Premier League - 2022/23

Aston Villa 2-2 Arsenal: Unai Emery haunts former club as their title charge falters - BBC Sport

Why do the BBC think that 2-4 is a draw!

 

One must have equality!

 

So too Abu Dhabi?

 

A third of all Soton's points have been won against Chelsea

 

Dennis will be GBM,gone by Monday.

Can't keep him can they?

 

How is that a foul let alone a booking for Antonio?

Won the ball , didn't make contact with England's captain who collapsed holding his ankle.

Plus ca change!

 

Some very weird decisions in our game at Man Utd today too.

Refs on their best behaviour for the big boys this weekend because they know there won’t be sniff about it in the papers tomorrow.

 

Yes Rice made the point to Oliver about Perisic.

They did look very poor.

I said to Mr IBB,in his constant state of fear about Palace that if Palace were worse than WHU they deserve to be relegated.

Ah the Sainted Eddie Izzard strikes again!

Sap!

 

I can see his point as it was unlikely someone as poor at goalscoring as Mo Salah would have scored anyway.

 

Yep. Red card all day long for the Man U player with that high challenge

 

Sabitzer should have been sent off, he wasn’t even given a yellow. Unsurprising big team bias there on show for everyone to see

 

He did. Probably our best manager of the Pozzo era.

 

Leeds have set themselves up for a fall. Bielsa's style takes years to perfect, then Jesse Marsch brings in half of the USA and is gone with in a week of the window closing. Gracia is a fitness man and without a pre-season I can't see what he can do.

Oh well, nobody likes Leeds anyway.

 

Looks like Gracia's set to be appointed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/64716610

 

Great appointment for him if it happens, I'm a little surprised as he didn't strike me as being charismatic enough to manage in the P.L.
I know personality shouldn't come into it, but if I was a player fighting against relegation I would want someone shouting who aspires confidence, I don't think Gracia is that sort of person!

 

Wish he'd come back here instead

 

Isn’t that exactly what he did for us after taking over from Silva though? Hadn’t we lost about 10 in a row or something like that.

 

Silva wasn't bothered as he had been tapped up by Everton, it remains to be seen how good Gracia is!

 

Of course, but our situation was fairly precarious when Gracia took over and we’d lost loads of games on the spin so morale could not have been good. He then took us to our highest PL finish and a cup final the following season, so I’m not sure how much remains to be seen. He’s easily the best coach we’ve had, and we’ve had a lot.

 

100% agree. We were in serious trouble. A foolish decision to get rid.

 

Muchos Gracia's.

Yep. The board should have backed him the following summer. Instead we ended up with a £35m white elephant of a winger and a crappy centre back, plus an injured striker.

We should have allowed Javi to rebuild with his own squad, but we didn't and we've been in decline ever since.

 

Laughably gave him a four year deal though, and then didn’t back him at all. A complete and utter lack of joined up thinking and hence why we’ve been on a downward spiral ever since.

 

Good luck to the guy. He deserves better than our shower of *****.

 

Don’t forget the arguments over the unpaid bonuses following the 11th place finish and cup final. While it didn’t emerge until the Covid pause - reported by David Ornstein at The Athletic - it was apparently rumbling on all summer, causing issues behind the scenes.

https://theathletic.com/1756620/2020/04/19/watford-bonus-coronavirus-deferral-wages/?amp=1

Not hard to imagine the disruption had something to do with the appalling start - losing 0-3 at home to Brighton and managing only a point at Newcastle (robbed by VAR too) before they sacked Gracia after just four league games.

Add to that the long chase for Sarr, who didn’t fit Gracia’s system instead of prioritising better defensive reinforcements, a striker and, arguably, a new goalkeeper and it was not a good summer. To make Gracia the fall guy after just four games was probably the worst decision of the Pozzo reign.

Not saying Gracia would still be here, not even saying that his spell in charge was flawless, but he created the strongest, most dynamic Watford team to play in the top flight since GT. He got the best out of some very good players.

The Capoue-Doucoure axis in midfield absolutely purred at time. The wholehearted players showed commitment. Deeney led from the front. Deulofeu was given licence to create.

Not criticising those who felt we freewheeled over the line and that general sense of taking the foot off the gas led to the very poor performance in the cup final because that is undoubtedly what happened, but Gracia dared us to dream. To go to games feeling like we could stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone. In the rarified atmosphere of the modern PL that requires so many things to align. Sad as it is to say but a dozen or so wins a season in that league and a cup run really is about all we can afford to aspire to without a nation state or billionaire investors. For a time it was magical and I’m glad I appreciated it as such as it was happening, just as I am sad it all turned to sand in the space of six weeks in the summer of 2019.

 

I mean, yeah - he did well. But so did QSF in his first season. The feeling of standing shoulder to shoulder you describe here was just as applicable that season (at least for me), and at times during Walt’s season too (although that really was limping over the line).

 

QSF mark one started quite conservatively, easing his way into the season until those back-to-back wins against Swansea and Newcastle. Then there was the purple patch running up to Christmas when we won four in a row – a real rarity for Watford in the top flight – and played with the handbrake off against Liverpool, who had just appointed Klopp. But I also remember the moaning and grumbling about how cautious we were after Christmas, how boring the football was and we lost a lot of games.

Other than the early wins at West Ham's athletics stadium and against Man United, Mazzarri was anti-football. Middlesbrough away was one of the worst wins I've ever seen. We beat Hull 1-0 at home without having a shot on goal! It was turgid, boring and negative for the most part.

Gracia's team was the first time since GT the first time round that I felt we went into more or less every game with the confidence that we could win. It was also by far the best football of the PL spell. When Deulofeu, Pereyra, Doucoure, Capoue were on song we were good to watch.

Not to say there weren't bad days, there were, but the good days were better. Winning the first four of 2018-19 in a row, Wolves away, West Ham away at Christmas, smashing Cardiff and Fulham, the cup quarter-final and semi-final...

Then again, GT always pointed out that when we finished runners up to Liverpool in 1982-83, we lost 15 games – the same number we lost when we finished 11th in 1985 and 12th in 1986.

 

While I agree to some degree about the quality of the football, my point was simply in relation to your 'shoulder to shoulder' comment. Certainly from December onwards in QSF's first reign I was regularly confident that we could get something from the majority of games. Perhaps you weren't.

Don't forget we also beat Arsenal at the Emirates under Walt.

But even on the quality of the football aspect: we played some great stuff under Silva until his head was turned.

 

I guess I felt QSF's style was much more about containing, although there were exceptions, of course. I didn't feel confident we'd stay up until really quite close to the end of the season, even though it was pretty comfortable.

That win at the Emirates under Mazzarri, as brilliant as it was, was like finding a shiny gold coin in a sea of post-Brexit bonfire-of-regulations sewage, though.

I also think the further we get from Gracia's 18-months or so in charge, the more it'll be appreciated.

It's interesting how, depending on the question, or the frames of reference, we all review the PL years slightly differently each time. I know I often do. Now Gracia is at Leeds it definitely feels more irritating to me how it ended for him at Watford. In another thread, with a different issue being discussed, the memory of the PL years could just as easily be how dreary it was trudging to 14th place or whatever, knowing we'd get humiliated half a dozen times a season. The bright twinkles amid the gloom seem to shine brightly – as they should. Crikey, even Mazzarri is getting a fairer hearing here!

 

Absolutely classic Pozzo incompetence to throw away 5 years of work by bungling over £3m of bonuses (and likely being arrogant and uncommunicative about it with the players to boot).