I know we are still royal upset and angry due to yesterday's total no-show of a performance, but as the old saying goes, the "crap show" must go on. New Year's day we welcome Conte's vastly improved Spurs side to the Vic who must be drooling to get the New Year off on a good foot by slicing through our defense like a hot knife through butter. Nothing even remotely suggests to any Watford fan we will get anything out of this game. We are on a run of five consecutive losses, which could well be seven after this game and then getting knocked out of the FA Cup by an inconsistent Leicester. I have nothing but admiration to what Claudio has attempted to achieve with our bunch of spineless cowards who seem happy to play like crap for 90mins then collect their pay each week for a job never well done. Of course, not all of our squad fall into this pit of despair each week, but about 80% of them do. Anyway, enough about moaning about how bad we are, what about the white half of North London? Harry Kane - England Captain, Goal Scorer and serial whinger It's almost impossible to speak about Spurs without spouting the name Kane. Harry has been one of their top players throughout seasons past and continues to impress on the international stage as England captain, playing a role in our World Cup nearly-success last summer. What he is also good at, is whinging and diving. Not on the level of certain Bournemouth players or our egg and chip eating friend Zaha, but still likes to play 'con the ref'. His move to Man City in the Summer never happened. as Pepsi got Grease ball instead. Son Heung Min - Deadly against Watford Son Heung Min, or "Son" as he is widely known in football circles, is the strike partner of the fore mentioned Kane and quite possibly one of the few players outside of "Agueeroooooo!!!" who loves playing Watford. He almost always scores against us, proven as his goal was the difference in the reverse fixture when Bachmann had oily gloves. One to watch for certain and a fan hero among a few of my Spurs supporting friends, he will no doubt be given the freedom of Hertfordshire. There season had been very up and down from the start, picking up the odd win but also losing a few with the odd draw thrown in for good measure. Not what the wily fox Daniel Levi had planned, and dispatched the old manager for the well known serial winner Antonio Conte'. Under his leadership, Spurs have improved in result wise, despite a crushing loss at home to Man Utd, they have climbed the table and look to cement their place in Europe next season. As for how we line up - does it really matter at this point? We could put Dennis and Pedro up top with Sossoko in midfield and have practice cones as the other players who would be just as equally effective. Whenever we seem to take the lead in games, we go into ultra defensive mode and sit back time and time again. Guess what? Time and time again we do that, we lose. Claudio must be wondering what else he can do to prevent players from making such basic mistakes game in, game out. As bad as we have been, the buck stops with him and he will be the one shown the door if we continue to play like lost souls. We will lose this, put your mortgage on it. Just a better performance than West Ham and some pride for the shirt would be nice to see. Watford 1 Tottenham 3
Apparently Son is “off form “ Well he has a chance to redeem that! And Kane has started scoring. Didn’t they beat us on New Year’s Day 4-1 when Walter was here ?
Looking forward to Claudio dropping a number of losers who didn't bother turning up yesterday. Right back could be interesting if Ngakia has covid and Kiko decides he doesn't fancy it. Angelini Kucka Sierralta Cathcart Morris Sissoko Louza Gosling Dennis King JP Bachmann, Agyakwa, Masina, Tufan, Conteh, Pochettino, Sema, Cucho, Fletch. Watford 1 - 5 Spurs 'Orns!
Why not. We're going to get murdered anyway. But I can see a return for Ekong with Cathcart playing right fullback in all seriousness. I would just go 4-5-1 and try and steal a bore draw.
Here's a better formation. 10 - 0 - 0 Still concede though, Troost will do a bicycle kick in defensive mode and Bachmann will be glued to his line.
There is little hope or point in even bothering to turn up for this. Let's all stay at home nursing a hangover.....and I'm talking about the players here......and give Spurs the default 3-0 win. We only lost 1-0 away earlier in the season, but Spurs were also crap at the time. They are far stronger now under Konte and will be far too much for our feeble defenders to handle. Although, having said that, Watford tend to apply themselves more against the bigger sides, so maybe they'll try a bit harder. This is a true, but damning condemnation the attitude of some of our players. They only get up for the bigger sides. There are so many players I want to see the back of in this current squad. Not because they are loathsome individuals, but they are just not good enough or do not have the heart for the fight often enough. I think if we put in another pathetic performance like yesterday, there will be a bit of a backlash from the fans. Back-to-back sh1t shows will not be tolerated, even by our passive bunch of fans. I cannot see them being too supportive if effort is low and mistakes are numerous again. If we lose, but go down fighting, that's a different story and everyone can support that, but the West Ham debacle and the negative emotions still fresh in the mind will easily carry over to Saturday, if the team does not put a shift in.
We will lose this one anyway might as well try to attack them. Bachman(maybe Angelini not sure if he is any good) Kiko(who else? Kucka?) Sierralta Cathcart Morris(can't be worse than Masina) Sissoko Louza Pedro Dennis Cucho King I'd rather play Joao in midfield than Tufan. Kucka could probably play 10-15 minutes a game at an acceptable level but he definitely shouldn't start. Sadly there aren't many options in defence and with Sarr out the attack picks itself. If we attack them there is about 1% chance we can win, if we try to defend we'll probably get massacred as always.
I'm trying to be optimistic, so I've gone for '3 conceded'. As HB1 has said, our players seem to have worked out that they can just flatter to deceive enough to keep a solid proportion of dribblers on side by occasionally putting in a modicum of effort and being valiantly defeated whilst held at arm's length by the bigger sides (when they're not giving up and getting historically humped by them) so three would represent a solid result in that context - especially if Dennis manages to conjure his customary solo goal out of nowhere.
We need to score at least 3 to get anything out of this. Do the attackers have the fitness and desire? Maybe. I agree with others about using 2 holding midfielders. Do we have the players available to make this happen? Maybe use Kucka in this role and do not let him Cross the halfway line? Stick Louza as a deep playmaker and use Sissoko as a box-to-box? Can't see any alternatives, myself.
I think I'll stay in and watch a war film. The appointment of a stadium announcer with a voice like a market stall greengrocer ( "Here's today's teams... Squeeze my lovely plums, Mrs") has made visiting Vicarage Road even more miserable
Not a winnable game, not a chance. It’s not even worth worrying about goal difference anymore, at best that’s worth a point, just not shitting the bed against Brentford would’ve been worth 3 times the amount of points, even if we then let in 50 goals against spurs. Claudio is better off looking ahead to the Norwich and Newcastle games, thinking about the sort of formation and personnel he wants to deploy for them and then treating it like a training session to practice for those games. Just tell them the result is irrelevant and try and get some sort of coherent playing style drilled into them.
I'm not sure I can get hungover enough to mask out the pain of the inevitable result, but I'm going to have a damn good try at it.
3-1 loss Dennis will score in minute 6 and then we will fall back and defend (if what we do can be called defending)
Not going. Yesterday was so depressingly bad even booze didn't help much. We left as soon as they scored the disallowed goal. Realised it was struck off but left anyway. Shyte.
Looks like I'm the only one going to be positive here, I think we'll get something out this game. I know Claudio reads the forums so my advice: Find a goalkeeper named Van Helsing and sign him on emergency loan. Play Kabasele, he always has Kane in his pocket. Play a brick at left back, it'll be more mobile and make fewer mistakes than Rose and Masina combined. Provide fake postive Covid tests for Tufan and Sema with the new variant 'Omytheyrecrap' so they have to self-isolate for 5 months. If you're going to play Kucka which seems a given...play him in front of the defence and protect them, he goes no further than the half way line. He hasn't got the legs to go box-to-box for 90 minutes. Apologise profusely to Sissoko for having a crap defence behind him. Work on the tactic of not conceding any goals in training. Play Louza. Support the front three. Score more goals than them. Watford 2-0 Spuds
It's on the season ticket, but even then I would probably swerve it except I bought the wife a ticket for Christmas. I don't know if the club can / want to do anything in the transfer window to change things, but the swathes of empty seats and zero atmosphere must be sending a message, obviously that's not including the terrible performances and defeat after defeat.
One training session in 3 weeks is a massive part of what we saw yesterday. Not physically or mentally prepared gives that performance. I expect a huge improvement against Tottenham. A West Ham supporting friend was worried about yesterday pre game and I said the same thing to him. One match fit team against another without a game or proper preparation is only going one way. We won't beat Spurs but it will be more of a match.
