This is my reading of the situation as well. With the game being so close to the emotion of winning the league, it could actually play in our favour. Chelsea also have Sunderland at home on the following Sunday to have their party. The Watford match could be seen as an unnecessary inconvenience to them. For this reason, there is a miniscule chance we might even get a positive result!!
Just been reading an Everton forum. They seemed to like our attitude. They were more positive about us than most of the ****s on here anyway. Here's a selection: Watford's attitude was spot on all game. Some proper needle out there, especially between Williams and that big Irish-Brazilian loonball centre forward Okaka. Good to see in mid may. Deeney was awful. at least that Okaka made some sort of an impact I liked that Janmaat as a footballer. I might be alone in this, but I was really impressed by them. Their attitude anyway, if not necessarily their skill level. I could watch that big cvnt up front all day! So was I. Game plan absolutely perfect for their current limitations. Some good players too. If there were a few more goals in them they'd have kicked a few arses this season. I won't even get started on their pace compared to ours Yeah they had loads of attitude but not ability, other way round for Everton. Not sure how or why Koeman has allowed these performances the last 5/6 weeks. Utterly grim
Malts and Halfwayline - my very best wishes to you and your families at such a tough time. I hope both of your loved ones win their fights and have a speedy recovery.
On the football I can't comment about last nights game. For the first time in all of my years following the Orns going back to 1981 I've lost my appetite for watching them and didn't bother last night. I looked at the team sheet before the game and saw that Wally had set us up for a nil nil with no width and couldn't face watching the same old game plan.
Are you suggesting that this is the least entertaining Watford have ever been since 1981? What an extraordinarily ridiculous thing to say. The second half of last season was worse for a start. Let alone the truly grim parts of the 90s. Get a grip
I thought there was plenty of effort last night but as all season there is an obvious lack of quality We don't currently have (because of injuries or recruitment policy or both) players able to break a decent defence down Deeney and Okaka lumber around and push and shove and give it some beans but neither of them is skilful, creative, has pace, or is a natural finisher We are a bottom half team and it really shouldn't be a surprise we're in the bottom half Hey ho...
I'm amused at you have the enviable position that your opinion is the only valid one. You might want to remember that as you get a grip as well.
QSF was boring. But he was not 'six away defeats in a row without remotely looking like scoring' boring.
I didn't watch it, but what's annoyed me is that we needed a goal and Mazzarri puts on Amrabat, who I'm a big fan of but has been very poor since injury, over Niang. What on Earth was he thinking!?
I don't know if it's the manager, some of the players or my general apathy towards the Premier League these days but I saw the scoreline and realised I don't care anymore.
He was worse. Exact same players, exact same system, exact same results. It was so awful it caused me physical pain to watch it. It's grim at the moment, but to suggest it's the worst it's been since 1981 is laughable.
It was inevitable we would lose and would not score. If Mazzari stays we will get relegated as we are toothless and piss poor.
Is it possibly because the season is over? I've felt the same before as Championship seasons petered out into nothingness.
To be honest amrabat was decent when he came on, we were definitely better because of that substitution.
Supporting a lower PL club does take getting used to, and I'm not certain I have yet. Or others on here (not meant critically). Back in our better Championship days, promotion was the target, or at least making the play-offs. The matches came thick and fast, and there was always something to attain to. I rate the last few weeks of our last promotion season (the 4 horse race) as among the best weeks of my WFC supporting life. Even in lesser seasons you always clung to the hope of a late burst to make the play-offs, as we did in 1999. So then the holy grail is achieved. Up you go. And the fixtures being released day is so exciting. Old Trafford. Emirates. Anfield etc. And then that great feeling we got last season around October time when we realised we belonged at this level and wouldn't embarrass ourselves. Staying up was great. Target achieved. And so begins the second season. You know you ain't going to win it but you hope to firstly stay up and then to come as high up as possible. But a battle to come 12th v 13th v 14th or whatever is no way as exciting as a battle to go up or win the play-offs. I think most of us are feeling frustrated lately because we aren't playing as well as we think we can, we aren't scoring and we dislike Mazzarri and some of the players. But I think as well it's still important to remember that actually plodding through the last few weeks of a PL season (when we wrongly perceived ourselves as being safe) is never going to be as great as a promotion run-in. This is a downside of the level we are currently at. We get the big clubs to take on, we get better crowds, we get more coverage and kudos, but equally we miss that feeling of every game really really mattering. Takes some getting used to eh.
All these people don't care and have lost connection with the team. It's great news for me. Should be no end of free seats next season. Maybe I'll be able to sit with my feet up in splendid isolation in the middle of dozens of empty seats in the lower shrodells again, like the old days. We knew before we came up that the Prem was like this. It's the price we pay. We had a debate about it on here as I remember. Money has a ruinous corrupting influence on everything it touches.
Nail on head there Clive. This is the reality of being a mid table prem team. There is nothing to play for, unless you get pulled into a relegation battle. Going to games is far more fun in The Championship but being in the prem is better for your armchairs asthere is more coverage of your team...albeit ill thought, stereotypical MOTD cliches. In the Championship you can have an average season and still be in with a chance of play offs come Feb/March.
Amrabat was pretty good and we should have done better with his crosses. Niang, I'm afraid, was crap.
Malteser has hit the nail on the head, in the championship you are always striving to get in the land of Honey (P.L.) as that is the place to be! However once you are in the Premiership and you have obtained (or stumbled to) 40 points the players seem to think " Job Done " as they know they have cemented the clubs place for next season! Us supporters want more goals and results but the players have achieved theirs! strange really because the place money is huge (roughly a million a place) but the Manager and players don't seem too concerned about that! Other teams ie Stoke, West Brom and Southampton also seem to stumble once they have hit safety we are not alone, plus don't forget our end of season results are pretty tough anyway (which I believe has done us a favour) by allowing us to get in this position anyway!
Exactly! This season might have lacked some of the excitement we have grown used to since the Pozzos arrived, but it has been nowhere near as turgid as others in the fairly recent past. 1990/91 - the ‘Lee/Perryman/Petchey/Herald & Post season’ - stands out for me as being worse than anything before it or since for its relentless tedium. I'm sure others have their own favourites
I just watched the replay of the game. For the Barkley goal, the ball comes forward from the keeper. Deeney and Okaka are rightly the farthest forward. Then, while the keeper still has the ball and is about to launch it forward Etienne Capoue, for a reason only he and God knows, runs forward to, what, press? close the space? tackle the keeper? He leaves a huge chasm behind him and the ball goes to the man behind him, Barkley, who runs forward with no midfielder near him (hello, Etienne?) doesn't get closed and scores. Not the first time this season Capoue does something bizarre and has a token attitude to defending. He is a bloody liability.
Behrami compounds it too as he appears to be going back to plug the hole in the defence he expects Prodl to open up by going to challenge Barkley. When that didn't happen it literally left their man completely unchallenged.
I can understand a teenager making a comment like that, but that fellow has been watching us since the 80s! I would say though, this is the first game I've watched on my laptop in a long long time - and sober too - and it is a much much more miserable experience than watching us live, so all the over the top moaning and underpants wetting from the armchairs on here is a bit understandable I suppose.
Agreed, watching on a laptop definitely makes it more depressing. I quite enjoyed yesterday, but being in the second row I had no idea what was going on positioning or formation wise, so couldn't get angry at anybody for slacking! In fact I pretty much had a terrible view of everything, except the ******* sticking his middle finger up at the players at FT, who Deeney decided to go and say hello to.
I realise that I seem to be in the minority, and I am not suggesting I am "right" nor that others are wrong. But ever since I first started playing football, whether on the field outside my house, in the school playground, the local Saturday or Sunday leagues, or when I played in the Isthmian League, I always tried 100% to win and I cant ever contemplate doing anything less. (Ok, I sometimes let my little boy beat me a few times in the garden). How can these players think they have nothing to play for? They have higher positions in the League to play for and, until mathematically unlikely, a European spot. Then, not least, they have a future contract to play for and potential lucrative moves elsewhere. Then, of course, they have their pride. I can understand the money men involved in a club merely being concerned with survival, but not the players. On the pitch, nothing less than 100% is good enough and the fans should not be content with anything less, and certainly not on a regular basis. And the fans? Where's our pride? Should we be proud that we seem content to finish 17th - the best of the worst? Not me, I want us to be battling for the best of the rest position (outside the top 6). I cringe watching ourselves live on Sky or on MOTD sometimes when I know that just about every football lover will be watching how we play football and thinking "Wow, that is just so awful, so inept, terrible discipline and thoroughly unlikable," because, for those that don't have the opportunity at work to discuss with other fans - that is what they are thinking. I admit I often enjoyed the matchday experience more in the past, but that is because the periods that stand out for me were the GT years when we were generally putting in 100% effort and our Manager was getting the best out of the players he had. A battling loss against better opposition still excited me and left me with a sense of pride. There is nothing to be ashamed of in losing a game or finishing low down the table, if we did out best. Continuing poor efforts against lesser sides just annoy and embarrass me. The bad years, like some of those mentioned in earlier posts above, are just forgotten.
Anyone who thinks Walter should stay at the club must need their heads testing. Thankfully the number of people defending him is regressing... He is stubborn. He also has a higher opinion of this squad than anyone else. He blames injuries but our injury 'crisis' was over long ago. And a good squad copes with injuries. He isn't learning the language at a required age and says he doesn't want to say things in English and get misquoted - he says the same thing every week so little chance of that! I can't get my head around fans who see 'what Walt is trying to do' etc etc. He's had two windows to build a squad that's up to it and he's failed, injuries or not. We need to ship out a few prima-donna's but make no mistake, Mazzarri needs his P45 before we enter the transfer market.
I don't like Jamie Carragher but he said it best when he said 'Watford are safe. But I've seen them play a few times and I've no idea how.'
Also, I find it futile how people still judge how many games you go to as a barometer for how much your opinion should count. We all support the club so we all have an opinion. Calling other fans 'armchairs' is the act of someone that can't make an eloquent argument for their own opinion in my eyes.