We were good. Stoke were woeful. I was in the ground early and at about 11:10 there was a commotion in the home section to our right, which turned out to be two sets of stewards having a full on scrap with each other which was quite a strange to witness.
I still want Gino out. A decent owner would change manager after each game, thus ensuring a new manager bounce each time. He's far too soft.
As seen on their forum We literally have no defence. No midfield and No Front line. No plan. No clue. No heart. And now, no fans in the Stadium. Awful day for everyone connected Stoke City.
Just seen the $ky fifteen minute highlights. Very clever sorcery from Kamara,Mavis took his goal well and Tapestry does get into some good positions. "Nice" as Donald F would say!
In 10 games he played a back 3 8 times (could be wrong, I think it was 8). He was married to a back 3. He was clueless playing a back 4 because he barely played it at FGR, if at all. When you’re forcing the best LB/LWB in the league to play RWB, you’re married to a system. Even if he had Louza from the off, I don’t think we would be that much better off. His tactics were atrocious. The players had no fight or belief in his system. His substitutions were just as horrendous as Hodgson. His game management was seriously exposed every game. He didn’t know how to change a game at all and swing momentum our way. Louza wouldn’t make up for all of that.
Bedwetters bemoaning we won. They’re really depressed. Congratulations to Mrs tache! Hope she’s as elated as the COGS on here (and isn’t too sore tomorrow).
Really? We were having exactly the same issues today as we had under Edwards until Louza came on. All of a sudden we had someone showing for the ball, someone with a first touch, someone with composure on the ball, someone with passing ability. He made us look twice the team today, it's perfect fair to assume he'd have made Edwards' team look twice as good as well.
It's very hard to make substitutions that positively impact a game when you have such pitiful options on the bench! We'll never know how things would have panned out, but right now, he's in the club with big Vlad Ivic of Watford managers who were missing that oh so vital midfielder and full/wing-back for the entirety of their spell, I can only hope Bilic proves to be as successful in the Championship as Xisco
Stoke are ****, but there was a 30-odd minute spell either side of half-time where they were having plenty of joy and we weren't creating much at all, until Louza came on, it was a fairly even game. Granted, I wasn't as worried as I would have been in Edwards' 11 games in charge as we did have a genuine game-changing option from the midfield to come on, but it certainly wasn't a classic performance until then!
luke on Twitter: "Watford created 7 big chances vs Stoke today. 6 of them came when Imran Louza was subbed on in the 60th minute https://t.co/zvcXfp1pgD" / Twitter
It's clear to me we have a side capable of getting promoted. We now have a coach who will put players in their correct positions and play a formation that will get the best out of them. Rob Edwards should never have been part of the equation this season, and that's all on the board. It wasn't his fault he was offered the job. Maybe he shouldn't have accepted it, but an ambitious coach will always want the job. Are we perfect? No, of course not, but we have enough to win the quota of games required to get promoted. We are 6 points off 2nd place and have to play Norwich twice. I expect us to go on a winning run now. I see people are trying to say how bad Stoke are, but their recent results suggest otherwise. They won at Blackburn and had a big win at Hull, drew at QPR and at home to Swansea. Their only loss came at Reading. They are a solid mid-table Championship side. We battled with them, held firm when we had to, then took total control as the game wore on. It was a similar performance to those we had during our last promotion campaign. Games seemed easy. The difference from this performance compared to RE was dramatic. Sure we got a lucky break with the first goal, but we could have won by a bigger margin in the end. 7-0 would not have flattered us. Hit the post twice and Louza shot just wide with a great opening. We didn't command a single match under Edwards. Bilic has come in and quickly worked out the best formation and where to place the players. We are only going to improve. Of course Davis and Louza make a big difference, and Edwards didn't have Davis for long and never had Louza at all, but we were still under-performing. He wasn't getting enough out of the team. Bilic has shown already the level Watford should have been playing at. We didn't even have our best player today, in Pedro. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. I think things could get very enjoyable from here on in.
I honestly can't believe people are saying that the performance was same as with Edwards before Louza came on. Louza improved us 5x but we were significantly better even before Louza came on. We weren't playing extremely well, but we hit the post twice and scored a goal, while not looking completely clueless going forward. Does anyone really think that Rob would win this match 4-0? My guess would be a scrappy 2-1 win under Rob. It's only the first game, but I'm much more confident that we'll play better football and get more points with Bilic than I was with Rob. Will Edwards be the better manager than Bilic in the future? No one knows. But at the moment, Bilic is ten times the manager Rob is.
Am worried squad will become demotivated after that easy win , might need to replace the manager to keep the momentum going .
A game of 2 halves today I thought. First half wasnt great and no improvement on previous games in fairness. Our passing and ball retention at times was atrocious and the half was actually quite dull for large spells as both sides contrived to needlessly give away possession. Having said that I thought we were the better side and probably just about did enough to deserve the lead even if we got lucky with the offside not being given. Sarr should have added a second and though Sema also hit the post his chance was more difficult as given the angle you would have thought the goalie would have had it comfortably covered. Second half was alot better after another slow start by us. Louza made a huge difference and unlike young Asprilla he doesnt struggle with the physicality of the English game. Once the second went in Stoke fell apart and far too many of their players simply gave up. We got another two and both Louza & Sierialta missed chances they should have scored for what was a comfortable victory in the end. It was a strange game in a way, because we didnt play well for large parts of it and I can see why a previous poster thought the scoreline flattered as it was as much Stoke collapsing as anything yet with more composed finishing we would have scored 6 or 7. Good first game for Bilic against the weakest team we've played in the league so far, infact I think its the first team we've played who hasnt either been in the top 7 on the day we've played them or been heavy preseason favourites for a top 6 finish. Thought Gasper had a better game and good to see Hungbo get more of a run out. The substitutions generally werent good granted, but embarrassing performances? Thats somewhat revisionist to say the least. We had one genuinely bad performance which was Blackburn away otherwise the performances werent too dissimilar to today for large parts except against better opposition. I would agree that 4-2-3-1 is the best formation for the players we have and not the 4-3-3 that so many in our fan base have been calling for. Atleast until the end of this season when four of those players go back to their parent clubs, irrespective of which league we're in, and we replace them with another bunch of over paid aging mercenaries seeing out their careers on free transfers as the debt lingering over the club will leave us with an insufficient transfer budget which will only be leached off on Mogi signings anyway.
Having visited Stoke on several occasions I can well believe that most days are awful days for people living there.
Significantly better? What games have you been watching this season? For twenty minutes we were totally incapable of stringing two passes together before giving the ball away. Thankfully Stoke were just as bad and kept giving the ball back to us. Louza made a huge difference when he came on. Composed on the ball which he was always looking to get on, linking play, often kept it simple rather than trying to do something flash and unlike Asprilla wasnt knocked over by a gentle breeze. We might have hit the post twice but that first half wasnt great in fairness. Second half much improved.
The win was good but I don't think that we played particularly well. The difference was in attitude. There seemed to be a belief that we would win, which is something that we haven't shown all season till now. If we were a goal up in the first ten games we seemed to want to protect the lead at all costs. Yesterday we wanted to score again. The skill levels seemed to be firmly Championship standard, with too many poor passes. When we stop passing to the opposition we really will be a good side. At present I'm not sure I want promotion because even a poor EPL team would hammer us. Having said that there seemed to be a better understanding between players than we have seen all season. Kamara and Sema worked well together. Even Gaspar looked as if he had been introduced to the rest of the team. As others have said, it is too early to get excited but if we can win the next two games the confidence boost will be enormous. In the post match interview Davis seemed to hint that whilst the players feel sorry for RE, they believe in Bilic.
We will never get our club back even if Gino leaves. Those days are long gone. Gino will leave at some stage and the club will then be owned by some American or Latvian or whatever who will probably not be able to find Watford on a map even after they have bought the club.
Bachman, Gaspar, Sierralta, Hause, Kamara; Choudhury, Louza; Sema, Pedro, Sarr; Davis. If we can get that 11 out more often than not, HMSPTL resumes!!!
I've watched every game bar one (think it was Preston that I missed). As I said, we didn't play extremelly well, but it was still better than any performance so far this season. I see you posted few posts above that apart from Blackburn we didn't have embarrassing performances. There have been plenty of embarrassing performances. Best example is WBA. WBA was pretty much as bad as Blackburn. I am still baffled how we got a point there, as in some moment we looked even worse than against Blackburn. In almost every win we had so far, if we drew instead of winning, it wouldn't have been unfair. Against Stoke, we were the better team in both halves. We deserved our lead in the firsf half, and we deserved to trash them in the second. I liked Edwards, he seemed like a very nice guy, but for whatever reason, it wasn't working. Again, do you really think we would have won this game 4-0 with Edwards in charge?
