I particularly enjoyed Sema taking a corner and watching it with awe then when Hull won the ball back realising he should have started getting back in position about 5 seconds previously and sprinting up the pitch. Are all our players as ******* stupid?
It’s not one game though is it, we’re nearly half way through the season and we’re 5th, that’s a fairly decent sample size to make an assessment about our promotion chances. The play-offs look likely which are somewhat of a Lottery (we’ve lost 1/1 of them under Pozzo ownership) This game is just yet another below par performance amongst many others.
You think we're likely to get playoffs. So if the play offs are a lottery, is it fair to say we'd have a 25% chance of promotion? If so, surely @wfcSinatra is correct to say it's silly to write off promotion, right?
I'm glad we were clearly the better team against a Hull side that have lost half of their league games this season. I was beginning to think we were rubbish today, the three shots on target and clean sheet make it an excellent result now.
Expect nothing less from the best championship squad ever. Just imagine how good we’ll be when we add an 19 year old Brazilian and 20 year old Canadian who are new to Europe. And all the new players that we’ll get from our new crack scouting team in January. Forget catching Burnley, I think we can still catch Brentford.
I had some ( maybe not high) hopes today about the impact of improved fitness levels , injured players returning and Bilic having had more time to work with the squad . We seem to have more injuries now than when the break started ( where we’re Kayembe and Kalu ?) and the first half felt like a friendly . Could have been down to the Choudhury injury throwing out the game plan , but it was really weak . We did step it up in the second half and should really have won it with a couple of great chances . We showed more aggression and we’re winning the ball high up the pitch . Pedro was driving everything . But we seemed to drop back the levels again for the final 20 mins or so. What the hell was going on with Davis today as well ? Completely ineffective in holding up the ball . Hopefully just an off day for him . only positive was that we defended ok and looked fairly comfortable at the back. I feel we may have lost one one nil a few months back. Little consolation, as we needed a win . I’m sure we will recruit in January but in between now and then with most of our midfield potentially injured might be too big a gap and autos might be gone by then.
Turgid crap. Cathcart and Kabasele were both solid, and twice Kabasele got the full backs out of trouble with late tackles after individual blunders. Ngakia looks well below par and Kamara continued where he left off before the break. Pedro, Asprilla and Sema deserve credit for their efforts but when they are trying to feed balls into Kienan 'the statue' Davis it was destined to come to nothing. I was hoping the break might have allowed Davis to get some fitness but he seems incapable of doing anything after the 60 minute mark. Sarr crying off shows a massive lack of respect to the club and the fans.
How do you measure it? I’m basing it on the closing down, tracking back, blocks, determination to win the 50/50’s. I’d say we did all that. Watching that straight after watching the worlds best players at the worlds biggest tournament will always be a come down in many regards. There was no lack of work rate from what I saw. Trouble breaking them down, yes, but we did try various ways to do that. Problem is when we don’t win against teams we ‘should’ people come out with all the usual cliches. “They don’t care, they don’t try, they are mercenaries blah blah blah”. You think I have a low bar, I think the opinion they didn’t work hard is lazy.
Hull found it so easy to play through us and march up the field tbf, we had the better of it in general, but they had their chances too and perhaps should have scored 1 or 2
I confess that I couldn't motivate myself to spend the afternoon freezing my t1ts off at Vicarage Road , so I missed this. Sounds like a wise move
They refused to play it long unless they absolutely had to, but they struggled to get pass us the majority of times and ended up losing the ball or hitting it into touch. Looks like I’m in the minority on this one so if I’m wrong then fair enough. Be interesting to read the Hull fans opinion. Might go look
I don't think anyone called it an excellent result but please, keep talking to these imaginary posters.
First half was one of the worst half of football I have ever seen. Not exaggerating, it was awful. I got in 3 minutes late because loads of trains were cancelled, I preceded to not see more than 3 minutes of football until the 15th minute thanks to the injuries. Second half we did more than enough to win the game and I thought we actually played pretty well. Another day Asprilla and Manaj finish those pretty easy chances and it's an easy 2-0 win. Davis was useless, how he wasn't subbed off at about 65 mins is beyond me, how bad must Bayo be if he can't get on earlier in that game? Aspirlla isn't good enough yet to be starting regularly. January is massive. I still think we'll get top 6, but can't see us getting anywhere near the top 2 now.
And only 5 minutes injury time.. Would have been about 15 at the World Cup - guess it was cold. I suspect we worked for days/weeks on the formation and tactics but that had to change after 15 minutes with our best player and attacker having to turn into a defensive midfielder. e got a grip of it a bit 2nd half and had chances but we seemed to get momentum then lost it straight away. And we won nothing in the air whilst they always seemed to just get to the 2nd ball or put in an important block.
Well he came on and once again looked like he'd never been on a football pitch before, so pretty bad.
Also, had a very strange interaction walking to the ground. A foreign couple ask me and my brother how to get to the ground, we tell them to follow us. Turns out he was a Georgian Dinamo Tbilisi player under Xisco & Xisco had sorted him out with hospitality tickets. He even played us a voice note from Xisco explaining how to get to his seats!
I trust the club will be having a set of medals struck to award to those of us who sat through that game in the freezing weather. Hull were inept but we couldn’t beat them. JP was miles better than anyone else on the pitch but unfortunately largely wasted by having to play too deep. He should be looking to move on in January.
Well that was grim. On the plus side, because trains had replacement buses, I drove. And discovered that the multistorey for the hospital which literally has a door to the bottom of the Rookery is cheaper than WGGS, and the trading estate on Wiggenhall Rd.
Yup. It’s about time FIFA, the FA, the EFL etc gave referees a clear instruction and mandate to prioritise entertainment above everything other than serious player safety issues. They should make whatever rule changes are needed to facilitate it. Far too often now there are interminable delays and stoppages and all manner of nonsense is allowed to dribble on while the crowd are left waiting around like chumps. The first half today was atrocious stop-start b*llocks and both sides should be ashamed of their contribution to that when they’ve got thousands of people paying good money to turn out in the freezing cold to be faced with players routinely lying/sitting down forcing the game to stop, taking an age to get treatment or come off, pishing around over every throw in or set piece, general time wasting and wandering across for de facto team talks multiple times a half…
The two things that FIFA could do to improve spectator viewing , which should always be their primary objective, is to eradicate time wasting and diving/play acting .
Completely agree. It was summed up, when after having a 6-7 minute break whilst the players were injured, the Hull player preceded to need to tie his shoelaces and waste another 30 seconds on the next throw-in, which was about 15 seconds after the stoppage! Ridiculous.
Exactly, we're 5th. Would've been 3rd today with a win. With a shyte academy kid, TDB who is pure Championship, an 18 year old Colombian in his first season here, our best attacker playing CDM and our second best attacker not in the squad. We have a decent Canadian kid coming, a supposedly exciting Brazilian forward coming. Then our manager just got his tried and tested assistant, we have added a very exciting Technical / Sporting (whatever the hell it is!) Director, who knows what effect he might have in January. Pozzo has done a lot wrong but them just upping and leaving is unrealistic, so the next best thing is some of the changes we're seeing like some new eyes in the recruitment / scouting area and a slightly different approach to it. Their methods have got us promoted twice before, better than any other modern ownership we've had in Watford, so let's see what happens, 5th at this point of the season is no bad place to be!
Matter of fact, some stats: 2020/21. After 22 games, we were 6th, with 37 points, won 10, drew 7, lost 5. +8 GD. 2022/23 (This season) After 22 games, we are 5th, with 34 points, won 9, drew 7, lost 6. +6 GD. Almost identical records, we went up automatically. 2014/15. After 22 games, we were 6th, with 38 points, won 11, drew 5, lost 6. +16 GD(!!!). Ipswich were 2nd, they are now in League 1. Goal difference significantly better, other than that, not much else in it again. Again, in case anyone forgot, we went up automatically.
Could’ve been third if we had won is a very strange argument, considering the whole point is we failed to win at home against 20th placed Hull, 2 points off relegation, who have lost 11 games already this season. Just a reminder where Hull are in that table, and we just laboured to a draw, at home against them. At what point are we going to start beating teams like this exactly? (Again, a reminder that we’re pretty much halfway through the season now) Also, at what point exactly are people going to wake up and realise what it is going on? But yeah, don’t panic everyone because it’s just one game! Let’s all forget things like context etc.
And we've beaten Burnley, Norwich & Sheff United! So what's your point? You win a league by just simply beating every team below you. Anyway, if you want to panic, go for it, why is it an issue if I disagree and think we're doing okay, could be better but also think it's clear why we're not in automatics right now.
I suppose if you are looking for patterns that is 3 out of 4 games we haven’t scored in which is a concern I guess . But then we need our better attacking players to be fit /want to play/in form or playing in their natural positions to look like a real goal threat .
I don’t think we can take a top 6 place for granted. The team we put out last night and the performance were not top 6.
That was about as bad as it has been for the last 3 or 4 years. 3 Shots on target, one that was a deflection. Serious questions need to be asked about our physio and conditioning team. How we are getting so many muscle injuries needs to be looked at. It has to be something to do with how they warm up or how they are being conditioned.
Best part of this game? Shout box. You know it's a yawn fest of game when posters start making up funny names for the players instead of talking about the non-event on the pitch. I actually found the banter the best parts of 15.00-17.00 yesterday.
I was in murky Byfleet playing for our 50s in the national club doubles, hoping to add it to the 40s we won at the NTC last month. It was cold and the indoor courts had such a low roof you were glad Sara Gomer or Jo Durie weren't playing. Dave gave me updates as we crawled along the M25 and it didn't sound good. What reason was given for Freddie's non appearance? Was A Trois 's miss as bad as it sounds? Will Michelle Oldham bother to coach today? Questions, questions, questions. At least we got a point,which is better than our 3-1 defeat! I hate sport sometimes.
