Off to Vicarage Road then after our exploits at Old Trafford. The Hornets, like us, have won their first 3 fixtures and will be a real handful for anyone this season. Arsenal-basher Troy Deeney has formed a nice parnership with young Gray up top and Doucoure and our old boy Capoue run the midfield, with the talented Argentinian Pereyra supplying a goal threat from behind the strikers. Should be a really good game. We have also drawn them in the 3rd round of the League Cup and we are the "home" team for the tie but will not be able to play at Wembley. I heard that the club will ask the supporters to vote on either reversing the fixture or playing it at a neutral venue. Considering how good Watford is, I wouldn't fancy playing them at Vicarage Road. I think it would be great if we played the tie at a lower-league club's ground, like Stevenage, I recall we had some kind of partnership with them and played some pre-season friendlies there.
Our youth play a lot of games there. Don't think it's big enough for our first team though. Stadium MK is 30k compared to 7k at Stevenage.
I know, it was the football romantic coming out in me. It would be nice now and then to see the PL throw some love to the Football League and play the odd cup ties at a lower league ground.
So, unable to watch because unwilling to pay extra for NBC's broadcast package that includes it. And, I see we lost a game we should have at least drawn (I know Watford are better than expected... but, we are supposed to be contender level). So, we still don't have the mentality to handle winning the big one without the let down to lose the small one the next week. <sigh>
Bit of a letdown after such a great result at Man U. Tough CL run coming too... Shake it off and carry on, COYS!
Well all that talk about Spurs being a title contender and having changed their mentality went out the window with Sunday's capitulation at Vicarage Road. Once again, we failed to finish off a team when we were on top for large parts of the game and got caught out with some terrible defending from set pieces. The gaffer, dressed in his Sunday's best, was in a bizarre mood, looking like he had just endured a long sermon from the pulpit or a sermon from the Church of Levy telling him there will be no new transfers in the foreseeable future with the latest delays in the "new" stadium. Why he had Dier on the bench and didn't make any changes until the game had gone was beyond me. Dembélé produced another dreadful outing and is starting to look past his sell-by date. When he once purred in midfield, dribbling past opponents and playing key passes, he now gives the ball away constantly and gets outmuscled by adversaries he used to swat away. Ben Foster didn't have a difficult save to make in goal, as our front 4 kept giving the ball away and failed to profit from numerous counter-attacking positions. Kane was particulary profligate, having headed over a sitter in the waning minutes and failing to thread a pass to Lucas on a 2 on 1 break when we were 1-0 up. At least there was some good news. Son got his military service exemption, as South Korea beat Japan in the final of the football tournament of the Asian Games. Victor Wanyama was on the bench - let's hope he regains his form of 2 seasons ago or we are going to have problems in midfield. And it was great to see Harry Winks wearing a proper footballer's number 8.