How comes the attendance was 57,000 today, surely they must give away half the tickets to fill their athletics stadium?
Unlike some others I thought it was an impressive win today. Spam are on run and two of their forward players cost £77m on their own. Yes, they had two great chances, but we had equally good chances and fluffed them. Capoue was excellent. Deeney scored a great pen, but I thought he was poor apart from that - two great chances missed, and precious little else, Sema too, he look like he can do stuff, but normally fails. He also seems so awkward on the right as he is so left footed. Good cross to set up Doucoure, though. But I think he could have been subbed earlier. I would have preferred Quina and Success to start. We'll probably be 7th tomorrow, and I still think we can get a lot better all over the park. Chelsea is an intriguing match, I think we'll win. Merry Christmas everyone!
Agreed. I thought we had more than enough about us to win the game and Fozzie did what he was paid to do.
Just read the Spam forum, most are fairly accepting of the defeat. Said we deserved the win and that we out-muscled them. Some blamed the ref and Tony Gale's commentary for losing!! This is a quote, which I think is fairly standard across supporters and media of their view of us. "i just have a hatred if Watford , just a nothing team who always seem to roll us" We are an annoyance in the Premier League. Everyone feels they should beat us, but frustratingly we are not as sh*t as their pre-match prejudice tells them we are. This goes for pundits as well. For some reason, Lawro has quite a liking for us this season. I think we've worn him down. Merson is still defiantly defending his corner. Thought we'd lose 3-1. He's gone to hospital this evening though, so spare a thought for him. He's having breathing problems as the egg of his face is suffocating and needs emergency attention. I wish him well at this difficult time.
There's a lot of ego on this forum, but you two are the first forumites to bring home three lovely premier league points. Merry Christmas to you both
This. You could clearly see on one of the replays on the stream that a plastic bottle was thrown. It seemed to come from quite far back in the stand as it didnt really get anywhere near any of the players.
Good to see Cleverley back. Two good late substitution appearances that added a bit of steel when we needed it. We do have an embarrassment of riches in midfield at the moment! Happy hornet Christmas everyone.
3 points always make me happy - 3 at WetSpam extra happy - 3 just before Christmas extra extra happy - and I could add lots more because today I am .......... happy
Today we be benefited from the reverse of what saw us lose against Newcastle. We’d beaten them so many times in a row it wasn’t inevitable. Whereas West Ham winning 5 in a row was equally unlikely as it rarely happens outside the top 4.
Watched it on a stream today and there were a few things thrown at Deeney. West Ham fans were trying to wind him up before the penalty and he simply gave it back. They've never been good at that down at the athletics park.
To be fair the ref didnt help himslef with the counting to ten yards thing. The first half free kick (for a kabasele foul on the edge of the box) was setup and the west ham players started crying about the wall. The ref seemed to say "get on with it" but they carried on crying about it. Mason then spray paints the ball, walks 8 paces to the wall and sprays a line across the watford players feet. I think he didnt want the west ham players to control what his decisions were so just did the line as a statement that the wall was in the right place. That would have wound me up a bit if i were a west ham fan. The west ham fans counted him out to ten for the next one. Overall he was a bit fussy and gave a number of free kicks that both aides could argue about but thought he was fair.
I'm pretty sure top level officials are taught to know how many strides it takes them to pace 10yds, not to do 10 paces for 10yds.
Dropping Quina for Capoue made sense in the end. It was a real physical battle in midfield and Capoue did so much defensive work that Doucoure/Quina can't do. And I think playing all three of them would have left Kiko exposed - for all of King Ken's struggles in the final third (not entirely his fault), he really did put a lot of work in going forwards and backwards. Overall Javi got it pretty much spot on today. Speaking of Sema, it's easy to forget that today was only his third Premier League start, and it's also easy to forget the massive step up he's made from Swedish football. He will improve if given time.
Decent fan view highlights of the game if anyone is interested. Was nice of him showing our limbs in the away end after Delboys goal.
I think he realised that it wasn't actually a foul nor a yellow card. There was no way Kabasele could have seen or avoided a player that ran across his line All in all we battled hard, probably didn't deserve more than a draw at times and wasted three glorious chances to put the game to bed. For someone who is meant to be quick, Sema doesn't half slow us down playing on the right. A wins a win and 3 points away are always welcome, but like Everton we have played better and lost, so you can't be too unhappy It also means that anything we get against Chelsea is a bonus.
Here's a more predictable stat from the BBC. Watford are second from last on MotD. Only a dull 0-0 draw prevented them from being last.
At the final whistle today, there were 3 players on the field that were playing for Watford when Doyley scored against QPR in 2009. Can you name them?
