Ratings & Reactions: Watford v Villa

[NeilS]

Very Disappointed with that start. Players don’t look sharp from the off after a disrupted pre-season, and we have some catching up to do. We have some of the so called “easier” games first, so we need a drastic improvement before the tougher games kick in.

Hopefully Ollie coming back along with Buendia and Bailey gaining sharpness and a couple more additions in midfield to add some physicality and we will be looking upwards again. 
 

We can’t afford too many bad ones like today!

[RicRic]

10 minutes ago, hippo said:

3-2 Hides a multitude of problems IMO.

Budenia was very poor must have had a about 6 touches in the first half. When he got the ball he just seemed to stand still with and let players surround him. Can't believe he was fully fit

Ings - very poor - sure not much service - but struggled to even make nuisance of himself.

Our iffy players Nkamba, AEG, Cash - all had days to forget.

Worst of all we seemed to have no idea what were doing or supposed to be doing. People go on about missing jack - this much worst than last season without jack. I think we have tried to be to clever replacing jack - all this bollox about replacing him with 3 players - less reliant on him - complete tosh (even if it were true)  - We need somebody dynamic - not tidy players who place a couple of decent passes each game. We need someone that terrifies defences, makes things happen.

My point exactly too much nonsense about making up for stats that Grealish had contributed and all this nonsense, go and get that dynamic electric midfielder that has top talent and able to bring us to that next level, the strategy they chose is ridiculous and im not saying the players we signed are not good but its the philosophy behind it

[IrishVilla10]

1 minute ago, TomC said:

I'm surprised that people thought Cash was so bad. His defending was bad, but I thought he did reasonably well with the ball coming forward.

 

Running down the wings one thing, doing something at the ends another. I thought he was very poor in the final third. Took ages with his free kick early in the second half and didn’t even beat the first man 

[macandally]

We love a drama on here do we not!

Looking at it clinically, think Deano overestimated the fitness of his players, Beundia, Targett, Young all looked under baked to me and need minutes in their legs.  The Watford game plan worked, they defended deep and use pace down the sides on the counter and it worked for them.  Also, lets be honest, everything that could go for them, did.  For the first Konsa's block could have gone anywhere and Emi usually saves those, it appeared to go under him, the second took a deflection and could have gone anywhere, the third was a perfect finish but the pin ball in the build up could broke to them.

My worry is the difficulty we had in breaking down that defensive line.  Perhaps we went a little gung-ho at the start and should have been more defensively solid, as Watfords legs were bound to tire towards the back of the game if we had kept moving the ball.  A bit of game management.

Anyway, for those going on about relegation after one game, take a breath, let the drama go and we will be fine with more minutes into players legs and them understanding each others game.  Playing away to teams newly promoted is always difficult, see it for what it is and don't panic.

[Wezbid]

6 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

I don't care what he did last season.

It's all about what he is doing right now. 

So you're a total flip-flopper who can only react a game at a time instead of looking at the overall? 

Targett was absolute quality last season and an awful 45 mins against a mint player does not define him as a player. 

[TheMelvillan]

19 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Not the level we will be at in 5 games time. 

Oh Christ don't tell me we're gonna get worse! 

[OutByEaster?]

Really poor - what we have looks disjointed and lacking in practice and pattern - you'd expect that to an extent given that some of them are new and the rest have barely scraped together a pre-season. It's what we don't have that's most worrying, especially with the comments from Purslow and Smith suggesting we're done.

Targett doesn't look fit and sharp yet, he missed some of pre-season, he'll get better - Cash probably needed a little bit of a slap in the face to remind him he'll have to work for it - I think the back five need playing time, they weren't good today, but I'm not massively worried about them.

Up front, Bailey looked a real threat, hopefully he'll soon be starting games, Buendia had a poor game, Ings was hit and miss, but we've invested well and we have players we can bring in when that happens - with Watkins fit and Traore 100%, we have options and solutions if someone just has a bad day. Buendia and Ings are good enough that days like today won't be the norm from them.

The middle of the park remains a massive mess - it looks like the club have got so tied up in replacing Grealish they've forgotten the rest of the side - we've lost a world class creative force and replaced him with three really good players - good job, well done - now what about midfield - well, we've got McGinn, super John McGinn - and the the best part of f** all else right now. Ramsey improved us in two ways - he added a third body in the middle of the park which gave us a foothold in the game and he can run. That's good to have, but is a young player adding those two things enough?

We didn't ever look in control of the game, there wasn't protection for the back four, we couldn't sit and break, we couldn't control the ball or the tempo, we weren't pressing them in possession enough and we couldn't cover their breaks, our forward players were having to get into weird areas to try to get involved and our back four were having to try to do the things they're not good at in order to provide some sort of creativity. All of that comes down to not having enough in the middle of the park.

If Sanson comes good and Luiz comes back strong, we might get away with just one new body in there - personally I think we need two to be competitive and three to push for Europe - we need to play with three in the middle and there is currently only one player that's fit and good enough to do that at the football club - you could argue against all three of McGinn, Luiz and Sanson being good enough in the long run, certainly no one else in our squad is anywhere near and unless we buy an absolute solid gold defensive midfielder at the Declan Rice level, we'll need three in the middle to cover for that weakness - we need two more really badly.

That at the moment is in opposition to what seems to be a push to play four of the attacking players - Buendia, Ings, Watkins and Bailey - and I'm concerned that if Dean Smith thinks that we can do that, it's a gamble that might see him under pressure quicker than he thinks.

We were dreadful today - we'll improve in the areas where we have good players - we'll be stronger for the Newcastle game, but we're a bagel of a football team with a big hole in the middle and if we don't plug that we're in for a very long season of days like today.

 

 

[andyjsg]

5 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Might have to agree with you, until Matty gets back to last seasons levels.

What Ash doesn't have in physicality, he makes up for with experience.

Ash had Sarr’s number 2nd half, would like him to start at left back next week

[TRO]

1 minute ago, El Zen said:

In hindsight, I think it’s fair to say the wrong team started.

when you lose, its usually a popular assumption.

[hippo]

1 minute ago, RicRic said:

My point exactly too much nonsense about making up for stats that Grealish had contributed and all this nonsense, go and get that dynamic electric midfielder that has top talent and able to bring us to that next level, the strategy they chose is ridiculous and im not saying the players we signed are not good but its the philosophy behind it

It smacks of  businessman thinking - not football people. 

[KentVillan]

Loads of new players, first game of the season. We were very poor first half, but each of Smith's changes put us more in control I thought.

He'll need 5 or so games I think to get the formula right. If we're still shit around Christmas time then fine, we have a problem, but people saying this already puts him under pressure really do just have a vendetta.

The highlights for me:

• Young still looks excellent at LB, and Targett is going to have to fight for his place
• Bailey is a nailed on starter now, what a player
• Traore has won his place back
• Ramsey looks to have progressed over the summer - decent performance from him

Problems:

• Ings was a bit too "old fashioned poacher" for my liking. If he's playing lone striker, he needs to be laying the ball off, playing people through, etc. We missed Watkins.
• Buendia did nothing.
• Nakamba is supposed to be there to add defensive solidity. We got more of that from McGinn than from him. Personally I think Nakamba should have been helping Targett out more often, but he seemed to be playing too high up the pitch. Didn't really understand what his role was.
• Targett looks out of shape. He'll need to fight his way back into the side.
• El Ghazi.

All stuff that can be sorted (I mean a lot of it we already sorted today midgame, but it was too late). I think the Nakamba issue will come down to signing another CM / DM, but the other stuff we already have the answers.

[Tumblerseven]

In my book this was just a weirdly bad performance by everyone.

Target and cash both horrific. Nakamba should be 3rd choice.

Ramsey looked better than our new 30 mill player.

El goalzy can only take pens and shoot. He is hiding from passes behind opposition players!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Im not rating him at all  i want him to leave . When he plays we dont have wing its simple as that.

Team clearly needs to gel. 

After 3-1 from70to87minute Konsa Mings and Young just passing the ball between themselves that look pretty weird i got angry not gonna lie. No rush to win the game just passing for the sake of passing. Mings didint do any of his long balls...

Bailey looks great.

I think were fine we got 2 goals just from individual performances from behind!! were fine.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Tumblerseven

[Villa94]

dont think we should over react we hardly had a pre season and it wasnt our best team but we do need a big central midfielder through the door in the next couple of days maybe we will after that result 

[villatillidie1980]

I didn’t say anything to the contrary. My point is that he didn’t persist when it wasn’t working. He saw what we all saw with Targett, he made changes early which seemed unthinkable last season 

[TheMelvillan]

Looked like a team a couple of games away from full match sharpness. Go figure. Disastrous pre-season the real villian in this piece.

 

[TRO]

Just now, andyjsg said:

Ash had Sarr’s number 2nd half, would like him to start at left back next week

A 36 year old left back coming in to show an established left back how to defend a plucky winger, would suggest maybe we might have had too much faith in the established left back, to start with.

[Jareth]

1 minute ago, TheMelvillan said:

Oh Christ don't tell me we're gonna get worse! 

Haha. Yeah, not sure it could get more disjointed. 

[May-Z]

His hand was forced today with the starting line up so can't really grumble too much at what he selected.

However, there must be instructions for McGinn and Nakamba to go forward though...and for the high frequency of long balls forward. Those are things that we must absolutely sort out pronto because it meant we couldn't do anything to Watford today and will affect us badly in other games.

[StanBalaban]

20 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

Fitness fitness fitness. Looked like we had a shit preseason, and we did. Dropped in it during the last two weeks.

We always said it eould be a tough start because of it, and that we wouldn’t see the best of our team for at least a month. So it seems.

That said, we have been banging on about the midfield since before the end of last season, and we’ve been fannying about buying forward players. 
 

**** bite the bullet and buy a bastard midfielder.

We looked miles off the pace in terms of fitness and conditioning. Clearly evident in tired passes and poor touches from some normally very good players. We'll get better there.

Our midfield needs a leader, and I think we'll get him before the window closes. Watford beat us on athletism as much as anything else today.

Bailey and Traore looked good. Buendia looked far away from what we know he can do. Ollie will make a big difference in pressing from the front, and I'm pleased Ings got off the mark, even though he had a very quiet game.

Opening day, so anything can happen so I'm not reading too much into this.

Edited August 14, 2021 by StanBalaban

[abdulaziz1]

1 minute ago, Wezbid said:

So you're a total flip-flopper who can only react a game at a time instead of looking at the overall? 

Targett was absolute quality last season and an awful 45 mins against a mint player does not define him as a player. 

To be fair, when you take Smith games without Jack (wether that was in the PL or Championship) all periods were full of today’s game. 
Targett were good all season. It’s totally different.