BBC2s Premier League Show

We're trendsetters in that we're one of the very few clubs in English football who use this kind of model, but we're not the first. Southampton have had this model for a little longer than us, which is why they never seem to bothered when Adkins/Pocchetino/Koeman/Puel/Pellegrino came in as their infrastructure was already there. In actual fact, the majority of Prem clubs don't even use the "traditional English" model of running a club as they normally do something in between that and what us & Soton do. To the eyes of the uneducated/lazy/ignorant, it's a system that they don't understand and is one that will "inevitably fail". It doesn't matter what success we'll have in the next few years (if we do), we'll always have the labels of "we're unstable", "it will crumble eventually and I feel for the fans cos of these foreign owners..." and "x managers in y years".

 

And that's what annoys me. Southampton held up as ab example to follow , we are the Anti Christ.

 

The 'Liberal Elite', which tends to be left of centre (and which is very much how the Beeb sees itself), is a real phenomenum led by pseudo intellectuals who have knowledge, but subject it to their ego. They tend to have benevolent souls, but utter contempt for the target of that benevolence. Fascists act on the base human drives, utilising the populace to feather their bed, but the liberal elite do things because they believe they know better than the scum beneath them. Doesn't mean they can't do good things.

They made themselves unelectable in the US, and now we have Trump.

I believe the Beeb have a natural bias to the left, but generally have to keep it in check. Anyone to the right of Thatcher is Naturally going to disagree with that

Edit. Sorry. You are right, this is for elsewhere. I'll get me coat.

 

Sky's pundits today did a pretty comprehensive match preview on Southampton then laid into Watford.
Thompson said"Who would want to go there?". Instead of showing anything positive they decided to show the Britos tackle from every angle then Charlie Nicholas said he should be sacked! Stelling then went into how mad it was to loan their best player Amrabat out! They hate us so much. We must be doing well.

 

No, but I bet you play all sorts of tunes on your "flute" most evenings....

 

I'm not sure, it used to be a well worn line from pundits that Southampton 'can't keep selling all their best players and get away with it' but they have and the pundits seem to have given up saying it now.

 

Is Richarlison OK?

 

I went back through the live text update/commentary on Sky Sports website this morning of yesterdays game. Now we all know how well we played yesterday - but reading what they put on there, you can only wonder if they are either getting their information from opposition fans on Twitter, or have employed a scummer to cover our matches. Even when they have no option other than to compliment us, they still manage to put a negative spin on it. Here's a few examples:

Out. Of. Nothing. A high ball up to the edge of the box isn't dealt with by Southampton and the ball breaks to Doucoure twenty yards out. The strike is totally out of keeping with everything we've seen here in terms of quality and it spins off the turf and beyond the dive of Fraser Forster in the Saints goal.

A goal worthy of any match, and probably too good for this one.

You could almost make an argument for that wonder strike from Doucoure being the worst thing that could have happened for this game from an entertainment perspective.

It seems eminently plausible that the Hornets will stick men behind the ball and look to shut the game down in the second 45 now that they have the advantage. No-one's holding their breath for a classic at St Mary's.

A free header for Challobah as a corner is floated in for Watford. Inexplicable how he failed to make contact there, there was no one anywhere near him but he completely failed to get anything on it.

Long is going nowhere in the corner and it's the walking liability Holebas who gives away a needless free kick. A very inviting dead ball for Saints.

Pretty poor considering it's supposed to be a neutral telling of the latest events of the game.

 

Crystal Palace managers since 2010 :

Neil Warnock, Paul Hart, George Burley, Dougie Freedman, Lennie Lawrence/Curtis Fleming, Curtis Fleming, Ian Holloway, Keith Millen, Tony Pulis, Keith Millen, Neil Warnock, Keith Millen, Alan Pardew, Sam Allardyce, Frank de Boer (15), soon to be 16

Watford managers since 2010:

Malay Mackay, Sean Dyche, Gianfranco Zola, Giuseppe Sannino, Óscar García Junyent, Billy Mckinley, Slavic Jokanovi*, Quique Sánchez Flores, Walter Mazzarri, Marco Silva (10)

Therefore Palace are a proper football club run by a proper football man, and we are an unstable mess run by trigger-happy foreigners....

 

It's getting beyond a joke now. I think that generally pundits are employed due to their past playing experience.
This seems to be ex "top six team" players. They obviously don't have much time for the "likes of " Watford, "no disrespect to Watford". If enough muck is thrown some of it sticks. We are portrayed in bad light because we have no one in our corner in the media, even John Barnes has put the boot in in the past. I guess if we weren't winning they wouldn't bother spouting ***** about us so we must be really irritating at the moment.

 

I would advise giving all media a miss.

 

Yup.

 

Of course not! We are the great Satan.

 

Most of these pundits are well past their sell by date. Very few have retired in the last 15 years. They knew nothing about running a football club even back in the day. The football business is changing more rapidly now than it has ever done. Very few have coached and the ones that have include a few failed managers. They carry a boot bag load of prejudice around on their backs, full of stereotypes, clichés and resistance to change. They can't except that their beloved team last dominated the league 2 or 3 decades ago. They have no conception of the pressures young footballers face today, how the speed of the game has increased so much they would have struggled even in their heyday and they are jealous they missed out on all the money in the game. Finally most are of fairly low intellect, see the world in black and white and what is worse many do very little prep for the programmes. Most are intensely pessimistic at the best of times, which grinds us all down. They like to have a scapegoat for the wider media to latch onto and Watford are that creature of choice. They have never rated us and never will. We should not let it bother us.

 

Just remembered that Barnes related a funny story the other night regarding the aftermath to 'The World in Motion' single prior to the World Cup in 1990. Apparently the England players could either have future royalties for all record sales or share a one off payment of two and a half thousand pounds between 25 players. One or two of the brighter ones posed the question 'If no records are sold would we still get royalties?' When the answer came back in the negative they chose the immediate cash payment. As we now know the record was a smash hit. So don't expect most players to automatically become great managers, pundits or anything of the sort.

 

Nice little cameo skill from Chalobah on 2good2bad on MOTD2 last night.

That's twice this season already as Doucore' s skills were also shown on 2good.

And the little piece on Premier League Show on Thursday was quite positive.

Slowly the beeb will come around, and if we keep up this form we may be first on MOTD once this season (but only next March when we play a top 6 ).

It's the individual pundits on TV who are so negative.

 

Om MOTD2 Extra on Sunday morning was our match the only one they didn't discuss? Or did I leave the room at the wrong moment?

 

I genuinely fell asleep during the highlights of Leicester chelsea and woke up in the NFL show. Not sure why I bothered.

 

If the BBC's coverage of us annoys you, the two ******* morons on Bein Sports (Gray and Richard Keys) compared us too 90s Wimbledon and apparently we have no youngsters.

 

Why do our fans cry every time a pundit says something that isn't in line with the Pozzo World View? Who cares? Just enjoy our success.

 

The general public must have a very poor image of Watford FC if they listen the pundits. Its all very well to say "who cares" but I bet you the owners are pretty pissed off with all the negative stuff in the media. All we ask for is an unbiased report or credit where credits due. I don't think that is the case so far this season.
I don't expect pundits who obviously have an axe to grind to suddenly respect Watford FC but their comments cause a lot of damage when there are people working hard to improve the clubs status.

 

To be fair the newspapers tend to be kinder, particularly the Guardian as Simon Burnton is a hornet.

 

Excuse my incoming language and caps lock (and I know I shouldn't care) but

ARE YOU ******* KIDDING ME?

 

The Mirror's longest serving sports writers as well, Mike Walters. At least one more of the senior sports editorial staff too, though I can't remember his name.

 

"It was an outstanding performance. I remember certain people tipped them to get relegated but to go to Southampton and pick up a comfortable victory was very impressive. They have some good players and will be looking to push for a top-10 finish."

Hah HAH Cottee the savage getting the jabs in on our behalf on the ground floor, whichever intern/grad wrote this for him is my new favourite sky pundit who isn't Leventhal.

 

Oh no! Football fans are at best ambivalent to all other clubs other than their own anyway and those within the game know better than to listen to what a bunch of clueless, out of touch ex players think.

 

Where can I post this:

Swansea's home form has been not been great so far - they have lost both their league matches at the Liberty Stadium - but that is something they can put right this weekend.

Watford made an excellent start to the season but they are what I would call a 10-game team, because it is going to take that long to work out what they are about and how good they actually are.

Prediction: 2-1

Well we've got 11 points from 6 games Lawro, do you really need to wait for 10 games until you know what we're about?

 

Quite right. I got used to reporters getting all the facts wrong, but it turns out NONE of them know more than a bloke in a pub even when we're in the Prem. Lazy lazy pundits