Valerien Ismael - Manager

Can I interest you in a 26 year old bench that looks like it's a 46 year old bench but honestly isn't ?

 

That depends on whether you've negotiated me a higher than fair price, I refuse to pay sensible prices for your benches my friend

 

I think you know full well Kalu is contractually unavailable at the moment because he's out on loan.

 

I reckon we should plant some trees now, so in the future we can have some homegrown benches.

 

The best trees would be logged by bigger rivals.

 

Taken as wee saplings, but left to wither under the broad canopies of bigger trees. We should probably sack the guy organising the tree growing and start again...

 

According to “playmaker_en” on twitter we have had, jointly with Oxford, the least shots per game against us in the EFL

 

Fewest.

 

Leastest

 

Fewerer.

 

Valerien Ismael is the 12th longest current serving manager in the championship, who would have thought it!

Manager ins and outs - November 2023 - BBC Sport

 

A disgrace to the Watford tradition!

 

I've had enough of Ismael. He's completely changed the club and made it something unrecognisable.
Before he came we didn't have any of this team spirit nonsense.
We didn't have hopes of something as stupid as "stability"
We didn't give managers new contracts
And we most certainly did not come 12th (Top Half!!!) of longest serving managers.

Ismael out
Pozzo out

I want my Watford back

 

The clapping was strong after 20 minutes against Norwich !!


For sure I don't think last season's squad could have recovered from Tuesdays awful start
Maybe a seasons defining moment ?
Let's hope so

 

This is no longer “my club”. We have forgotten what made us so successful and entertaining for almost a decade. Can we honestly say we are still “everything that’s wrong with football”? When is the last time we exploited a “Pozzo loophole”? (Kamara value was independently audited and signed off given we turned down an offer of £20m from a R Riva of the Chinese club “Shanghai Rovers”).

 

We want our Mogi back!

 

Is that where Kalu's gone? Or does Mogi offer a seniors' bingo night too?

 

Not clever enought to swap the "O" for an "I"....

 

We are everything that's wrong midtable in football.

 

It's a shame for old grandad Sam that no-one will believe him and just dismiss him as a rambling lunatic.

And it's a shame for us that Pozzo picked Roy because he wanted to get someone Kalu knew to help him settle in

 

He's been tearing it up in the swiss league for FC Lausanne. 2 goals & 2 assists in 9 starting appearances

 

It all does feel like a good fit for what we currently need and that there is something to properly get behind . The decision to extend his contract and really back him appears to have worked so far and the club seem to be backing him and listening to what he asks for ( smaller squad , players who have the right attitude etc ) . Even the injury record has improved beyond recognition from last season.

I am hoping maybe Val has learnt from mistakes he may have made at Barnsley /west brom and is using that experience for out benefit here . At this point I’d love to see him backed in January and the summer to see what he can build . It’s a very different feel to the usual short termism. Our current position in the table is an added bonus .

 

I don't think we need much to achieve the aim of mid table stability this season. We don't have a lot of depth but our starting 11 and current bench is capable of a mid table finish. Our injury record this season is a lot better than the previous two seasons (mainly due to a mentality change) so the lack of depth might not even become a problem.

 

I’m sure the pre-season helped and there must have been some better conditioning work going on to see such a massive reduction in muscle injuries thus far.
But we’ll have to see how the injury situation develops after Xmas to see whether too much work was done pre-season.

 

Better conditioning and a group of players who actually want to play - a winning formula.

 

Still wasn’t quite convinced by him up until Saturday because we hadn’t beaten anyone good but a win at a top six side (if achieved with some luck) and a now half-decent goal tally suggests we can be more than competitive - up until not long ago I feared it was going to be a grim season in the vein of Lewington, early Mackay and Dyche where we would be scraping enough points to survive while being far from play-off contenders. I suppose like many I was worrying unduly about the possible chance of a relegation battle because last season’s squad while not massively better would’ve made the play-offs with just a bit more effort, but it was still a challenge reversing a collective loser’s mentality after such a dispiriting end to last season and losing several key players. I don’t think we’re good enough to challenge with the usual and expected teams at the top, as shown by some of our encounters with them, but we could finish top 10 and not too far from the play-offs, and with some entertaining football of the kind we’ve had at times (especially of late) that would constitute a more than satisfactory season for a club in transition.

Technically the squad is quite limited but we knew that from the start but scoring goals is looking to be less of a problem with Rajovic a respectable 7 from 16. It does generally look like though that the goals and assists are going to be quite spread out, but better that than being over-reliant on a couple of key performers and the team getting into a collective strop when they’re not on song.

 

In the top 10 now Mowbray’s been sacked by Sunderland.

 

Need to knock Mark Robins off his perch then it's wide open.

 

By next weekend Ismaël should have become our joint 3rd longest serving Head Coach since the departure of Javi.

He’s currently been in charge for 20 league matches, two short of both Ivic and Pearson.

He needs a further four in charge to catch Bilic (26).

Xisco remains way out in front (by our standards lol) with 36.