Their behaviour at Vicarage Road was disgraceful and they got to the referee. I remember there being a bog standard foul given against them in the first half and about five or six of their players charged at the ref who had to walk about ten paces backwards to deal with situation. It looked like it had been pre-planned and although Bradley Johnson got booked, the ref never recovered and it was no surprise when he gave the penalty. Just looked back at the BBC report of the game and found that incident occurred in the 37th minute. Before they harangued the ref, he'd given 8 fouls against them and only 3 against us. After that he only gave 4 further fouls against them but 11 against us!
It's a testament to Graham Taylor that he managed to get us to the premier league with those 2 up front.
Looks a bit like the shops by Moor Park station & also Chorleywood village. Are you saying Narrrch is actually quite nice?
'Spam,spam,spam,spam..' In which case I shall be taunting her with the vegetable pie option from the food outlet in The Rookery!
I can tell you that this is the A1067/A1024 roundabout, and this photo has actually been taken from a Lidl carpark.
Gomes Nyom Cathcart Britos Ake Capoue Behrami Guediora Deeney Abdi Ighalo That team would be hard to beat....
That whole team was garbage. One of the most incredible achievements of all time getting them promoted. Nick Wright, alon hazan...absolute dung.
That would be my choice but you know it will be watson in for behrami. If gued doesnt start then he is fully allowed to throw a hissy fit imo. He can do no more than what he's done.
I think Watson should start. I feel we really benefit form his set piece deliveries, someone will get their head on one eventually.
Yeah I wont be too upset if he plays. But I just want as few players as possible in the team who played against norwich last time at home. It's not inconceivable that there could be 7. Or even 8 if he played paredes and anya (though that is not likely). Hopefully it's just the 6 you listed.
You make it sound like we just played them on FIFA, lost and are restarting the console to play them again! As said previously, the variables could not be more different.
I'd rather Guedioura over Watson for sure. I would love to see Abdi get a game in the centre (it won't happen of course). I judge this 100% on this video, just because I was watching it at the time, so he probably wouldn't be QUITE as effective. [video=youtube;1JcH8sVoB78]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JcH8sVoB78[/video] What a player. Doesn't look quite so mobile these days.
Tiny nitpick but Smart scored against Sheff Wed, Spurs and Everton in that order. As an indication of just how bad that season was, the Sheff Wed and Spurs games (along with Derby) were the ONLY games where we managed to put an unbeaten run together at home. Getting that mini-run of results against Sheff Wed and Spurs (1-0 and 1-1) after such a miserable run of mostly defeats and even scoring 2 goals away for the first time that season at Everton felt almost like getting back into the play-offs the previous season, never mind the quality of football! And those who say that GT getting a team promoted into the Premiership with such ordinary players was nothing short of a miracle, yes it was, but it was also indicative of quite a different era of football even back then. If we were to drop into League 1 say, just before the Pozzos arrived and rescued us, even if we bounced back as quickly as we did in 1998, repeating what we did the following season would be nigh on impossible. Just narrowly avoiding relegation in the Championship a la Barnsley would probably have been the best we could have hoped for, look at how poorly last season's League 1 promoted teams are doing as a case in point.
What about Leicester, Norwich, Southampton and so on who did similar things in recent years? Every team is different, there is no set rule for how well a promoted team will do.
Yeah but they're all bigger clubs than us and the clubs that have just come up from League 1. No set rule of course, but there is a discernible pattern. The smaller clubs (mostly those who've never played in the top flight or not for a very long time) are finding it increasingly hard to survive in the Championship these days for more than one season, and practically every season there's at least one big ex-PL team going down, with Bolton looking likely to be the next. I certainly agree with those who say that the Championship is becoming much like the old Division One.
Thanks to Sky we aren't a small club anymore, not even close. Gate receipts will now have much less impact than before and being clever in the market much more.
In fairness we haven't been a small club since around 1997, if not earlier. 37 years and counting with just two seasons below the top two tiers should firmly establish ourselves as among the middleweights, if nothing else. Charming and amusing though this tag of "little ol' Watford" may be at times in establishing our underdog mentality, for me it's wearing a little thin.
Think last nights league cup games underlined how well we've progressed this year. The premier league teams that we are competing with and, in some cases beating, swept aside 3 of the stronger championship teams with some ease.
Can someone in the know fill us in on how crucial the first goal will be against Norwich ? To me feels like it could be quite crucial but not extremely crucial
And Champ newcomers Preston swept the mighty Watford aside in the same competition, also with some ease.
