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

Discussion in 'Match Day' started by Stuey, Mar 3, 2021.

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Score Prediction

  1. Zzzzz 0-0

    7 vote(s)
    10.1%
  2. Scoring draw

    5 vote(s)
    7.2%
  3. Watford win by 1 goal

    36 vote(s)
    52.2%
  4. Watford win by 2 goals

    8 vote(s)
    11.6%
  5. Watford blitz by 3 or more goals

    5 vote(s)
    7.2%
  6. Forest win by 1 goal

    5 vote(s)
    7.2%
  7. Forest win by 2 goals

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  8. Forest win by 3 or more goals.

    3 vote(s)
    4.3%
  1. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    For me, if we go to Cardiff and win, that would be our best result of the season. They are the most realistic side to get the double over us, and for pride, I just don't want any side doing that to us this season. If we win that, as an away game, given the calibre and form of our opponent, it would be a real statement that Watford are seriously pushing for the top two. As we've done at all our rivals, we've so far lost. Reading, Barnsley, Bournemouth & Swansea, so it would represent and big uplift in our abilities. Personally I can't see us reaching that level, but you have to have hope we will be able to do it.
     
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  2. Carpster

    Carpster Squad Player

    100% it's a battle we need to be right up for. Impossible result to predict for me. We're both in good form results wise but am hoping Micks new manager bounce has come to an end. Use our pace up top and we can get the result but they are going to put lots of long high balls into the box. It's whether we deal with this.
     
  3. lutonh8a

    lutonh8a Squad Player

    To be honest though the other teams are hardly in the best of form Swansea should have dropped 4 points in their last two and were beaten 4-1 away at Huddersfield. Brentford recently lost 3 games on the bounce to Barnsley, Coventry and QPR. We have won 6 of the last 7 if we get something against Cardiff we have a lovely run of fixtures.
     
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  4. Cthulhu

    Cthulhu Keyboard Warrior Staff Member

    skyla fancies Ada
     
  5. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    It's true Swansea should only have picked up 2 points from their last two games, but they got 6 because of referee manipulation. Hopefully that will not continue, but you can never know. In this league, even though they've been kind to us so far, referees often intervene to affect a result, so we're all at their mercy to a degree. It really makes a mockery of everything when they do this, but unless there's proof that they are match fixing, there's not a lot you can do about it.
     
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  6. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    I agree with the sentiments that Hungbo seems promising, but we signed him only 18 months ago from Palace when he was already 19 - don't think he counts as one of our own academy products.
     
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  7. SkylaRose

    SkylaRose Administrator Staff Member

    She was a bit of a hottie in her prime. ;)
     
  8. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    But is she "Mad,bad and dangerous to know" ?
     
  9. Chumlax

    Chumlax Squad Player

    Given the talk of difficult of opponents/top 6 opposition (and my own shared pessimism on that), I wanted to consider it in light of our last promotion, so I went back and had a look. The results were interesting, and perhaps a little surprising.

    upload_2021-3-7_13-39-20.png

    Considering we were clearly one of the two best teams in the league that season, winning more matches overall than any other team and only missing out on the Championship title thanks to assorted last-minute idiocy on the final day, we only won 3 games against opposition who eventually went on to make up the rest of the top 6 all season. Further to that, those 3 wins came against just 2 of the 5 teams in question.


    Our first was, amusingly, in Billy McKinlay's sole game in charge: the 2:1 win over Brentford on September 30th. But, for the next, we had to wait all the way until our next game against Brentford (the one team we did the double over from the group) the best part of 4 months later, on February 9th. Then, as we already know, there was only one more to come; 2 months further down the line, in the 2:0 defeat of Middlesboro that really got us all believing we could actually do it.

    upload_2021-3-7_13-45-43.png

    So we never managed to beat Muff, Norwich or Ipswich, and actually suffered the ignominy of having the dreaded double done on us by both teams from East Anglia.

    Our last three losses that season all came in sequence, in fact, against Muff, Norwich and Ipswich.

    upload_2021-3-7_13-51-6.png

    Just for safety, we can even expand that out to the teams who finished in the top 8 (which isn't that much of a stretch, considering Wolves lost out to Ipswich in the race for 7th on goal difference alone and, as we can observe, Derby in turn finished only 1 point behind that; a full 10 ahead of Blackburn in 9th).

    upload_2021-3-7_14-7-1.png

    If we do so, however, the record would probably be judged to make even worse reading:


    upload_2021-3-7_14-37-52.png

    upload_2021-3-7_14-7-46.png


    We didn't manage to defeat Derby or Wolves, either, recording one draw and one loss each (although that second Derby game at the beginning of April is another memorable touchstone along the way to promotion, as the impact of Adlene Guedioura's swashbuckling performance and perfectly-weighted through ball for Iggy to score a priceless equaliser allowed us to escape the East Midlands with a draw against a promotion rival, having played the entire second half with 10 men after the harsh sending-off of Marco Motta way back in the 44th minute).


    Essentially, despite dominating the division (alongside Muff), our record that season was never particularly impressive at all against our immediate rivals, right up to the final day. What you take from that is as much a matter of personal interpretation as anything else; perhaps it seems like further evidence that we as a club struggle in important games/against those we're competing with directly. Perhaps, conversely, it tells us that it isn't necessarily that important to go about knocking seven bells out of them in a 'there can be only one' style mini-tournament.

    This season is not that one, and past success is no guarantee of future, especially when we consider the layout of our final fixtures and in light of how important the way we roared into that final stretch proved back in 2015. But if we (and, in particular, I) are attempting to look at things in a more optimistic sense, perhaps we can allow this to inform our hope that direct performance against the teams we're currently sharing oxygen with won't necessarily prove to be the most decisive factor in the race for promotion.
     

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  10. Chumlax

    Chumlax Squad Player

    Rest assured, I don't count him as an academy product, but he's still coming in to our first team from our youth set up, so I don't think 'youther' is too much of a stretch.
     
  11. lutonh8a

    lutonh8a Squad Player

    Yeah I have to say it has crossed my mind that referees might be match fixing after seeing the Swansea penalty against Stoke and the Middlesbrough disallowed goal. The decisions were so obviously wrong that it makes you wonder if something more cynical is going on.
     
  12. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Except I don’t think anyone could provide a reason why Swansea would have been chosen to benefit from such skullduggery.
     
  13. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    Huddersfield 4 Swansea 1, I recall
     
  14. BusheyOrn

    BusheyOrn Reservist

    A lot depends on the Cardiff match, if we can get some sort of result out of Wales then we may be able to build a points barrier between us and 3rd place by the time we play Middlesbrough which will allow us to manage games from there on in.
     
  15. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    Betting? But I really hope not. In any case, dodgy betting is less likely to be risked on a match broadcast live on a major TV station in the home country.

    More likely that Gavin Ward is a prat. Pity that Boro's disallowed goal wasn't at the end of the first half rather than the beginning of the second, as he would have discovered his error and might have been tempted to stick with his original decision at the end and give a corner to Swansea rather than a pen.
     
    Knight GT likes this.
  16. Hogg-DEENEY!!!

    Hogg-DEENEY!!! Squad Player

    Bournemouth home-- Kelly should have been sent off, if not in the first minute definitely early in the second half, hard to say exactly how the game would have panned out, but you'd think that proved a disadvantage to us

    Wycombe away-- we got away with one at the end, a very soft free kick which saved a point for us

    Stoke home--opener should have been a foul on the keeper, poor Stoke have been on the wrong end of a few howlers this season!

    Brentford home--letter of the law it was offside in the build-up to the penalty and red card, but it wasn't a howler, and not one you'd expect to be given without VAR. On the flip side, Perica was not offside, you definitely expect the linos not to make that call

    Derby--extremely lucky to get away with the goal from their corner, yes there was a marginal offside in the build-up to their goal, but you don't expect those to be given

    Bournemouth away--God know what was going through the ref's mind when he gave that free-kick, although there's no excuse for switching off like that, a free-kick in the middle of the park should not be a match-defining incident

    Roughly even, though you could argue we've had the rub of the green overall
     
  17. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    No, that's Skyla.
     
  18. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    Sorry to be pedantic but McKinlay actually had two games in charge. The other was a bit of a tame draw at home to Brighton.
     
  19. Happy bunny

    Happy bunny Cheered up a bit

    You forgot Billing's elbow. Muff should have been down to nine.
     
  20. Chumlax

    Chumlax Squad Player

    Wondered about that at the time but ended up being the one thing I didn't revisit to check...
     
  21. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    And dodgy betting scams tend to be on a game-to-game basis rather than 2 consecutive matches for the same side being decided in their favour by utterly incomprehensible decisions.
    I think the original suggestion was wondering whether ‘the authorities’ were conspiring in Swansea’s favour. Historically ‘bigger’ clubs like Derby or the Wendies maybe, but Swansea?
     
  22. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    Crikey!
     
  23. Knight GT

    Knight GT Predictor extraordinaire 2013/14

    Poor refereeing? Absolutely. Betting syndicates? Not for me. They wouldn’t choose games like that. We’ve benefited from some nice decisions as well this season
     
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  24. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team

    Any news on Foster injury.

    Feel a bit nervous about Bachmann facing that Cardiff bombardment.
     
  25. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    He is in training so probably fit.
     
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  26. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    He left it a bit late if that is the case but I don't believe it for one minute,mind.
     
  27. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Except that Swansea may well have overtaken us by the time we play Cardiff...
     
  28. Forzainglese

    Forzainglese Reservist

    In addition, having revisited Watford's goal against Forest, I think we were a bit lucky with that goal. Difficult for the ref as he doesn't have VAR, but I think Gray may have caught the keeper in the face a fraction after the keeper had touched the ball. Not malicious, they both had to go for it, but probably a foul there. So, I know this does not necessarily fit the narrative about Moss, but we have got the 'rub of the green' in his decision.
     
  29. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I think you might be right as far as VAR is concerned with that goal, it certainly would’ve been looked at. As far as the John Moss narrative is concerned, I think that still fully supports the narrative, because he’s too crap to have even spotted that incident in the first place, it’s not that he was being generous to us or anything.
     
  30. Forzainglese

    Forzainglese Reservist

    Indeed - you're probably right.
     
  31. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    You forget to mention that Knockaert is a little beech.
     
  32. Harrybassetthater

    Harrybassetthater Academy Graduate

    The goal would have been disallowed by VAR but we would have probably got a penalty for handball be Worrall. So assuming we score the penalty things would have been evened out.
     
  33. Dorset-Orn

    Dorset-Orn First Year Pro

    I feel really positive about our club right now... I enjoy watching the games now and the bum clenching only starts in the 77th minute.
    The other top 6 teams will be just as worried about playing us as we are them.? On current form we are probably the best defence and our attacking play also.? All we need now is a slight pick up on converting chances, and improved crossing and in my bones I think we gradually getting there.... Imagine Sarr and Zinc ripping it up at Wembley.!!!!!! (assuming we will not finish top two.)
     
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  34. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Pretty sure we wouldn't. It hit his arm directly after hitting his body. That's a specific exemption written into the handball law.
     
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  35. WatfordTalk

    WatfordTalk First Team

    As long as his arm is in a natural position, which is debatable. Personally think it would have been harsh to give, though
     
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