Played right into their hands. Embarrassing result. No offense to Coventry, but we should be beating them easily. Yet again though, we lose to poor teams. Just like the Prem, our boys only turn up when they want to. Massive fitness issues as well. The World Cup break can’t come quick enough for our lot. They need to be running laps non stop for a week for 10 hours a day. Their fitness levels are like that of an overweight 40 year old. Bayo offers nothing. Ekong is still his usual crap self. I seriously hope Gino has a proper back up ST, CM, and CB lined up in January. If not, we will only make the playoffs at best.
We haven’t grafted for many of the points we have so far - the vast majority of them have come when the opposition have played into what we are good at and have been poor. But every time a team has turned up and looked to make a game tough, we have folded. It’s a huge, huge problem. Mentality issues all over the pitch. Kamara was a bloody disgrace today with his efforts and he wasn’t alone. Bilic is a good coach but given the choice, I bet he wouldn’t take many of our players into battle with him. That was such an arrogant performance at this level.
Actually quite impressive how poor certain players were today, and the worst of the Watford Way ethos really came back to bite with the Kamara yellow in particular. Serve up a dogshyt performance and guarantee it will be that much harder to make it up next game because you've earned a yellow card ban 20 minutes before the deadline of them being expunged. Genuinely impressively poor all round, tbf, except for Gosling, and perhaps Sierralta and Davis in the first half. Level on points and goal difference with the scummers. Huzzah!
We just can't break down these tight defences, especially when so many of our players were off their game. Hopefully they can turn it around against Reading.
Frustrating but I cant fault the players workrate at all, just lacked that bit of finesse in the final third. Coventry came with a gameplan and executed it to perfection, fair play.
A game of fine margins, Coventry played well as their form would suggest. Gyokeres who I'm notably a fan of was impressive, pretty much a one man attack at times. Was it actually a foul by Davis for the goal we had disallowed though?! Hive Live didn't show any replays of it. Typically we score the chance that was disallowed, and fluff the chances which were allowed to play on. Obviously had the Davis goal stood that would have been a very different result. Sarr played as if his head was already in Qatar. Joao Pedro also had another disappointing game - he was so sloppy in possession and lacked any real threat. He was rightfully subbed and Asprilla looked more lively and dangerous when he came on. To top a disappointing game off, Kamara and Sierralta both getting stupid bookings right at the end (and just before the booking amnesty ended today), leaving us without a back 4 for the game vs Reading.
Just a completely ill-disciplined, arrogant and sloppy display by us today. Too many players off their game. Bilic should be furious and absolutely tearing a strip off them in the dressing room.
Why would you say that us losing is supposedly the "normal service" and not any of the games we'd won previously (besides you simply being Nath)?!
They're on a good run of form, so I never expected us to hammer them today, but with the chances we created we should've at least taken point even though we were sh1te. Too many players with off days. Sarr, Davis, JP very poor. Need more depth in the squad, bringing on Bayo and Hungbo when needing to change the game is not good enough.
We also desperately need more firepower in the squad. When things are going wrong or not coming off, you turn to your bench - and we have Hungbo, Bayo, Asprilla and Manaj (when he returns). That simply isn’t good enough and we need 4-6 players in January.
Because prior to the three good wins we've been extremely inconsistent all season, often folding when teams rough house us and when the weather is a bit nasty. A toothless and dumb performance, as have a lot of our performances been this season. Even a lot of our wins haven't come from particularly good performances.
Yup and we’ve zero chance of competing for auto promotion - which is still a legitimate target despite our pretty indifferent league form to date - if we stick with Choudhury and Kayembe as our midfield pair. Both far too one-dimensional and nearly everything moving through them slows right down to walking pace. Awful.
Yep, the options on the bench are extremely poor. Bayo may have a couple of tap ins but he looks every bit the woeful, ineffective footballer at this level that I expected he would be.
9 points off top and 9 points off relegation. The Championship is really **** quality but nobody can say it's not competitive!
The last three wins have papered over a few cracks, not just at set-pieces, but also I think this was the first time since Millwall where we really missed Louza, the midfield was just not passing the ball quick enough. We really should have nicked an equaliser in the second half, but then again, I'd hardly say we were hanging on the door, and we could easily have gone into half-time one down
Even with Davis back we looked toothless up front. Sarr did mess up a brilliant chance early on mind when Davis had more or less put the goal on a silver platter. WTE was, well, WTE. Coventry played well as I thought they would - they stifled us for a lot of the game and we just could not find a way through, and when we did that extra peice of quality eluded us today. We were not terrible by any margins and on another day could of got a draw possibly, but take nothing away from Cov, they obviously did their homework on us and it worked. It's a shame our winning run had to end at only three, but we also got some not-so-favorable results from other sides. Defo one that will not linger in the memory and we need to forget about this and move on to Reading where three points is vital, however they are a good side this season so it's up for grabs. Bilic needs to get the players shooting in training on Monday. Not really much else to say, bit of a meh performance from us as we looked a shadow of the side we have in previous games. Two games left before the WC break now. Need at least 4 points to still be in the playoff mix. I really thought we would play better than we did today, but again part of that is due to Coventry's closing down and pressing. They are a decent unit.
Sarr had one of those games again, had plenty of the ball, but did almost nothing with it even when he did try to take on his man. Davis was OK, but outside of a few decent dribbles, JP was as quiet as I've seen him for a long time
They weren't the biggest issues today - far from it; we generally controlled the midfield and often worked the ball in to good areas. The issue was Sarr, JP, and then to a lesser extent Davis and Sema fluffing the opportunities we created. We made an open goal for Sarr to score and he missed. Sema had a good chance which he dragged wide. We actually did score with Davis but it was disallowed (not sure whether it was valid or not). Sierralta also didn't cover himself in glory vs Gyokeres. But on another day we could have nicked that ourselves and they're a strange place to point the finger as to why we didn't.
As has been said on social media in the last few moments, we aren't good enough in midfield to NOT play Asprilla. It's not ideal given his age to rely on him in such a way - but as @UEA_Hornet has said above, Choudhury and Kayembe together doesn't work more often than not. If we don't have Louza, Asprilla must start.
Coventry were s*** and we contrived to lose. WTE looked petrified whenever Gyokeres got the ball. Gosling proved today he’s not a solution at RB. Joao Pedro had a stinker. Sarr was roasting their full back for fun but couldn’t pick out a cross to save his life. Just not our day, and that Coventry fan running round the pitch with a whistle in his hand didn’t help.
I have to say I was impressed by Cov when we played them in the Championship, they did really well again last season and after all their off-pitch problems, they do seem to be turning their season around now. Fair play to them, can't really say they didn't deserve that
They still gave us two decent enough wins on the spin. Who do you bench? Because Asprilla does not offer enough defensively to play in a midfield two. Heck, we've been overrun in midfield in tough games this season with Asprilla starting with both of Choudhury and Louza. He's often been bullied out of games so far even while starting in a relatively undemanding attacking midfield role; coming off the bench is generally fine for him for now and should have paid dividends had Sarr not screwed up his chance. Heck, on today's showing I'd more readily bench JP than Choudhury or Kayembe.
Choudhury I thought was OK, even picked out a few really nice Capoue-esque long passes, but Kayembe was back to being pretty mediocre, I thought (from the other end of the pitch!) that he was lucky to stay on the pitch at the end
I promised my son that we go over and watch Watford before the WC and Ski season begins. I bought the Airlines tickets at 12.30 today. They were £92 × 2, so not too bad. No refund possible. Watford ticket office are very good at giving refunds. I haven't told him yet, l will decide over the next couple of days to see if it is worth going. I should have waited until the result today. Yet another insipid display. Live and learn
Only fair to criticise Bilic too today. As I said about Millwall game, today worryingly looked like he hadn’t done his homework on Coventry and allowed them to play the style that’s made them successful in recent times. Also should have had 1-2 of our players snuffing out Gyokeres but for some reason we allowed their best player free rein to do what he’s good at. Not good enough at all. Nowhere near it. Clearly didn’t learn a thing from the Millwall and Blackpool defeats.
Still, if our "normal service" is being inconsistent then you should also be saying the same thing whenever we win a game after having previously lost one. Also, today was not today with us "folding when teams rough house us" - we generally dominated the game and it came down to composure in the final third.
Just one of those days. Horrible weather. Horrible day. Horrible result. Pedro extremely poor today, pass completion rate must make awful reading. Didn’t agree with the Davis sub, should’ve left him and Bayo up to be nuisances. If Sarr scores that open goal we actually go on to win the game, that deflated the team I feel. The Asprilla ball for that move was simply gorgeous though. Ridiculous reaction save from the keeper from Hungbo’s effort. Not an awful performance, we still put pressure on and created, was just one of those days. We need to get some depth in in January though, Hungbo, Bayo aren’t the level of subs that change a game enough. Beat Reading it’s 4 wins from 5, I’ll be happy with that.
Their number 17 was fantastic as a lone striker by the way, how much would he cost? They must need to sell soon with their stadium situation.
Except it was pretty much always both WTE and Sierralta (which is 2 players) versus Gyokeres on his own, but Gyokeres was mostly too good for them.
