Just seen MOTD. Shocking decision to disallow Southampton’s 2nd. We dodged one the there. Reminds a bit of the Reading ghost goal. Having said that if we had got the penalty(most obvious this season) you never know - if we had scored with 15mins to go against 10 men we could have got 3 Bring in VAR - as poor a ref performance as I have seen
Yeah but as many on here have noted, if we had VAR, we wouldn't be debating the decision at the pub afterwards.
Considering the lack of midfield options available today, it's bizarre how Quina wasn't selected to be on the bench. What does this kid have to do to get selected, score a scissor kick from the halfway line?
Ha agreed. Don't get me wrong, I'm no advocate... Yet. While goal line tech has definitely improved the game, I'm yet to be convinced about VAR myself. And if I can't hate the ref for ruining my weekend I'd have to be cheerful, and me being cheerful would definitely unsettle the wife and make her suspicious!
Bad game. The weather ruined our possession play and both sides scored scrappy goals due to the slippery surface. Chabs was rusty. Hughes was even worse, with no excuse. The referee was awful. The most ridiculous thing he did was book Femenia when Deulofeu and Redmond clashed. Bizarre. Charlie Austin is hilarious. His post match interview is taking the piss, surely? He sounds like the most cockney man you'll ever meet on helium, imitating a brainless rant. Are we definitely sure that he's being serious? If so, I'd happily trade a penalty and second yellow, for the disallowed goal. Not that they'd probably have scored their disallowed goal with 10 men. Overall, despite playing very poorly, we were the stronger team in the match and I'll begrudgingly take a point. Southampton have a massive fight to stay in this league, irrelevant of decisions. They're a poor side lacking in quality.
You obviously interpretted that show very differently to me! Here's a link to the audio for anybody interested, Watford discussion is from 20:00 to 30:00 https://stitcher.acast.com/livestit...mzwvZ2gBfw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXAFARUOTJQ3BLOQ I thought it was mostly praise, although with a few standard inaccuracies: managers not lasting more than 6 months, implication that the loan thing was recent. The 'just Watford' parts, I assume, were: 'they've lost a few games, they're Watford...' (we have, we are) when talking about how good our form has been, and then 'it's Watford, no offence... they're punching above their weight' which we are. Wasn't there a stat recently that showed we had 3rd or 4th lowest wage bill last season? Maybe others see it the same as you, but I didn't.
Even stranger was that Wilmot, who WAS on the bench and is considered a midfielder by Javi, did not come on when all of the midfielders were having an off day. Either he’s good enough and ready to be in the first team or he’s not - which is it?
You are absolutely right, Scummybear, it wasn't a negative discussion on Watford at all. For a start, I dont think Danny Murphy said "only Watford" once, and Cates wasn't picking him up on it, merely asking what Murphy meant when he said "it's Watford" suggested that Watford are not likely to become a top six side. I think HornetBoy1 was either making it up, or we have our wire crossed and he was watching a different program.
After seeing the MotD highlights, Gray’s chance at the end was quite a chance, had it been Deeney in that same position you just wonder. Saying that had we actually scored that and won, imagine Austin’s rant then...
Basically having watched our performance yesterday, I'd say we deserve to be in fashion as much as acid house t-shirts, dungarees and chippy jackets
He's just much more of a class gentleman than Hughes, Dyche, Howe etc. Who'd have been like pitbulls with a baby over that penalty incident in all interviews
Just watched it on Motd. The Soton goal was correctly disallowed. The Soton player was clearly in Foster 's eyeline. Watch his movement as he goes to save. He pauses as he moves across as he has to wait to see if the Soton player will redirect the ball. If the player isn't there, he doesn't pause and saves it easily.
I suspect Mariappa is there as a vice captain whenever Deeney isn't starting. Mapps was pulling players away from the ref and leading by example in defence, but the tipping point in the game came when Deeney began to lead from the front and gave us some traction in that final third. Interesting selection choices for Javi now, because we've had this pattern a couple of times, play a certain set of personnel, in a certain formation for a couple of games and then need to change. It's a long season with a diverse division so there's no one size fits all approach to every game unless you're Liverpool or City. Javi has a few different options in how we set up each game and he needs to be more proactive about it, rather than waiting until we get beaten or found out by a well prepared opponent before shuffling. Would Deeney and Gray have been a better starting option than Delly and Success? Was our back 4 the right choice? Chalobah needed to come off after 60 minutes. Glad that he's got minutes in his legs, but he was off the pace. He's going to be a very important player for us, but I hope playing badly when unfit doesn't harm his confidence.
As others have said, the Southampton goal should have stood under the existing offside rules, speaking of which I think it's time for a radical overhaul of the offside rules, but that is for another debate. Getting back to the game, although their goal should have stood, it has to be said that had the ref not made such a horlicks of the Chalobah penalty incident, their disallowed goal would probably never had been scored in the first place. The reason being that the games momentum would probably have been with us, because even had we not scored from the penalty their player would most likely have been sent off reducing them to 10 men. So all in all I think we were probably the side most let down by the refereeing decisions not Southampton!!!
It’s highly likely that Southampton’s goal would not have happened if the penalty was given and Bertrand had been sent off.
Controversies aside, draw was a fair result. Missed Caps in midfield yesterday. Credit to Ben Foster, one of the clubs best acquisitions last summer. This is Watford, so I expect there is a fair chance we will beat Liverpool in a couple of weeks. I still can't work out why the club are seemingly holding back on JG's contract?
Thank god someone on this thread is prepared to stand up and say the things others won't dare to say.
No...actually you're wrong. I am pleased because he was bad for both sides. This shows a consistency. Usually, the bad decisions only go one way towards us. At least there was an even balanced about it. Had it been Moss, Oliver, Mason, Taylor or Probert yesterday we would not have been given the penalty or red card, but their goal would have stood, most likely.
Reasonable point. We should have had the penalty That goal shouldn’t have been disallowed. We just about shaded the match, just. Fair result Lots of single points mean staying up in this division and once again there appear to be about 6-7 worse teams than us. Can we stop predicting easy wins. And smashing teams by several goals. It might happen at some point but predicting it against prem opposition isn’t a great idea and I think jinxes us
That's odd, because your post seemed definitive: "HT and paid too much for a soggy burger and can of coke"
I know what I saw and heard. Murphy had a patronising tone and Cates did pull him up on it. I'm not going to debate exact wording, as I did this from memory, but he kept saying "it's Watford". It's not what he said, more the way he said it. Maybe I'm missing the point with the English, but to me that sounded disrespectful and patronising.
The weather conditions and Southampton's high energy performance (for an hour) made it a tough game. With lots of sloppy passing, we weren't at our best but showed great character to keep going and earn a point and could have won it late on. Fair result
Yes, but Austin was close to the Soton incident and personally involved, whereas he wouldn't have had as good a view of the Chalobah incident as we did. Even supporters find it easier to moan about decisions that go against their team and ignore wrong decisions in their favour, so it's excusable that a player who hadn't scored for yonks and whose team is fighting relegation should do the same
I predict if we play the same against Liverpool there will be an easy win and a smashing of Watford by several goals.
Charlie Austin interviewed after the game on MOTD, what a complete and utter tool. Austin you’re a *****!
And yet the pundits were all only interested in Austin's disallowed goal and not the serving receptacles of soft drinks in the stadium
Very good point. Still, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, which I eagerly await reading. Because this really does seem like the most peculiar thing to lie about.
