Don't you remember, players from the lower leagues can't make the step up. A frame of mind heavily supported by the experts on this very website.
Sh@t performance overall. Fozzie flapping, Lard arse and Gray below Sunday league level. Second goal was a total gift, but Swansea were by far the better team all over the pitch. We showed again today why we will not get promotion. None of this team give a toss. Go home now, feet up for two weeks them play turd vs Huddersfield. I'm getting sick of seeing such lazy half witted showings on the road. Our home form is keeping us near the top, but this unbalanced, aged and Covid hit team of cloggers are getting really hard to watch. FA Cup means nothing, but will we really see a response? Are the players sick of Xisco already? Will we ever get a decent striker who doesn't constantly get injured in training and isn't over the age of 79? I'm sorry I'm not usually so negative but after starting well, we reverted back to Ivic Ball. This team would never scare anyone and despite having some good players, never bother. Time for Bachmann in goal time for Deeney and Gray to eff off. Time for things to change, ASAP. I do not blame Xisco, he is clearly trying to inspire, but getting nothing back. Norwich was our Liverpool result. If we don't go up this year we are in real financial trouble, and in a small way offloading rubbish to balance the books might be a good thing. I really miss going to the Vic, but atm would any of us want to see this tripe? Happy New Year.
Also, please can we get Dahlberg back and give him a shot in goal? Foster left the first one - you could tell from Richard Lee's "he didn't get his dive away quite as he'd have liked" that he was trying to be kind but it was pretty obvious he thought it was going wide as he pulled his arms away from the ball. Second goal he's flapped at and missed. Directly cost us three out of the last four goals.
Our midfield can't win the ball back and give the opposition too much time and space, as they lack energy neither Cleverley nor Chalobah, can get their foot on the ball when we need them to and spray a few passes which means we can't control the game and invite pressure on ourselves. We just are not going to get promoted if we rely on Gray and Deeney getting us goals, did anyone have confidence in either of them scoring when we went 2-1 down? I would be stunned if many did. I am not getting too carried away yet as we played with what is probably our 4th and 5th choice centre back pairing and started with a 19-year-old right back at left-back and our best midfielder played the last minute. However, if we don't get Massina and Hughes fully fit and starting and don't replace Capoue we may not even manage to get in the playoffs. If the people in charge of the club think that a Deeney and Gray partnership can get us promoted then I give up!
I disagree with this - we still put in a few decent balls every now and then, even if we also messed some up. We should have scored loads more against Norwich and we even had a few more chances today. The thing is a decent striker can turn an average ball in to a good ball. You only need to look at the goals Toney scores, or Lowe's goals today, to see that a decent striker is able to pose a significant threat even if a ball isn't perfect. With Troy and Gray we can literally put the ball on a sixpence at their feet from 6 yards out and they'd still fu5k it up!
Deeney back to normal, then. So depressing to see him bumble his way into the box 10 mins after the cross has come in. Midfield crap again, good goal from Cleverley aside. Striker and midfielder needed ASAP.
I'm the last person who wants to be defending Deeney, he should be nowhere near the starting line up... however, Gray is on another level. Deeney can at least control and football and pass a ball, Gray genuinely looks like he should be playing sunday league football... and thats not a 'comedic exaggeration', thats a genuine appraisal of his technical ability, Scott Fitzgerald did the same job for us for £500 a week 10 years ago and he even scored the occasional goal as well
Poor ? He worked his socks off. Up and down his flank. Made defensive interceptions. Broke free several times. Delivered three peachy crosses that most strikers would latch onto except Gray and Deeney are on their heels and could not score even if they tried. I pity him. He cannot make the strikers runs for them. If we had just two mobile strikers he would have already had a decent number of assists. We cannot counter effectively because of the likes of Deeney. A glacier moves faster than him. As SLB said on that counter that was diabolical play. He is done. And we should be done with Deeney. It is Sarr we should pity. And no doubt Zinckernagel when he also finds that delicious cross after delicious cross is wasted.
Yep. You either put a ball into a good space and our strikers are nowhere near it or you have to try and pick them out as they stand still behind defenders. There is so little movement, Gray obviously miles ahead of Deeney on this front.
Unfortunately I don’t think we will be able to add a striker. Nobody is going to take Deeney and Gray off us and we are hamstrung until that happens unless we can unearth a cheap diamond.
I 100% agree in terms of Gray but Deeney is equally as bad, just in very different ways. One works reasonably hard and has half decent movement but disgustingly, embarrassingly poor technical ability, whereas the other is a fat, lazy w*nker who doesn't move but can control the ball fairly competently. They're both an absolute, complete and utter joke.
I’d love one of our wide players to test that theory consistently. One decent dross today, in the 80th minute and it was ballooned over. If you want our strikers to rely on one decent cross per game I’d suggest we get Ronaldo and Messi on the phone. We need better than Deeney and Gray. We also need midfielders who can create chances. That’s a lot we need and have done for a while, and it’s why we aren’t going up.
We are a team trying to claw our way back from the brink, Swansea look fitter, well organised, been together a couple of years, very sharp with the ball, and have a couple of game changers. We've just got Sarr who's not a striker anyway. We were completely outplayed apart from several moves on the break which came to nothing. Our team isn't a team it's a selection of players trying desperately to fit together... In the end we're a decent side but very raw and I inconfident, and definitely not one of the top five clubs around us. I still say that GP has to come out next week and say if this season is just a rebuilding exercise or expected promotion, as this bunch won't go up without another midfielder and striker, or a superb play off performance, and that's a 25/75pct gamble...
Lots of huffing and puffing but no quality against a solid side . Never looked like getting back in the game .
Agree. The failure to move either of these two wasters on in the summer may be the pivotal moment in our season. My only hope is clubs may be a little more desperate in the January window, but more fool them if they think Deeney or Gray are the answer to their problems.
Any cheap diamond won't start ahead of them as long as "Vamos" Munoz is in the hot seat. Ivic rested Deeney and got sacked.
Duxbury said months ago that this squad is good enough for promotion. Since then we've sold a player who'd had enough two years ago and bought yet another winger that we don't need. I'd say we are in the 'business done unless something better than we already have comes up' point of the window already.
One decent cross ? There were three from Sarr, one from Sema. A cross is only as good as the striker makes it. When you have two useless oafs upfront, one who cannot move and the other who cannot control a ball it hardly helps. Put Lowe in place of these two useless turds and see a different result.
Refreshing to see that level of toxicity back on the shoutbox. It's not the new managers fault, as it wasn't the last managers fault. The players are ****/past it and overpaid. Gino is reaping what he sowed with some bad squad mismanagement. Saw someone say on the SB that the only way we go up this year is a lucky run in the playoffs. Couldn't agree more. We couldn't have wished for a weaker Championship, yet still aren't good enough.
Duxbury is full of faecal matter. The deadwood that needed to be excised in the summer was not for fiscal reasons and because they think that just having Deeney on the pitch will cow the Championship into submission. I would not let Duxbury run a picnic let alone anything else. It is a disgrace that we have two utterly useless lumps that are costing the club in the region of £170000 a week. That is not shrewd financial management it is madness.
We lost? Really couldn’t be arsed today and first time in ages didn’t follow a match. Decided to take down the Christmas tree instead. My interest has well and truly waned now to be honest. Bigger things going on in the world and can’t be bothered to have following this shambles adding to them anymore.
Gray does lots of good running and has a knack of being in the right place in the box, unfortunately he cannot finish his good work by scoring. His two best bits of work today were spoiled by other players getting off side. I don't question his efforts when on the pitch, but the outcome is lacking.
Ha, he was worse than poor, he got in good positions because he's fast and then hit the first man or skyed it out of play. He's clearly not good enough or not bothered enough for even this league and if we get 15m offered it would be a suprise unless you're going off 1 game a year ago or the ridiculous price we paid for him. Its a ******* joke how bad hes been. Hes got more goals and assists than anyone because the one thing he can do is get on the end of Ken Semas crosses and fall over in the box. He "could" be half decent but I dont think hes got a footballing brain either to utilise his pace or ability on the ball.
Really do need to do more up front and midfield as they lose the battle too often. Foster was at fault for the goals but also made a good save or two . We definitely need a good clear out or younger players ready to play and want to be here.
I didn't see the game today I was watching Jeff Stelling giving updates on the game. Apart from the goal and a Gray chance it was just Swansea chances. Didn't look like the team as a whole played well enough. Clinton Morrison was saying "Swansea are all over Watford" for a chunk of the game. Gray has contributed to the last 2 goals Watford have scored, his run down the channel that created some space for Sema to cross for the Sarr goal against Norwich. And today with back to goal getting ahead of a Swansea player to set up Cleverley for the goal. Apart from Gray's involvement, both negative and positive, no positive goal mouth action on show from a Watford point of view. Both strikers need to start scoring soon as well. Doesn't look like the away form is getting any better if this result is anything to go by.
31 year-old central midfielder Tom Cleverley now has more goals from open play (3) than both our two CFs today combined. There are no excuses for how abysmal they are.
He does lots of very poor running too, though. Let's not re-frame it by pretending he's some genius defence-worker, he just just-about fulfils the minimum required for a striker when it comes to movement, which looks somehow impressive when compared to Deeney. If his movement was that good, he would occupy defenders and bring others in to play/create space, but he doesn't ever, and he's just as likely to be heading off in the wrong direction to the one the ball is going in as making a semi-intelligent run. He literally did it multiple times in this game. And that is literally what we could give him as his one 'attribute' - sheer mediocrity at making runs. Marvellous.
