Impressed with our centre midfield today, Livermore was a rock, Koné was progressive and full of running, I jumped up for his shot off the crossbar, thought it was going in. Kayembe also had a good game. Warner sacked in the morning?
Yeah, taking Idah off was also good for us as I thought he seemed their only real threat. The Norwich fans' chants of "you don't know what you're doing" at that sub suggested they agreed.
Another fun game, enjoyable to watch a team rather than a group of players and after the disastrous first 30 minutes you can see yet more signs that this team are being coached and improved bit by bit. Fair play to VI. Kone, Kayembe and Livermore are the best midfield 3. Kone was dangerous all game tonight - sometimes dangerous for us and sometimes for Norwich but always dangerous. Yet another MOM display from “past it” Livermore, shame we couldn’t have had him in January because Manga knew better. Asprilla was a waste of time yet again for the most part. He and Mileta both ticked the box of doing sweet FA other than popping up with a goal. Jamal Lewis is one of the worst left backs I’ve seen in a Watford shirt, and we’ve had some dross in that position over the years. Awful. I was fearing the worst when Barnes came on, enjoyable seeing him get bullied by Livermore.
Off the top of my head Danny Rose, Kamara, Matthew Briggs were all comfortably worse. Not a huge fan of Lewis given the delay to get him in, likely sizeable wages etc, but think this was a bit OTT. Agree with majority of your post.
Thought he'd be sacked a while back, but 2 wins in a row seem to have given him a stay of execution, surely he's a dead man walking now though?
The skill from Asprilla for the late winner was a thing of beauty. First touch sold the keeper, second to bring it back off the right straight away, and the thrid touch, was the thrid for the 3-2 against the inbreds. Bootiful, inbred defenders demoralised in the net too. Nothing better. Big shout to Hoedt for taking his time and keeping the shot down. Yaser!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thought Lewis was about as bad as anyone in the first 25, summed up being 2nd to the ball, slow on ball, and passing to the wrong team that scourged the whole side. However.... I thought after that he did really well. Linked up with Sema nicely (yes he's a bit reluctant to cross) and 60% of our attacks came down that side. Lots to improve on his part but nowhere near the liability some think he is.
Couldn’t disagree more. He may not be as dynamic as I had pictured in my head, he’s actually a more conservative full back than a modern attacking wing back. However, he’s one of the more intelligent players in the squad, he senses pressure, he’s good at defending his winger, he rarely gets beat, rarely loses possession, plays good passes and is a good athlete. He’s a little bit lightweight and doesn’t seem to have that explosive speed I thought he did, to be able to beat a man on the outside and his dribbling is a bit weird but my god to call him one of the worst ever is insane to me. I think the most frustrating thing about him is he doesn’t look like he believes in himself, the natural ability is there but he just seems a little unsure of himself, if he can shake that off then he’ll be great but he’s pretty reliable in my opinion. (Although the conceding of the corner for the first goal was probably his fault…)
Harmer - 5 - He is not good enough to be on the bench, not alone on the pitch, we must bring in another GK Andrews - 5 - Not overly impressed he gave the ball away a lot Porteous - 5 - Terrible for their 2nd goal and not good overall, did better towards the end. Hoedt - 7 - Looking more solid of late and did well last night. Lewis - 5 - Ditto Andrews Kone - 8 - Was good last night but he should use that shot of his more often Livermore - 9 - Commanding MF general performance, maybe should be captain. Kayembe - 7 - strong steady performance Asprilla - 7 - decent game but still a little lightweight at times, gave him an extra point for his well taken goal Sema - 8 - Ditto Kayembe Rajovic - 6 (mainly because he scored again) our fox in the box at last, pity about his overall play though. Well deserved win, but should have improved our GD by at least another couple of goals though.
Not sure what the score was when this happened but it maybe that the Naarch players wilted after seeing their hatchet man flattened by Livermore . They certainly had no stomach for the fight in the 2cnd half .
Morning all. Well in the context of our seemingly new-found mid-table mediocrity, that was terrific fun last night. Probably the worst opening 15 minutes we’ve played for many a while, followed by one of the best 75 minutes. Lovely, fluid passing, great pressing and practically everybody in the side prepared to shoot on sight. Eleven players have now scored for us this season! Who on earth saw that coming after the awful start? Apparently we’ve now conceded 9 times from set pieces, the worst in the division, yet still we persist with zonal marking grr. Seemed strange to not recall Sierralta (unless he’s not fully fit) and Porteous duly highlighted that with the poor pass for their second (although I feel he grew into the match after that). And then out of seemingly nowhere back we came, and then some... It’s lovely to see Kone’s development. I always felt he was a decent player just needing to settle in a new continent and league, and to get a good run of starts. Livermore has been rolling back the years of late, no coincidence that our good run has happened at the same time. Kayembe looks much better in his preferred more advanced role. Rajovic keeps defying the doubters by scoring goals despite the obvious shortcomings in the rest of his game, and surely that was why he was signed! Asprilla’s skills, positivity and strong engine are always good to see. Personally I even though Lewis had a fairly decent match against his old club, maybe his best for us yet. Many positives to take home with us last night. Yes most realistically we are mid table and talk of play offs is over the top. Most likely the coming fixtures will trip us up. The away form will continue to be a problem. Doubts will still persist about Ismael. One good win from a horrific start against a team with a porous defence doesn’t change this.... Which in a way makes it more important than ever to celebrate and enjoy nights like last night! Great stuff.
As said before, the first 25 minutes or so were the worst in many years, there was no structure, no cohesion and most of all no leadership. Lewis is young and getting caught in possession is one thing but the absence of any defending for a corner was unforgivable. The second goal the blame goes with both Porteous for giving the ball away when not under pressure and Hamer should have done better. Up to that point it only looked like Kone was putting in a shift but it's not possible for one man to carry ten others. A couple of minutes before our first, we actually started to attack and it was plain to see how fragile Norwich were. Suddenly Ken, Keyembe and Livermore grew into the game and most of the others followed. Asprilla showed glimpses of effort throughout the match. Andrews needs to learn better positioning and when to lay the ball off. One thing I don't understand with Porteous is his shocking distribution, last night wasn't the first time this season his lackadaisical passing has led to conceding a goal, he is a first choice international player and he is a walking disaster at times.
As a member of the 'lifelong centrebacks who's confidence far outweighs their ability club' I was genuinely delighted by Hoedt's attempt to score an overhead kick. Such hi-jinks shouldn't just be the domain of cocky strikers.
Agreed. They were gifted two goals but completely squandered the advantage, then decided to play for a draw instead of trying to get at us again. They hardly did anything between scoring and a brief flurry right at the end. The driving force for that win was Kone. He does make mistakes, but he’s young and beginning to realise he can dominate play in midfield. Livermore excellent as everyone has said. A woman in front of us left as soon as Norwich scored their second… Oh.
Leaving aside the game… not to go all flask man but since when could you not take in hot food? I have done that at least 10 games a season for 15 years but yesterday wasn’t allowed to take my chips in. Reason given was ‘because they sell chips in there’ really pissed me off. Also, since when weren’t you allowed bags/laptops? Have taken my bag into every midweek game but yesterday they made me put it in a store room. Seems ridiculously over the top.
Fantastic win in the end. We either play really bad or are all over the opposition, there doesn't seem to be a mid-ground. We are a long way off anything but it sits better with me that we didn't sack the manager after 11 games and gave him the chance to actually coach his ideas into the players. It definitely took us a while to find our feet but I can see improvements in our cohesion and tactics. The shoot on site policy was very effective and generated a lot of good chances on the 2nd ball. Kone, Livermore and Hoedt were fantastic but again we still suffer from catastrophic errors at the back. Porteous has to be dropped to the bench from now on, he costs us too many goals and concedes chances in every match by jumping in and getting turned. He seems to carry a lot of sympathy from our support because he turned up last year in an unmotivated team and looked like he cared.
The sight of Porteous charging past the ball and the game bypassing him has become a staple highlight of all our recent games. Even that "assist" he got against Rotherham came when he charged in for the ball, missed it and was stranded, but somehow we won the ball back behind him and it got passed forward to him. He really is a liability when he has these brain farts.
With a 5-0 and. 4-0 under our belts already this season, we don't need to worry too much about our goal difference thankfully!
Why? I genuinely don't understand it. As a club the vast majority of fans have been screaming out for managerial stability, we finally seem to have it and yet it still seems a few fans are looking for fault with him at any opportunity.
Tbf to Asprilla and Rajovic, they do what nobody else in the squad can do (especially Asprilla, what a composed finish that was!), so you can put up with the large parts of the game where they are either ineffective, or what they are trying just isn't coming off (you can't say it's for the want of trying from those two). Both should be starters now, especially up against teams our level when we're not going to be up against it from the start
Similar to the Leicester match in that the second half looked like men against boys. Only this time we were by far the superior side. In fact our possession and shots stats ended up very similar to Leicester’s on Saturday
I’m an engineer. I don’t ignore any test results. I carefully record the characteristics of every test, especially the level of applied stress.
