Not sure about that Yorkie, Schalke more or less gave up after the first 30 mins. The only thing to their credit was that their fans gave it their all even if their team didn't. The decline in the Bundesliga must start to ring alarm bells here - first an inept performance by Dortmund and then this debacle. Don't get me wrong with this statement but I love Watford, but generally hate the Premiership, which I believe is destroying football. From the 20 richest clubs in the World 9 are now from the Premiership - the last thing which football needs is 4 Premiership clubs in the quarter finals of the Champions League. I would like to believe that Ajax can turn back the clock and confound everyone by winning this thing, but money will probably tell in the end.
Well we put in a reasonable performance, did not give up, and scored a goal... Sent from my F8331 using Tapatalk
My post wasn't meant to denigrate Watford's performance Yorkie - I was just letting off steam about the Premier League in general. On the surface of it a 3-1 defeat at City is not such a bad result for us, and, as you say, we didn't give up. However, the starting line up had damage limitation written all over it, and if those quick 3 goals had gone in in the first half then the result could have been similar to the Schalke one. If you attack City then you will cause them problems - Leicester, Palace, Newcastle and Lyon have all proved this. Park the bus at City and you will come unstuck at some stage, and will then have to change your game in midstream, which is not easy. Most teams show too much respect for Man. City and we are also guilty of that.
Schalke was set up to get a result that they needed .And they paid for it as we did at liverpool and could not afford the same to happen at Man City. Javi said in Jan that he was happy with all the players he has, Aad backed that up by playing most of them which gets respect and they show that on the pitch .but you get so many still moan .They forget that he needs to keep most of the players happy not just the 1st 11
Ironically we got it the wrong way round Brian - Liverpool have big problems when opponents 'park the bus', City don't.
We hoped we could get something from Liverpool we could not afford to lose heavy at Man City plus it shows he is good to his word and back all his players
I thought it was just about the right line up and certainly the right tactics. One eye on the goal difference before we started and rightly so. Unfortunately: the first goal was a travesty; the second was a direct consequence of the first; the third was always likely; Watford's execution of the tactics going forward was extremely poor which strangled any hope we had of getting something out of the game. Had you offered 3-1 before kick-off then I'm pretty sure most of us would have at least considered it. I do not agree with Mex's assertion that it was "white flag stuff" - it only looked that way because we didn't get forward as intended - I lost count how many times we lost possession in our own half, a damning factor.
