Have come away with mixed feelings about todays game. I am very pleased with the perseverance the lads showed towards the end and I am glad we managed to grab a point. However, for much of the game we were poor and seemed to struggle with the basics. The passing was all over the place with alot of them going astray, Birmingham capitalised on this. Managed to concede from another corner and an unfortunate mistake in midfield gifted Birmingham their second. Still once we had managed to equalise, twice, things seemed to come together a little and hopefully this will instil some confidence in the side. Well Done lads.
Your welcome Norway. Sorry about my Avatar, I have tweeked it slightly and may change it a bit more later on. Our heads do seem to drop once we concede so I believe thats an issue. But I also noticed we struggled to work as a team today and were not reading each other so lots of mistakes were made. Maybe the team still needs time to gel what with Hogg and Weimann now entering the side?
Thanks GB Weiiman has been here before and knows half the team! I thought the reason we sold DG at the early stage of the window was that we could do our business early and not waste the preseason etc! I dont think things have gone entirely to plan!
GoldenBoy1985 - we did come from behind twice today. I think we are improving our ability to come from behind.
Agreed Chris ....However it would be nice to not have to come from behind , would be nice to score and then be ableto hold onto it!.........Except thats not the watford way
Hogg striked me as no better or worse than Jenkins, but then he has only been at the club a day. Sordell and Weimann showed some promising signs that they can play together. And however he plays, I think it's a good thing that Iwelumo is in the squad this season. Him being in or around the team puts the right sort of pressure on Sordell and Weimann, while at the same time taking some of the weight of expectation off of their shoulders. Throw into the mix the energy of Deeney, the raw talent of Massey, the options we have in attacking midfield should we go 4-5-1, and the fact that Yeates and Forsyth look capable of chipping in, and I think an extra striker would be a bonus rather than a necessity. Shame that we're in the relegation zone going into the international break, but it could be worse. We've got two more points than Arsenal and Spurs combined in the same amount of games, and have scored more goals than Arsenal and Spurs combined in the same amount of games.
I actually took some heart from getting a draw against a team that still has quite a lot of prem players in their side. When we went 1-2 down so late I thought that is it, but we kept going to snatch the equalizer. Stephen McGinn commented about the quality of player that sat on their bench, and felt that it was only a matter of time before they started to climb the table. On the matter of Hogg he got plenty of good comments. For someone to come into the team at such short notice and perform well makes you think that when he is settled he will be fine for us. It did sound as if he flirted with getting a red card, but got a good talking to. So some refs use sense, but even this one did not cover himself in glory.
I grew up with New Labour. But I make a serious point. We're in a very similar situation to those clubs. We know we're not going to win the league (okay, one difference is that we knew that before the season kicked off), but just like both of them, we know that there are a lot of extremely mediocre clubs above us which are ripe for the picking, and we know that we have the players to do it.
A relief to get a point because it didn't look remotely likely until Sordell's shot went in. There were patches of good play from the team, particularly at the start of the second half but we didn't often threaten the Brum goal. Hogg and Eustace are a better combination than any we've tried in central midfield so far but the wide players were disappointing. Neither Yeates nor Forsyth looks capable of going outside a full back and too many crosses were delayed so long they were blocked. Weimann looked very short of match practice, not quite the energy of last season and hence a bit less pressure on defenders. Sordell was quieter than usual until he scored but he remains the one player in our side with the pace and skill to worry defenders. For the first 70 minutes or so he was too hurried when he received the ball, and as you might expect from a young player sometimes made the wrong decisions. Defensively we were OK, but weren't as tested as we might have been. Taylor isn't quite as authoritative in the air as he was last season and Brum's 19 year old striker on loan from West brom looks just the sort of player we good do with...big, strong, quick enough, able to use the ball well and finished coolly for the second goal.
Probably would have taken a point beforehand and generally we lacked spark during the game..even Sordell wasn't as useful but did get his goal with a good strike. 2 wide players were ineffective this time (thought before Yeates and Forsyth) has been ok if lacked pace maybe) and ofcourse the defensive 4 had their lapse in concentration. Mind you it was nice to nick a late goal ourselves. Loach got lucky indeed!
Well for pretty much 3/4 of the game that was painful. Birmingham did play well, they closed us down very quickly throughout and once they settled after the first 10-15 mins passed the ball round reasonably well. We started off fairly neatly and looked for all the world like we may play some good football. Hogg started off pretty sharp and the quicker movement of Weimann (although he isn't that fast) seemed like it would pay dividends. Unfortunately Yeats is fast proving to be a bit of a statue who will not take defenders on and Forsythe, although gets stuck in, needs to speed up his thought process. It all deteriorated once again to "passes" where the player passing seemed to fire the ball into an area he hoped someone would be rather than to feet. The gap between the midfield and attack remains vast as our line in tactics seems to be that of defence minded. Loach once again was very uncertain and was a tad lucky I felt to get the foul when he flapped at the ball and a goal disallowed. I felt this seemed to filter through to the back four who looked uncertain. Loach, recognise that you may make some mistakes but please come out and claim some balls into the box. I feel that boat has sailed unfortunately. However, once Weimann is up to full fitness he could be very useful. He seemed to offer a bit more than just being a target front man and in fact put in the best cross all game from the right (Yeats were you watching?). Hogg also needs to be given time.
For me the negatives were that Yeates was very predictable, slow and clumsy......which can and will cost us goals on the counter. Also Sordell earned us the point.....but he was generally a bit too slow to the ball, he needs to be more proactive. A positive was that....we are learning to pile the pressure on teams and get some goals. Deeney came on and made it a lot harder for Birmingham...his physical presence gave Sordell some more room.
Sorry guys but we really do look like a team that will be fighting relegation all season. I hope I'm wrong but we have got to change if we are going to even get to mid-table. Attack as a team, defend as a team - rather than defend as a seven man unit and attack as a four man unit. The signs are not good
