Then your wish is granted as it is. go onto a Villa, West Ham, Brighton and evening Muff forum and see how confident they are. I assume muff a little more after the last two results - but we have shown a few good results don’t guarantee it will continue. There are 6 crap teams battling to keep out of the bottoms three. We are one of them.
The mind boggles. Does he follow the players into the lavatories as well and take stool samples ? His recruitment policy whether or not it has been hindered by Gino is appallingly bad. We also have an ageing squad and are stuck between signing players nearing the end of their careers or semi crocks or unproven kids with very little middle ground. We have missed out on several players we should have signed and to all intents and purposes were within budget.
Yet two or three games ago we were unbeatable and top of the from league. Things can change very quickly in either direction. We’ve just lost two games in a row to injury time goals, it’s unforgivable but it’s also very fine margins, play another two games and it doesn’t happen. Most fans on here only seem to be able to see things based on how we are currently playing, things can get better or worse from game to game and they will do over the rest of the season.
How Isaac Success is not good enough to play against Tranmere but can get on the pitch today is baffling? All that social media ******** over Joao Pedro and he's not a better option than someone we tried to desperately get rid of this month? And then we have Andre Gray who Pearson only earlier today insists he "values" and he can't even get on the pitch when we've used 6 attacking players in one game? Get rid of him then! His wages are burning a hole in finances and if he's not the man for a goal against a 10 men side when will he ever be needed? Utter shambles of squad management, not even a fit centre half on the bench!? Pozzo's have gone from being football geniuses to above average football owners to actually looking more clueless than your average billionaire who takes over clubs as hobbies, even Mike Ashley has put together a better defence. Pathetic, I am fuming.
Is happy clapping your way to relegation any less comical? When the players and the board have given up, how can you blame the fans for doing the same?
Hard to take, had we hung on for draws today and against Villa we would now be in 17th spot where Villa is. Luckily other results today have largely gone with us, so a win at Brighton would get us out of the bottom three next week. Therefore the Brighton game is really massive now thanks to our lack lustre performances in our last two games. If we win next week we will still be in with a fighting chance, but if we lose I fear we might be ****ed SO COME ON YOU GOLDEN BOYS LETS GET BACK ON TRACK
I do not think the FA Cup loss has any real morale loss on the first team. Gray maybe, but he is just crap and even Lg One level is beyond him. Today was about dusting off the poor performance at Villa and getting stuck in. We did that, for 42 minutes. Then rolled over and got our shorts pulled down by a very average Everton side. Credit to them, they reminded of us over the past few games when Pearson first came in. I understand what you mean - but the FA Cup squad took that on the chin I expect. We have just seen our first 11 get shafted by the second last minute goal in as many games. It is not good enough.
Exactly. It's just like watching the Watford of old. The confidence has gone and the run-in looks difficult. We are desperate for Sarr and Kiko to return, but with the medical teams track record god knows when that'll happen. We also need to keep our CBs fit and hope they actually, you know, defend properly. Don't get how people can be anything other than pessimistic after the last 2 games.
That is the sort of game and result that leads to relegation. Just so disappointed. Didn't turn up 2nd half and then to rub it in Everton score from our own throw! We looked like the the team with 10 men!
this squad is good enough to get out of this. If we do go down it won’t be because we conceded to Everton or villa. Won’t be because we, alongside many other teams, didn’t add to the squad in January. It will be down to the f@&£& £g ludicrous decision to reappoint QSF
...and none of the other clubs around us have any problems and are bristling with confidence. They have all got brilliant squads with brilliant defenders, worldie goalscorers and a coach that never makes mistakes.
Why didn’t hughes come on in place of chalobah? Why, with only a couple of minutes left, did we not just settle for a point? Why didn’t either Mapps or Cathcart take one for the team by hacking Richarlison down before he crossed to Walcott? Why are we so ****, we let Theo ******* Walcott score the winning goal?
This money for finishing in the bottom 3 has already been borrowed against by the Pozzo family. Looking to sell? That rumour has legs
The one error from the centre back we'd all say was most reliable did not cost us the game. If we needed to replace Cathcart we needed 4 centre halves this window. All over the pitch we made wrong choices with poor execution, thats what cost ua the game.
I completely disagree. We need to win AT Brighton now. Not something we normally do, even when playing well.
Pearson’s completely right though when he says what others do is of no relevance to us. I look at us and see a mental fragility which isn’t compatible with a successful relegation fight. Have any of our rivals lost from 2-0 up at home on 44 minutes this season?
Agree aside with settling for a point. We are at home against ten, trying to win is fine. Leaving us 3 v 4 at the back is not fine.
We're unlikely to stay up either way, win next week and we are temporarily out of the relegation zone, only to then play United away and Liverpool at home I don't see a scenario were we aren't in the relegation zone, on less than 30 points and with 10 games to play
It isn't happy clapping to not give up when there are 39 points to play for. And those that think the players have given up, are talking out your backsides.
You said there were no individual errors today. I’m merely pointing out the fact that you are incorrect. And yes, replacing Cathcart is not high up the priority of changes to our dreadful back line.
If the players showed as much effort as you have to actually centre justify the final line, we'd be more than safe.
And nothing to do with the ludicrous decision to ignore the horrendous state of our defence for about the sixth transfer window in a row, that has resulted in us losing games like today. If we go down it definitely will be because of results like that, along with the many others across the season.
What I don’t get is Deeney had the measure of Mina in the air in every attacking move in the first half. So why wasn’t he given the task of marking him for their attacking corners?
We don't and then someone says we've got to win the next one and the cycle continues. We've been saying this sort of thing for months.
I guess you'd think that a central defender would be competent enough to not completely lose his man, grasp at thin air and collapse to the ground that if it was another team, I'd probably still be laughing. But our back line is just fine.
For heavens sake UEA. Pearson means that what the other teams do should not affect how he prepares his team and how the players respond, we do our own thing based on the task ahead in the next match. He didn't mean that it doesn't matter how many points the other teams get, as it will be the three with the least points that go down. All teams at our end are putting in poor displays and dropping points.
we have conceded similar or less when compared to the teams around us. Goal scoring is the bigger issue across the season
My intended point was you cant blame individuals or individual errors for that performance. Ill tell you what though, Britos and Prodl in their prime were better defenders than anything we have now.
I see your point. Cathcart is a very average defender. The confidence has gone within the team. I do not agree with you about beating other teams. If we lose to Brighton then all confidence in the team from the fans will go. We were not playing a top 6 club today. It was Everton and they are not a good side. I think another meeting with all the players is needed. Time to sit them down and be told what is expected from them. Also for Pearson to be aware of our frustration in this shower of 5hit Good God! Success, Mariappa and Grey still at the club. Worst still, they are bloody playing. Get them out asap. Time to earn your money Watford or the Championship is coming .
I’m not convinced we have the ability to play the football version of Russian roulette and simply hope to be best of the worst come May. I think the first 15 games of the season showed we’re more than capable of being consistently crap. We had an opportunity in the last two games to go from where we are now to essentially being one step removed from the relegation fight. And we’ve blown it, not by conceding last minute goals but by playing poorly against against two beatable opponents over 90 minutes.
Wow....you've got to hand it to Watford. They worked incredibly hard to lose that today. Not many sides would have lost after being 2-0 up against a team like Everton, who are notoriously bad on the road, and with only 10-men to boot. It's amazing. Well done Watford. You're finding more and more inventive ways to torment the fans. You start off throwing the first half of the season, then you play a bit to give everyone some hope, then you throw away THREE victories on a spin. Pussetto messed up the plan with his 10mm goal line clearance, to spoil three last minute defeats, but he's new and can be forgiven for that. Next week, I want a 3-0 lead in the 90 minute and end up losing 4-3. That would be awesome.
Obviously not being literal, but if we don't beat them we'll need to get an unlikely win or 2. The run in looks tougher than many are making out imo.
I hoped we would win today, feared we might not and worried that we might lose, however, my worst fears didn't account for the manner in which we eventually surrendered that match and, IMO have all but guaranteed our relegation from the Premier League. Today was a match which really brought to the fore, all the long standing and obvious faults with our club, recruitment and modus operandi and showed exactly why we are where we are and why we deserve to be going down to the Champioship. Defence - for years, a growing band of us have recognised that the firm club policy of signing ageing, cheap defenders is not conducive to sustained Premier League football. The people in charge of our club, clearly believe that you can sign any old defender and somehow or another, get them to do a job, after a fashion, and that will be good enough. Today we saw what that results in (as we've seen many times before). Sure, you can get average and poor defenders to make blocks, drill them to keep things tight and make things difficult, but when playing against teams in the Premier League, eventually the abject lack of quality will tell as it did today. As it has so many times before. The completely wrong headed belief that a club can just wilfully ignore the shortcomings of Cathcart, Masina, Mariappa and Kabesele and get away with it, was laid bare, once again. Set pieces - for years, as a club, we've been awful at corners and attacking free kicks. Given our limitations in other areas, this is an area which could and should have been fixed ages ago, for relatively little investment. It hasn't and today we had a good half a dozen chances to create something from dead balls in attacking areas and were utterly inept at all of them. Guts - We saw for a few games that with a traditional, New Manager Bounce, our motley crew of misfits, assembled for a variety of reasons, not all to do with the advancement of the WFC playing side, could muster some good performances and results. Today, however, we saw exactly why this season has panned out how it's panned out. The slightest hint of adversity (Mina's first goal) and our gutless team implodes. We literally watched Mina head in the second and then, came out after half time with our tails between our legs and allowed Everton to play. Even when Everton were hampered by a red card (which by all accounts was soft as all ****) we offered little and then, were caught out by a goal on the break. No more than we deserved. Squad - We brought on Isaac Success, to turn the balance in a game which seemed crucial to our medium term future as a club. A man who cost us upward of 12m, has done nothing of note in 3 years at the club, yet is still here, stinking up the place, taking up a squad place. There are several others in our squad who are as bad. Players who were duff signings that either we cannot unload or we simply refuse to cut our losses on, instead compounding the financial loss with the continued failure of them to contribute to our footballing needs. Staleness - In the summer, the club seemed to get a few big ideas. Rather than sell our in demand players, we'd hang onto them and push onto new heights with them and become a top 10 side. Instead it didn't work out like that. Doucoure and Pereyra have regressed massively. Their values have diminished hugely and they are worth even less to us. Both were appalling today, despite the latter's goal, and should probably have been cashed in on last season, at peak value (not that we could trust our owners or DOF to reinvest the profits wisely). I think Pearson worked miracles in the little run he oversaw, which gave us hope, but we've reverted to type, losing two games in succession now where we had taken the lead, and showing that all the frailties and weaknesses that got us into this relegation fight, are still all there and were just beneath the surface all this time. That we didn't address any of this in the January window is wanton negligence of the highest order and I will take some crumb of comfort, that relegation will hurt Gino worst of all, because he deserves to absolutely take a financial kicking for his consistent and obstinate refusal to bend in his idiotic and arrogant ways. I hope that relegation is the catalyst for the Pozzos selling up and moving on too, because frankly, I'm tired of being proved right, time and time again when I call out how their methods are broken and not up to muster in this division. I won't be using my ST's for the remainder of the season. I'll find something less distressing to do with my Saturday afternoons.
