If they're told to stand 35 metres away from the centre backs whilst they are fannying around with the ball, then might not expect too much. I wonder if Kone even knew his role in the midfield 3? The way we persisted in passing up the line to a man who was marked and had nowhere to go even if he did control it was hugely frustrating. It seems you just need to stop us passing to the wing in order to stop us completely. We give the ball up when the pass isn't on and we turn into nowhere not knowing what to do.
I don't mind another reset but I'd love for just one of them to last more than a pre-season and for us to actually improve following one. We shouldn't just be resetting the reset for the sake of resetting the reset. Reset 1 lasted until a mildly warm room and slight ripples in the water Reset 2 lasted until Bilic got angry Reset 3 was Chris Wilder (whose post game comments Ismael is now seemingly emulating in that it's all the players' fault) Great Reset 1 seemed promising because we'd become so unaccustomed to players trying but it's now petered out incredibly What will happen to Great Reset 2: Electric Boogaloo? Neil Warnock? Sam Alladyce? Alan Pardew? The return of Xisco? Is there any chance we could have a management consortium made up of forum members - what would that look like? For me: Reids on stats Moog for motivation Otter to organise squad bonding through werewolf Keighley to manage the legal papers Positions for other roles open following successful interview
True, it's not clear where the main faults lay but our defenders are not comfortable with ball at feet and our midfielders don't drop into any slots to look for the ball. Also team managers will all have picked up on our "play out from the back" system, and our weakness doing it, that they know what to do from the first minute (hence our slow starts). Two options.... 1) buy better players that like the ball at their feet (not going to happen any time soon), 2) change tactics to suit our players. (managers hate changing their favourite system/tactics). So we are stuffed right now....
Spot on, teams know exactly what we will be doing and have a plan for it, while we play "wait and see" and try to figure it out as we go. This is a situation from early in the game. Lewis has just played the ball to Sema and is starting a run forward. Notice how every player is marked, except TDB (out of the picture) because they have two men on Dennis, which makes sense. Kone has just made a bit of space for himself and is checking where his marker is, ready to receive the ball. Now - what should Sema do here? In my mind, it's pretty simple - you play the ball one-time to Kone. Kone would then have the option of either a) switching the ball to the right flank, b) try to thread a ball through to Lewis if his marker doesn't follow him, or c) try to advance with the ball himself, or d) try to link up with Kayembe or Dennis somehow. Positive stuff that keeps us on the front foot. What actually happens is that Sema takes a touch and then travels backwards with the ball, sees that everyone is marked, travels with it further, sees that everyone is still marked, and eventually when the center backs have gone all the way back, almost into our 18 yard box he decides to pass to Pollock, scuffs the pass and it goes straight to their forward who had already anticipated what was happening. I know this is just one isolated moment, but Sema wasn't one of the players to be hauled off shortly after. So persumably he's following instructions? Don't pass the ball forward, go back back back to keep possession at all cost and wait to see what the opponent does next - that seems to be the plan?
And what the opponent does next, ever more regularly, is intercept one of our pathetic attempts at a pass to immediately create a chance for a goal.
I'm 99% sure Sema is the player Val is talking about here: https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/24142648.watford-boss-ismael-think-made-mistakes-yesterday/
Yeah I know, but a better manager would ask himself "why is this happening?" instead of just blaming the players. Put players in situations where a mistake will be disastrous and eventually it will happen. And for what - keeping possession deep in our own half? I know, in his mind we control the game if we have possession of the ball, but that's not really true. If you're just forced to move the ball and the players backwards it's actually the pressing team that controls the game.
Yup. There was that one where he fell over in the corner and lost the ball in the second half. Another where he tried to retrieve a pass that was slightly behind him but got his feet in a muddle and miscontrolled it straight into touch. He had a stinker.
If the players don't run or play accurate passes you can have the best manager or tactical plan in the world but it's certain it won't work. I'm not saying he has the best tactical plan in the world of course. I think he's a relatively unambitious manager tactically but there's been enough upsides this season (in both goals scored and wins) to see he's not super defensive either. There's no way in hell he's telling Kone to kick it straight to their keeper from kick off. Or Lewis to dither on the ball time and time again and not bother running. Or Sema to play a suicide ball to their unmarked player bearing down on goal. Or Pollock to arrive a second late into every situation. Most of the time in the stands we can see there are passes on but our chumps just take the easy option time and time again. The biggest issue is pros can smell straight away when a teammate or their teammates in general aren't on it and they dial back accordingly. I think that's the biggest contributor to the aimless safety-first stuff, not an instruction from the bench.
I don't think our defenders are especially weak with the ball at their feet, Hoedt in particular had a wicked ping on him, but we are setting them up to fail with nobody else calling for the ball. We did improve (from a low base!) with Chak and Ince in the midfield, which leads me to think that the players were hiding more than it being a tactical choice not to make any runs, although I don't think Val did himself any favours with the way we started neither
I've said it before we seem to have something against using the centre of midfield, at all, ever. Watch what Grimes does at the base of midfield when Swansea visit. It shouldn't all be on the full backs and wingers to take any forward pass. Should be bread and butter for all midfielders to receive the ball from goalie or defenders, turn and pass.
I thought Louza was going to be the man at the base of the midfield to transform us, but while he had a little burst of form last season, he's simply not produced at all. Livermore has been good for us, but he's definitely not one to always be calling for the ball and starting attacks from deep
Playing out from the back isn’t really a hard thing for keepers or defenders to do. But it requires the defenders to be able to be calm on the ball, be cool under pressure AND have dangerous midfielders/full-backs who will always exploit the space that a high pressing attack would leave. We have Livermore, Lewis and TDB in those spaces now. If I was playing Watford, I’d be pressing the hell out of us.
I think we've seen more than enough panicked hoofs up to Rajovic or Dennis this season to know that whatever we are doing now is not exactly a 'plan'...
The plan after half time seemed to be hoof it to Dennis a bit more, really disappointing from Ismael. Of course you can only do so much and it's up to the players, but a coach at this level should be able to see the glaring problems of the first 45 minutes and rectify it at half time. Why not replace Livermore with TDB or drop another midfielder deeper to give the centre backs more options passing out? Rajovic is terrible but he occupied their centre backs more than Dennis, why not move Dennis wide and bring on Rajovic at half time? Why not take Lewis off and send him back to Newcastle immediately?
Even the last time we got promoted, we were utterly terrible at progressing the ball... until Will Hughes was finally fit then all of a sudden we had a player that could play on the half turn from deep, getting it into feet under pressure. The irony being that a player like that was critical to the way Ivic wanted us to play. He gave several chances to Quina to be that player but it was beyond him and then we sacked Ivic just as Hughes became available. Xisco was incredibly lucky that Hughes came back, a left back was finally available and Deeney got injured meaning he didn't have to shoe horn him into the team.
Probably didn’t help Dennis got injured but was he going off anyway . We actually created chances though but couldn’t finish for toffee and didn’t defend basic throw ins .
