Based on this forum we must be the most miserable fanbase in the premier league

Or its maybe suggesting that some people have already made their mind up, rather than give the thing a chance.

You make it clear that you don't have a positive word to say about the club or our chances this season, and a ball hasn't even been kicked.

Yes, it is a fair comment to make. But it is a crap thinking your going to a match to cheer kn your team, and there are people out there who seem to wish we do badly, because if you prepared to make the arguments you do on here, its fair to say you are likely to be moaning and whingeing at the match too.

I hope you are not sitting anywhere near me because I intend to get behind the team.

And I won't be surprised if we win well or lose, or spend the next week saying we were lucky or bemoaning my fate.

You don't have to love it, but if you are a Watford fan, ffs get behind them, because they will be counting on you.

We are counting on you.

 

People can support the club any which way they like. There's a difference between expressing frustration online and not supporting in person. There are always a few outliers but most of the fanbase seem to straddle the cautiously optimistic/slightly worried divide. I find it weird that some people take such exception to people that aren't as positive as they are - perhaps people just see things differently?

Personally, I think this might be the year that injuries catch up with us, and we'll go down - doesn't mean I'll behave any differently at the ground to the last three seasons where I was confident we'd stay up.

 

Yeah. But if you had a reason for deciding the injuries are going to catch up with us, the people who criticise your negativity might respect your pessimism more. But seeing as you just decided they would, you appear to be panicking about nothing for the sake of it.

There is a massive difference between reasoned concern and knicker wetting. If you describe yourself as a knicker wetter, which you have effectively done above, you are likely to be marked up as one. Especially with this forums fetish for lady garments.

 

There is a reason for suspecting injuries will catch up with us, namely the fact we have been statistically the worst in terms of player minutes lost over a two season time frame.

Perhaps it is a statistical blip and just plain bad luck and we won’t suffer this year. Perhaps it isn’t and our medical approach to conditioning and injury rehabilitation is incompetent.

Either way it’s obviously a cause for “reasoned concern” and is hardly panicking about nothing for the sake of it.

 

Yes, exactly. You have just shown the difference between reasoned concern and knicker wetting.

SteveLeo, based on the reasonable argument you make above, has illogically decided that we are going down this year. Yet the fact that we survived in the seasons when those stats were recorded, and they have improved, suggests that we are less likely to go down if we are to consider injuries alone as a factor.

If he had concluded that injuries may be a factor that could lead to relegation, fair enough. A reasoned opinion, if a little pessemistic. But no panty soiling.

If he concludes we are going down just because he believes we will because of injuries, without any further explanation, I am afraid there is some wetting of knickers going on.

 

Looking beyond the pure statistics of the last two seasons it’s also true that our players’ recovery rates have been awful for many more years than that. Even when we’ve just had the odd player injured they’ve regularly taken way longer than expected to come back. Players at other clubs seem to make surprise appearances back in the first team only two weeks after an injury which was due to keep them out for three. With ours the time passes and two months have gone without any news, let alone a reappearance.

 

We famously had virtually no injuries in our first season. So has something changed? Or was that just as much of a freak as the past two might have been?

 

Yes, something did change. Whereas in the first season we didn't have many, the other seasons we did. That's the big change.

 

Maybe it's just a case of things evening themselves out over a period of time.
Given a long enough timespan the mean will normally prevail.

 

Oh splendid, I'm now getting lessons in logic from a poster who thought that Amrabat was a £25 million top six player, that Holebas was one of the four best full backs in the league a couple of seasons ago, and that WhoScored ratings were "facts" that could definitively tell you how good players are.

 

Is your name Richard Collinge by any chance?