Middlesbrough 3 Watford 1 (04/05/2024) 05/05/2024

1- “Fernando Forestieri as Nick Nack!”

It’s 9am.  We’re somewhere near Peterborough.  The car is full. Dave and I are cutting it fine, but nonetheless honouring a long-standing tradition of one stupid drive per season facilitated by the decision to move final day games to 12.30pm. Sophie happened to be in earshot on Occupation Road as we discussed it and joined the party influenced by the desire to cross off a ground.  Daughter 2 is up for anything that involves a football match and the ability to pop in her earpods and tune out.

The immediate objective is an eleven of Watford players past or present who could have appeared in Bond films.  Highlights include Ramon Vega (centre back / archvillain, but only in a relatively mundane “planning a cyber-robbery” rather than “taking over the world” kind of way) and Giedrius Arlauskis (goalkeeper / hapless Moscow taxi driver who inadvertently gets sucked into the plot when Bond jumps into the back of his cab and tells him to drive).  We fill up the slots, but struggle with the left side of midfield;  the answer comes with the epiphany that Neil Smillie could easily have been a croupier in a Roger Moore-era casino.

The answer to a broader question is provided by the entire discussion, along with countless snack stops, a match prediction competition (monkey tennis selection: Hamilton vs Kelty Hearts), a traditional ten minutes of eulogising over John McClelland,  a stab at a Pozzo era select eleven which stalls with an unresolved three-way dispute over who partners Craig Cathcart at centre back, a half-time rendez-vous with my brother and his herberts,  and two packs of jelly babies.  Oh, and a game of football.

The broader question is of course the one that you asked when you saw that I was reporting on this match.

2- It’s not a bad game at all, as it turns out, for all that we lose it and deservedly so in the end, and for all that it is nonetheless unavoidably shaded in the colour scheme of end of season dead rubber.  The latter colours our interpretation too, since the same game in January would surely have featured a deal more frustration and rancour than the two lone voices who can’t help themselves but briefly explode into righteous fury at our failure to press high up the pitch in the wake of going behind.  And not just because January is wet and cold rather than, as here, finally, relatively mild.

Instead, the away end is incorrigibly boisterous and carries the air of “damn it all I’m going to enjoy this” that you really think ought to be more typical of long distance away crowds than it is… but is in any case guaranteed by today’s exceptional circumstances.  Tom Cleverley’s name features frequently, Ismaël Koné finally has a chant of his own and Luton’s travails are celebrated in a now traditional fashion.  There’s a degree of bonhomie with the noisy home end to our left (at least for a while, until the posturing, chest thrusting dullards on either side of the divide have their say) – on the 16th minute the away end joins a round of applause in memory of 16 year-old Boro fan Joe Field, whilst later as more critical developments develop elsewhere there’s a touching moment as supporters of both sides unite in revelling in Leeds’ woes.

Even as we go behind, a development which has in all honesty been coming as the home side, and Emmanuel Latte Lath in particular, have been doing a persistent job of tiptoeing through the brambles and protruding roots of our defence before being denied by a well timed limb (most frequently a Dutch limb), or a block, or a boot to a slightly loose piece of control.  Around half an hour in there’s a breakthrough, a ball from the right finally allowing Latte Lath to convert (albeit with what looked like an unhelpful deflection off Sierralta).  The mood in the away end is perhaps prepared for and in any event relatively robust to this development.

3- The second half sees a better game of football all round, largely because we’ve mobilised some attacking play at last.  Our best first half attempt had been very early on, a decent Bayo header that Dieng did well to deny; beyond that it had been suggestions of breaks and half-chances rather than a convincing threat.  Mileta Rajović is making his first start since the win at Rotherham in February, but whatever his strengths – and I think most would agree that at the very least there are situations that give you hope that there’s a proper player in there – he’s not suited to a game when we’re deprived of possession in attacking areas.  He’s a willing chaser, but not one that either accelerates or changes direction very quickly.

But in the second half our midfield gets hold of the ball, we spend more time in Boro’s final third, and the whole thing looks a bit more convincing.  Edo Kayembe has been a force for good throughout, physical and aggressive without giving fouls away, even under the fussy eye of Keith Stroud, but Ismaël Koné has perhaps his best outing since Tom took over, playing his third full ninety on the hop to boot.  We’re now trading blows with Boro rather than merely digging in and repelling attacks…  Bachmann is required to come out quickly to block as a move expands from right to left on one occasion and pulls off a couple of sharp stops including one that was breathtaking but irrelevant in the wake of an unseen offside flag.  But at the attacking end Ryan Andrews picks out Vakoun Bayo through the centre, but rather than slipping the ball sideways to an unmarked Asprilla he hesitates and gives a sliding tackle the opportunity to be relevant. Half time sub Morris gets into good positions but is let down by poor delivery, Asprilla gradually flames on and starts causing mischief. 

Finally, on 73 minutes we’re level…  a fine Asprilla corner, Hoedt propels himself forward under attention at the near post and directs a header back over his head and into a waiting net.  The away end is jubilant, the goalscorer, on review, surprisingly reserved.  A minute later Koné is floating towards the box and forces Semy Dieng into his best save of his afternoon, pushing the shot wide.  Briefly it looks as if the tables may turn.

4- Team selection was always going to be of at least moderate interest here given the summer’s likely departures.  Loanees Dennis and Lewis were completely absent…  the former decision telegraphed by the head coach but largely unmourned absences in both cases.  Lewis, for me, did no worse than OK (if little better) but the decision to bring Dennis back has proven to be an unsuccessful one, despite and in some ways because of the occasional sparks of light.  We know what he can do, after all.  He just didn’t do it nearly often enough, and the expectation that he would only have been re-signed with surety of a leaf-turned was ill founded.

Also missing were Ryan Porteous and Giorgi Chakvetadze, mothballed for the Euros, the presumably also exiting Tom Ince and the fragile Tom Dele-Bashiru.  Lined up on the bench were all of the kids that have been named in squads over recent fixtures, plus one new “next cab off the rank” in midfielder Leo Ramírez-Espain.

Three of them would take to the field.  Jack Grieves got the longest, fifteen-minutes odd in a central attacking position which he started tentatively before seemingly being wound up by the passage of events around him and snarling after the ball with the focused aggression that characterised his brief outings last season.  The highlight was a bullish run with skittles tumbling around him that saw him release Zavier Massiah-Edwards to his right, the young winger underhitting his rolled cross before admonishing himself furiously.

Massiah-Edwards and Albert Eames had both made the briefest of appearances in injury time, the first academy kids to debut this season for all the new names filling spaces on the bench from time to time.  This is of course a Good Thing, particularly if they prove to be any cop.  Getting them involved and inconsequentially over the bump of making their first outing won’t hurt at all.  In the concourse before the game Fran had gushed with excitement of her optimism following the recent youth-based “At Your Place” event.  As a fellow statistician I can only have confidence that her conclusions are based on a most robust analysis of the data at hand.  Hurrah for that.

5-  By the time Grieves had come on, of course, we were behind again…  some more tiptoeing around the box from Greenwood before a ball across the face of goal found sub Bangura.  His finish was precise but not powerful, Bachmann may have been partly unsighted but should have done rather better nonetheless.  Within minutes, and having just rejigged with Grieves having entered the fray for defender Pollock, Boro took advantage of now wide open spaces to convert a third.  Like the previous two it had come down Boro’s right, no chance for the goalkeeper this time.

A fittingly meh end to the season perhaps, the third disappointing season in succession.  Personally however I’ve enjoyed it far more than the preceding two…  much more than 2021/22. a season of being inadequate in the top flight is never fun.  More too than last season, where we may have had slightly more quality but where we underperformed our potential to a far greater extent and failed to take advantage of a lamentably weak division… though perhaps promotion merely by dint of being slightly better than the rest is a mixed blessing, as the current Premier League table suggests.  This season we’ve been rather irrelevant, impotent too often. Not a great watch, as the empty patches in the stands betray.  But little worse than we had a right to expect from this squad I think.

Meanwhile one of the surprising number of benefits of the earlier kick-off to which we might need to become accustomed – the mental block of getting up early the only real negative – was the ability to spend time in the Boro fanzone chewing the cud with similarly phlegmatic home supporters before heading home in daylight.  Not having made the playoffs in the end, or done anything of great consequence didn’t seem to be an impediment to pride in their shirt, quite right too.  Neither side boasts even the qualified successes of promotions and cup runs often enough for this to be the defining metric of enjoyment – let alone actually winning anything, for all that the Copa de Ibiza still stands proudly in the Watford Museum.

A few more wins wouldn’t hurt though, obviously.  Next season, maybe.  See you then…  there’ll be all the usual summer guff here in the meantime.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 3, Andrews 3, Sema 2, Pollock 3, Sierralta 3, *Hoedt 4*, Koné 4, Kayembe 4, Asprilla 3, Bayo 2, Rajović 2

Subs: Morris (for Sema, 45) 2, Martins (for Rajović , 55) 2, Grieves (for Pollock, 79) NA, Eames (for Andrews, 92) NA, Massiah-Edwards (for Asprilla, 92) NA, Nabizada, Ramírez-Espain, Livermore, Hamer

Watford 1 Sunderland 0 (27/04/2024) 28/04/2024

1-  So.  Decision made, then.  Earlier than expected which suggests, whilst acknowledging the encouragement of recent performances, a desire to make a statement of faith before the reassurance of a home win.  A “he’s the guy”, rather than a “well, OK, go on then”.

Which is a Good Thing.  Not since GT took over the team for what was effectively the third time in 1997 have we appointed someone with quite such a local history.  Not since then, with nods to Quique’s miserable second coming, Malky, Dyche have we appointed someone who we want to succeed as much for their own sake, not just because they happen to be managing Watford.

And therein lies a risk.  You hope for something, cross your fingers, want something badly and… as soon as it happens you start worrying.  What if it doesn’t work out?  What if he doesn’t get backed.  What if his lack of experience means that he’s just not ready… something will come along that he doesn’t know how to handle, yet, and it capsizes everything?  What if Jimmy Gilligan, now heading back to the academy, was the catalyst behind our better performances?  What if Tom isn’t actually cut out for this after all?

Here’s a confession.  I was worried when GT came back, too.  The second time… at least until the Ipswich game and the reassurance of seeing that it was all real, for all that we lost.  Not identical concerns perhaps… Jimmy Gilligan was only three years retired as a player, albeit already coaching youngsters at Watford in 1996 so wasn’t perhaps at the front of anyone’s thinking.  But concerns.  The risk of his reputation being tarnished not least.  

That turned out OK.  Which isn’t to say that this must…  but there are already reasons to be positive, on and off the pitch.  Visiting supporters may scoff at this revelation, but the atmosphere yesterday was the best for a while, Cleverley the first manager to have his name sung since ?Xisco? (remember him?) and a boisterousness, even if only occasional, in defiance of another nil nil scoreline.  Jeopardy, after all, is a prerequisite for real excitement.

2- But the game was dreadful once again.  This despite a statement of an opening play that saw half the team hurtle for the Sunderland penalty area with a big up-and-under hoisted at them.  It came to nothing, and any momentum quickly dissipated…  I was reminded of the Douglas Adams’ account of a ferocious alien attack on Earth, “where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”.  Oh.

What followed was various ebbs and flows of a match-up with a lot of things not going for it.  Two average-to-mediocre Championship sides with not an awful lot to play for in in constipated form…  three of our last four games had finished nil-nil, Sunderland’s last four had featured a grand total of two goals.  We hadn’t won here since November, Sunderland were on a run of two wins in fourteen.  It was never likely to be a classic.

Each side desperately missed a focal point for their attack.  Sunderland’s approach to this problem seemed to involve Jack Clarke running at the penalty area a lot; it wasn’t a dreadful plan and on a luckier day for the visitors might have yielded something but on the odd occasions when both our centre-backs and our fortune were found wanting, Daniel Bachmann’s propensity for hurtling out at high speed served him and us well.

Our own forward line comprised Vakoun Bayo and Emmanuel Dennis.  Bayo has developed a single-minded approach to his hurtling around and closing down which he did here assiduously and effectively, but for all the occasional decent touches he’s not a target man.  Dennis, meanwhile, continues to irritate… disappointment has ceased to be the right word, since that implies expectation.  To whatever degree his performances are influenced by the injury that Tom reports, his departure at the end of the season is unlikely to be mourned.  He contributed next to nothing here.  “Come back Ismaël, all his forgiven” whined a voice from behind us as we laboured, its source mistaking petulance for humour.

3- There were bright spots, even if most of them didn’t have much to do with the afternoon’s football.  The much trailed and much welcomed full debut for Jack Grieves was a fine thing, even if it only lasted 45 minutes and saw him pitched in an unfamiliar position (in as much as we know what his preferred position is) on the same flank as Sunderland’s star man.  He did well enough; it seems likely that the half time switch was planned, but he had been increasingly scrutinised by the visitor’s attack and perhaps his preoccupation with the less natural job of defending limited our attacking threat down the right.  

No doubt we’ll see more of him, extending a celebrated family dynasty yet further.  Hurrah for that.  There was also the opportunity to commemorate the passing of Sunderland legend Charlie Hurley; decent that we’re attentive and considerate enough to doff our caps on instances like this.  I approve.

Finally, the latest approach to the handing out of the End of Year awards by, this year, sprinkling them between pre-match, half-time and post-match with the assistance of a well-picked set of special guests, perhaps attracted by Tom’s appointment, in Lloydy , Troy and Tommy Smith.  This worked well, the only slight hiccup being the delay for the the loop of the pitch before the big awards which made the former feel like more of a chore than it should have done.  All worthy winners though – Wes for both Player of the Season and Goal of the Season, Yáser for Young Player of the Season and Sarah Priestley as Supporter of the Season.  Hurrahs all round, and a nod too to an accidental highlight of the season in the ongoing failure of anyone to get anywhere near hitting the centre-spot from the penalty spot and thus winning £10k in the half time challenge.  Mr Q’s main man seemed embarrassed enough by the difficulty of the thing to arbitrarily change the rules and give some money away anyway at the last, but the farce has been essential viewing all season and a good lack-of-need-for-investment for the sponsor.

4- As for Sunderland, they looked a sorry shadow of the punchy side that we faced at their place in, similarly, the penultimate fixture of last season.  We only see a snapshot of our opponents of course, there’s plenty of narrative that goes on in between and before, and anyone who listens to the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcasts will have heard Barry Glendenning’s non-specific grumbles about the running of his club and be under few illusions.  The chants of “we want our club back” from the away end that peppered the second half were more than mere childish tantrumming in the wake of a disappointing season.

Like us, like pretty much every side in the middle of the Championship, there are positive bits amongst the dross.  Dan Ballard looks a solid centre-half;  he came as close as anyone in a first half low on attempts on goal, a sort-of-threat from set pieces suggested by his far post header to Clarke’s free kick, headed away by Porteous as it wandered towards the goal-line.  Ekwah, Alese and the absent Dan Neil are useful youngsters and Luke O’Nien has developed from his ball-juggling days at Vicarage Road into an arch-shithouse of a captain, the sort of captain every struggling side needs. Here, he happily took the visitors’ only yellow of the game for his team with a stretching two-handed block to a Koné through ball that would have sent Matheus Martins through on goal.  Sunderland need more like him, more structure since a team of kids is a necessarily flaky thing… Sunderland are all baubles with no Christmas tree to pin them to at the moment.

5- They could, and perhaps should still have taken something from this game, since they made creating chances look a lot easier than we did.  Our back line did a good job of making things difficult, the visitors didn’t spurn clear-cut openings but had they been able to finish we wouldn’t have come away with the points.

So it should be a source of great encouragement that we did.  The home win was everything of course, the need to get that monkey off our back before the summer break absolutely paramount.  But having struggled more, in Tom’s nascent management career, against obstructive opponents like this (see also Preston), to get away with standing our ground whilst fashioning the best of the games clear chances and grabbing the points irrespective of merit builds on the suggestion that Tom has something about him.  

The first of these came from a move down the left that saw a rare contribution from the disappointing Sema.  He dummied Callum Styles and put in a ball that found its way to Kayembe who lashed a first-time shot as the ball dropped requiring an urgent, frantic block on the line.  Ten minutes later – and the other side of the O’Nien booking that resulted from the denial of surely another clear chance – we got the winner.  Good, too, that it was Ryan Andrews who got it…   the pendulum has swung between the unreasonable extremes of him being the best thing since sliced bread and Not Good Enough in the wake of some flakier performances, but here another fine Koné pass popped the lock on Sunderland’s defence.  Andrews’ acceleration and willingness from right wingback are to be cherished, but more than that it was a hell of a finish at speed and across the face of the goalkeeper, the effect only slightly spoiled by Patterson getting a forlorn glove on it.  The relief around the ground was audible.

And so we look to next season with some of the reasons for optimism that Tom spoke of when he arrived.  A support uniting around a head coach, one who speaks candidly about his team’s strengths and failings and has already displayed versatility in addressing very different challenges.

It won’t be easy of course, plenty of challenges remain to hold us back…  Yáser Asprilla made a show of acknowledging all four sides at length as he was subbed in the second half (before, slightly confusingly, expressing through translator Wesley Hoedt how much he enjoys being here and what sounded like optimism for next season).  

Either way, it’s not supposed to be easy.  Without jeopardy, where’s the excitment?

Will be going to Boro, and hope to fit in a report.  If not, there’ll be more Stuff as usual over the summer.  Enjoy.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 4, Grieves 2, Sema 2, Porteous 4, *Hoedt 4*, Pollock 3, Koné 3, Kayembe 3, Asprilla 3, Bayo 3, Dennis 2

Subs: Andrews (for Grieves, 45) 3, Martins (for Dennis, 45) 3, Lewis (for Sema, 69) 3, Rajović (for Bayo, 80) NA, Livermore (for Asprilla, 91) NA, Ince, Sierralta, Morris, Hamer

Watford 0 Hull City 0 (20/04/2024) 21/04/2024

1- Watford and Hull City have an odd relationship.

Or rather, an odd lack of relationship.  Odd in that despite having spent a reasonable number of recent seasons in the same division – 8 of the last 20 – there’s not much of a narrative, little story line.  They’re the neighbour you pass in the street;  you know their name and you know that so-and-so knows them but you’ve never spoken to them yourself.

And this despite our shared histories overlapping at significant moments… but always in a sort of incidental way.  They happened to be the team who, rather than a Palace or a Bournemouth, an opponent whose trajectories have seen them become fierce rivals at particular times through circumstance.

Back in 1979, our last game of the season saw us need a win to seal promotion to the second tier for only the second time in our history under Graham Taylor.  This was achieved handsomely, a 4-0 triumph confirming successive promotions to escape the lower divisions in which we’ve only spent 2 years since.  Hull just happened to be the victims, lying in upper mid-table; “the Hull game” remembered fondly by those that do, but the Tigers’ biggest role was in labelling it.  

Our next encounters were nine years later;  an FA Cup tie that went two two replays (remember them?  back in the day when not every lingering jar of soul had been greedily licked clear) which the Hornets eventually navigated on our way to a Quarter-Final defeat at Wimbledon (John Fashanu’s handball, by the way, still pisses me off).  Each of those ties was overseen by a different manager – the outgoing Dave Bassett, the caretaker Tom Walley and the newly appointed Steve Harrison.  The Tigers side included recent young Hornets Richard Jobson, Charlie Palmer, Alex Dyer and Neil Williams; Steve Terry would join them that summer, but for all Andy Payton’s scurrying around Hull’s name was mere detail.

Another twenty years on, Aidy Boothroyd’s side lost to City over two legs in the play-offs – indeed lost both legs, in the end… but City, who were ultimately promoted, were merely the side who drew the lot of putting us out of our misery after an astonishing and pathetic collapse in the second half of that season. Any contention arose not from City but from Kevin Friend’s decisions to disallow a Danny Shittu header and then dismiss John Eustace.  The fight displayed that day was too little, too late.

Five years further on it was Hull who benefitted from our failure to see off Leeds United on that impossibly tragic final day as Gianfranco Zola’s swashbuckling side failed to crown a fine run that had gotten going in October.  Once again, Hull were bystanders;  Dominic Poleon, Jack Bonham, Jonathan Bond and even former Hornet Malky Mackay, who took his already promoted Cardiff side to second place Hull and got a point to open the opportunity of automatic promotion, would all play more significant roles in the afternoon.

Four years more and an overeager Marco Silva is on his way up the greasy pole, swapping Humberside for Hertfordshire.  Both contentious moves, both locations mere stepping stones with barely a year passing between his appointment at Hull and his departure from Vicarage Road (and a good deal less with his mind on his current job) but none of the many players linked with a move from City to Watford that summer (Eldin Jakupović, Josh Tymon, Kamil Grosicki, Tom Huddlestone, Andy Robertson) would move to Hertfordshire (a decision they surely all regret) and lack of relations with Hull City remained unaffected in the long term.

That summer did see the (second) coming of one Tom Cleverley to Vicarage Road.  Today, another incidental encounter with the Tigers on a day when, with our season all but over, the need for his first home win and the club’s first since November really needed putting to bed.

2- Not that the fans had flocked to see it.  For all that Tom’s albeit stopgap appointment has provoked an upturn in mood, this was still a dead rubber and “you never know, we might even win this week” remains a tough sell.  We were half an hour later in than normal due to One Thing and Another, but the concourses were quiet, there were no queues for anything, the stadium felt empty.

It wasn’t, of course, not quite.  Plenty of hellos were said and hands are shaken as we navigated our way through the GT concourse and down into the Rookery, Daughter 2 rolling her eyes bashfully at each.  It would be a sorry thing if we were entirely reliant on the football itself for entertainment after all, and Joe and Pat would, one assumes, have knocked the trips over from Ireland on the head long since were that the case.

And good job really, because our start wasn’t one to get the blood racing or fists pumping.  We retained the ball reliably enough, but did so inconsequentially and largely in our own half;  when Hull gained possession, which one two occasions happens as the result of a slack pass from the still not-quite-got-his-head-around-this Ismaël Koné, they were all over us in far more dangerous areas with wide men Omur and Philogene causing us immediate problems.  The penalty was no great surprise…  it hadn’t quite “been coming”, but we’d looked get-attable.

Ozan Tufan’s name was being chanted from the far end before he lined up the kick; the Turk has nine goals for the season and has even lasted the full 90 a few times, so we may have to accept that he’s a slightly better player than the tubby caricature who encapsulated our recruitment inadequacies of three years ago.  Nonetheless, his spot kick was entirely consistent with that caricature;  feeble and rueful, well within Daniel Bachmann’s reach and reach it he did.  It speaks volumes of both the goalkeeper’s performance and the limpness of the kick that this doesn’t even make his top three saves of the afternoon.

3- The most immediate consequence of the penalty save was that the level of niggle in the game was amplified.  Watford’s support raged at the visitors’ propensity to hit the deck easily;  the away end no doubt perceived instead an attempt by the home side to kick the shit out of their opponents.  In truth there were elements of both, perhaps exaggerated by a refereeing performance that comprehensively failed to command respect even if it never entirely lost control of proceedings.  An ongoing spat between Jaden Philogene and, astonishingly, Ryan Porteous was the most prominent; the Scot, along with the rest of the Three Amigos at the back, picked up a yellow as eight were shared between the two sides.

Hull continued to have the better of it without ever quite threatening to overwhelm us.  Tufan came closer than he had from the penalty spot from slightly closer in, receiving a knock-down with his back to goal in front of Bachmann’s right hand goalpost and executing a sharp, quick backheel, denied by fine reflexes from the goalkeeper.  The visitors looked like what their position in the table suggests – half-decent, which in turn implies half not-decent, the latter accounting for the fact that they haven’t even been able to keep pace with a flaky Norwich side and as such probably shouldn’t be under any illusions regarding readiness for the top flight.

As for ourselves, our own attacking limitations were showcased by our inability to create much worth writing about; a lot of what we managed on the break ended up with Jamal Lewis on the left and one of several fair deliveries found the relatively unattended head of Asprilla on the far side of the box.  He’d be near the top of the list of players you’d want attacking a shot on the volley, but bottom of the list to attack with his head, a badly directed effort going criminally wide.   Dennis, meanwhile, was having a tame afternoon… disappointing in the context of a feisty encounter albeit he’s still carrying that knock.  His best effort came at the expense of a better passing option and flew well wide on the spin.  In almost a season and a half at Vicarage Road, he has been involved in three home League victories… a statistic for which he is far from solely responsible, but damning nonetheless.

4- The second half was, eventually, much brighter;  Yáser Asprilla got hold of the game and the double substitution that introduced both Ken Sema and Mileta Rajović left us looking a lot more potent.  Hull remained dangerous on the break despite having less of the territory in the second half, Bachmann again called into action to beat away a fierce Carvalho free kick, and then to execute a double save to deny first Jacob and then a follow up from Sharp.

But most of the action was again at the Rookery end.  Sema was an immediate threat, making mincemeat of a tiring Regan Slater who was replaced within ten minutes.  Whatever the remaining problems with our side/squad, Ken ain’t one of them;  slightly concerning to see him approaching the last year of his contract.

Hugely encouraging, too, to see Mileta Rajović looking as much like a proper target man as he has in a Watford shirt…  battling, getting in the way, getting his head to things, laying off.  We are past the stage, too, of remarking on his taking free-kick duties from the left of the box or of being in charge of the long throw in attacking positions.  Both were in evidence here, his whipped free kick forced a straightforward but necessary save from Allsop from close to the edge of the box.

But the biggest obstacle to our achieving that much awaited victory remains the lack of confidence in front of goal.  Perversely given our record when shooting from distance – and our associated propensity for doing so – we look tentative and anxious in the box.  Matheus Martins is the poster boy for this, a ghost of the erratic but usefully cocky forward of the first half of the season.  He was at the end of the best chance, a fine Asprilla delivery from the right with time to take a touch, choosing instead an anxious volleyed slice which flew wide of a gaping goalmouth.

5- At the end of the game it was the visiting players that were the more visibly distraught, understandably so with more material objectives at stake.  Whilst not out of the play-off race the Tigers are now outside candidates… but presuming they don’t make the top six, our role was incidental, as is traditional.  A side who happened to be in the way as things slipped out of reach rather than the root cause of Hull’s distress.

As for the Hornets, Dave suggested during a brief congress on a quickly empty Yellow Brick Road after the game that a win, finally, against Sunderland next week would seal the job for Tom longer term.  One suspects that that win might be necessary for all concerned, reassurance that the decision is based on evidence as much as sentiment.  For the time being, Tom has achieved the aims he set himself – a win against Birmingham and reasons to look forward to next season.  As evidenced by the irrational levels of excitement that greeted confirmation of our trip to Middlesbrough on the final day.

Yooorns.

*Bachmann 5*, Andrews 3, Lewis 4, Porteous 3, Sierralta 3, Hoedt 3, Koné 2, Kayembe 3, Asprilla 4, Bayo 3, Dennis 2

Subs: Ngakia (for Andrews, 65) 3, Rajović (for Dennis, 73) 4, Sema (for Lewis, 73) 4, Martins (for Bayo, 82) NA, Ince, Livermore, Pollock, Morris, Hamer

Watford 0 Preston North End 0 (06/04/2024) 07/04/2024

1-  This morning, we cleared out the container.

It’s been sitting in the car park outside the centre for as long as I can remember, and it was full of crap.  If that were all there was to it life would have been easier but there was actually useful… no, essential stuff in there too, nestled amongst the crap.  In the build up to every theatre group production Chris makes positive noises about “sorting the container out”.  In the event, despite his best intentions, we end up lugging out the stuff we need – flats with which to construct the set, doors, batons, costumes, curtains, cables, paint, glue, shoes, wigs – for the duration, then shoving it all back in, padlocking the doors closed and trying our best to forget about it entirely until the next one.

This morning, we cleared out the container.  It helped that the sun was shining, which in part surely abetted the handsome turnout.  The were all sorts of folks present, only two of whom will actually find their way onto stage during the next production but any amdram group is necessarily a large extended family and many hands make light(er) work. Things were lugged, sorted, carried, sawed down, thrown out, arranged.  There were worthy people making tea and coffee, brave people crawling around under the stage lugging out long forgotten bags of even more crap.  People with power tools, people carrying things and plenty of standing around drinking tea. There was, it must be confessed, more willing incompetence than direction…  those with any expertise at all were thinly spread, the rest of us floated about desperately looking for an unclaimed job. Jude and I spent a happy fifteen minutes constructing a set of plastic shelving, establishing that it was still functional and then packing it away again.  Daughter 2 mucked in quite literally… using her own particular set of skills in sorting through an ancient bag of mostly revolting and possibly dangerous makeup and was rendered speechless by an unlabelled pot of green something that was quickly disposed of.  By the end of the day everything would be removed from the container, sorted, disposed of or replaced and the necessary for the next production lined up and ready to go.  Daughter 2 and I, needless to say, had made our excuses and headed for Vicarage Road long before.

2- The sense of a shared passion, of being part of something bigger and experiencing it with people who are similarly minded and similarly motivated isn’t unique to the theatre of course.  This, too, is surely part of what supporting a football club is all about…  the football matters, up to a point, and our mood is overly dictated by the vagaries of the team’s success or lack thereof.  But at the heart of it, the Thing that we support isn’t the players or the owners, the stadium or the colours or the badge – though they all represent the football club in different ways.  It’s the community.  The spirit, the sense of shared belief.

This is true despite the fact that Watford have a distinctly unimpressive trophy cabinet and will not spend much time in the consciousness of many other football fans in any normal week unless they happen to be facing us at the time.  Other people’s indifference is utterly irrelevant.  This is our club.

On which note, what a bloody wonderful thing Preston North End’s gentry day is.  It’s not new, it’s been celebrated in this way for nearly twenty years…  and I’m sure I was aware of it before today.  But we’d never seen it, never hosted until now the annual celebration of Preston fans, players and friends recently lost.  There are bowler hats all over Vicarage Road.  Not just one or two blokes having a laugh, which would have been fine in itself, but sported by hundreds upon hundreds in the away end.  Many have gone the whole hog and suited up, enough such that the spivvy suits aren’t unusual either, they’re everywhere.  Before the game, we are told, a wreath has been laid at the grave of former PNE invincible and Watford boss John Goodall in the Vicarage Road cemetery.  And the away end is full.  Not just busy, full.  Anyone who’s done the reverse trip knows that Watford to Preston is a bloody long way, PNE don’t have the biggest fanbase in the division and an outside chance of a play-off place isn’t going to do the job on it’s own.  Folk have come down specifically for gentry day, that’s what fills their stand.  It’s absolutely beautiful.  It’s poetry.  PNE celebrating their own people, their own reality.

3- Unfortunately, the game is shit.

There was a degree of inevitability about this from the moment that Daughter 2 and I took our leave of the hard work (and tea drinking) going on in North Bedfordshire of course, such behaviour would never be rewarded by that long-awaited home win.  Nonetheless it’s a numbing thing, a cold shower after the relative thrill of the Easter fixtures. 

On the pitch, Preston are a charmless breeze block of a team…  grey, solid, uncompromising and without decoration or accoutrement.  That the game follows the trend set by both of last season’s encounters with Ryan Lowe’s side is not all down to them, of course… our own limitations are cast into sharp relief by the afternoon, any overexcitement after the Leeds and West Brom performances quickly doused.

But the joylessness of the spectacle owes a lot to the nihilistic approach of the visitors.  Many a side has thrived in this division with a solid, obdurate team that is set up to allow opponents to crash against them with enough magic dust up front to nick a goal and a win here and there.  Hell, any number of Watford teams have employed that blueprint, Sean Dyche’s side and Quique’s team that comfortably survived our first season after promotion both good examples.  

None have followed it this absolutely.  None have interpreted the blueprint as a religious document to be followed unquestioningly, absolutely and dogmatically.  None have prioritised the suffocation of space in the final third to quite such a degree, none have so readily substituted magic dust with, frankly, more concrete in the shape of a brutal forward line of elbows and shoulder barges.  That Ryan Lowe’s relatively high water mark as PNE boss hasn’t seen him taken to Preston hearts is much easier to understand having seen the team play, let alone after three games in two seasons of fist-chewing tedium.  This is the sort of football that will see a manager turned on as soon as it fails to be successful and even, perhaps, before that.

4- Really, any attempt at a blow-by-blow would be doomed to failure from the off.  There weren’t any blows for starters, not that didn’t involve people colliding with each other; the closest that either side came was a header in the opening minutes that either came off Whatmough or his marker and squirrelled  its way around Daniel Bachmann’s woodwork.  Other than that the story of the “blows” is in quite how the few that came along were blown…  Jamal Lewis, frequently the attacking outlet since playing around the outside of the breeze block proved easier than bludgeoning through the middle of it, was on the end of a reasonable half-chance in the closing minute of each half and shanked the both. The first, a rare unattended ball in the Preston area, more forgivably clouted over with his weak foot; the second at the end of a good move in the second less excusably well wide.  The visitors had far less possession but made as much with it in terms of clear chances, Hughes executing the most spectacular miss of the day by slicing across an open goal in front of the Rookery and almost hitting the corner flag before the break whilst Keane came rather closer with a first time shot in the second half.

But long before the end it was clear that what residual enjoyment was to be bled from the afternoon would come from the fact that Richard Walker had been let loose with the microphone again.  Having long perfected the art of finding comedy in both the introduction of the ever-growing column of mascots and the participants in the fabulously futile “hit the centre spot” half time challenge that doesn’t involve humiliating anyone involved, the chucking-the-mike-down “f*** this” drawled, hopeless announcement of Preston’s last sub (“Coming on for Preston….  number 17.”) captured the mood of the stadium entirely.  The whistle blew, we went home.

5- Tom Cleverley may or may not be a football genius.  Time will tell, and the first disappointing performance of his short tenure doesn’t prove the case either way.  Elements of the team look much stronger for the new shape and thus for Cleverley’s influence…  defensively we look much more solid, four goals conceded in four games a figure distorted by two worldies, “could maybe have closed down better” notwithstanding.  Tom Dele-Bashiru continues to sparkle in that midfield and was again the pick of the bunch here, at the centre of a second half upping of the tempo that saw us at least threaten to play through Preston’s rearguard.  This improvement has been backed up by Tom’s post-match assessment, the need for more risk-taking when teams are sitting deep against us.

The next week brings two further tests against top six sides of the sort that have brought our best recent performances – I won’t make Ipswich (rehearsals trump driving to Suffolk midweek) but hope to be at Southampton.  Hopefully those that travel will enjoy performances akin to those against Leeds and West Brom against opponents less likely to sit back than Preston were.

But you do suspect that any lasting, permanent improvement rather needs us to get around to clearing out the container.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 3, Andrews 3, Lewis 3, Porteous 3, Sierralta 3, Hoedt 3, *Dele-Bashiru 3*, Kayembe 3, Asprilla 3, Bayo 3, Dennis 3

Subs: Chakvetadze (for Kayembe, 62) 3, Rajović (for Bayo, 62) 3, Koné (for Dennis, 82) NA, Ince, Martins, Livermore, Pollock, Morris, Hamer

West Bromwich Albion 2 Watford 2 (01/04/2024) 02/04/2024

Less may or may not be more, but it’s better than nothing at any rate.  Concise thunks, rather than an attempt at a report, befitting that they’re starting at 9.30pm before the grindstone tomorrow…

1-  “Please hang on….”

The guy next to me hasn’t struck up conversation in the two and a half hours that we’ve been standing here.  This despite the extremely close quarters that the narrow seating berths impose…  actually sitting down is out of the question, even standing demands a degree of co-ordination, sideways-onning and forbearance.  

But the whispered entreaty isn’t for my benefit.  Nor is it merely giving voice to anxiety, a futile call to the team of the sort that we all indulge in to give us the illusion of a degree of control or influence.  This is completely subconscious and is a sentiment shared throughout the noisy away end.  Points from a home game against the form team of the division and a difficult away trip are fine, late equalisers notwithstanding.  A win would be fabulous.  A win would see us galloping into the home straight.

It didn’t happen.  Which matters in one sense, and not at all in another.  The former, because see above.  The latter because this is suddenly huge fun again anyway.

2- It’s not even as if Albion had been knocking on the door, really.  Leeds’ equaliser on Friday was fortunate in the timing and manner of its arrival, but whilst we felt hard done by, it was a tickets-raffles situation.  There had been balls bouncing around our area looking for a leg to deflect off at regular intervals during the last twenty minutes.

I find West Brom less objectionable than most of our rivals, all things considered.  But whilst they too persevered they had none of Leeds’ verve, had applied very limited pressure and as frustration had been voiced around the Hawthorns the home fans began to trickle away.  Indeed, we had been threatening to extend our lead ourselves, Andrews getting himself on the end of an excellent move that ended, as so many, with Jamal Lewis free on the left sending in a ball which the right wing-back did well to reach but stabbed unwittingly at the keeper – either side and it was in. Minutes before Darnell Furlong, one of many names crisscrossing today’s teams, dumped an equaliser past Bachmann that his father would have been proud of I’d been pondering whether there were any Southampton tickets left.

There had been none of the frenzied bloodlust that had characterised Friday night.  Indeed Albion started much the stronger, but we’d established a foothold and were punching our weight by the interval.  In the second half we pinned the hosts back for long periods, our play characterised by retention of possession, yes, but quick quick slow, often involving brave passes to players in tight corners, trusting their ability to play their way through such situations.  Emmanuel Dennis and Tom Dele-Bashiru in particular thrived in this regards, Dennis through belligerence, TDB through being in complete control of his balance, of where the ball was and where he was going to send it.  Nothing untidy, nothing done by accident.

3- A word for Mileta Rajović, who got a proper run here for the first time in Tom’s three games to date.  I’ve been fooled by suggestions like this before that haven’t been followed through in subsequent games, so let’s see but…  one of the frustrations with the big striker has been his reluctance, perhaps inability to weaponise his size.   He grapples, he competes, though his total lack of acceleration makes him less of a nuisance than he might be…  but he’s not shown enough evidence of an ability to bully opponents.

He bullied West Brom here.  His forty minutes or so was aggressive and effective…  somehow he no longer seemed to be lumbering slightly haplessly after the game but was very much at the centre of it.  Competing for headers he had little chance of winning but leaving something on his marker anyway, just to let him know he had a scrap on his hands.  Pushing away challenges and spreading the play as teammates scampered away from him.  Bellowing at Emmanuel Dennis’ selfishness (yes, really) as the Nigerian picked up the pieces after Palmer had pushed away a TDB drive and smacked a shot against the post from a ridiculous angle rather than pulling back for the Dane to tap in.  Arguing with fellow sub Martins, claiming rights to a free kick won on the edge of the area… Martins prevailed and curled a shot gently into the keeper’s chest, a Rajović set piece would have been morbidly fascinating.  Finally, flying in at the far post to stretch and turn in yet another Lewis cross; the celebration was in front of the away section and screamed both joy and relief.  We screamed with him, a fine moment irrespective of what happened subsequently.

4- Actually the worst moment of the afternoon, now that we’re reconciled to our disappointment, was the passing of another significant landmark.  The Abbey Stadium in 1991 saw the first, the emotional blow of someone younger than me playing for Watford (in that ridiculous blue chessboard kit of all things from memory) only slightly tempered by the subsequent development of the miscreant into Richard Johnson.  The first Watford manager younger than me was the next…  Brendan Rodgers, whose rapid and clumsy relocation to Reading might have been met with more vitriol than it probably deserved as a result.

So Zavier Massiah-Edwards being an exciting new name on the teamsheet was briefly a fascination, but googling revealed the sorry truth…  that I was only an indulgent substitution away from watching someone younger than Daughter 1, and thus by definition a small child, playing for the Hornets.  This is a bridge that any parent will have to cross, of course;  I concede that it’s not really reasonable to hold this against Massiah-Edwards for too long (and of course he hasn’t taken to the field yet…).  But I’m going to need a lie down and/or a stiff drink when it happens.

5- The question on everyone’s lips, evidenced both on social media and in the stands before the game, is whether Tom gets the gig at the end of the season.  He’s demonstrably suggesting nothing of the sort, which is entirely proper.  Probably not significant that his interim team was drawn entirely from existing ranks within the club…  financially expedient for a holding position as well as names and faces that he clearly trusts, so not indicative either way.

For me… the hope is that we’re still asking that question by the time we finish at Middlesbrough in a month or so’s time.  If that’s the case, if he’s kept the team positive and playing, nobody on the beach, meeting the challenges of opponents wising up to his approach – his biggest achievement today the reset that propelled us into the second half – then he’ll have succeeded in his objectives.  Beat Birmingham, confirm survival, then leave us looking forward to the next one.  He’ll certainly have made it much harder to look anywhere else, and would be a popular appointment.

As for me, I bought those Southampton tickets anyway…

Yooorns.

Bachmann 4, Andrews 3, Lewis 4, Porteous 4, Sierralta 3, Hoedt 4, *Dele-Bashiru 4*, Kayembe 4, Koné 3, Dennis 4, Bayo 3

Subs: Asprilla (for Koné, 56) 4, Rajović (for Bayo, 56) 4, Martins (for Dennis, 74) 3, Livermore (for Kayembe, 85) NA, Massiah-Edwards, Ince, Pollock, Morris, Hamer

Watford 2 Leeds United 2 (29/03/2024) 31/03/2024

1-  Timing means that this is going to be a different sort of report.

There’s only so many hours in the day, dear reader, and a kick-off at 8pm on Good Friday doesn’t leave you much wriggle room if you’ve got a good hour’s drive once you’ve gotten out of Watford, only to drive back the next morning for an Event.  Thus, I’m writing this 24 hours after kick off and much as last night was thrilling we’re passed the stage where any “big learnings” piece, let alone a blow-by-blow, adds much.  So this is going to be largely vibes.  But such vibes. 

The Event in question is a Batmitzvah,  our invite coming from Felix and his wife, parents of the daughter in question.  Felix has been my neighbour at Vicarage Road – Daughters 1 and 2 permitting – since he walked into Leeds University Union wearing the grotesque blue-and-white chessboard away kit of the time well over 30 years ago.  The next two years saw many trips around England, including dicing with trouble with scarves flying all the way back up the M1 after this fixture in 1992. 

It’s my second visit to a synagogue;  the first, a mere 20 years ago, for his wedding.  This time there is heavy if cordial security…  without wishing to wander into reckless territory, indicative that irrespective of faith there are some foul people in the world.

None of them are here, though.  This is a fine event all round which concludes with a lot of food at a Bushey restaurant.  Many of the guests are of an appropriate persuasion of course, and are bound even stronger on this occasion. There’s an odd giveaway noticeable by anyone paying attention, a sparkle in the eyes akin to the blue glow of the Fremen in Dune.  Daughter 2 has it in spades, so too Felix’s brother and nephew.  Felix and his son have it, and they didn’t even make the game due to their pre-Event duties here but it’s contagious and undeniable.  His Dad, Joe, sums it up best.  “I’ve not enjoyed a game that much in years…”.

2- Wind back to Friday evening.  Let’s say…  8.45ish.  Emmanuel Dennis is haring towards the Sir Elton John Stand and the stadium – barring the rammed away section – is collectively doing its nut.

This is Vicarage Road  at it’s finest…  an evening kick-off, for one thing.  This stadium is ours and home.  We know it’s special for all sorts of reasons that might not be immediately apparent to a neutral, let alone a rival.  But even the most journeyed supporter would surely concede that there’s nowhere that quite sucks in the darkness like Vicarage Road on such occasions.  

It’s also noisy.  Daughter 2 and I are fuelled, as is long traditional, by the stunning Tandoori Chicken and Masala fries with curry sauce available in the Upper GT concourse… I mean, don’t go telling everyone because we wouldn’t want to have to queue for it or anything but jesus.  

But even those not similarly rocket powered are noisy tonight.  Birmingham was obviously critical in this regard… never mind the performance, feel the points.  Anything less than a scruffy win and this game would have been met with trepidation and yet another glance over the shoulder but that’s all gone now.  “Bring. It. On.” is the subtext.  Bigger they come, harder they fall.  

It helps that the opening half has been extraordinary.  Furious, aggressive, wild, merciless and all but unprecedented. And having seen our lead stolen by a fabulous finish from the remarkable Summerville… well.  This goal is…  perhaps one of the goals of our season – though the number of times that Dennis has held on to the ball too long and f***ed it up on previous occasions rather takes the edge off that perhaps.

But it’s undoubtedly the moment of the season so far.  A prize sealed, perhaps, by the ferocious challenge by Dennis on Cooper that featured in the build up, a great big “f*** off, pal” (of which more below) which already had everyone’s adrenaline going such that when the ball was planted past Meslier a primal scream followed.  Just NOISE.  By half time, my voice was gone.

3- Come Monday night, everything might have changed.  Come Monday night we might have travelled up to the Hawthorns, haunted as it is by the ghosts of Bob Taylor and Lee Hughes and drubbings past, and been thoroughly undone.  Perhaps they’ll have watched this video and thought “right… we do this, and this and a bit of that” and unpeeled Tom Cleverley’s new dawn like a banana.

Until then, Tom Cleverley (with nods to Kavaja, Lathrope, Gilligan) is a football genius, so let’s enjoy the heck out of it.  So much of what had changed just seemed so utterly sensible.  Like… putting players in positions where they can do things they’re good at, enlightened, modern, namby-pamby thinking that it was – and often in places that Leeds didn’t expect them at all.  So you have Vakoun Bayo as a wonderful, hurtly, pain in the arse, underneath every long clearance forward and not particularly having to hold the ball up because suddenly he’s one of a two and has Emmanuel Dennis, spiky and venomous in his own right, prowling around next to him.  You have Tom Dele-Bashiru as a sort of human protractor, popping up like whack-a-mole to create an angle, quick-pass, twist into space.  Or maybe create an angle, twist into space, quick pass if he’s feeling cheeky. He’s a critical cog.

Jamal Lewis in particular benefits from being pushed forward to wing-back and spends the game galloping down the left flank, a cute line in outward-curling lobbed passes from Porteous into his path a particular highlight.  Ryan Andrews, one suspects, will similarly enjoy his new liberty once he doesn’t have Crysencio Summerville to worry about.

Behind them, Dan Bachmann is now protected by three centre-halves, who elaborate on the themes suggested at Birmingham by snapping the ball along the now shorter distances between them much more quickly than we’re used to seeing it swing across the back…  but also by allowing themselves be bloody centre-halves now and again.  How much has Mattie Pollock in particular been desperate to be allowed to be a defender?  He, Sierralta and Porteous clear things that need clearing, as far as they can clear them.  They head things that need heading.  They shout at things that need shouting at.

And, yes, they kick things that need kicking.

4- Because the other attractive characteristic of the performance is an overdue level of violence.

Heaven knows there are some big bastards in our team, but with very few (if notable) exceptions – that’s you, Ryan Porteous – you wouldn’t have known it for much of a season in which we’ve been too supine too often.  Patience is, I suppose, a virtue but there comes a point where one really has to lose one’s rag and start demanding things as everyone who has ever parented a teenager will tell you.

And this is the most impatient performance we’ve seen for a very long time.  But…. disciplined with it.  For while Dennis and Bayo are hurtling around, Dennis back in the Tasmanian Devil form that characterised his better performance two seasons ago, and as a team we’re chasing down any whiff of controlled possession in the Leeds half our defending is much cuter…  standing players up, not jumping in, not overcommitting.  Jockeying, hassling, demanding. “Come on, then!”.  And then, when you see the whites of their eyes, kicking them up the arse.

Meanwhile in midfield, Edo Kayembe is rumbling around like the heavyweight unit he always should have been, ploughing through tackles rather than around them  Even Yáser Asprilla is doing his bit, seemingly tasked in the second half with being the irritant that cuts of Joe Rodon’s surges forward at the knees… the Welsh defender had followed an inhuman challenge to deny us a 2-0 lead with a surge through midfield to instigate the move for the equaliser, then caused havoc with a similar run later in the half but was given short shrift after the break.

Leeds don’t like it.  At all.  Summerville reacts early to being bullied out of possession by shoving his adversary two handed – with a more demonstrably insecure referee all sorts of cards could have been thrown around but, implausibly, we see none at all.  Dan James spends more time rolling around on the floor than not.  Patrick Bamford earns every inch of the derision he receives from Daughter 2 for flopping around inconsequentially for ninety plus minutes, waving his arms in the air.  Late in the game sub Jaydon Anthony channels all of his side’s peevish frustration into a snide rake of his studs down Porteous’ shins as the pair back away from a throw in at the Rookery end before stumbling backwards over his enraged adversary.  The ensuing handbags are quickly disposed of before Porteous earns the second biggest cheer of the afternoon when Anthony sits up in front of him on the GT stand touchline like a bouncing ball asking for a half-volley on the edge of the area and he launches his adversary into the hoardings.  Ludicrously, neither protagonist earned a card for either incident.

You’d have thought that Leeds, a team whose reputation was built on sharp edges and hailing from a City with similar character, would indulge in less pearl-clutching than most in response to this but seemingly not.  Seems that self-awareness is in low supply in West Yorkshire. Bless.  Tiny violins out all round, I think.

5- No, we didn’t win the game.  Noticed that.  Detail.

Having successfully prolonged our ferocity into the second half and kept a firm grip on the initiative, things changed when Emmanuel Dennis went off, ostensibly to protect a groin injury that already looks vastly less of a problem than it did at Birmingham.  It’s an expensive change to have to make, since Ismaël Koné never quite tuned into the inensity of the game.

Vakoun Bayo, meanwhile, was dead on his feet by midway through the half;  somehow he made it to the 89th minute but he wasn’t not the only one to slow down as the half progressed.  Leeds had most of the possession for the final quarter of the game and for all that we were the better side of the ninety this could have been a loss and a very different feel in the end. Dan Bachmann in particular, with a couple of fine stops not least from Anthony in the dying embers, saw us through as Leeds compensated for their lack of penetration with a bloody-minded perseverance that earned them a point but didn’t burgle them all three. 

Nonetheless.  Given a fairly feeble haul against the league’s strongest teams this season, a point from a side who had been 13-1-0 for the calendar year and hadn’t conceded from open play over the same period (let alone twice) is not to be sniffed at.  

Tom’s commitment was to get us looking forward to next season.  Much more of this and we’ll all be getting quite carried away.

See you at the Hawthorns.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 5, Andrews 3, *Lewis 5*, Pollock 4, Sierralta 4, Porteous 5, Dele-Bashiru 5, Kayembe 4, Asprilla 4, Bayo 4, Dennis 4

Subs: Koné (for Dennis, 58) 3, Ince (for Asprilla, 80) NA, Rajović (for Bayo, 89) NA, Martins, Grieves, Chakvetadze, Livermore, Morris, Hamer

Watford 1 Coventry City 2 (09/03/2024) 10/03/2024

1- The scenes at the end of the game are heart-breaking.  

The players look hollow.  Or rather, Wesley Hoedt does.  He’s the only one I wait around long enough to applaud as Daughter 2 has really had enough and is already down the tunnel.  His eyes betray the same haunted, vulnerable, beaten look that permeates the Rookery.  Perhaps a blessing that he’ll be sitting out the next two games, the first minutes he’ll have missed this season.  He needs exorcising more than exercising.

There are a few angry, red-faced men shouting at the players.  This isn’t fair, the narrative of this one is transparent and lack of effort isn’t part of it, unlike an absolute lack of belief exacerbated by having stolen defeat from the jaws of victory.  There are a few applauding, sparks of confrontation between the two parties.  But most troop out quietly with the same dull, numb emptiness in their eyes whilst the unwelcome, noisy visitors from the midlands enjoy that finest of things, a hard-earned if scarcely merited away win.

It’s difficult to know who to blame.  The players, yes, up to a point but having pulled that first half from somewhere sympathy is more appropriate than blame.  Not the referee…  the penalty looks a bit soft on the replay, the lack of censure for the foul on Chakvetadze disappointing but he kept a difficult game flowing for the most part and was intolerant of Coventry’s aggression in the face of our first half dominance.  The manager?  Well, perhaps.  But events overtake me as I type, so we’ll come to him later.

2- He had chucked the cards in the air again before kick off.  Often accused of being inflexible in his approach, his attempts at mixing it up have been less convincing than his earlier commitment to an inconsistently effective dogma.  Some selections, most recently the re-introduction of Andrews and earlier Pollock, seem to have been capitulations to pressure, others a haphazard “let’s see if this works”.

It would be hypocritical to criticise this lack of clarity too much.  Our own pre-match routines and superstitions have long been abandoned in a similarly desperate flailing around for something that might please the fortune fairies and improve our form.  Wednesday’s lucky chocolate had seen ig’s old staple, the mint Aero, adopted for the first time while Daughter 2 abandoned chocolate altogether in favour of a lollipop (both choices revised today, a home point inadequate however much an improvement).  We’ve come by train given the recent resumption of the Bedford-Bletchley service, a sedate trundle through things called Fenny Stratford and Apsley Guise that takes 45 minutes to cover roughly 15 miles as the crow flies. Heaven knows what impact that had. The real silver lining of today’s outcome, the only silver lining is that it doesn’t set a precedent involving lunch choices.  Having ambled around the town centre, we’d somehow ended up in Taco Bell.

Back in the stadium, whilst Dan Bachmann has retained his place after a characteristically eventful evening on Wednesday the midfield and forwards are shaken up with Koné and Kayembe returning for the absent Livermore and for Asprilla, moved back to a wide position as Dennis starts down the middle with Chakvetadze coming in for the injured Ken Sema.  Another tweak, perhaps a more interesting one, sees the sides switch ends with the Hornets kicking towards the Rookery in the first half, contrary to tradition.  Since Coventry then kicked off, this was presumably at our own instigation.

3- The visitors start like a train, because why wouldn’t you?  Jake Bidwell, who has always looked like, smelled like, had the aura of a second division left back, slugs a shot wide of Dan Bachmann’s left post.  You’d like to think that his swallow dive in the right general direction would have obstructed the shot had it been on target.  

The atmosphere is muted, sullen.  This season’s anthem, or at least 2024’s anthem, “football in a library”, regales us from the packed side of the Vicarage Road end.  The other stands in the ground are desperately patchy;  according to the official attendance there are only 2000 empty seats but it looks like an awful lot more.  The Totally Football Show this week hosted a fine rant by Seb Stafford-Bloor on Tottenham’s forthcoming ticket price hike in which he highlighted the privileged position that a football club has… it’s clientele desperately want to buy the product.  It takes an awful lot, supporters will put up with an awful lot before they vote with their feet because this is about so much more than the quality of the football (or lack of it).  It’s people, friends, family, traditions, habits.  Abandoning a lifelong commitment takes a lot of doing, however sensible.  Nonetheless Felix, who I’ve sat with at home games pretty much since we met during our first term at Leeds in 1991, had sloped in shortly before kick-off sheepishly admitting that he couldn’t face Swansea during the week.  He’s far from the only one.

So it’s a barren landscape, a blasted heath.  And yet as we survive City’s early assault and start playing some unusually punchy football of our own, green shoots are quick to emerge.  The people are desperate to be entertained – eight (now nine) home games without a win in the league yes, yes but on top of that we have enjoyed just 23 home league wins from the stands over the last five years, a figure distorted by promotion during a lockdown sandwiched by relegations, but nonetheless.  We’ve survived on meagre morsels for a while now, it doesn’t take much to put a smile on faces.

So as we start to rattle at Coventry, on the front foot, pinging the ball around, the crowd is quick to warm to it, the “I remember this, this was happiness, right?” murmurs evident.  Much of our attacking play is focused down our left where Giorgi Chakvetadze, so often a source of hope of late, is cutting inside and flowing around Coventry challenges like water while Jamal Lewis is having one of his flame on days, hammering down the flank and into challenges with an aggression that isn’t really his trademark; one shoulder-to-shoulder surprisingly seeing the not inconsiderable bulk of Bobby Thomas flying into the hoardings.  Coventry respond to this perhaps unanticipated challenge with rugged brutality to which referee Bobby Madley is quickly intolerant.  City fans will cheer ironically when they’re finally given a decision later in the half; not kicking our players incessantly would have been a more straightforward means of evening out the decisions rather more quickly.

Emmanuel Dennis is more effective down the centre than he has been wide of late, even if he hangs onto the ball for too long as is his way, and his passes to teammates rather force them away from the action instead of towards it.  Nonetheless Edo Kayembe, back in the side and looking suddenly much more like his old self, applies a corrective touch before flinging a shot across Coventry’s bows.  Collins pushes it away, Asprilla is sniffing after the rebound. He doesn’t reach it and is offside in any case but this is actual attacking play all of a sudden and We Like It.  Another attack down the left, Dennis flicks on and Asprilla is arriving again…  uncontrolled contact, narrowly and unwittingly wide but he was there like Nigel Callaghan would have been.  GT would have approved.  Another attack down the left, Chak doing his glidy thing before teeing up Koné whose shot skids across the face and wide.  

When it comes it’s a set piece, off the training ground and no shame in that.  Andrews, who has been positive and energetic when given a chance on the opposite flank, takes the throw, nobody tracks Porteous’ unusual break from the pack towards the thrower and he manages to execute a reverse lobbed header with his impossibly twisty neck muscles that drops over the helpless Collins and inside the far post.  The celebration is almost muted, we’ve forgotten how, but the sun is shining suddenly.

4- It doesn’t last, obviously.  As we continue to look positive it is beyond dispute that we could and should be further ahead…  but this is a hypothetical truism, something that you know to be correct but which seems divorced from a game in which we’re still on top so what’s the problem?  

By the end of the half we have two.  Coventry have shown signs of life, but Eccles tricking his way into the box is still incongruous… Bachmann charges out, Eccles pushes the ball sideways and goes over the challenge which was clumsy enough to deserve the outcome even if, strictly speaking, it was incompetent enough perhaps not to merit a penalty at all – obstruction for lying in the way and thus an indirect free kick feels more appropriate, Eccles having initiated the contact.  Either way, the impressive Haji Wright clubs his spot kick well beyond Bachmann’s dive and from nowhere the scores are level.

Minutes later  Giorgi Chakvetadze, by some distance the star of the first half, is felled by a cruel and deliberate foul that sees him fall and twist with weight on him, leaving him punching the turf.  Bobby Madley has been quick to punish Coventry’s earlier transgressions so the lack of punitive action here is a little surprising and such is clearly Val’s perspective from the touchline.  The Georgian recovers to end the half but doesn’t reappear after the interval, his replacement pointedly confirmed as caused by injury over the tannoy.

The combination of the two developments changes the game completely.  We still have possession, but even our better chances – another shot from Koné whilst falling, a header from Hoedt to a left wing set piece – lack conviction.  We are retreating back within ourselves, whilst the visitors bring on Ben Sheaf and Callum O’Hare on the hour;  not sure why they’re on the bench, but testament indeed to the depth of City’s squad if those two are now on rotation.  The visitors are the better side for the last half hour, and if they barely create a chance they create enough, a fine strike from Wright again but demonstrative of our fragility as Porteous is isolated on the edge of the box just as he was when Eccles skipped past him on his way to earning the penalty.  There is no suggestion of a fightback.

5- And so midway through the writing of this report the news breaks that has been coming, however reluctantly.  Ten months is probably not far from average for a managerial tenure these days and any number of statistics will support the fact that most clubs in this position would have taken the same steps by now, not that this will prevent any tired hacks from wheeling out tired gags.

One half of the paradox is that much of the stuff that I put in the Leicester report when recklessly pinning my colours to the Ismaël mast still holds.  Much… not all.  The lack of throwing players under the bus didn’t survive Norwich, for example.  But… you’d still acknowledge that he instilled discipline, that he gave the team a shape it had badly lacked.  That he improved a good number of the players, that he found albeit sticking-plaster solutions to deficiencies in the squad without bitching about them (TDB at right back, making a nuisance of his limited centre forward options), that he managed to keep most of the squad fit most of the time through diligent rotation.  The passing of time, what happens next, might see him end up with more credit than he’s leaving with.

Because the other side of the paradox is that our form and performances, notwithstanding half an hour or so here, have been what Joe on the WhatsApp chat accurately summed up as “ridiculously bleak” for some time.  Our seven defeats in nine are a catalogue of horror shows, almost all of which prompting an “oh yeah that was awful” on reflection.  Millwall.  Norwich.  Jesus, Huddersfield.  I’m rehearsing for a play at the moment, two-thirds of the principle actors in which are of a Watford persuasion.  Weekly comparison of notes has been a repetitive and mirthless affair.  However reluctantly and whatever the conspiring factors and environment that contribute to our situation, this call feels sadly unavoidable.

And so, Tom Cleverley.  An “interim” position, a charge who one hopes will do enough to steer us over the line, a low bar that should be attainable given the number of clubs below us.  He can at least count on renewed and unequivocal support from the stands, though I’m sure he’d prefer a kinder baptism of games than Leeds in his first at home and West Brom away three days later.

Either way, best of luck Tom.  You may need it.

Yooorns.

Bachmann 2, Andrews 4, Lewis 4, Porteous 3, Hoedt 3, Dele-Bashiru 3, Kayembe 3, Koné 3, Asprilla 3, *Chakvetadze 4*, Dennis 2

Subs: Bayo (for Chakvetadze, 45) 3, Martins (for Dennis, 64) 3, Ince (for Koné, 76) NA, Rajović (for Asprilla, 86) NA, Grieves, Sierralta, Pollock, Morris, Hamer