TRUE BELIEVER
Vital Football Hero
Well Rotherham's attendances are smaller than ours, they spent less than us in the window and they at least picked up a point and scored at home vs Watford. They also put four past Reading who are tipped by many for promotion and are in the top-half. I think we've only scored five or six in nine games at home combined this season.
I thought we battled well but their keeper ultimately didn't have a save to make again and we had one shot on target for probably the fourth or fifth time at home this season even though Watford were nothing special at all. It is 100% possible to win these games at least once every 5 or 6 outings at the DW and the brutal reality is we're going to have to beat some of these 'established' teams at some point to stay up. We proved against QPR we can more than match good teams in this league! Our spend in the summer of 2018 was pretty slim, much of our side retained its core League One DNA and we still put up much, much better home performances that season than this.
I just don't think we should be talking up sides like Watford like they're some unbeatable behemoth even though they've only won 6 from 16 this season. Most teams have more money and experience than us at this level, at least two-thirds so, unless we ditch the negative, overly-respectful attitude to the opposition we will never stick in this league.
I take your point about Rotherham having lower attendances than us but once again you are using an example of a club that has been in the championship more recently than us and have retained players from that era. They have been a yo-yo club in recent times and have been relegated as many times as they have been promoted so in my opinion, they are a poor example to quote.
Also, if we had held out for a few more minutes we would have equalled Rotherham's result against them. You may also be forgetting that we beat Rotherham 2-0 at their place and were hardly embarrassed by losing 1-0 to Reading.
I also don't think people are talking up Watford, they are quoting a fact that they have a team of ex-premier league players and a respected ex-international manager with a massive budget difference to ours. True, their results have been poor, but they are a sleeping giant in this division with the quality of player they have retained from the PL, and under the right manager will start to recover.
As far as beating the "established" teams in this division I would say we have not been too bad, we have had decent draws against Preston, Norwich and Bristol City and wins against Blackburn, Luton and Birmingham.
The problem we have is inconsistency in our performances that have probably led to a loss of confidence in the squad, however the last two games seem to have got us back on track performance wise and hopefully a win is just around the corner which will help to re-establish the confidence.