Slaven Bilic - New (for Now) Watford Manager

I hope he loses the next 8 on the spin and gets sacked

 

Kamara is clearly better than all of them. Bartley and Ajayi are both average. They looked worse than our defenders in the PL. Furlong can take a long throw in, but apart from that I haven't seen much to suggest he's a good defender. In summary, in my opinion, no one would get into the team instead of Kamara, and the remaining 3 spots are pretty close.

To add to my point, defence is overrated in the Championship. We had the best defensive record with pretty much the same defence(downgrade at rb bc of Kiko and upgrade on lb because of Masina). Nottingham Forest have gone up with a 50 year old Steve Cook. Our attack blows their's out of the water and at the very least our squads are of similar quality. Original take that WBA had a "much better" squad is plain wrong

 

He’ll get 8 0-0 draws and we will all be bored to tears.

 

Very little of this is true.

We are all looking at the wider picture - but Bilic is not a yes man, and WHU fans were not happy when he was sacked. And Duxbury and Bilic being ex-WHU is no more relevant than Bobby Moore playing for West Ham.

 

On Bilic, what formation does Giaretta want him to play?

 

Soooo, Bilic is on an 18 month contract, taking him to March 2024. March?!

 

He’ll be lucky to last until the Christmas decorations come down. Madhouse of a club.

 

Sami Mokbel (well placed with Watford news) suggesting Xisco was heavily considered too.

Gino is a mad man.

 

Gary the Hammer came to my 7pm group last night.

He said they liked Bilic and were sad to see him go.

He did say he'd bring half of Croatia with him on his staff too!

 

Nearly 24 hours since we appointed a new manager and this thread has barely made it onto the 3rd page.

Just not that big news is it. Crazy.

So, how are we likely to set up and style of play with Bilic? Going to suit our squad?

 

I genuinely think people have stopped giving a single crap about who it is or what we can expect. Because we know how it ends.

 

Not necessarily refuting all of it, but I'm sorry, this part is somewhat disingenuous - Pereira chose to go to Saudi Arabia for the money, but it doesn't reflect on his quality in anything like the way you're implying - several Prem teams were strongly linked with him the summer they were relegated, including us (and here on this forum, in a wishlist-sense, as much as anything else).

He got 8 goals and 20 assists in their Championship promotion season, and 11 goals and 6 assists in his one Prem season with them, in a dogshyte team that was immediately relegated. That's almost an exactly equal record with Sarr in the Prem (he has 10 league goals and 8 assists), having played half the number of seasons he has, with far better overall production down at this level to boot.

 

Bilic favoured a 4-2-3-1 formation at West Brom, holding lots of possession.

You’d think this would suit us very well. We don’t have wingbacks, we have fbs much better suited to defending. We have plenty of CBs to choose the two in form from.

We have a very promising bully of a forward in Davis to play up top, whereas a role in the three behind would suit our not quite strikers Pedro and Sarr very well. We have plenty of players to play behind Davis from Pedro again through to Louza when fit. We also have players to play as the two in Kayembe and Choudhury.

Altogether a much, much better fit that three at the back.

 

Genuinely an idiot who never learns from even the starkest and most recent of his mistakes, it seems.

 

Yes but bear in mind 1/ The end date of most of our managers contracts becomes an irrelevance, and 2/This gives us a f.o.c opportunity to cut him adrift and achieve a "late in the season bounce" as we try to fight off relegation to League 1.

 

On paper, yes, a 4-2-3-1 can have everyone in something resembling their best position, but if we do want to be anywhere near the top of the league, ideally you'd like attacking full-backs (a la Kiko 2 years ago), and although JP can play in a number of attacking roles, his best seems to be in that #10 role, but with fewer defensive players behind him, can we really pull it off in a 4-2-3-1? Besides, a change in formation doesn't change the fact that our defenders are not comfortable on the ball, and that, Louza aside (who should be back soon, but I wouldn't want to pin all our hopes on one guy), our defenders are not comfortable on the ball neither. Our performances in a back 4 weren't really any better than with a back 3, and if anything, we were probably more exposed defensively

 

Basically, my point is we're not really 'suited' to any formation such is the ****** recruitment of the squad

 

Half of Croatia is only 2 million people but let's hope one of them is a championship quality right back!

 

They have a large diaspora population all over Europe too in fairness!

 

Whilst that is a fair point, Pereira didn't have stats like that before or after WBA. Undoubtedly, Bilic had something to do with it.
Still I rate Sarr and Pedro more than him and I think my point still stands. That WBA team wasn't "much better" than our team. Some would say it's a bit better, some would say it's a bit worse. Bilic has a much better Championship ppg stat than Edwards with teams of similar quality. Will he succeed here, no one knows, but the original comment was unfair to Bilic.

 

I don't have a lot to add about Bilic that hasn't already been said.

I do think the thread title needs work though. It could be misinterpreted as Bilic being new until he shortly ceases being new, rather than until he shortly ceases being the Watford manager. Or, you never know with our club, just shortly ceases being.

 

Defensive and boring, but probably effective.

Hopefully we defend and attack as a unit, as under Edwards, our defenders dropped back, our forwards pushed forwards and our passing between the lines was so poor that there was no transition whatsoever.

 

Yeah, like I said, I'm not necessarily refuting the rest of it and I'm intrigued to see what Bilic will be like; I'm cautiously optimistic, despite my feelings around the general situation. Pereira was a brilliant player to have, though, that's all - even at Prem level. I think he could provide something of a blueprint for JP in this team.

 

In all honesty it doesn't matter who is in charge, if you can even call it in charge! I have never been so embarrassed about supporting this club and doubt I will even give a **** about results until they sell up and **** off.

 

I think you're overrating Kamara, he's bang average. Despite those West Brom players also being average they're still better than what we have in defence. Their squad in that season was better than ours now, pretty clear cut if you ask me.

 

Us fans get Season tickets and commit for the Season, shouldn't it be the same for Managers!

 

Kamara was crap in the Prem and even when playing in his preferred position he hasn't been much better this season.

 

Kamara isn't bang average, he was excellent in a lot of games in the PL. And I don't think their defence was better than ours, they were dogsh*t in the PL following their promotion.
And let's agree to disagree re squad quality. I'd say they are of pretty much equal quality (one might be slightly better than the other), but I definitely don't think WBA had a "much better" squad.

 

Kamara has been pretty bad this season at lower level than the PL. I think the promise he showed at PL level was more that he was quick, and ran around more than what we’d been used to. Kucka looked like a world beater after one game, then a geriatric for the rest of the season, it happens.

 

I don’t think this will be a happy marriage. Bilic is very outspoken and will walk if he doesn’t like the setup.

It shouldn’t take long for it to unravel if Giaretta is still haunting the place.

But, ultimately, Bilic has 11 games before the next big break. That is certainly sacking territory. This is when I think he’ll go.

For him to stay he’d have to attain at least 20 points in those 11 games. It’s a tall order. This is why I don’t think he’ll be here after the World Cup break. He’ll either walk away himself or will not get enough points on the board.

 

Just under 2 points a game ?
I think if he hasn't averaged at least 2.2points he'll be gone in February
Wonder what the record is for managers in a season

 

Exactly this. Genuinely don’t give a shyte who it is, because at best, he’ll see out the season and get us up, before being sacked 4 games into next year after being forced to work with a horribly unbalanced, I’ll-prepared squad.

On the face of it, Bilic is an appointment that makes sense given his track record. I think most fans would look at his appointment in isolation and agree that he’s a decent choice.

None of that matters though, because it won’t be enough to overcome our short-termist, toxic owner, who clearly has priorities that go beyond our relative success as a football club.

All of those opposition fans who used to talk about our club losing its soul, they were right. It’s gone. There’s nothing left. An empty shell.

 

I think he's absolutely focused on making us a success as a football club to protect the value of his investment. He's just not going about it very successfully !