Not sure where you got that info from, they have actually only beaten us 8 times to our 11 in all competitions - https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/head_to_head.sd?team_id=2741&team2_id=1524. But otherwise good preview. Our record against them (though impressive against such a massive club) is very mixed, regardless of where the teams have finished - amidst all the big wins have been a fair few games of frustration if not heartbreak. As well as those awful 2-1 home defeats (one which left us on the brink of relegation to League 1, the other in 2013 we all know about), there’s been: Losing 1-0 at home to an early Richard Naylor goal - they’d just come up from L1 and we looked to have a good team that season but we never really looked like getting anything Drawing 2-2 at their place in the same season thanks to one of Troy’s first goals - unfortunately it was an own goal late on after we were leading 2-1, which all but ended our play-off hopes Conceding an injury-time penalty at home in 2011/12 to draw 1-1 after missing a penalty of our own two minutes before injury time Drawing 3-3 at Elland Road in 2013/14 after being 2-0 up, summed up our season So this game could really go either way! Hopefully it will be in a manner that both keeps Xisco’s job and makes our prospects for survival look good.
The only game where we've been relatively error free was the Palace cup match.....and as if by magic, we kept a clean sheet in that match. I would add, McGinn's goal was avoidable because Gosling did not track his run. Unforgivable he didn't bother running as he had only just come on; Masina nearly gave away another penalty straight after the Villa penalty as well; Masina failed to jump for Duffy's goal for Brighton; Bachmann should have come for a routine cross which led to Sierralta's OG; Not only Ngakia culpable for the first Stoke goal, both Kabs and Elliot should have done a lot better. So virtually every goal we've conceded this season has come about directly from a mistake, or a failure to do basic things like closing down or tracking runs. We are so slack it's just crazy. We need to sharpen up, work harder as a unit and do the basics a hell of a lot better, or else we'll give ourselves absolutely no chance of staying up.
You can change the font from the default Georgia using the icon at the top of the message box, sixth from the left. Looks like he’s using Arial or Tahoma.
We moan about our defence now but imagine facing Cantona, Chapman, Strachan, Speed & McAllister with a back 5 of Lavin, Drysdale, Ashby, Dublin and Holdsworth.
We go long we will get completely battered. I would rather we try and play football on the floor. It might no always go well but it will suit the front players.
Five of our goals in that 6-1 win at Elland Road were from outside the box. Surely that can't have happened in any other game?
This was before my time as a fan so for a moment I was thinking that defence couldn’t have been that bad if it contained Dion Dublin! Wonder if he and Keith are related?
I should have done this preview as I truly despise Leeds. Even more than our traditional rivals. I was never happier as a Watford fan than when we were slapping them about in the Championship a few years back. Most clubs have a hateful trait or two but this lot have them all combined in a blender and out sh*ts Leeds. Their moronic support, their laughable ownership over the years, the fact they haven’t won anything since 1992 yet still act like they are a ‘giant’, their crumbling hole of a stadium, the fact they are on TV all the time, the revelling in ‘dirty Leeds’ monicker. And that dirge they sing all the time which couldn’t have been more ironic when they were languishing in League One were they deserve to be. Can’t stand them, I want us to win this one so much. But we won’t. We’re due a tonking and it’s obviously going to be by this lot.
Football is a game of mistakes. There are mistakes in every minute of every match. It could be a case of poor positioning, a misplaced pass, a badly-timed run. Mistake after mistake after mistake through every game that has ever been played. The thing that is critical to the outcome of matches is the severity and timing of those mistakes, followed by the ability to recover from them. No one plays the perfect game and the trend of highlighting mistakes usually only when they lead to a goal or goalscoring chance has led us to think that mistakes are something that can be eradicated from the game. Even Manchester City, further along in the pursuit of the unattainable perfect game than anyone else in the league, make hundreds of mistakes per game. Of course, some mistakes are absolute calamities and they are the ones we remember and notice and think, "Arrgh, if only Sierralta hadn't headed that ball into his own net we might have won."
Home win is the most likely outcome but I feel like we will be a good away side this year with the paciest line up we’ve had in years/ever. Prediction Leeds 3-2 Watford Sierralta (og 90+1, og 90+3, og 90+5); Sarr (23, 45+2)
There are grades of mistake though, in terms of severity, risk and stupidity. Cathcart just allowing a through ball straight past him is both stupid, and extremely risky and likely to result in a goal. Same goes for giving the keeper a hospital back pass. We seem to make a whole lot of stupid, high risk mistakes. By comparison, misplacing a pass in midfield by a yard or so is highly unlikely to have severe consequences.
That's all well and good, however, too many players are making the same mistakes time after time and are not learning from them. This is when it becomes a big issue. Anyone can make a mistake, but it's when these errors are repetitive and become characteristic where the problem lies. A good case in point is Troost-Ekong. He made a horrendous error at Brighton and it directly cost us a goal, but since that time he's hardly put a foot wrong. This tells me he's working hard on his game and is aware of where his mistakes were coming from. I've been impressed with his level of improvement. The same can't be said of others who seem to be doing the same things and getting caught out in the same way to the team's cost.
I like your analysis, but I do wonder how you would be assessing Watford if King had been just onside instead of just offside when he scored on Saturday. That would have put us in the top half of the table, above both Arsenal and Spurs and closer to the top than the relegation places. Small margins and all that!
That's just cruel on Sierralta. Xisco and Gino would have his bags packed for Chile faster than any of us could pass an edible one!
Agree with you both there a19tgg and HB1. I wonder how much we overlook mistakes made by the opposition and attribute our team's successes to our own players' ingenuity instead. Of course, good teams force the opposition to make mistakes in dangerous areas. But you're right, the self-inflicted mistakes are something players have to take responsibility to reduce. I wonder, though, HB1, whether it would indicate that Troost-Ekong had stopped working hard on his game if he makes a mistake in an upcoming game? Or is it just that mistakes are an ever-present part of the game.
As always, you can only comment in this precise moment in time. If WTE plays dreadful on Saturday, then it makes my comment largely redundant, although it's valid for the here and now. Hindsight does have a habit of making liars of us all. On the flip side he may be MotM, so enforces what I'm saying. I tend to look at a collection of games to support the point I'm making. I've not seen anything in his game that has been substandard since that mistake at Brighton. Quite the opposite in fact. I think (right now on Tuesday 28th September at 13:42) he's shown a lot of improvement, even from last season.
I never allow results to cloud my judgement. Had King's "goal" stood my view would have been exactly the same, although it would have been challenged by others more readily, with them citing we are on 9 points above the aforementioned clubs from North London. It would have been a lot harder putting my view across. That's the only difference.
What worries me the most is the games after Leeds. Anything we pick up at Elland Road even a point, would be helpful considering what is after. End of October and the whole of November plus our seasonal slapping by Man City in early December could well see us rooted in the bottom three or even at the bottom. It's going to be damage limitation month and a bit that's for sure. It's not so much we could/will lose all those games, it's the morale damage it could do to an already fragile squad which has shown simple mistakes keep happening and should of been ironed out. I know there is still a large chunk of the season before and after Xmas, but generally our second half of Premiership campaigns have been awful. I just prey Xisco has the tactical nounse to get the players psychologically prepared.
Swapping him for Tommy Mooney with Southend must be one of the best ever transfers the club ever did ?
The Southampton game is a good chance to get three points, and it’s not inconceivable we could get results from Leicester and Man Utd in November. Oh, and Brentford finished four points below us last season and managed a draw and three goals against Liverpool. Have they actually strengthened their squad more than we have?
Brentford are a little like Brighton (and even us actually from 14/15), they have a real "let's go for it" attitude to games and have already replaced Muff as the new media darlings. Side by side, we have the better technical players but I think where Brentford do trump us, at the moment anyway, is how they approach games and never give up. Could I really see us going down three times to Liverpool to equalize each time? Ok , we did it under Silva in his first game of that season, but now?
Brentford are just a better team than us right now. They are doing all the nasty stuff. Running for each other, covering positions, playing to a set plan, everyone buys into it etc. It's almost irrelevant who their playing squad is because the stuff that makes you an effective team, they are doing better than us at the moment. Watford could be getting similar results to Brentford against the so called bigger clubs, but we won't because we're not yet at their level in terms of concentration, hard work and playing for each other.
It actually looks quite bleak when you look at our next 9 matches, as to where the points will come from. I believe we HAVE TO beat Leeds and Southampton, or else we'll be in a really bad position by the end of that run. Here are the fixtures:- Leeds (a), Liverpool (h), Everton (a), Southampton (h), Arsenal (a), United (h), Leicester (a), Chelsea (h), City (h)..........I can't see any more than 6 points from that lot and I'm being optimistic here. The following two games will be at Brentford and Burnley. Does anyone think we'll pick up many points from those two away fixtures? So it's a tough, tough run of games now. We've pretty much used up nearly all our winnable (on paper) games for this half of the season, and have not done too well to be blunt about it. We could easily find ourselves having played 17 matches, on only 14 points. That's only a couple of games short of the half way stage. I think not only do we have to win at Leeds and beat Southampton at home, we'll have to beat a couple of other sides like a win at Brentford, Everton, Leicester or Burnley. Right now, I just don't see it.
I mean, come on, you know - it's abundantly clear that they have a superior head coach, tactically and in terms of attitude/motivation and the way that is applied, to us. He may be an annoying bawbag, but the extent of his influence isn't gurning on the touchline, sputtering about 'moments' in quarter English. That, along with Ivan Toney, is the difference.
Also spent £15m on a centre back (probably more then Gino has ever spent on defenders, in total) while we’re playing Craig Cathcart regularly.
