The thing with Battocchio is that the more he has played the more vunerable he looks. He hasn't got the best ball control but he can turn anyone with ease. He has a keen eye for a good pass and the intelligence is there, it is just that he sometimes takes the selfless route. If it comes to it, being used as an impact sub wouldn't be the worst in the next few games.
Was a bit daft to make 3 extra changes on top of the 3 forced ones, showed a complete lack of respect to Yeovil imo. So 6 changes and no cohesion in the team because of it. Should be 6 points off the playoffs this morning and would of been if the management hadnt got cocky.
Stop kidding yourselves. This squad of players isn't the quality we thought it was/would be, and its shown for 7 months or more. There are some exceptions in Forestieri, Almunia, Angella, Abdi and Anya (the A-team), but the rest of the 'team' are beginning to show themselves up as Udinese Rejects. Harsh but true. I don't care if we play total football or direct football or any other kind of jargon football, so long as we are good at it. We're **** at all of them. We couldn't play tiki-taka football because our squad are inept at passing, and the players are too gutless (Pudil aside) to play lumping tactics. Pointing at 11/15 points is glossing over the performances in the same way we did August-September with Zola. I can't believe by this stage of the season, one where we have not had one solid performance out of the squad, people think all that needs to happen is the squad to 'clicking'. Something needs to change and it's not the manager.
It isn't a case about it clicking now. It is too late for that. It is about accepting what we have, playing it safe and seeing out games without losing and that is winning and drawing. 11 out of 15 points is nothing to be scoffed at in a team in our position. It is these points that get us to look forward rather than having to worry about this season. In my head we're well out of the playoff hunt now, it will be a good surprise if it happens, so the idea for me is working with the team on togetherness and solidity and move towards the foundations of next season. With 15 games left you've got to think in the next few weeks we may see some players recalled from their loan deals, this way we can integrate them into the squad.
The Watford fans that constantly feckin moan about the team's performances, obviously didn't experience watching The 'Orns in the late eighties and nineties.
Another Mr Lizard is totally right in what he writes..every season, even the successful ones, have brought some terrible performances and results. The 1999 promotion season was going nowhere fast until that remarkable Tranmere comeback, and from then on every match became like a cup tie, in that we simply had to keep winning. We saw the finishing line on the horizon, then get closer each week, and we gratefully accepted every 3 points, no matter how it came! Even in Boothroyd's promotion season we had some stinkers..I remember a 6 game winless run that culminated in a 1-4 loss at Burnley. Under Dyche we had some shockers, under Zola we had some shockers on the road..had we not, we'd be a Premier League Club by now! So last night was nothing new in that respect.. So nobody's saying Sannino's the first Head Coach we've ever had to be in charge for a boring, negative, disappointing result. And he certainly won't be the last. What I think adds to the sense of frustration is the expectation we all had for the season. Of course we all have hindsight now, and we know how much the loss of Vydra/Chalobah/Hogg etc has hit us, but we started this season as one of the favourites for promotion, having spent the summer recruiting plenty of players who all came with fairly decent CVs. I don't think we ever had a sense of entitlement, merely a realistic expectation that a side who came 3rd last year and had been busy in the transfer market would have a decent chance of having a really good season. So there's far more expectation around than for the GT promotion side that drew with Bury (which was in it's first season back in the Championship, after all) or the Boothroyd side getting stuffed at Burnley (because he was a new manager and we'd narrowly avoided relegation the season before). I expect a Watford side to try and win a match rather than settle for a draw against the bottom side, and when the Head Coach decided that instead of replacing a tired forward with a different kind of striker for the last few minutes, and instead made a like-for-like swap at left wing-back, I knew my expectations of the evening and his were totally at odds. And that's what I, and think many others, find so frustrating. You won't ever get to the heights if you're not prepared to aim for them first.
Agree with all that you have said there. I do understand the frustration of those that went and I applaud you on a Tuesday night, I'd have been there myself if the game had been a rearranged one. As always with me there is something that I'm going to say that puts everything into reality. This is the thing now. We aren't aiming for anything. The heights of this season are now just getting on with it.
I agree that he ahs the potential to become a good player - you cannot question his fitness and enthusiasm but sometimes that isn't enough, recent games have shown him to be inadequate (at the moment) at passing, control and at times decision making. These are more than 'little flaws' they are the crucial ingredients to being a good player. I will stick with him, but for now, he needs to be out of the team. Why not give Luke a run???
Does anyone think it's possible that, maybe we just didn't play very well last night and there's no more to it than that?
Can I also add to that point. Like someone said before, we're now an average Championship side. Therefore, logic dictates most of our players are average. In which case like Lizard says we didn't play very well. This is what normally occurs with average teams. Sometimes they play ok, sometimes not. Just be pleased we're almost safe from relegation now after this solid mini run we're on.
Last night was our first clean sheet on the road under Sannino. It was also the first away match under him that we have failed to score. It was the first time in 7 league matches we haven't got a goal. We managed to avoid our first losing double of the season, though Yeovil are currently the only side we've played twice who we've failed to score against in either match. Last season, we scored against 22 of our 23 league opponents, Millwall being our only double blank. Ranegie last night became our 33rd different player of the season, and the 13th to play for us this season who has a full international cap.
Why should that be? A play off place, however remote, is something to play for. What is the advantage to be gained from playing for a draw? From a purely commercial point of view, if you don't want all those want all those new STs to melt away, you need to give them some entertainment or some aspiration.
A bad night, albeit with a luckily earned point..it's good the games are coming thick and fast at the moment..just 3 days and we get a chance to put things right..hopefully a few lessons can be learnt from last night and taken into the weekend game.
very well put.....a point was, well, pointless last night......we could have won easily with more ambition
As opposed to the "air of inevitability" during Zola's last couple of months....the inevitability we would lose and not score either. Yes, Sannino is currently employing a primarily functional approach, but there are so many variables we do not know. If the suggestion that the squad is woefully unfit is true, then that is something that cannot be sorted properly during the season, and may have a significant impact upon Sannino's plans to improve our transitional & attacking play. He took over a squad plummeting towards relegation, confidence shot, apparently unfit within Championship context, and so probably incapable of fully implementing his style of play. To lambast him for delivering the sort of solid, relegation-avoiding results we were desperate for, because "he's SO not 2012-3 Zola" is missing the point. Whether he can deliver a more entertaining AND solid style of play after a close season that he can control is, I accept, another question. But maybe he deserves the chance.
The only surprise about last night is that we didn't lose.. We always struggle against sides fighting to avoid relegation. Zola was an unusual Italian manager - we know how they generally set up. Although not sure time-wasting etc from the "55th minute" is going to do us any favours...
I cannot fault Batty's enthusiasm, but it would probably had been better if he had gone out on loan IMO!
