5th August 2023- Championship, Watford 4 Queens Park Rangers 0 https://www.skysports.com/football/watford-vs-queens-park-rangers/teams/485024 https://www.watfordfc.com/match-report/match-report-watford-4-0-qpr BBC: Watford eased to a dominant win over sorry Queens Park Rangers in Valerien Ismael’s first Championship game in charge of the Hornets. Sky: The red-hot Hornets produced a swashbuckling first-half display which saw them score all their goals inside 43 minutes as Rangers showed why many have tipped them to struggle to stay up this season under Gareth Ainsworth. Guardian: Even as Watford eased off in anticipation of the final whistle, the contrast between the two teams was stark: one with a weight off their shoulders, playing neat one-twos, and the other labouring under some invisible burden. “We made the perfect first step, but it’s nothing more than the first step,” said Ismaël. Watford Observer: Live Feed Match Report BHappy: Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first off. QPR are terrible. They were expected to be terrible, and they do not disappoint. There are manifold reasons for this, and far from all of them lie at the feet of Gareth Ainsworth. Many of these involve money, or rather the absence of it; the sight of erstwhile director of football Les Ferdinand quietly letting himself out of the back door over the summer was ominous in the extreme. So too was seeing Gareth Ainsworth, who had deplored the lack of fight in his charges at the tail end of last season whilst vocally anticipating a rebuild, finding himself in charge of largely the same bunch three months on, minus goalkeeper Samy Dieng and key centre-back Rob Dickie. Two further senior centre-backs are missing here, which means we face a pairing of two left-sided defenders, one of whom reportedly half fit and the other making his full debut. Fran’s Watford Blog: That performance was just what we needed. The Hornets were completely dominant. They clearly had a plan and executed it. They looked like a team rather than the group of individuals that we saw all too often last season. All of the players worked hard, and they looked a lot fitter than they did last season. It was pleasing that nobody ran out of steam after an hour. Sierralta’s move to a midfield position had been met with some scepticism, but he was excellent, breaking up play when needed, but also contributing going forward culminating in an assist for Bayo’s goal. It was great to see Tom Dele-Bashiru back from injury. He looked really sharp, did well for his goal and almost scored a second. Ngakia has also come back this season with something to prove after an injury-plagued season last time out and he was instrumental in a lot of the forward play. Louza looked back to his best. And the new man, Chakvetadze contributed a very encouraging cameo. He is going to be fun. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66345298 Share this: Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook