With a section of the fans causing altercations in the stand, the West Ham defence very much fell apart just before half time, with miss-communication between Gomes and Collins the main cause of the opener. “I’m a new manager here at Watford, but slowly we are going to build great things”.
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Nearly as captivating was Deeney’s lob of goalkeeper Adrian in first-half injury-time that enabled Watford to enter half-time all-square and West Ham’s fretful back four never recovered. But the key for him, and I told him yesterday, is not to forget which way of training and playing gave him the opportunity to be called into the England squad. We controlled the game, we were two up, I was happy with the way we were pressing them. For me they expected to be as underestimated as they were last season, but no such luck.
“In the second half, we let them score a couple of goals without basically putting them under pressure, like it was too easy for them.” complained Bilic, labelling the first two conceded as ‘silly’.
Wilfried Zaha’s opportunist strike handed Crystal Palace a first Premier League win of the season as Middlesbrough’s unbeaten start came to a disappointing end. They were pressuring us, but we felt not only the pressure of them but also the public.
The morale of West Ham supporters was further dampened as a outcome of the club’s humiliating exit in the Europa League play-offs at the hands of Astra Giurgiu and it is notable that Watford beat Slaven Bilic’s men 2-0 at Vicarage Road last season. “No, no. We have a good penalty taker already, a great one”, said Bilic.
It only took seven second-half minutes to take the lead, as Pereya’s ball bounced into Capoue. After that, we had a couple of opportunities where we could have scored, but we didn’t. “If we defend like this we are not going to win too many games, because we scored enough and we created enough, some of those we can put down to defensive mistakes but not today”. “I am very angry”.
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“We all dug in and started to lay a bit of a hand on them and before you know it we were getting more chances and we got two goals before half-time”.
