Watford Fc 1-0 Nottingham Forest - 06/03/2021

Ok, l have been saying this since he given the No1 shirt.
I was lambasted on here for calling him Dracula.

On Another note, what a miss by Gray. Sunday morning football.

 

I almost entirely agree.
My only thought is regarding Bachman. I do agree he is not as commanding as he should be but with,to use your very cute acronym,TBFC in the defence we do have a great asset in dealing with this,especially Cardiff. ( As the BHA keeper makes a complete hash of a corner!)
Don't misunderstand,I'm still concerned but less so than I would be without TBFC.

 

What's TBFC

 

It depends where we end up. If Premier League football is the ambition, there is no way I would trust him.

 

Oh no! Not Quest. Now they’re against us I suppose next up is QVC and Dave +1.

 

My match report: we got one over on Forest without pulling up any trees, and despite Pedro branching out into a midfield role.

I'll leaf it at that.

 

Pedro is terrific, but “absolute baller”? Good grief.

 

Lad's got serious tekkerz.

 

Yep

 

There was a bit of play yesterday where he controlled the ball with his head, did a few keepy upys with his head, then got it on the deck and turned his man. Absolute balling.

 

Hungho was on the bench m8, did alright when he came on though.

 

I’ve just twigged what you were up to there

 

Fir play to you.

 

C'mon we're better thean this. Tree jokes about Forest are so old they have roots in the the dark ages.

 

Leaf it out will you , you're barking mad and the root of all........blah blah etc etc
I'll get me coat
Lol !

 

"Not noises One Round,music".
The Bloke From Chile as KGT named him.

 

El Gaucho?

 

"Who is the gaucho amigo?
Why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes?
Bodacious cowboys
Such as your friend will never be welcome here
High in the Custerdome".

Yes.

 

I was too concerned that I would spell his name wrong

 

TBFC is excellent,goes well with WTE.
TTFN!

 

For me yesterday was one of the more satisfying results of the season. With only one natural midfielder, supported by a striker and a winger, it really shouldn't have worked out for us.

Big credit also to the linesman raising his flag when Taylor scored. It was a clear offside when the ball was played, but in a blink of an eye, when Taylor receives the ball he looks onside as he moves up and the defense drops back. Had the lino been asleep or just had been looking at the ball instead of the line, it's 1-1 and we drop two precious points.

We can see how important officials are, and this season, we've benefited from a lot of favourable calls. Swansea are having the same, in dramatic style, almost match-fixing proportions, in their last two games.

There is no let up though. Swansea do have to waste their games in hand, then it's a flat foot race to the top two. If Brentford win their game in hand they are level with us. If Swansea pick up just 1 point from their games in hand, the same applies. All on 66 points with 11 to play.

Then it becomes a mini league of 11 games, where the trio of clubs play each other over the final two games. Incredible scripting of fixtures there.

For me, we've got the far harder run. I can only see 4 games where I would say we should win. Those being Rotherham (a ), Birmingham (h ), Sheff Wed (h ) & Millwall (h ). Then we have the games where we could win. These are Luton (a ), Reading (h ), Middlesbrough (a ). Finally we have games which I consider extremely difficult. Cardiff (a ), Norwich (a ), Brentford (a ), Swansea (h ).

We need to win at least 8 of our last 11 games. This will give us 90 points. That means Swansea can only win 8 of their 13 games, and Brentford 8 plus two draws from their 12 remaining games.

Clearly those final two games are going to be highly significant. 6 pointers if ever there was one.

Swansea fixtures
Blackburn (a ), Luton (h ), Bournemouth (a ), Cardiff (h ), Birmingham (a ), Preston (h ), Millwall (a ), Wycombe (h ), QPR (h ), Reading (a ), Derby (h ), Watford (a ). Sheff Wed (a )TBA

Brentford fixtures
Blackburn (a ), Derby (a ), Forest (h ), Huddersfield (a ), Birmingham (h ), Preston (a ), Millwall (h ), Cardiff (h ), Bournemouth (a ), Rotherham (h ), Watford (h ), Bristol City (a )

Watford fixtures
Cardiff (a ), Rotherham (a ), Birmingham (h ), Sheff Wed (h ), Middlesbrough (a ), Reading (h ), Luton (a ), Norwich (a ), Millwall (h ), Brentford (a ), Swansea (h )

To be fair, looking at the remaining fixtures I cannot see us doing it. We've got far too many difficult fixtures, whereas the other two have bulk standard Championship sides right the way through, until they play us of course. Both have Bournemouth away and Cardiff at home which could be considered difficult games, but I cannot see too many matches where they will probably drop points from here on in.

 

How did Swansea get away with all the decisions going their way?
Are they the new Bournemouth?

 

A sound summation and regrettably I agree with your conclusion.
However what it does give me,with the way the team is playing,is much more hope for the play offs.
Assuming we have an actual referee and not a teaspoon like Gavin Ward or the one who gave the penalty at Stoke.

 

I feel a clip from 'Good Morning, Vietnam' coming on.

 

A fine film.

 

A reasonable assessment but as shown recently Swansea have relied on a fortunate amount of luck recently, and like 2015 we were one of 4 teams going into the final few weeks vying for promotion and a lot on here were saying we wouldn't do it. With the other teams around us it simply means the players' heads have to be screwed on and focus on the job at hand. Although theoretically it's out of our hands as if Swansea win all of their matches up until the final week, we wouldn't catch them, but that's not going to happen, like we won't win all of our games. However, I am confident that as long as Sierralta starts every game we will be very hard to beat.

Having a week off will do some of our players, like Sarr, the world of good.

 

We might do it, we might not, nobody knows. I don’t believe we will due to our fixtures, if we had either of the other teams fixtures I’d rate our chances higher, that’s all it comes down to.

Brentford and Swansea have just had mini wobbles, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, it could continue, they might have got over them and go on wining runs. We might be due one ourselves and then it’s game over, we might not and we might continue our great run, again who knows.

Are Swansea lucky? They’ve certainly been fortunate in their last couple of games, but if they’ve been lucky for the rest of the season as well and/or their Xg doesn’t support their league position, who is to say when that luck will run out? If it’s sustained them for 35 games, why not 46? or 50, or 100? It hasn’t run out yet so there is no rule to say it will before the end of a 46 game season.

Will Brentford choke again? Maybe, but equally choking last season might just mean they are less likely to repeat that again this season. Again, we don’t know.

Putting luck, sorcery, magic crystals and mental strength aside, we are all more or less on the same points after 35 games, the only thing you can logically do is look at the remain fixtures and draw the conclusion that we have the hardest by far. That doesn’t mean we won’t go up, it will just be harder for us from here than it will be for the other two teams.

As mentioned above though, one thing I’m more confident about now is the playoffs if we do end up in them.

 

If we win every game between now and the end of the season we get promoted, even if 3 of them are play off games.

Simples.

 

Got to be Blackburn fans this week with their two games. But hoping that win at Millwall has given them some confidence. They will play the same way as always and go for the win. Will be very interesting.
Cardiff away is going to be one hell of a battle. Our defence will have to really man up against them. Just hope they dont target Kiko for long diagonals into the box because it's going to cause us no end of trouble. Especially with the guy who makes throw ins look like decent crosses.
The big plus is that the defence isn't the quickest so stick with what we've been doing and we can easily nick a goal or two. Huddersfield got a result against them then so can we. A draw wouldn't be the end of the World though.

 

Agreed didn't we score 6 last time they had a week off

 

I don't think that our closest rivals are going to look at the games against us and see them as comfortable wins. Can we honestly think that Swansea and Brentford will be full of confidence after their recent games?

We've got one advantage in that we don't have to play Watford, a team that is on the up, a team that still hasn't reached anything like its potential, with players that can slot in to alternative positions all over the park and is full of confidence.

 

If we don't do it, it'll be down to the awful negative 'tactics' we played for half the season with, rather than how good Brentford and Swansea are.

They'll wobble before the finish line. They're not world beaters. We just have to keep going. Even Norwich may not be out of reach yet.

 

Of course they aren’t, nobody is suggesting that. They’ll view the games against us exactly as we view them against them, tough games. It’s the fact we have more of those tough games than they do which is the issue.