Probably not. Suspect we missed someone like King as a more natural centre forward or maybe could have played Pedro? I presume Masina played as extra defensive cover but that didn't work. We let them dominate the ball and they moved around us like we were status.
Salah abused Rose like he was a 10 year old. Rose's positioning contributed to his troubles, he kept getting outside Salah (who is quicker and faster) and was left chasing the play after Salah beat him to the ball. It got a little better when Ranieri slid Rose inside and put Masina at WB, but Masina gave up on plays several times, leaving the back exposed. This is basic youth team stuff. Get inside and goal side of your mark and when you get beaten (which everyone does), run you legs off to get back in the play. Our CB's can't complete a pass and the marking was often poor, but to be fair to them, communication is a huge part of what lets them survive and we had a new formation with people in new positions, so expectations should have been low. That still doesn't mean any of them can get the ball out where it needs to go to get us out of our half. Our best passers at CB are all on a sick note. Somehow we need someone in the side who can connect the back line with the forwards. I don't know if that's Tufan, Louza, Cleverley or Kucka (with someone else as a 6) but we need it. I am optimistic Ranieri will sort that bit out. Bottom line for me is that we need some players back and we need to get back to a back 4. We don't have great FB's but we've consistently been a disaster with a back 3 for years. I don't care what formation is in front of the back 4, but ideally it has only 1 predominantly defensive midfielder. Sarr needs to be out wide, but having the forwards interchange to create differing angles and runs for the defenders to track is a good thing. Having someone in midfield with the ball to pick out those runs would be even better. Having the "front 6" playing facing our own net has to stop - but thankfully we won't be playing the likes of the scousers every week.
It’s funny you see Rose as CB and Masina as LB. I saw: Rose Cath WTE Femenia Masina Sissoko Clevs Cucho Dennis Sarr It was 4-4-2 with Masina LM, I’m assuming maybe to double up on Salah? Because God help us if Ranieri thinks he’s an actual left midfielder.
The good, the bad and the ugly. The good: it was pretty clear that this was going to be a training session for Liverpool within 5 mins of kick off so I spent the 90 minutes having a good catch up with my sister, while taking a vague note of the carnage going on below me. It was so bad that I was able to become emotionally detached from it pretty quickly. And we decided to leave 5 minutes before the end, which I’ve only done once before in all the years I’ve followed Watford (the other time being when we lost 0-4 to Bournemouth), so we missed their fifth goal The bad and the ugly: yup, pretty much everything about today’s performance Spent a bit of the second half looking at the upcoming fixtures and wondering which are worth turning up to. Definitely going to swerve Manchester City so there will be at least 1 ticket in the Rookery up for grabs for any masochists among you.
Yes but Masina played at WB and Rose at LCB rather than the other way round . Id love to hear what the thinking behind that is .
From where I sat in Rookery it seemed pretty clear that Rose was LCB and Masina and Kiko were WBs . When they kick off, which we did 6 times in that game , you can usually see the formation
If you are going to play with wing backs then I would actually play Sema. Don't rate him at all but it's probably the role that best fits his attributes. Masina is crap wherever he plays.
Well I watched the game on TV, but despite replays, analysis, team sheet graphics and my own eyes watching play I genuinely still don’t know who was playing where. maybe it was a modern day approach with fluidity throughout. Whatever it was it was crap. I’m annoyed barely any of the players put a proper challenge in.
My thoughts exactly about the third goal. Shouldnt have stood and maybe I'm being cynical but I bet it wouldnt have if it had been down the other end
Has Rose ever played CB before? Masina has at least (albeit badly), and I'd have thought Rose would have been a far far better option at wingback than Masina!
Wait till we play Man Utd. It will feel like a home game for them. 100's of 'Watford fans' pass their tickets on to United fans.
Myopic Klipp Klopp and the idiots from Merseyside. Salah the best player in the world at the moment....... Best fans too. Best kit. Best everything...... Yawn. They don't half get up themselves. Nauseating group of supporters. As with the other super six fans.
I can't wait to see the GOAT Ronarod taking us to the cleaners. We'll be talking about Salad vs Ronarod: who is the best, on our WFC fan pod this week.
Going forward, I'd go for a sort of diamond 4-4-2/4-5-1 (Joao/King as the lone striker, dropping deep when necessary and Sarr/Dennis out wide, forming a front 2 when the striker drops deep). Think Sissoko and Tufan have to start whenever available, as for the other midfielder, that's a bit of a headache as now that Etebo is injured, the only one who's vaguely a defensive midfielder is Kucka, and we've seen that we can't rely on him. Louza might be a fantastic midfielder (I'm sure he'll be given chances in various roles under the Tinkerman), but I worry he'll be a bit too lightweight to be in the holding role, if anything he seems like an alternative to Tufan
Local glory hunters no doubt. Probably never been to Anfield, have no connection to Merseyside but content to sit on the coat tails to make themselves feel good. Not forgetting the thirty odd years where they crawled into the woodwork and only recently have come out of hibernation. Haven't got the guts or decency to actually support their local team. Winkers the lot of them. Most think Roger Hunt is cockney rhyming slang.
It's a real shame because WTE has the right attitude on and off the pitch and comes across as a genuine person. However, he makes too many unforced errors for top flight football and is probably the reason why Spurs released him when it came to that decision about whether he was first team material for them.
From where I was in the Rookery it looked like some kind of bizarre 5-2-3 formation Masina wing back, Rose LCB, Dennis right, Cucho left and Sarr through the middle
This is clever. The fan who put this up has a good sense of humour. The bonus from the game today was that it wasn't 10 -0. We can look forward to next season in the Championship with a smile. He couldn't get a taxi out at half time due to the hundreds of Watford fans in front of him at the taxi rank...
IMO our formation saw us overrun in the 1st half particularly the midfield however I thought Sissoko was magnificent trying to put out fires here there and everywhere . Errors led to at least 2 of our goals but Liverpool never really got out of 2cnd gear . As we all know our CBs are not good enough and the debate last season regarding Trondre seems to me that our owners thought that we only had one problem team wise. My view is that we have never replaced Prodl-Britos-Holebas. As for Cucho he only seems to have a right foot which is not anywhere near good enough for a Premier division forward and he is very much a very poor man's Delefeou
Same happened in the France Spain game last week - Mbappe offside but it was allowed as Garcia had touched the ball. I have no doubt there will be Man U/City/Chelsea fans in the home end - even more so as part time Watford fans won't want to go to those games if we perform as we did today.
We only gave away 4 fouls!! Not sure if that stat is correct, but certainly no yellows cards is correct. This tells me we had no commitment, no anger and no pride. Ranieri may not be the answer but players have to be committed to the cause. I think we’ve got far too many players who are not bothered as they know they won’t be around for long. Watching Brentford right now, and they are giving Chelsea a real game. So that is what a “team” looks like. We are nowhere near this level. For me, the buck stops with Gino. There is something rancid running through the club these days.
He's not good enough to be 3rd choice at a bottom 2 side. He must have been miles away from a Spurs career.
What if we did lose the next few games which even with performances much better than today could happen? Will he go or maybe even quit. I sensed Ranieri was very frustrated with today.
He is neither use nor ornament. He is not a footballing CH or is he a bruising enforcer I don't want a nice guy at the heart of our defence....
