Yes, they did. Sherlock has made that clear on a number of occasions. He scored a combined 12 league goals across two seasons right before they bought him for 100,000 Euros after Empoli were relegated. He was nowhere near the finished product when they bought him and was a very late developer.
What was our sole objective at the start of the season? Survival. Are we on course for this so far? Yes (early days but yes) Are things perfect? No, but it's only 8 games gone. Are things usually perfect 8 games into a season? No. Think Dyche. Think Zola. Think Joka 8 games in (four defeats in a row)
It's interesting that the intro to your moan is this. Does it not count after 8 games? Or 15? At what game does our real level become agreeable? As we're 12th in the most lucrative league in the world after 8 games. Which is a ****ing miracle considering that according to you we have no identity and there's unrest in the dressing room.
Bornmuff fans moaning about Capoue 'raking his studs' down Murray's Achilles. That's the only retort they can come up with to the three years of cheating!! Keep clutching at those straws, Boscombe Diving Club. Still, they've managed to have three games against us handed to them on a plate by the officials and only managed to win one of them!! I regret putting money into their poxy little pisspot club when they were in administration now. I can't wait to see them rooted to the bottom of the table with Blunderland at Christmas.
Our play has clearly deteriorated. Our passing is deteriorating, our shot accuracy is deteriorating. My rating of our play does indeed show a downward line (8 7 6.5 5 7 8 5 5) but of course that is entirely subjective. The argument, which you are allowed to make, is that our deterioration of play is okay as long as we are picking up points. My response to that is over the season, if we do not improve, we will not continue to pick up as many points as we did in the opening weeks. If we get an injury in defence, I also think we will struggle to pick up points. If we do not change the current tactics, and better teams than a depleted Bournemouth side know exactly how to counter us, we will be less likely to pick up points. I hope that the international break stops our deterioration, like the last one did. If so, perhaps it is just that further understanding of Quique's tactics is required. Our play in the last two games has been relegation quality. Poor movement, little creativity, no drive. Points can be picked up by teams that play well, and teams that do not play well. Over the season however, when you have played each team twice, luck or good runs of fixtures, are largely factored out of final position. Teams have learnt that by pressing us, the gap between our strikers and midfield is so great that we will just long ball it and lose it. Our passing is increasingly being lumped to nowhere. The head coach is telling us to keep the ball and seems very keen that we play as a short-passing side; however his tactics are leaving us lacking a spare man and overwhelmed in the middle, resulting in the long ball. We are playing two strikers whose advantage against Premier League defenders is often lost during the aerial duels they are forced to get involved with. I am not saying that I am not happy with the points which we have amassed. I am just commenting on the poor parts of our game are not being fixed, and are being increasingly exploited by the opponents due to their predictability. I don't personally think we will go down. But I don't want us to play like relegation candidates for the rest of the season, and rely on other teams to simply be worse. And I don't want to just clap everything which we do either, or this forum would be absolutely insufferable.
Admittedly I missed some of the first half due to a dodgy stream, but what exactly were those instances of "aimless long balls to nowhere" that people keep complaining about? Can anyone give specific examples? The only two I can think of out the top of my head was a random launch from Cathcart, and an uncharacteristically poor pass from Abdi, but while I'm not necessarily approving of this style of the play or saying our first half performance was good, for the most part I seem to remember that when the ball was launched (or passed - there is a difference) long, it usually found a team mate. The main problem was more what to do with the ball once it got there, with Bournemouth constantly pressing and closing us down, and us lacking ideas of how to deal with it. It hardly compares to the aimless long balls we endured during the last Prem season, which were more about winning 50-50s and/or forcing a set-piece, which teams learned to counter all too quickly. And don't forget a certain great man's Watford team was based on the long ball (or rather, again long pass) - unless some of you football purists think that passing a ball more than 20 yards is inherently unacceptable in football, even if it's sometimes the best, if not only option?
So IYO, the average rating of our first 4 games was around 6.6, and the average rating in our last 4 was around 6.3? Massive deterioration.
Passing accuracy in the last five games: 85% (City) 71% (Swansea, Behrami gets banned for three games) 71% (Newcastle) 75% (Palace, Jurado injured for next game) 72% (Muff) Bearing in mind this is as objective as it gets, not seeing it myself. Shots on target: 0/7 3/8 4/13 3/16 2/11 Again, not a massive variation in terms of accuracy. Again, not seeing it.
Even Quique said we hit too many long balls and didn't keep possession: "We changed our style too much," explained Watford's Head Coach, speaking to Hornets PlayerHD at The Vitality Stadium just after full-time. "The players had control of the ball but we played a long ball too often so we were chasing for possession.". I reckon that when even the Head Coach says we're playing too many long balls and not keeping possession, the fans complaining about it probably have a point.
Quique has lost the dressing room. Nobody is buying into his bull**** philosophy anymore. This is Sannino all over again. quique will not see his face on that pitch
As you didn't answer my question, I'll assume the response is that our league position is only real at the end of the season. Your rule. By that logic, our play in the last two games is irrelevant, just as our position of 12th is irrelevant at this time. If, by your rules, it only matters after 38 games, then really, the time to moan is then. Or when we fall into the relegation places. Which we aren't in. Well, two teams. We don't count Man City around here. One being Palace, a likely top 6 team and Bournemouth, who got lucky we didn't win the game before their penalty. Either way, by your rules, these two games in isolation don't matter anyway. I'm a massive believer in the fact that you are where you deserve to be in the league after each game. Our goal, this season, is to avoid relegation. We are currently doing that. You don't believe we'll go down playing the way we are, but don't like the way we are playing because they are relegation performances. You believe the league at the end of the season is the fairest reflection because at the moment we're twelfth and playing like relegation candidates but you don't believe we'll go down. I'm sure you don't mean to be as contradictory as you are, so I'm going to suggest something that maybe you think but don't really want to say. We play boring ****ing football and you don't like it.
My interpretation of performances (subjective of course). Our successful pass % falling as we increasingly struggle to maintain posession We are taking more shots. They are hitting the target less often. Trend suggests more speculative efforts. To win with current creativity, we would need to score with 50% of our shots on target. Again, just showing that our percentage of shots which test the keeper. Conclusions. Our passing is getting worse as we are predictable and teams increasingly press us high up the pitch. We are creating very few good opportunities, and they are decreasing in frequency. We are going to need to ensure Ighalo keeps working wonders with scraps. Two shots in target or less, in 50% of matches through the season, is a statistic which needs to be dramatically improved.
Thanks for those stats Mike , I genuinely enjoyed them . Did you use Sqwuaka ? The reason I ask is because their overall performance measurement places us 9th in the league . Early on in a season where a teams points tally doesn't always reflect their performance levels I find these stats can be a good guideline. In that same table we re are 2nd in the defensive rankings and 17th in the offensive rankings. So considering both QSF and Deeney have said publicly , that the bulk of training time has been taken up with defensive issues and that only recently have they concentrated on attacking , I'd say we re in a pretty good place. To transform a team of new players into the second best defensive outfit in the league is an incredible feat. Now they have time to concentrate on attack , is it not reasonable to expect a big improvement? If you interested here's the Sqwuaka link... http://www.squawka.com/football-tea...ny#any#season#1#all-matches#attack#desc#total
Meaningless over such a small sample without including blocked shots or a means of quantifying the quality of our attempts e.g. Anya's big chance against City counts for nothing and Watson's crash against the bar counts exactly the same as Abdi's skied shot into row Z. We have on the whole produced better misses than the teams we've played against.
What does anyone expect? They still don't admit that the penalty should've actually been a foul the other way.
TBF when against all odds you're made it to THE PREMIER LEAGUE, but know there's zero chance of actually staying there, it must drive you a bit nuts. Especially when the other 2 sides that came up with you look quite decent.
Bournemouth are scum. That's why I'm so gutted that Flores treated it like a training game, completely oblivious to the rich history of rivalry between the clubs.
