I went out for dinner there on Saturday night at Five Little Pigs, what a great restaurant, you've got an absolute gem there.
Wasnt a classic but on the balance of play think we deserved to win. Thought both teams looked in need of the world cup break. Gosling has done a good job standing in at right back but thought he struggled last night and RB is hopefully a position we're looking at. Hamza man of the match and notable mention for Sema who did well out of position. It got mentioned after the Preston game, but if we keep picking up 9pts from every 12 available then it puts on 92 points and most likely an automatic spot come the end of the season.
Decent performances all round, particularly Sema, who looked much more effective than Kamara and Choudhury. Both central midfielders had decent games. Our glamour two are both our surest way to goal and highly frustrating. Both were often wasteful in possession, with their control letting them down on several occasions. Kalu, by contrast, was more controlled. Likely he will start in place of Asprilla at some point soon.
There only needs to be one other, and we will lose out as Pozzo tries a cheeky bid of £5 and a bag of chips.
Agreed. They have a distinctive regular strip that uses completely different colours to ours - why not wear that? They deserved to lose for that alone. By the way, in the past a colour clash of black shorts like we saw last night would never have been allowed. Why has this changed?
Reading were really really awful and lets face it we weren't great. Hamzer is getting loads of plaudits, but a few flying tackles doesn't make up for th enumber of times he over carried the ball or ran the ball out of play. I thought Kayembe was the better of the two last night. A real chance to go in the World Cup just 4 points behind on Saturday ( hoping Burnley and Blackburn draw ). Which given the wasted points, because of poor performances against Birmingham, Blackpool, Millwall, Coventry, will be a pretty decent place to be.
Actually it was a very good cross between the defenders and the keeper. Very difficult for defenders to clear it facing their own goal and it forced the keeper to go full stretch to get a hand to it as had he not we had a player waiting to touch the ball home. It was put in the perfect area
Good little analysis that I like it. I do like Kalimantan he’s a slippery player and can do some damage. What’s the situation with him though is he an out and out impact player off the bench or a potential starter? If sarr goes in the transfer window come January could he fill the wing position
Yep. I'm of the opinion Sarr is putting in some tired performances of late, but that ball was absolutely perfect. If you're going to put a grounded ball into the box that's exactly where you aim it
Because despite people saying how much they love the Championship, the standard is dreadful. The scum game aside, I've not seen a decent game this season
Some very strange comments on here considering we just had a very comfortable 2-0 win against a side who've been in the top half all season. Yes we should have put the game to bed much earlier than we did which was frustrating but we were never in any real danger of conceding. The fact we had two midfielders at full back and a couple calamitous centre backs as well means limiting Reading to basically nothing deserves a big pat on the back. I see Kayembe getting pelters but I thought he was ok. The hair was the best player on the pitch. Sarr is another getting a lot of stick saying he's not worth what we paid for him. That's not his fault. He has six goals and 5 assists in 16 games which is very good. Whenever he went wide they immediately doubled up on him but he would have got a goal had it not been for an incorrect linesman's flag and obviously got an assist at the end. He may have the world cup on his mind which I can't blame him for but if he was sold in January we would miss him terribly It's nice to see that Kalu actually looks like a decent player and probably deserves to play a bit more. We could do with back up for Davies up front as Bayo really isn't good enough. That chap from Coventry would be great but hugely unlikely but he looked a perfect fit for the Premier League The amount of games is nice but I still prefer the Premier League, there are far too many ordinary games in this league As I walked away from the game last night there were two Reading fans behind me who said how bad they had been and felt they concentrated too much on trying to foul us rather than trying to play football. They are certainly the dirtiest side I've seen this year and how more weren't booked is incredible yet Asprilla was booked for his first foul On the subject of Asprilla, I think he's worth sticking with as he sees passes others simply don't, he could just do with a goal but for a very young lad thousands of miles from home who is about about 4 stone dripping wet, he's doing pretty well 5th in the league, the scum lost and we comfortably win. Some of you need to cheer up!!
Watching from my usual position in the rookery I couldn't really see what the penalty was for at the time, in fact being stupid my first thought was had the ball had crossed the line and we scored, when I got back home and looked at the high-lights I thought there were two instances in the same move that could have been penalty's hence the ref pointing to the guilty player and saying you! People are slag@ing off Sarr but up until the penalty incident he had hardly been given the ball, in fact because of his good forward play I believe we won the penalty!
It was Asprilla's first foul but it was I'd say it was also a nailed on yellow card in the modern game. If the contact with their bloke had been a bit higher up it could even have been red and I think the ref was making that point to him and Troost-Ekong.
I actually thought that was one of our best performances at that point in the season. Should of won but in typical Watford fashion we conceded a sloppy goal but thankfully did equalise. Looking at the table now, Brum are actually in a good run of form - they helped us out massive last night with a very late equaliser against Swansea too. Thank you Troy. I would say we are playing ok home and ok away, doing the bare minimum in most games to not lose. When we have lost we have deserved it (Blackpool, Blackburn and Millwall were especially bad performances) however if we want to finish anywhere near the autos or at least have a chance to challenge for them, we need to somehow get our better players' back and play at least 7/10 for the rest of the season. With our wreched injuries this season that seems doubtful. However if we did finish in the playoffs at the end I would consider it a decent season considering the state of our squad and lack of depth in almost all positions.
Except our goal difference has improved quite a bit since Bilic has taken over. It was 0 in the 10 games under Edwards, but +6 in 10 games under Bilic - extrapolated over the season that's only narrowly behind Burnley and Sheffield Utd and would be the 3rd best in the division. With a bit more luck with injuries say, there's no reason we can't match them going forwards.
I’ve watched it a couple of times and on first viewing I thought he’s just put it aimlessly into the box. But i wonder if he is trying to pick out kalu? In which case of not for the keeper it wouldn’t have been too far away. It’s in a very dangerous area for a keeper either way, to far out for him to gather in but the defenders were also too far away. So with all that considered I would say it was a good cross. Perhaps more needs to be made of the fact that the forwards were not there to be on the end of it, but Joao’s finish was excellent so prepared to let them off.
I'm usually pretty relaxed about teams changing kits. I don't especially mind if teams wear their away or third colours when there's not a clash between the home colours. I don't mind if clubs want to issues special edition kits or different shirts for Europe. It's not mandatory for supporters to buy them. I don't even mind when teams wear an away kit at home for purely commercial reasons, as we have done a handful of times over the year. (We wore black at home under Vialli once, we wore black and white stripes against Millwall a few years back). But the fundamental requirement is that the kits do not clash. Last night's game was completely unwatchable and as a result I gave up after half an hour. My eyesight is fine, but pale pinky-whatever-that-was shirts and dark shorts against yellow and black was absolutely ludicrous. If the game's authorities can't have the respect for the spectators to at least make it really bloomin' obvious which team is which, why should anyone bother?
It’s a shame because at times he looked really good in the first relegation season, his finest hour being the Liverpool win (though you could say much like the result and team performance as a whole that was an outlier). He didn’t reach that standard overall last season, but I maintain he’d do well in a top 10 Prem more confident and less dysfunctional side with someone of Deulofeu’s quality giving the opposition something more to think about. True, braindead and/or basic defensive errors, lack of assertiveness in goal and ponderous midfield play couldn’t excuse his sometimes poor crossing and decision making and seeming lack of interest, but look at Kiko - one of numerous culprits (although not among the worst) for our terrible showing at the top level second time round, now a regular for a Villarreal side 9th in La Liga with only 10 goals conceded. And we all know about Craig Dawson…
Sarr is capable on occasion of putting in crosses that no one else in our squad can deliver. This was one of them, excellent ball. Defender can't touch it and risk the OG, and it's whipped enough that a keeper can't catch it.
Looking at his cameo performances you would think so. But I wonder if he can last the 90 minutes. We don't know the answer to that. But there is a decently capable footballer there. Asprilla, I think, is a very promising player, but he shows inexperience quite often at the moment; I imagine he would make more impact as a sub with 20 or 30 to go. This requires more of the squad to be available, though.
I couldn't understand as to why we were using Gosling and Asprilla last night on the R.H.S. in the first half all the time and not switching play to Sarr, in the few occasions we did he helped create the penalty and assisted the 2nd goal as we know, Sarr doesn't seem to look for the ball but when given it generally does something with it to help in a positive way! All out tippy tapping at the back is frustrating as it gives the opposition time to mark-up, whereas a few of our goals have come from quick forward play ala our second last night and the 3rd/4th against L@ton.
Yes it was really noticeable on Saturday that Cov broke at speed against us and caused all sorts of problems. As soon as we got the ball back we had the chance to exploit their players still being in the attacking third, but too so long to play the ball forward we were left trying to play the ball through a blue wall with no space.
You're right but it's not always at the back. Sometimes we get to relatively advanced positions but then decide to head backwards or sideways rather than exploit gaps in the opposition defence. I'm not looking for us to throw the ball away and sometimes it makes sense to move inside or pop it back to someone behind who can then switch play, but too often the pass is under hit or to a teammate who is marked and the result is contested possession again. Even if we come away with the ball we're just creating hard work for no good reason. And obviously by that point the other side often have 9 men behind the ball at least.
Agreed. I would say it's definitely improved over the last 5 games though with Choudhury and Kayembe looking forward more often. Bilic made the point about being braver and we are starting to see an improvement. Ironically our worst offender with slowing the play down is one of the fastest players in world football. It's both baffling and frustrating
