I mentioned this on the SB today. It was the only glimmer of hope all season. Still no idea why the press which had Chelsea and Leicester on the ropes at times and demolished Man Utd was just abandoned by Brentford. Absolute madness.
Yeah, of course. I am lying to myself a bit, because of course on some levels I care. I just have to mitigate that as much as possible as it's clear that the owners, the manager and the players don't give a ****, so fans with absolutely no power to influence anything might as well find something else to do on Saturday afternoons.
I do not think that squad could cope in the Championship, let alone the PL. We have only got to get through five more games of abject torture before this horrible season is over. Then we can look forward to a botched Summer Window where our owners will sell our most worthy players for pennies in desperation to coup back some of the financial blow relegation will take. If we can finish 18th that's a couple extra million in the pot. What worries me more about this season is the fact we will have two maybe three seasons to get back up with a squad that our CEO will refuse to admit is broken, filling it with cheap crap we do not need or want, ignore the youth system we do have and hand another few extensions to Kucka and Cathcart. I know I said a few times we need a rebuild, but we do not have the resources for that. This is the major worry for me. Next season will see a coupled together squad of freebies and contracted extension OAP players with a manager tasked of getting us back up at the first attempt. Which will fail. When we last went down, we managed to keep Sarr, and thankfully he bothered more than he does now. This time he will be gone, and we will have to pray the squad can hold it's own. I seriously think, like I know many of you do, had we not bought Sarr, and spent the money on a few players we needed, we would probably still be a half decent PL side, never really worrying about relegation. Cathcart, Masina, Sema, Kabaselle, Foster and Cleverly should of been replaced by now with better players within the price range we would have, if the money was spent right and the scouting was assured. Half of those listed will probably make our first team next season, which is quite frankly, scary. I want this club to succeed of course I do, but we cannot even think or imagine becoming what we were so close being, which is a main stay PL club, until Dux leaves, Gino sees sense and moves is forward. Keeping hold of what we had in 17/18 is pulling us closer to being a League One side in a few years. It's a depressing time right now for a Watford fan, and all we can do is sit and watch the house that GT/EJ built, come crumbling down.
Good point @wfcmoog Ok so let me say that if anybody important should be reading this thread (owners, manager or players) I DON’T care either. It’s the cricket season now.
Because instead of being able to fully remember him as the guy who did so much good work on and off the pitch for those three seasons two decades ago, our most recent memory of him will now be associated with our relegation, with Hodgson and with clearly failing to coach our squad to any sort of improvement. Just my opinion of course. I respect if you disagree.
He nearly got us relegated to the 3rd tier. Took Hoofers coming in to rescue that season and then get us up the next year.
You seem to be forgetting that this squad is still better than the one which finished 2nd in the Championship last season. Man City are as good as the Championship is crap.
Done my bit for those bunch of losers I have lost my voice. Kamara only one with any passion he looked gutted at the end when he come over to us.
Aidy and GT Championship teams still did better though. Also Brentford finished below us last year, yet are a mid table PL team this year.
As I've pointed out across the entirety of the season, there is no basically no manager capable of keeping his shower up, and that has proven to be correct. It's incredibly harsh to blame Lewington for failing at what was basically an impossible task. Plus he's only been the assistant during this brief spell which isn't as significant an association as being manager. It's not even difficult to forget that he's even here.
I don't even think this team is better than the champ side. We've demolished the midfield and almost everyone we signed since coming up is ****.
Did Aidy and GT's Championship teams do better? Both went up via the playoffs. Aidy also had the disaster of our only goalscorer King getting injured for basically the whole season. As for Brentford, they were in complete freefall until they managed to sign Eriksen; he's completely turned their season around. Otherwise they would have been close to the drop.
Capoue hardly played, so the only player we really lost is Hughes. He's been replaced by Louza who is a marginal downgrade. But on the flipside we've had Dennis and Cucho playing instead of Deeney and Sema, and they're both significant upgrades. Kamara is also marginally better than Masina. Otherwise the squad is pretty similar.
I think you’ve completely missed the point with your first paragraph. As for the second, well they did sign Eriksen, so I’m not entirely sure what you’re point is there either.
COVID Championship, Foster, Cathcart, Cleverly are all a year older. Lost Chalobah & Hughes. Stopped playing our best centre back from last season. This team is marginally better.
What was the point you were trying to make then? Because it must not have been clear. My point with Eriksen is one of the main reasons why Brentford are so far ahead of us this season despite being below us last season is because they improved in Jan by signing Eriksen - ie he changed the dynamic of their squad from last season. Otherwise they had been starting to struggle.
Shame that Masina played what must've been 15-17 games because for whatever reason they decided we didn't need a left-back in the summer.
Right, so you do recognise that - in which case your idea that a team that's 10th in the Championship would do any better over a season in the PL is clearly absurd, considering we were much better over a season than a 10th place Champ side while we had a marginally worse team.
Yes I agree with you about our squad being so bad, it was unlikely anybody would have kept us up. Rather than blaming Lew for failing though, my earlier point was more saying it’s a shame he came back and tarnished his memory here. That was the gist of my comments, rather than me saying it was all his fault.
The GT team got 24 points, the Aidy team got 28 points. This team has 22 points, so will struggle to beat either teams points tally, that is despite as you say, both teams coming up from the playoffs and Aidys team selling young and losing King to injury. Brentford have also been miles ahead of us points wise all season, they beat us without Eriksen and with him. With or without Eriksen they would’ve finished comfortably ahead of us, it’s completely churlish to suggest otherwise. Your point about is having finished second last season is therefore completely irrelevant.
But then my response to you would be that considering the reasons given in my previous post, you should basically just ignore his spell here now, don't count it as being bad, and pretty much forget it ever happened - which wouldn't be unfair; therefore the memory of his previous spell has no reason to be tarnished.
Does anyone genuinely care at this point? The season is a total write off and we’ll go down as one the biggest embarrassments in the clubs history. Scott and Gino do business properly though.
Before Eriksen played they'd only got 4 points from their last 12 games - a home win vs Villa and a home draw vs Palace. Since then they've got 16 points from 7 games - they've been completely transformed. Had they continued on their same trajectory as prior to Eriksen they could have easily been on course to finish with about 28 points. Sure, even then we still might not have ended up above them, but they were in serious trouble. Had we not been massive bottlejobs ourselves this season we should have still beaten them in our last game vs them as well.
When Eriksen joined they had 23 points. They could’ve not got a single point for three months and still been ahead of us.
All I'm focusing on now is going down with our lowest PL points total. Can't wait to see how Duxbury spins this in the summer.
It would have been much, much closer though, and they were definitely on course for being very close to relegation. We also could well have beaten them without his set-pieces which would have put us closer as well. (Though we should have beaten them even with his set-pieces)
If you think they wouldn’t have got another point in the whole of February, March and April then good luck to you.
I pointed out that they had managed 4 points across their prior 12 games before he joined. From the first game he started they had 11 games remaining until the end of the season. At the same average ppg that would have also just given them another 4 points come the end of the season. I did not specify in which of the remaining months those 4 points might have arrived in.
It doesn’t really matter, Brentford would’ve comfortably finished above us with or without Eriksen, it’s bizarre to suggest otherwise.
So if a team which finishes 3rd and goes up via the playoffs is capable of comfortably staying up in the PL ahead of the team in 2nd without changing much of the squad, then couldn't you also argue that GT and Aidy actually under-performed in the PL?!!
