope, but we huffed and puffed but fell short and were down around March/April time. When we last came up I was much more optimistic we'd pull a few surprises, which we did. This time I'm not that confident.

 

I expect the bloke that's sat behind me for God knows how long will continue to shout 'No! Not there!' every time one of our defenders attempts anything other than a long punt into the opposition half.
Beyond that I don't know. I'm just looking forward to seeing games live again and having a few good pi55 ups when go away. That said, I'll be bitterly disappointed if we don't win either the League Cup or the FA Cup

 

I expect to reach 40 points and safety

Anything else is gravy

If King gets back to his best... if Cucho is the real deal... if Sarr has a blinding season... it might be a lot of gravy

 

I'm hanging fire on my thoughts until the window closes in hope that we will bring in a couple of last minute saviours, even if they are just loans. Otherwise my expectations are going to be quite low like maybe scraping survival by virtue of 3 other teams being even worse than we are probably going to be

 

Lower mid table survival.

 

Of course, I've already started work on my tin foil FA Cup

 

For the record: since the beginning of this century 39% of promoted teams have been relegated straight away (26 out of 66). 11 of those 26 had been promoted via the play-offs, so 34% of automatically promoted teams are immediately relegated 15 out of 44).

 

Norwich City have been promoted 4 times during this period and only survived the first season once.......

 

Relegation but I expect a brief fight in the second half of the season.

 

The real question is how many managers are we going to get through.

 

I know we are always tipped to struggle by the bookies, who tend to get it wrong with us. I think they've got it about right this time.

Our squad is weaker than the one that started the 15/16 season and we have a much less experienced manager.

I like the look of King, Louza and Etebo. Cucho looks exciting. I'm not sure they have the grit and *********ry to get is points in tight games. Compared to Pridl, Britos, Cholebas, Behrami and Capoue this is a major difference.

I think retaining Chalobah is key. He was a leader last season. We need as many of them as we can get.

 

We ve got this young lad who sits right behind and moans like its the end of the world everytime we attack but dont score, and panics everytime the opposition goes near our box.
The poor lad, he really needs to be supporting someone like City because supporting Watford is going to give him a heart attack before he loses his virginity.

I love his passion though!

 

Relegation but we might be able to stretch it out till March after a couple of new manager bounces.

 

I've voted for 'scrape survival' because anything can happen and we have one or two players (literally) who could potentially be game influencers/changers at this level, plus, of course, it's the option I want to happen (within reason). It's not currently what I believe will happen, though, and I'll believe it even less if our defence is indeed further unchanged when the window slams shut on whatever date it is that it slams shut.

Our entire recruitment strategy this window is a physical manifestation of the expression 'throwing (free or incredibly cheap) shyt at the wall to see what sticks', and we look penniless as a result. But I'm still irrationally hoping that the Pozzo have one decent player ace up their sleeve that they will bring in (later than would be ideal, of course) that we will actually spend money on, and will significantly improve a position that we need significantly improved. Going back a bit, it looked like we basically wouldn't spend any money the summer Sarr came in and we were all kind of annoyed by that, right up until his signing was suddenly announced, having been told by the itk's by that point that it wasn't going to happen (the actual logic in and intelligence of his signing is it's own debate, of course...).

I think I'm probably being delusional and am very prepared to be as impressed by the Pozzo ability to identify and fix an issue as I have been every window for the past five or six prior, but until it is no longer a possibility a small part of me will continue to believe it is possible.

If the squad has basically already taken shape (which, again, I hopefully doubt) we are likely to have a farcical season, and honestly I can't finger three teams who seem at this point likely to be worse than us. Then again, I don't think anyone would have fingered Muff or ourselves to be worse than the promoted teams two seasons ago.

One thing's for sure - Xisco will not see next August (as Head Coach of Watford Football Club).

 

Top half - believe.

 

You’d put your mortgage on Munoz being the first manager to get sacked

 

Vieira is my guess. Woeful manager.

 

Strictly speaking, if I put my mortgage on the bet, Id be gambling my lenders money. Sounds like a great idea to me.

 

Begins with an R and ends with an N.

Also rhymes with Smellegation