That's true, but the bar in those times was set much lower. During this campaign, the bar was raised to such an artificially high level despite the constant flashing of various warning lights which have been triggered over the last 2-3 seasons. As they say, "it's the hope that kills you".
Really struggling to process the club's treatment of Luther. These snivelling cowards have no place at our club. Deeney Pozzo and Duxbury out now!!
It wasnt worse to watch at any time I can recall. I mean that. In the past we have had some young decent players coming in, Sean Murray, Ashley Young, Bruce Dyer, Wayne Andrews even for example to give you hope for the future, we had Craig Ramage in the side when we were relegated from the league. Devon White was entertaining, Barry Ashby and Jason Soloman gave their best, our loans from the big clubs were decent, like Clevs when he was spriteley, Pennant and that paedophile from Boro were terrific. The quality of football may have been worse with more schoolboy errors, but its never been as boring and disappointing. I'm not interested if the youth team are going to come in and be exciting because they wont be given a chance, we just wait for 31 year old Gosling to come in and pedestrianise our midfield a touch further. Never been less interesting.
I couldn’t agree more, when the warning lights come on instead of diagnosing and fixing the problem we have reset them, managed to get through the MOT for a couple of years and now have the situation of not only the lights flashing but no matter how you try they won’t go out anymore!
How on earth are we only seven points off top? With an eight point gap on seventh? This league is still for the taking by half a dozen teams. So, so poor. Massively missed opportunity.
The engine consistently misfires, the clutch is slipping, the management system is faulty, there is too much plastic padding in the bodywork, there is no alternator, the stereo is stuck on loud but the biggest problem is the nut behind the steering wheel.
I’m typically pretty level headed about things and don’t get too worked up after yet abort **** performance but even the next day I’m furious. Everything about the club is so infuriating as it’s so obvious to fix, or at least improve sufficiently that we would not have been relegated in the first place and we certainly wouldn’t be floundering to a playoff finish, at best. The errors have been because they have gone so far against conventional wisdom it underlines the boards arrogance. I’m not saying I could get everything right and we’d be storming the league but I’d be confident a good portion of people on this forum make improvements to the current set of circumstances managers - stop employing two bit nobodies that inevitably are out of their depth and back them over the players. In the interview process do they even ask them what do they think is the strengths and weaknesses of current squad, how would they implement a formation and playing style. We should have kept Pearson and Shakespeare. Sports psychologist - the current players are good enough to get promoted in the basis that the league is awful rather then their own talent, and the farcical tactics, if there are any, employed. They look shot of confidence and sometimes it takes a qualified outsider to spell out the problem and provide the tools to rebuild. Same of any performance based career Deeney. You’ve done wonders for the club but you’re not above the manager. If you want a media career you will need to retire as it’s a conflict of interest to your current role at the club for which we pay you. Squad Having one rm and one lb in an entire squad is absolutely criminal. Yet we loaned a striker and a CM. Formations We can’t play 352 as our two most productive players are wingers. We can’t play 442 as cleverly and chalobah get overrun by most teams have 3 in there. This is further compounded by Cleverley being a headless chicken leaving chalobah more ground to cover further back. Even further compounded by chalobah daydreaming that he’s as good as Pirlo. So we have no control of the ball - don’t let 55% average possession fool you, 90% of that is across the back 4. Deeneys arrogance that his is the savior means he drops behind the half way line attempting capoue style passes to Sema and Sarr. Which unsurprisingly aren’t as successful. The occasions when they are subsequently the only target in the box is Gray. Treatment of players, young and old. I’ll pick two as this rant is long enough already Peneranda. The bloke is clearly a tool but at some point he should have been told over the next 15 games you’ll be involved in 10 this is the opportunity to cement your place in the first team. That time was probably after Coventry in the cup Murray - the guy is an out and out goal scorer. We shouldn’t have loaned him over a lb or rm and yes he was rusty as hell at the start but he demonstrated at Wycombe better movement in one moment than anyone else has shown all season. Play him! Nope, his reward, go sweep the changing rooms for 4 months grandad. I’m sorry if this rant is poorly written, I needed to get it off my chest to hopefully not continue to be a miserable ******* around my family for the rest of the weekend
Surely Sky will cancel coverage of any further Watford games this season after the last two ‘performances’? The commentators and pundits were baffled as to how we could be so poor and despaired at the lack of entertainment.
There is no nut on the steering wheel, that fell off ages ok, the whole thing is driven by a series of electronic pulses sent from a seat high up in the stands, received via an ear piece attached to the dummy in the driving seat!
It won't be. We can see the direction of travel. We will sell anyone not nailed down and we will fill our team with Gosling/Lazaar quality signings plus a couple of Udinese reserves. Anyone still here next season will be **** and unsellable (Gray and Deeney) or **** and cheap.
Presumably the only measure there is league position. As a fan, I much preferred our 3rd tier title winning season. And many others where we didn't sit in the play offs all season, but we had honest players giving their all, in a system that got the best out of them, under a manager who was trying to build something with whatever resources we had.
Even Kenny Jackets rebuild season saw some kind of progress with youth players coming in and developing. Our youngsters are getting ruined in this team by poor tactics, favouritism for senior players along with total lack of nurturing or encouragement
I think almost all of us share your anger and frustration and your analysis is sound. It is quite breathtaking how bad our governance has been in the last two and a half years and how dreadful the level and number of mistakes have been,especially this last week. If I thought he'd take any notice I'd write to Gino. GT would have and did reply,as we know but I'm beginning to suspect that Pozzo is unwell,given the fundamental errors he has made in the recent past. Lord knows where we go from here but aside from Duxbury vandalising the GT statue, I cannot think how the situation can worsen. However who could have predicted the Luther debacle.
This is an important point. Quite apart from individual match plans and tactics coaching should also involve the development of individual players; especially, but not exclusively, the young ones. I do not have the impression that this goes on and neither has it for a long while.
It appears to go in in reverse! All of our players appear to get worse,the more they play. Look at Bielsa and what he has produced at Leeds. Bamford in particular. That guy was miles away from being a PL striker and yet here he is on the verge of an England call up. Good coaches make players better. Great coaches like GT,Clough,Bielsa make average players good and good players great.
Baffled? It would help if they had done some homework, or, if they have, they are liars. Banging on pre-match about the importance and strength of Deeney and Gray, for instance. The average sports journalist/pundit, at least in football, strikes me as a person who sees football reporting as a first rung on the ladder, but doesn't actually understand/give a f*** about football. Of course, there's always the cynical angle: Pretend bafflement as the story you can push..
Yep, that's why the should get the best coach you can, give them the freedom they want and pay them what they need. We won't do any of those things and are no doubt scouting Latvian Leisure Centres as we speak.
Poor old sky LOL. Personally I'm still astonished how we're in a playoff position. I honestly can't understand it. It really does show how s h I t the Championship is this season.
With regard to managers, just look at the difference the new Chelsea boss has made already with the same group of players ?. Also Tom Cleverly, for example, has played under SAF now he has to listen to a Personal trainer .
Interesting point. I was asked to do an interview about the AO by two trainee journalists from London University. It's a post grad course and the chap I conducted the interview with,named Harry,was very thorough,knew his players and probably new their results better than I did! I'm glad that they have chosen tennis as it's not so cluttered as football and so many of the people in the media have such a flimsy knowledge of any club outside of the top six in the PL. It is almost as if they have a template for each club and ours is,as we all recognise; * Italian owners,like to sack coaches. * Very good squad,Deeney is the heartbeat of the club. * Errr that's it. Lazy,weak and not poor research,NO research. Infantile but they prosper so why change.
Completely agree with this, the revolving door of head coaches simply cannot provide any progression to a player’s development. A significant number of the current squad give the impression that they feel no compulsion to develop further as they head to the back end of their careers and react negatively to head coaches such as Ivic. So we then have a more genial appointment, probably less of a task master but unfortunately with the current incumbent tactically naive. signings such as Gosling only reinforces the issue. The talented youngsters are not progressed at a time when they most need it. Moving on will see them progress elsewhere. The head coach position needs to be elevated not used as a scapegoat for under performance or sacrificed to protect the exec from criticism.
It's an unbelievably stupid way of looking at things. "Well this is better than the 1881-1914 period for example, so what are you complaining about? as though that has any relevance to any of us. That winning combination of a really stupid point that someone thinks is clever, delivered in a patronising holier-than-thou tone.
You should feel lucky, in 1880 we didn't even have fans to deliver remarks in a patronising holier-than-thou tone.
I don't know if it's been said but did anyone notice how despondent the players looked in the tunnel coming out yesterday. Cleverley especially looked wound up about something.
God that was awful to watch. I would not pick Gray or Deeney as both are has beens. Got to play Pedro and Perica before them or even with a false number 9 and how Hughes does not get a start is beyond me. Having watched a lot of the 'mid' table sides they all seem to have better midfield players with more energy and creativity. These are not high profile players and have been unearthed from the lower leagues. Our recruitment model far from being world class is being found to be completely inadequate and needs a severe overhaul concentrating on the lower English clubs and also the lower ends of the squads and youth teams of the top and bigger clubs.
Actually thoroughly enjoyed that. Slow first 5 minutes as we got used to the pitch, then started to show our quality. Sarr had their full back on toast all game, thank God we rejected the offers in January and kept him. Thought Troy bossed the midfield, and Gray showed real signs of promise! Miles away from 7th now and within touching distance of the top 2! Gino, if you're reading this I'm available for any podcasts, articles, tweets or snapchats you want me to put my name to.
If you have a quick read of the forum, you'll see that most of the anger is directed at our "talented but ******* lazy players", a few of whom are less talented than most fans of other clubs realise. The manager simply embodies the nonsense the owners get up to. We've tried tough managers, easy going managers and now unqualified managers, the players always end up having a hissy fit and ruining it.
It would be nice if we were faced with such a dilemma; to balance our ethical concerns with those of self-interest. Instead we see a perfect alignment of the two in Gray's case.
My brother jokingly said the only possible explanation for the continued decline and ongoing terrible decision making is a sort of Bialystock and Bloom, The Producers type scam. Maybe they've run up all this debt and only complete and utter failure of the club will allow them to escape with no further questions asked and the debts just written off. Xisco in the role of Roger De Bris. Gray as Franz Liebkind Sierrelta as Ulla
