Watford Fc 1-0 Millwall - 24/04/2021 - Promoted To The Pl

This the the one photo that makes me chuckle however many times I see it

 

Hardly. When they finally publish this set of accounts and the ones after we will realise how close we were to the edge. I’m just glad we have a lifeline so they can hopefully operate without mortgaging everything in sight.

 

To be fair it's not been a merry go round for us for a change. Merely tagging in in a wrestling tag team event

 

The most utterly vile fanbase.

Who else remembers when they got to the FA Cup Semi Final against Wigan in 2013? What should have been a massive and exciting day for such a small club descended into vast rabbles of them fighting THEMSELVES. I still remember the images on TV of an abandoned child crying while punches fly all around them.

English football would be better if they just didn't exist, no one would miss them.

What both bothers and amuses is me is how their fans wear others disdain for them as a badge of pride, it makes them feel important. It's like the man who killed John Lennon who just wanted to be famous even if it was for being hated. Scummy morons.

Ironically the only Millwall fan I know in real life is a friendly, laid back hippy, so you can't tar all with the same brush.

 

How do you know he was good in training? How can a defender prove anything in training? It’s not like he’s an attacker, and he can stand out by dribbling round his teammates constantly putting the ball in the top corner in drills. I’m pretty sure they don’t play 90 minute games in training due to the gruelling schedule (and if they did how would that replicate the pressure of a real game as far as a CB is concerned) so it would pretty much be drills and practicing how to line up formations etc.

 

Its my absolute favourite away day. Achieving safety there after being 1 0 down at half time in early noughties only to win 2 1 and taking the micky out of pink shirt on the left was brilliant Then I was going through a rut and had been made redundant and a friend paid for me to go to Millwall away, we won 6 1. 2 0 win in our promotion season to send them down was class as well. Love it there.

 

Personally if I were to attempt to tar a group of Millwall fans I'd want a VERY long-handled brush.

And some good running shoes.

 

This was well before I became a fan but I found out about it around the time we got promoted to/played in the Premiership under Boothroyd. The game stuck in my head because we lost 3-0 and it was a shockingly low attendance (our lowest during that era?). Interesting how many times I’ve seen that game mentioned since, I guess it was iconic of that period for all the wrong reasons.

 

Ha ha . It was that Portuguese bar on the corner . There wasn’t much social distancing going on so our fault really.

 

To have a brain fart, you’d first have to have a brain.

Sorry. I apologise.

Dunno why our wiki page for the season says attendance 0.

 

How do you think he would have approached it with no Masina or Hughes? Or if Deeney hadn't got injured? We didn't look like we were trying to win the game against Coventry, Millwall, Boro, Luton, Bournemouth or QPR under Munoz.

It's comparing apples and oranges. Ivic had a deficient squad and did well to keep us in contention and provide us with a firm defensive base.

The biggest criticism of him that I feel justified is that he could've played Kiko at left back and Ngakia on the right to move to a 4-3-3 but the Kiko-Sarr partnership is a major reason we are where we are. And even then, we still would've had no Hughes playing to allow us to get the ball from the centre backs and pass it through midfield. Chalobah, Cleverley and Garner all tried that in the first half of the season and none of them could do what Hughes does.

 

If somebody had told us after the 0-0 horror show at Coventry (and just 2 points out of 9 in that little sequence) that we would start game 44 knowing that a win would confirm promotion with two matches still to play AND equal our number of home wins in a season too...

I’d have taken it, wouldn’t you!

What a great position we are in. It’s so exciting.

Ivic did my head in, as you might have noticed at the time lol. but he did make us tougher to beat and also it could be argued that his caution and rotation meant we still had a lot left in the tank when we came to the all important last 10-15 matches of the season.

Yes we could have done better under him for sure, but equally we could have appointed somebody who did worse than him and left ourselves too big a gap to make up.

He’s played his part in our almost confirmed promotion too.

 

There won’t be too many clubs that are not struggling at the moment, even the big boys and relegation and Covid were always going to impact. But I am not aware that we are even close to financial trouble, but no doubt we will be constrained in what we can spend if we go up.

 

I just don't get this weird outlook which appears to be that Ivic did a great job, we owe our success to him, and that Munoz just had a far superior set of circumstances to him.

Yes Ivic was without Hughes, Masina and Deeney but Munoz has been without Capoue (who on his game is at least as good as Hughes in that DM role) and Deeney for almost the entirety of his tenure. Ivic had a tough start with all the upheaval in August and September, but his record from mid-October after our win over Blackburn several days after the transfer window closed and that sense of upheaval and disruption dissipated to his final game at Huddersfield was 21 points from 14 games, which simply wasn't good enough. We were awful away from home; I can't remember the stat but how many goals did we score away from home under Ivic? For some reason the fact that Deeney was injured is deemed fortunate and advantageous to Munoz but a tricky circumstance that Ivic had to navigate; managers make their own luck. While the arrivals of Gosling, Sanchez and Zinckernagel and return of Masina and Hughes did mean that we were stronger after January than before, nothing from Ivic's tenure suggests that we would have enjoyed title winning form under Ivic as we have under Munoz.

I think you're right that the biggest criticism was his unwillingness to shift Femenia to LB in a back four. You say he didn't do this out of concern for the Kiko-Sarr partnership but a) that partnership was not one that flourished at all under Ivic and b) Ivic regularly played Femenia on the left in a back five. I'm not really sure why he thought that Kiko was a viable option at LWB but not at LB.

Ivic did ok and certainly had he done poorly we would not have been in with a sniff. But we owe our (likely) promotion to the title-winning form of Munoz.

 

I think he'd have set up to play less conservatively than Ivic, especially away at e.g. Bristol City or Forest.

It's the away draws that mean we're not top and already up.

Absolutely agree no Hughes is a gap we can't fill. Maybe Munoz would have motivated Caps to stay and play.

 

I didn't say Ivic did a great job and we owe our success to him. I think he did well given the circumstances and laid the foundations for our good defence.

The Deeney issue is interesting. He was unavailable for the first few months of the season, as were Gray and Success. Perica was suspended then injured. Ivic had to play Pedro pretty much every game for the first three months as we literally had no other options. You say Ivic had Capoue but he only started seven games of Ivic's 20 in the league.

I didn't say Ivic didn't play Femenia on the left out of concern for the partnership with Sarr, was just pointing out that had he done that our most potent attacking combination wouldn't have been available to him.

We clearly wouldn't have gone up under Ivic as Deeney hated him and he had lost the dressing room. But he still did a good job given the circumstances and wasn't a bad manager for us, that's my point.

 

I genuinely don't think he set us up not to attack, more that the system he chose with the players available meant we weren't very good at attacking. All of his post match interviews expressed frustration with our attacking woes.

In much the same way that we drew 0-0 at Millwall and Coventry under Muñoz (wrong system, wrong players) and lost 1-0 at Luton (midfielders and left back unavailable) and Bournemouth (lost our heads). Muñoz didn't set us up conservatively in those games but we didn't look like scoring in any of them. It was the same with Ivic but he had a worse squad to contend with and fewer options.

 

I think having Capoue was more of a hinderance than a help really. He didn’t want to be here and was obviously trying his absolute best to arrange a move away. His talent was more of a draw back, because he thought he didn’t have to do much to be better than the Championship cloggers.

Ivic just massively over complicated things, we didn’t need to play 5 at the back in the championship. Ironically I think he would’ve been better for us as a premier league manager.

The one thing we’ll know about this season is what would’ve happened if Deeney didn't get injured.

 

Ivic kept on about controlling the game.

We didn't have the players to do so.

He failed to use the most talented attackers we have.

He tried to win 1-0 in a division where we can afford to take more risks and go for it, because the finishing on show is generally poor, even from the better teams.

I'm not sure that the squad was much worse tbh.

 

No one seemed to want to play under Ivic.

I quite liked him, but the players clearly didn't.

 

Is Jack Bonham back for this one?

 

I was responding partly directly to some of your comments and partly to a sentiment that I've seen expressed here on a few occasions. Ivic did do a not bad job for us, particularly improving the defence and I hope he has an opportunity at a different championship side to show what he is made of.

Capoue only started seven (in fact I think only 6 under Ivic as his seventh was in our win over Norwich), but he was in the squad for 11 of Ivic's games and may have been available for more. We didn't even fare particularly well in the games in which Capoue started under Ivic (2W-2D-2L). I think @Supertommymooney is right to suggest that Munoz could have motivated Capoue to play more regularly and the culture he created may have even convinced him to stay. Who knows?

I am not sure I get your point re Kiko-Sarr. Ivic did little to foster that connection so of course that relationship wasn't available to him; that's not an unfortunate circumstance that is him failing to get the most out of our players. He repeatedly played Kiko on the left but not in a back four; so not playing a back four was a choice he made, and was not forced to make, and it was a bad one. Look at our win over Norwich this week: our two best RBs were injured but Munoz stuck with a back four even though it involved playing Cathcart there. Management is often about choosing between sub-optimal choices, and while Ivic faced sub-optimal choices more often than Munoz he rarely made the right choice.

If your point is just that Ivic is an ok manager who didn't do a disatrous job for us, that is hard to disagree with. But I think he gets a lot of credit on here - too much in my view - and Munoz does not get enough, and I think much of that is because of the managers' respective records and fans' expectations around their appointment. Ivic, as a previously successful manager, would have had any success ascribed to his quality as a coach but Munoz, with a lesser track record, is deemed a fortunate beneficary of success that has little to do with him. I don't think that's right.

 

The last accounts were after a strong league finish and a cup final. We had borrowed against many assets and most future cashflows. Goodness knows what it is like 2 years down the line after Covid and relegation. Thankfully we are back up and a chance to reset if they are sensible. I think we'd have been in huge trouble if not for Xisco.

 

I did exactly the same! And I was about 15 and a half. Kept the turf in a shoe box for years.

 

To this day, I've been going over 40 years, I've never seen our supporters actually do something to try and change what was going. There are many other owners who have been shocking but I don't think we've ever even come close to the actions of quite a lot that night. Score was correct and the attendance was low but not the lowest. I think we had just over 4000 for a game against Oxford in the nineties. There were a few that night that very nearly got in to the directors box. Incredible stuff. Has anybody got footage of this or is it lost forever.

 

Ivic deserves credit for sorting the defence out but when players don't like the manager or his training regimes you are doomed to fail. I think it's worth noting that we were in a huge mess at the start of the season. Was it 15 players unavailable for the Boro game? He was left with no left back, players not wanting to be here, no Hughes and various other issues. I credit him with keeping us in the hunt but when things settled down a bit he couldn't seem to change what was happening. Whatever people think of Munoz, I haven't seen a squad so together for many years and this is something he has instilled. Is Deeney getting injured a help, probably yes as it allowed him to set the team up to the strengths of our best players. I think both managers should get credit but more to Munoz as the transformation has just been incredible.
Please win Saturday, I just want to relax

 

Where they both made sub optimal choices was succumbing to the pressure to play Deeney. Ivic clearly didn't want to but found himself eventually going there in desperation as we couldn't get the attack going and Muñoz looked in awe of him (unsurprisingly given he'd basically been publicly told to play him by Duxbury). They both shoe horned the squad into a formation with two upfront as Deeney can't play on his own and that compromised where they could play one of the league's best players in Sarr.

I do find the notion that Xisco's cheery demeanour could've convinced Capoue to stay rather than go and play in Europe for Villarreal somewhat fanciful but then perhaps he really loves Sweet Caroline...

As I said, my point is that Ivic did a good job for us in very difficult circumstances but we wouldn't have gone up with him at the helm. Xisco has had a better squad and took advantage of Deeney's injury to find the correct formula. Both deserve credit but it's mainly thanks to Xisco that we're on the cusp of going up.

 

Bournemouth would get over 100 points under Woodgate too if you extrapolate it out over the season. But Xisco's extrapolated record would beat them by 1 point.

 

We should all watch the below clip to jinx it from happening again.

 

I found a few seconds of highlights here, no protests though (must've happened later):



Poor quality, but a couple of interesting things to note from it:

- Craig Shakespeare scored their third goal. Well, you learn something new (nearly) every day!
- According to Wikipedia the Rookery was built during the 1994-95 season. I see the terrace it was opposite the then recently built Vicarage Road Stand. What was it called back then?

 

The Rookery!

that night was firstly hopeless, my word digweed was something... and then i did find it unpleasant at the end, wondering how far it would go.

 

Great Watford kit that one.

 

I can't remember much other than it was a warm night,Jenkins scored and I lost a flip flop in the celebrations.
I know,I know,oh I know! Who on earth wears flip flops to a football match?!

 

I think the Vicarage Road Wikipedia article needs editing, as the section on the Rookery is misleading for us supporters not in the know - it implies that a new stand with a new name was built at the Rookery end, when it's always been called the Rookery. It should start off with a history of the Rookery before saying that a new stand was constructed in the mid '90s - a side of a stadium is always a stand whether it's all-seater or terraced. But I'd rather leave that to someone far more knowledgeable...