Sunday 16 June 2013

Following Fernando

Let me get this out the way - I know I can be quite silly at times; you don't need to remind me.

What's great about footballers these days is how they can share their lives with fans via Twitter. You get to see behind the scenes of the training ground, the banter and their real characters can start coming out. We've seen that those real characters aren't always likeable (Ashley Cole), but others have made me care more for them. Lots of the Watford boys are on Twitter. Troy Deeney loves to show up teammates fashion sense, U18 Bernard Mensah will literally not stop tweeting and Fernando Forestieri has shared his love for Mickey Mouse and his new experiences in England.

I now find Fernando to be a very endearing character and via Twitter I have come to think of him as a very loveable fella. So much so I find it hard to call him by his surname as I do most footballers. Well all except Lloyd. To me he is just Fernando. Now I was slow to pick up on his Twitter pictures, but Mike pointed me towards his flurry of shopping tweets back in the autumn. Like the one below when he was in IKEA.


I knew it was IKEA instantly. Having become a homeowner in the last year I have had my fair share of visits to the blue and yellow shop. So a week or two after seeing the above picture I was back there, getting excited that I would be taking on another flat packed challenge. As I made my way through the maze of furniture I noticed I was in the plant and candle area. Yes, the same area Fernando had been only a few weeks before. 

So, with very little effort, I found the same aisle, the same red heart shaped candle and got my good lady to take a picture of me. She didn't understand, did it anyway, but when I sent it to Mike he was delighted with my effort. 


I told you I like to do silly things.

The thing is we hope you like doing silly things as well and if you fancy recreate your own Fernando Foestieri photo then do send them in.

Make sure you are following the great one on Twitter - twitter.com/fores41 - for inspiration, but here are a few that you might fancy taking on.













Cheers

Jon

---
Download the latest podcast via iTunesPlus, get FTRE blog posts sent straight to your inbox. Simply enter your email address in the "Subscribe by Email" box in the right hand column near the top of this page. Or if you're really technical you can use this RSS code.

Saturday 1 June 2013

2012-2013 on Aggregate

Doing the double over a team is something football fans look out for in the latter half of the season, especially if things aren't going as planned. Finding a positive anywhere you can is part of a football fans survival. Over the last two seasons I've taken that idea to the next level. I've got clever with excel and made the below table of Watford's aggregate results:


It will be no surprise to anyone that we have won more games on aggregate this year then we did in 2011-12. You don't go up the league as much as Watford did without winning more games, but it's only two games on aggregate. However, the number of games drawn is exactly the same over two legs. And, I think, most surprising is how many ties we won by more than 4 goals - 5 games. As you will see below, in 2011-12 our biggest goal difference was only 3. Yes we 'should' have beaten Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield well, but it's nice to see big wins over Birmingham, Forest and Leeds (especially Leeds).

It's no surprise that we lost our aggregate game against Derby by 3 goals; we would have had to of done something very special to get over the 5-1 drubbing at Pride Park back in September. However, the big down in this list of results must be losing to relegated, and finished bottom of the table, Bristol City.

The satisfying win are having come out on top over Crystal Palace - I'm really grabbing at straws aren't I?

Here is the 2011-2012 results:


RookeryJon

---
Download the latest podcast via iTunesPlus, get FTRE blog posts sent straight to your inbox. Simply enter your email address in the "Subscribe by Email" box in the right hand column near the top of this page. Or if you're really technical you can use this RSS code.