Five thunks from a comprehensive victory over Scunny…

1- The more this goes on, the greater is the credence to the argument that we’re not playing a succession of bad teams at home… we’re making teams look bad. Our midfield was again phenomenal, Lansbury and Cowie in particular standing out, and that movement and ball retention is going to expose plenty of teams, even those that haven’t had to cope with an early morning hotel fire alarm like Scunny. It could have been six.

2- With half an eye on the recent trip to West Brom, Palace and Newcastle could both be interesting. Scunny tried to bully us in the first half, indulged by a refereeing performance that reached extraordinary levels of preposterousness after the break, and more experienced, more solid teams will do so better. How we cope with Warnock’s trolls and mutants will be informative.

3- No weak performances today. Not one. And Lee Hodson is just bloody ace.

4- It really nearly happened again, didn’t it? And this would have been a beautiful moment for Lloydy to open his account, what with Grant absent at a photography course (I ask you!) and Messenger having already departed for his half-time pint. I do hope it happens when Messenger’s at the bar…

5- Scunny do seem to like their gobby little strikers. A visit to Glanford Park a few years ago was dominated by Martin Patterson (now Burnley) mouthing off incessantly, this time it was Gary Hooper. Like Patterson, a decent looking striker, but he didn’t half go on… Scunny looked tidy in the final third, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Five Thunks from a fun-packed evening at Vicarage Road.

1- Well I have to confess to not having seen that coming. The continuing absence of H and the Duke still on the bench didn’t particularly lift the spirits on the way into the ground either. It’s never as much fun as when you don’t expect it, is it…?

2- Speaking of which, Angela’s performance had not been suggested by his previous outings. Strong, confident, elegant, direct, and utterly unplayable. More please.

3- Having said all of which, Wednesday were pretty shocking. They were ropier than us defensively, and whilst Tudgay looked sharp there was next to nothing going on around him. And quite what Michael Gray, the most left-footed player ever, was doing on the right flank is beyond me.

4- And not wishing to focus unduly on the negative, but Scotty really does need to start coming for things and knocking opponents out of the way whilst doing so. It’s not as if his centre-backs are really big enough to do the job for him…

5- Having, whilst hanging the washing, frequently overheard two of my younger neighbours debating the various merits of the big four ad infinitum whilst kicking a ball around, I took the bold step of inviting the pair, both nine years old, to watch, you know, a proper football match, in the stadium and everything. The morning after, both are gushing about the experience and Josh is wearing a brand new replica shirt. My work here is done… (with a bit of help from Angela, Danny, Tom et al).

Five thunks from the horror show at the Vic

1- Well where to start, really. Defensively, a side that was holding it together quite convincingly earlier in the campaign really isn’t doing so at all now, and that goes for the entire team, not just the back five. We could really do with a gnarled old boot like Mackay or Dyche (of five or so years ago…) in there shouting at people… since the back four are individually more than adequate, but about as watertight as, well, something with ruddy great big holes all over it at the moment.

2- Cathcart in particular, had a horror show – his stupid and utterly unnecessary tug on Bothroyd, who was heading towards the corner flag and would have managed an off-balance shot at an impossible angle at best, resulted from Cathcart losing his concentration and his man again, just as against Leicester. He failed to cope with the unlovable Bothroyd throughout, and isn’t inspiring confidence at the moment. Reports from Plymouth suggest that this is a cracking defender in the making but perhaps he needs a dominant figure alongside him. Unfortunately the same goes for most of our centre-backs, including our visually impaired absent captain.

3- Two weeks’ respite might give us room to wallow in our miserableness, we could certainly have done with something from the home games this week, but it might also herald Helguson’s return. Danny Graham, suddenly looking far from confident in front of goal, could do with that boost. No pressure again then, H.

4- Would welcome readers’ views on Hoskins… my view from the Rookery was that he’d done well enough to last an hour without contributing an awful lot, and was certainly adding nothing by the time he came off. My brother’s Upper Rous view sparked a furious defence, he should never have been taken off, had a great first half, everyone mistakes his good bits for Cleverley (possibly true). My feeling remains that whilst Ellington will not (one hopes, for the sake of our wagebill) be a long-term solution, using a hungry and effective (if over-eager) player as cover for Helguson makes rather more sense than persevering with the ineffective Hoskins.

5- It’s odd… logically, after a game in which the difference between the sides was far larger than any margin that might be attributed to erroneous refereeing decisions, one ought to be able to sit back and marvel at a particularly spectacular demonstration of how not to referee a football match without getting bloody angry about it. Alas, I am unable so to do. Andy Woolmer missed two clear penalties (one for each side), was constantly behind the play, was horrifically inconsistent in what he chose to penalise and has seemingly never heard of “playing an advantage”. After a similarly chaotic visit to Vicarage Road for the Sheffield Wednesday game last season, Mr.Woolmer’s name becomes one to look out for.

Five thunks from an astonishing afternoon at Vicarage Road.

1- Only one place to start. Jaysus. The level of expectation associated with Helguson’s return might have been slightly moderated by his injury-burdened last few years, but only slightly. It was still wholly unreasonable to expect him to pick up where he left off, the whirling dervish focal point of the team. As it turned out he exceeded all expectations… announcing his arrival by flying into Leicester’s goalkeeper within thirty seconds and deflecting the ball narrowly the wrong side of the post. Then forcing the issue that led to Graham’s fine goal. Then the moment that brought the house down… classic Heidar, flying in vertically at the far post with little concern for the potential collision with said goalpost. This prompted one of those goal celebrations where you finally stand up five rows and twenty-seven seats from where you started, untangling yourself from others’ discarded limbs. A blinding moment. And then what might have been the winner, and if the celebration that greeted this one was relatively muted it was only because our reserves of energy and incredulity were already long exhausted.

Most of all, Helguson gave our attack focus. In the first half we’d done OK for the most part, but Leicester, who looked a decent side, coped pretty comfortably in the final third and took the chances that came their way. In the second Leicester looked very far from comfortable as we mutated from a tidy but perhaps limited side to something quite irresistible. It’s no coincidence that Leicester only got a foothold again when H went off injured… until that point they had looked like caving in completely. It’s difficult not to salivate at the potential of this team if we can keep H fit on that evidence.

2- Which said, it’s unlikely that we’ll be facing Wayne Brown every week. If there are any remaining dissenting voices wondering why we got shot of him then surely no longer… as one BHaPPY contributor of note commented, the second half was surely his finest for Watford and he was playing for the other side. Comfortable enough in the first half he utterly failed to cope with his new charge in the second. Whilst his prompting of his keeper to put the ball out so that H could receive treatment was worthy of respect, one can’t help but suspect that he was simply desperate to get the Iceman off the field as quickly as possible…

3- Craig Cathcart. Find myself reminded of a young Rio Ferdinand… cool, composed, effortless for the most part… and then suddenly falling on his arse at the least opportune moment. Early days, but we’ll need tighter performances than that from our new loanee.

4- Conceding the late equaliser was a bit of a choker… but whilst it’s justifiable to ask who was supposed to be marking N’Guessan, reportedly a summer target for ourselves from Lincoln, I think we can forgive Hodson’s inability to prevent the cross from the left. Hodson, after all, provided the crosses for all three Watford goals – the third, with his weaker foot, an absolute gem – and all from deep positions. Nigel Gibbs’ name being mooted in the Rookery may burden the youngster with unreasonable expectation, but he already looks nailed on at right back.

5- Reading. Chortle.

Five thunks from an enjoyable afternoon at Vicarage Road.

1- One of those wins that’s worth more than the three points, if you know what I mean. Much as the start to the season has been reasonable on the pitch (and much better than reasonable on occasions), failing to record our first home win against the bottom-of-the-table side after all the recent departures, revelations and lack of recruitment would have fuelled apprehension. As it turned out we got the win, and deserved it with some bright, clever football.

2- …although if there’s a criticism, it’s that our superiority in possession didn’t really translate to creating chances; there was a certain tentativeness in front of goal that we could do with sorting out pretty sharpish. I remember an Icelandic forward who once had a no-bullshit approach to attacking the ball in the box. That would be handy.

3- With the music stopped and the musical chairs over for the timebeing it’s a little clearer which bodies we’re left with, and there are encouraging signs of a couple of the large number of expensive persona non grata finding their way back in from the cold. Stand up John Eustace, who was little short of magnificent in the middle of the park in a strong all-round team performance. An encouraging cameo from Mr.Ellington, too. Now that would be a comeback to rival Southampton in 1980/81…

4- Extraordinary that after such hand-wringing over our lack of defensive options, the four academy products who lined up together did such an admirable job. Take a bow in particular Captain Mariappa; clearly a much-needed organiser at the back, time will tell whether he’s a leader too. Also Dale Bennett, for a very fine full debut.

5- Having said which, Barnsley looked pretty much what you would expect a side without a league win to look like. There was little evidence of the vim that a new manager might have expected to instill and, critically, the Tykes didn’t exploit their physical superiority anything like as effectively as they might have done. Darren Moore and Kayode Odejayi in particular are big old units, and yet neither bullied our lads as they might have, and one fears others will. Odejayi in particular doesn’t seem to have impressed his new boss… a sub being subbed doesn’t imply total satisfaction.

1. After a relatively quiet start, a really tremendous game of Championship football, culminating in a breathless, nerve-wracking final twenty minutes of end-to-end mayhem. None of which should distract the coaching staff from taking a clear, sober look at the reasons why we didn’t win it…and that isn’t to ignore the part played by an enterprising Blackpool side with chances a-plenty, merely to recall that there was a point when it looked like we were going to put them to the sword. And it was exactly then that we conceded a scrappy, incomprehensible-from-the-other-end, oh-for-heaven’s-sake equaliser. That kind of nonsense will get us into a lot of trouble if we’re not careful.

2. A very enjoyable home debut for young Tom Cleverley, not least because of his complete refusal to be bullied or intimidated by the physical stuff that came his way. One walloping challenge under the Rous in the second half was something that many would’ve thought better of, preferring to keep all of their limbs intact; he won that and many others too, scrapping wholeheartedly throughout. And that’s the point about sending your players down to this level: you find out whether they can stand up for themselves, whether they can turn that training ground talent into something tangible.

Oh, and I’ll always love a wide player who’s prepared to make a lung-bursting run to the far post to get on the end of a cross from the other side. A splendid moment, that one, as you realised that Tommy Smith’s cross wasn’t just going to whistle through an empty penalty area, Danny Graham having been drawn wide in the build-up. More of that, please.

3. Of the recent acquisitions, it’s Scott Severin who continues to struggle. The post-Premiership conundrum was neatly summed up by a very decent cameo from John Eustace, who did the basic stuff rather well and added some of his old-fashioned, oddly slow-motioned bootery too. The absurdity is that you have to buy players to replace those you can’t afford to keep…and yet you might have to keep them anyway if nobody else wants to pay their wages, in which case you didn’t need to replace them. Regardless, it’s hard not to like Eustace…and it would’ve been even easier if that last-ditch drive had drifted into the roof of the net rather than against the underside of the bar. It was a game good enough to deserve an ending like that.

4. And it contained some of our best attacking football for a considerable time. A delight to watch four intelligent, bright players moving so well around the final third: Danny Graham as the fulcrum for it all, Tommy Smith darting into the spaces around the centre forward, Tom Cleverley and Don Cowie offering a genuine threat from the flanks. We were mobile, positive and really rather lovely to watch, and we should’ve made it count for more. It was that kind of afternoon, I suppose, summed up by Don Cowie’s one-two with Tommy Smith and glorious chip from twenty yards, hitting that spot on the underside of the crossbar for the first time. That would’ve been goal of the season, right there.

5. Of course, there was more than a hint of sadness as you watched those four link together so beautifully and so effectively. We won’t get to see that come to fruition: the meal’s been served up, the silver cover’s been lifted from the plate, we’ve picked up our cutlery and inhaled the mouth-watering aroma…but the waiter’s about to come along and tell us that we’ve been given someone else’s meal by mistake. Your bread and water is on its way, sir.

There are lots of things to say about Tommy Smith’s second spell with the club, but the key one is this: that he’s been an utter credit to himself. It seemed like a curious move at the time, but he’s made it work better than anyone could’ve imagined. The player who always struggled for a defined, established role as he emerged from the youth set-up – neither productive winger nor reliable goal-scorer, often lost in the grey areas in between – is now so influential that he can career around wherever he bloody well likes, making his mark above and beyond that defined role. I’ll freely admit that I hadn’t ever been convinced by Tommy Smith; no malice, no real criticism to make, just a feeling that there’d always be someone more useful, if less talented, ahead of him in whatever queue he’d lined up in. He’s changed all of that…and he’s done it himself, by force of will as much as anything else.

You’ll be sorely missed, Tommy.

Five thunks from a hugely enjoyable evening at the City Ground:

1- My first game of the season after an eventful and often stressful summer… and this was just what the doctor ordered. A wonderfully open, chaotic second division game of football, with just enough individual excellence and collective calamity to ensure the full attention of all in the stadium throughout (save the many early Forest departees, natch). I’d been apprehensive, based on reports of unconvincing Watford performances and Forest’s impotent dominance of West Brom but we looked far better than advertised… Forest being far less than a sum of their parts only tells half the story. Poor teams don’t score four times away from home against anybody.

2- That said… the crucial factor in this game could scarcely have been more evident had Tommy Smith been followed around by a luminous pointing finger sporting the caption “the difference between the two sides”. If this is to be Smudger’s last outing for the Hornets then what a way to go… one magnificent strike of his own, a sublime piece of skill to set up Graham’s opener, a fine header the scraps of which Mike Williamson capitalised on and a composed tee-up for Tom Cleverley as we won the game on the break were merely the consequential details of a virtuoso performance. You can’t help but hope he’ll stay, despite evidence to the contrary, but good luck Tommy wherever you end up.

3- Tom Cleverley… nimble, clever, confident. Did drift out of the game, particularly in the first half, and seemed to struggle with his defensive positioning, particularly after switching wings to accommodate McAnuff’s injury, but this looks like a good’un to enjoy, however long his spell with us lasts.

4- Mike Williamson. Colin Foster. Again. That’s all. Would be nice to have another tall bloke in the side, mind… it shouldn’t be a mystery who we’re trying to hit from set pieces, even for Billy Davies.

5- On this evidence, Forest look like providing some comedy entertainment for however long it takes them to get their shit together. Competent but impotent and tetchy, not abetted by a notoriously impatient home support there’s quite a lot wrong with this side despite prodigious summer outlay. Two cases in point… first, you don’t equalise on half time at home to roars of acclaim, dominate most of the second half and still lose by two goals. Second, when you’re chasing a game, the ball’s bouncing in a crowded penalty area and nobody’s challenging Scott Loach for the ball, you’ve got a problem.

1. Fizzle. It should, of course, be remembered that there have been less auspicious starts than this to very auspicious seasons; we all crave answers, but these early season games often raise still more questions instead. It was a bit of a non-alcoholic beer of a match: the same fizz as the bottle’s cracked open, but some bite missing from what’s inside. This tight, well-drilled Donny side – atypical of the Championship in terms of their patience, but not in terms of their organisation – should remind us how badly clubs without financial clout require stability and continuity. That process has to start somewhere, auspicious or otherwise.  There’s plenty of hard work ahead.

2. For the two debutants, a mixed afternoon. Danny Graham was excellent, visibly growing in confidence after Tommy Smith’s cross-shot dribbled his way for a Scott Fitzgerald-style tap-in; a centre forward can’t ask for much more than that in their first game. Even as the service dried up in the second half, he showed an encouraging combination of work-rate and touch, a bit like Darius Henderson with the volume turned down.

In midfield, Scott Severin also had a fine game: he clearly has the ability to pick out a pass and to pop up in convenient places at convenient moments. However, technical problems meant that he was a couple of seconds out of sync with everything else, as if beamed in from another continent via a ropey satellite link. You hope that he’ll come up to speed quickly: there are times when you can afford one or two failures in the transfer market, and this decidedly isn’t one of those times.

3. Elsewhere, it was hard to avoid the impression that selling Tommy Smith would be utterly disastrous, much as you’d try to take it on the chin like a grown-up if it really had to happen. For without him, there’s just a whole bunch of fairly pedestrian huffery-puffery: Don Cowie’s limitations would be severely exposed if he were required to become a creative force; Jobi McAnuff is much too prone to days like these, days when nothing goes right, days when he’d find a winning lottery ticket in the road and get hit by a bus as he picked it up; Will Hoskins still looks like a decent player and plays like a decent looker. Smith, on the other hand, add so much energy and so many ideas, bringing the game to life by trying to make something happen every time he picks up the ball. Heaven knows what we’d do without him, frankly.

4. The good news, Danny Graham aside, is that the defence looked like something you might be able to rely on for more than ten minutes, something that might not require constant, fretful attention. Mike Williamson picked up where he left off: willowy, elegant, Foster-esque for those who still hold that memory dear. Bar one slip in the first half, superbly covered by Ross Jenkins, Jay Demerit was all power and muscle alongside him; they complement each other superbly.

It’s not to everyone’s taste, I know, but I rather like Demerit’s insistence on attempting to play implausibly ambitious defence-splitting passes from deep within his own half; the memory of those deathless early games under Brendan Rodgers, when it appeared a crime to even think about trying to score without constructing an elaborate forty-seven pass move first, is still fresh enough to treasure a bit of good old fashioned up-and-over.

5. Is it not time that someone tackled the issue of time-wasting substitutions? Given that the number of allowed substitutes and substitutions continues to grow, I imagine that we now spend the equivalent of a full ninety minutes every season watching players – theirs and ours – amble towards the touchline like sulky teenagers being dragged around the clothes shops by their mums on a Saturday afternoon, barely able to put one foot in front of another for sheer ennui. I hereby propose the following simple measures:

• If you’re not ready to make the substitution – fourth official lined up, player stood on the halfway line – when the ball goes out of play, tough toffee. That also applies to instances where the player being substituted finds that they’re suddenly and temporarily deaf and blind, unable to hear the call of the touchline and unable to find their way home.
• Between them, the four officials on duty ought to be able to count to twenty-two. Why should several thousand people have to wait for one player to wander off, shaking the hands of everyone along the way and applauding all around, before the other one enters the field of play and the game re-starts? Send ‘em on and get on with it.

Lecture ends.

1. A touching send-off for Mike Keen before kickoff, with the Birmingham fans adding their applause to that of everyone connected with the club he once managed. I wasn’t around in any meaningful sense back then, I’m afraid, but Simon Marchant was and you can read his tribute here.

2. Football matches happen pretty regularly, once every week and sometimes more. In that respect, they’re not necessarily noteworthy per se; five thunks is frequently more than such a commonplace event really deserves. A shot from Lloyd Doyley, on the other hand…well, that’s an event. A shot from Lloyd Doyley that whistles a yard past the post with the keeper scrambling…heavens. Heavens above. It’ll actually happen one day and everyone’ll remember where they were when it did. You better hope it’s not somewhere other than the scene of history being made: you really don’t want to be in a queue at Tesco’s when Lloyd belts a last-minute winner into the top corner….

3. In less unusual ways, the defence did sterling work here. We were again sufficiently lacklustre in midfield – and against hungry, confident opponents – that they bloody well needed to. A particular nod towards Mike Williamson, who appears to have been bought the box-set of Colin Foster’s Guide To Looking Imperious to point him in the right direction. That’s a hard act to emulate, but there’ll be plenty of fun in watching the attempt on this evidence.

4. Birmingham were, of course, another proto-Middlesbrough, cobbled together from a well-thumbed copy of The Who’s Who of Ho Hum. It’s like finding a new panel show on BBC3, another vehicle for the same old faces to pick up their appearance fee for churning out lukewarm banter; a tedious game of musical chairs. They’ll take nobody by surprise next season: anyone who’s surprised by, say, Stephen Carr has presumably had their head in a cement mixer for the last ten years. Or doesn’t like football. Or both, to be on the safe side. Actually, watching Stephen Carr, you have to say that they might be onto something. Anyway, let’s not pretend that they weren’t better than us by some distance, but there was a spell in the second half when we hinted that something else might be afoot. That would’ve been awfully good fun.

4.1 Quite long for a thunk, that. Sorry.

5. Dear, Brendan. It’d be really nice to be properly safe, wouldn’t it? Perhaps that could be arranged at your convenience, ideally at Coventry.  Much obliged, ig.

1. A telling memory of How Things Used To Be from the recent Clough documentary: Forest players in the centre circle, turning to greet and be greeted by each of the stands before kickoff. We used to do that too, a line of players in the middle of the pitch. It meant something. Now, it’s not until we’ve had a pedestrian parade of players and officials across the full width of the pitch, followed by an extended mingle with nibbles and a free bar, that we get to applaud and be applauded by our team. Or the first two or three of our team, to be precise: by the time you get halfway down the line-up, everyone’s got bored and the remaining players just wander into position rather than bother to sprint purposefully towards the Rookery. Something essential has been lost here…and for what, exactly?

2. A reminder to those of us – well, me – who are sometimes guilty of over-romanticising the more elemental end of this division’s rich spectrum that for every game like Tuesday’s, it throws up (in every sense) a dozen or more like this. It was forgotten as it happened, when it happened…and it happened very little.

3. We’re about ready for bed, by the look of it. In Jack Cork and Ross Jenkins, we have two (one borrowed) extremely fine young midfielders who don’t need to play any more football for a while. The lack of back-up in that area is terrifying for what it says about our finances, our manager’s common sense, or possibly both. Or perhaps we’re trying to reduce Cork to a broken, shattered physical wreck in order to bring the asking price within the pint-plus-crisps range that we might just about stretch to. Elsewhere, we just look stale and stodgy; Danny Rose’s thoroughly random cameo at least added some colour to what was otherwise a great grey smudge.

4. Was Adrian Mariappa wearing Lloyd Doyley’s boots?

5. Barnsley: Jon Macken and Darren Moore, plus an apparently inexhaustible supply of ineffective pale, thin types with lank shoulder-length hair;  they merged into one after a while, to the extent that I’m not completely certain they didn’t bring a substituted player back on after a rest. In the relegation stakes, they looked dead certs, ready for shooting, in comparison with that lively, upbeat Southampton side. It doesn’t work like that,  though: but for a flying save from Scott Loach to prevent a doubling of their lead, they would’ve won this; that wouldn’t have made them any good or anything, but it wouldn’t have made us look too clever either.

6. For all that, first one to complain about the season petering out into nothingness is a complete plum.