So here we are, here they are, here we all are. Unless you were at home…in which case, up yours. For Sky, it’s a box-ticking exercise: stick us on now, then concentrate on the points of interest at the business end of the season. There’s no back-story here for a channel-hopping punter to buy into; the empty seats around the ground testify to the lack of theatre in another visit from Reading, like an aunt popping round for lukewarm tea and a nice chat, not exactly Frost-Nixon. There was a point when I found Reading remarkably, if inexplicably, irksome…but then they starting employing Nigel Gibbs and even that faded away.

Sigh.

2. So, life without Michael Kightly. Ah. Mmm. Thing is, it’s easy to concentrate on what a player of that potency actually does…and Kightly’s light flickered and flashed rather than relentlessly dazzled. But more important, at this level at least, is what they might do, for a player who requires a higher level of policing changes the shape of the game, spins it around the pull of his gravity.

You simply can’t commit someone as far forward as Reading pushed Kebe to attack Dickinson if you have a Kightly waiting on the same wing. You can’t shove your midfield into John Eustace’s face, chopping off any controlled supply to those further forward, if you’re overly concerned about what lurks behind. But a front five of Forsyth, Buaben, Yeates, Deeney and Sordell…? Aside from the last of those, you’d be pretty confident of coping with one-on-one situations against that lot, I think, and based on last night’s evidence, your confidence wouldn’t be misplaced. Once again, we look pedestrian and workmanlike, earnest and willing and little more.

3. Which is how life in the Championship works, of course, in an era when clubs are ever more dependent on the loan system and ever more desperate for income to fund debts. You build a side in August, coax it into some kind of shape by November…and then, in January, you have to try to hold it all together through loan departures and transfer speculation, like carrying a house of cards on a tea tray across the M1. We’ve done remarkably well to bring Nyron Nosworthy into the fold on a permanent basis, but the loss of Kightly and the potential loss of Sordell once more threaten to turn us into bottom six fare. That should probably be part of Thunk #2, but I’m stretching things out.

4. “Le Fondre leaves it late” and similar headlines would tend to suggest that Reading snatched victory at the death…but, in truth, they were much the better side for pretty much the entire match. That was partly due to the tactical edge previously mentioned, pushing their midfield into our half to leave everything behind isolated and irrelevant, and partly due to a snappy, aggressive attitude to the game which we singularly failed to match.

Even in comparing the two incidents worthy of post-match discussion, you can see the difference: replays suggested that Robson-Kanu could’ve been dismissed for an ugly assault on Mark Yeates, whereas the two bookings that Craig Forsyth would’ve received from a less lenient referee were both for frustrated, tired, over-stretching hacks. That was us in a nutshell: frustrated, tired, over-stretching, and the hapless Forsyth more than anyone.

On the touchline, we seemed content to let all of this play out, perhaps hoping for a similar break to the one that gave us the lead. Not a lucky break – Troy Deeney’s driven cross was testing in a way that little else we produced was – but a break in the pattern of the game, a brief sense that the ball might stick up there and things might happen when it did. But we surely should’ve changed it long before we did: the midfield battle had been lost from the first minute and bringing Ross Jenkins on to give Eustace some assistance was the move to make long, long before the eighty-first minute. We may not have many options, but we could use those we have more decisively.

5. Since it’d be a shame not to include a positive, a passing word about Lee Hodson. If there’s a source of encouragement for poor Craig Forsyth, it’s here…for Hodson, so far adrift at sea for parts of last season, has come through it all as an assertive, punchy little full-back. Not yet perfect, no, but he’s on the right path to an excellent career…and there’s a tenacity to his play which is reminiscent of both Gibbs and Doyley, and those aren’t bad names to be put alongside. Both Leeds and Reading have attempted to exploit his lack of inches, but he’s defended those situations – against Kebe here, notably doing enough to prevent a clear header at the far post – with strength and determination and character.

We’re not short of those qualities. But we are desperately short of a creative spark. Maybe we should arrange for Luka Modric to get lost in the East Stand and locked in a broom cupboard when Spurs come to town….

As you will know, the film is a triumph merely in getting this far;  the $223,000 budget for the film was entirely “crowd-funded” (i.e. without the backing of a studio), making it reportedly the largest such independent exercise in movie history.  As if another excuse to go watch it were needed.

RISE & SHINE – THE JAY DEMERIT STORY from D&E Entertainment on Vimeo.

The guys at From the Rookery End have reviewed the movie; you can read their thoughts here, along with an interview with co-director/producer Nick Lewis.

The film is being screened by Odeon cinemas both next Tuesday evening (17th), and in matinee on Sunday 29th January.  You can find out more about the film, including locating your nearest screening, here.

Incidentally, I’d like to deny rumours of a Scholes-style comeback. Dream on.

1- This is how games against lower division opposition are supposed to pan out, of course, but we’ve made it look considerably harder than this in the past.  From the opening minutes when Marvin Sordell made space for a cross far too easily and Troy Deeney headed in unmarked at the far post, this was never in doubt.  This was due, in part, to the fact that Bradford were dreadful; you expect a lower division side to hassle, to close down space;  instead, as against Doncaster, we had acres of room;  three of our goals were all but unchallenged, John Eustace even had time to line up a Steven Gerrard pass in the second half. City’s aggression took the form of slightly sulky and somewhat incidental low-level thuggery as the game ran away from them after the break; we stood up to much more focused, better organised thuggery recently against City’s near-neighbours Leeds, this was never going to be an issue. As last week, however, it’s worth noting the progress from a team that struggled so badly earlier in the season to a team capable of sticking four past anyone… even if a couple of instances of slack defending rendered the scoreline closer than it needed to be. This wasn’t a victory based on a few moments of quality, in short.  We were much better than Bradford.

2- Sobering to look at the state that the Bantams have got themselves into.   Circumstances differ of course, but it wouldn’t have taken a lot for us to end up where City are, and without the opportunity offered by a huge catchment area to fall back upon.  More than anyone else, Ray Lewington takes credit for the fact that we staved off relegation when the going was really tough, his achievement less lauded than that of some of his contemporaries but no less significant.  That our only dalliance with the lower divisions in the last thirty-odd years was brief is deceptive.  There’s no carousel back to the top divisions, ask Bradford.  This could have been us.

3- Having cited the reduced number of substitute berths available for League fixtures as a factor in the limited chances being offered to the youngsters blooded over the last couple of years, it was more than a little disappointing that Sean Dyche made scant use of the opportunity to give some run outs, or to add names to the bench.  Adam Thompson made a welcome first appearance of the season, if only as a non-playing substitute – an interesting choice given that David Mirfin is presumably the man in possession if we really have lost Nosworthy and Taylor is still not available.  Tom James perhaps a surprise call, making a brief but neat cameo on the left side of midfield.  Perplexing though that Dyche seems so determined to field neither Whichelow nor Murray, even in a cup tie against a lower division side with seven subs and no wide attacking options on the bench.  Worth noting also that the double sub featuring both of our attacking subs, the leaden Iwelumo and the eager but impotent Garner, was utterly unproductive.

4- Having said which, the four brought into the side all did well enough, three of them featuring in the stand-out highlight of the game.  Jonathan Bond stood up well to the limited opportunities that City created to intimidate him;  he came for everything, perhaps injudiciously once or twice, but with the score at 3-1 he decisively clouted a cross out of a crowded penalty area above some competing heads, setting a counter-attack in motion.  John Eustace, whose head bandage naturally did nothing to detract from  his on-field persona, charged upfield with three opponents closing in and, at the ideal moment, slid a pass left to the galloping Craig Forsyth.  The Scot, back in the side after two months without so much as a spot on the bench, was already a goal to the good after knocking in a loose ball after Yeates’ slice;  nonetheless, the home stands held their breath and prayed that Forsyth’s fragile confidence wouldn’t take another hit.  No bother… a glorious first-time finish to a fabulous counter attack.  Forsyth is no Kightly, but here – a gentle route back, admittedly – we saw all the most positive elements of his fledgling game.  Complete – if occasionally a little random – aerial supremacy, a tidy competence on the floor and attacking the box well; plenty to be encouraged by, even if you’d rather that there was more obvious competition for wide positions.

5- A slightly anxious footnote to a very comfortable victory is that our superiority didn’t quite translate into chances on goal.  Never in danger, as mentioned above, and yet…  the visitors’ goal was never quite under siege, we didn’t spurn too many chancs.  Given that this midfield saw a return to the side fielded earlier in the season – Eustace and Hogg in the centre, Yeates and Forsyth wide – this  was maybe predictable and might be a concern going forwards.  Nice to be saying this after a second consecutive four-goal haul, naturally…

1- First and foremost, this is a marker of no small progress.  Interviewed in the wake of our draw at the Keepmoat Stadium a month ago, Rovers’ Senegalese defender Habib Beye rather perplexingly cited Watford as evidence that Donny weren’t one of the worst three sides in the division.  Perplexing given that Rovers hadn’t merited more than a point in a fixture which at home to, according to Beye, one of the division’s weakest sides should have been a banker for his side.

For the first six weeks of the season, in fairness, relegation had looked a very real possibility.  We had looked limited and disjointed, resorting to optimistically blaming our luck horribly early in proceedings.  We’re not out of the woods, of course;  only a fool, and a fool who’d never watched a turbulent season at this level would suggest that (and see below…), but there was only one side out there today that qualified as relegation fodder and the ultimate comfort of our victory would have been unthinkable under any circumstances earlier in the season.

Even circumstances which involved us being afforded acres of space in midfield, as we had been in Doncaster during our earlier meeting and even before the second half dismissal of Rovers’ Herold Goulon.  The first twenty minutes or so resembled a coconut shy, with Rovers barely getting over the halfway line, giving the ball away cheaply, not closing us down.  Sordell and Kightly both tested the keeper;  Nyron Nosworthy got on the end of a deep cross to loop a header off the far side of the goal frame.  If we lacked the intensity of some recent performances we were still well on top.  Yet as our flame flickered somewhat Rovers started to get forward, late in the half… and just as you were wondering whether the tide was going to turn, Marvin Sordell picked up the ball in midfield and finding that Rovers had none charged onwards before belting the ball eagerly past Woods.  Terrific, aggressive forward play from Sordell; laughable defending from the visitors, it was a goal from the playground.

2- My daughter noted at half time (whilst repeatedly emphasising that she WANTED Watford to win) that she thought it more likely that the outcome would be (“what’s it called when they get the same, Daddy?”) a draw.  And as if Donny had had their attention drawn to the fact that they needed to score a goal, they came at us at the start of the second period looking like a football team for the only period in the match.  Sharp duly equalised, expertly, and though the game soon settled and we began to find space in midfield again, the nagging memory of points dropped at home in recent games when three had been on offer would have been in the players’ minds, surely, as much as ours.

Not that a tenuous, contrived excuse is needed… but it’s tempting to think back to THAT Tranmere game. Again. And how Tranmere really could have won the game if they’d just let it lie.  Let the game die, our season with it.  This game can’t possibly be as pivotal, but in the same way… this indisciplined, antagonistic Doncaster side was never going to play it cool.  Herold Goulon had already run away with the “comedy opponent of the year award”, for resembling the Eiffel Tower in terms of scale and mobility.  He had avoided a red card at the Keepmoat by virtue of Lee Hodson’s nimbleness in avoiding his stroppy lunge;  here, he gained a completely unnecessary second booking for a crude hack on the escaping Kightly.  Doncaster had barely been denying us space in midfield as it was; without Goulon, a midfielder with his own postcode, there was more space and time than we knew what to do with.  A flicked header from Sordell; a marvellous, mathematically precise drive with John Eustace’s first touch and a glorious sign-off from Kightly were the consequence.  A hugely important three points, however they came.

3- The other “but”…? The question as to quite how many of today’s starting eleven will still be here at the end of January.  That Kightly would go was always a given;  Nosworthy too, it seems, is signing off if the choreographed farewell on the final whistle is anything to go by.  Worth pausing to acknowledge two extraordinarily successful loans, even by the recent-ish standards set by the likes of Cleverley, Foster, Mutch and Adam Johnson.  Kightly flickered prior to his mid-loan injury, but has exploded since into the fabulous and occasionally unplayable weapon that got Wolves promoted and is surely destined, finally, to play a role for them in the top flight.  Nosworthy, contrary to many expectations (mine included), has rendered the loss of Martin Taylor unnoticeable.  Authoritative, reliable, with the Keith Dublinesque sense of bravado that didn’t ought to work in a centre back but somehow did.  Martin O’Neill, according to the week’s papers, was due to be at the game today to check on his charge; it turned out he went to Stoke-Wigan instead.  So he didn’t catch Marvin Sordell’s performance… his strongest of the season, even if he didn’t quite end our fifteen year wait for a hat-trick from a yellow shirt at home.  Probably irrelevant – there will be offers for a natural goalscorer (thanks Dave) in the transfer window from Sunderland or elsewhere, and it may be that braces against Doncaster represent both his first and last goals in yellow at Vicarage Road. And Aidy Mariappa, magnificent again, would arguably be the biggest loss of the four; he would be far harder to replace than Taylor has been.  So far so good… but our end of season tumble last season began in the January with the loss of Mutch (and was kicked into motion by McGinn’s injury).  It’s a seller’s market in January;  we found filling one gap hard enough last season.  A nervous month ahead.

4- To briefly echo last month’s note on Doncaster, it’s hugely gratifying that the masterplan hasn’t come together for Willie McKay’s troupe of mercenaries.  Having abandoned the path that earned them such respect in reaching this  level, Rovers won’t be mourned on their way back down. The utterly unlikeable Dean Saunders, the cynical approach to botching a team together that completely fails to respect the need of a supporter to associate with those they are watching, the menagerie of desperadoes that have been dragged in off the street (including El Hadji Diouf, still a potent weapon but a seasonal pantomime villain booed with as much gusto as the less convincing “Flesh Creep” had been on Friday).  None of these are ways to win friends and influence people.  One can only hope that the scheme continues to die on it’s arse, and that there’s a club left for Rovers fans to support when a sense of normality returns. Football could do without this becoming a blueprint.

5- The final thunk shared between the half-time attractions;  firstly, the original Ross Jenkins, looking just like a returning star ought to look with his grey hair tied back in a pony tail.  Not a shuffling old man, colouring our memories of his past deeds;  Jenkins was a rock star, grinning all over his face, loving the moment, barely able to tear himself away from the Rookery’s adulation.  Marvellous.  And then, of course, the American Marching Band, adding a slightly surreal edge to proceedings with occasional other-worldly rat-a-tat-tats and salutes.  The half-time repertoire included a cover version of the Cantina-band’s catchy number from “Star Wars”, but this was outdone in strangeness by an incongruous fanfare as the action rattled on late in the second half, heralding a parting of the waves in Doncaster’s back four as Kightly galloped through and, with options screaming on either side, thumped the ball past the keeper before celebrating in front of the band, who played on.  There will, one suspects, be duller afternoons than this at Vicarage Road some time in 2012.

1- Each of whom received a mixed reaction from the home support.  The hostile welcome was the noisier, inevitably, but distracting only a purple-faced, merrily outraged minority for the most part.  For me, there’s no argument as far as Mackay goes.  At least one very significant season’s worth as a player, and two as a manager where his team delivered way above what anyone had a right to expect.  So, sure, a pisser that he chose to leave.  Gutting.  But to blame him?  No.  More money, more security, greater possibilities?  Anyone who expected (or thought they had a right to expect) any other outcome was kidding themselves.  The same can be said for Cowie really;  the choker there, the extra twist, was that it was sprung on us, we didn’t know it was coming, and so the fact that he followed Mackay to Cardiff was hugely suggestive.  Actually, if we screwed his contract that’s our fault, nobody else’s, and it’s my inclination to trust Mackay’s assertion that Cowie’s contract situation would have seen him leave even if Mackay had stayed.  Another to whom I don’t really get the bitterness, then.  His effort as a player was unrelenting, he gave us two and a half seasons of industry and quality, and movement under freedom of contract really is something that we should have our heads around by now.

The only niggling thing for me is that it hacks me off that despite our scouting structure nominally existing as a distinct entity from the team management, Cardiff have really done rather well out of that too… we know about Andrew Taylor, of course, and that Craig Conway was a summer target was telegraphed long before the end of the last campaign.  Mackay has acknowledged in interviews that Slovak Filip Kiss was watched by Watford over a prolonged period.  He won’t have been the only one.  Again, with a hard face, Mackay has done nothing wrong and one can’t expect him to empty his mind of everything he knows on leaving, it doesn’t work like that.  One does feel a little short changed though.  Nonetheless, the applause that Mackay’s post-match acknowledgement received before the excitably eager boos drowned it out was far more fitting an appraisal of both individuals’ Watford careers.

2- And for most of the first half, there was an awful lot that was familiar about the visiting side.  It’s never a good idea to successively read two novels by the same author I find;  however impressive the first I begin to get irritated by an author’s habits and style when they begin to emerge in the second.  And lo… here was a visiting team paying expansive football across the full width of the pitch, rendered get-attable at the back by their refusal to sit back but leaving us chasing shadows for the most part.  And Don Cowie at the centre of everything, scurrying this way and that, on the end of crosses as well as providing them and coming close more than once, most memorably a diving header to a right-wing cross that brought a fine save from Loach. The riposte to the fist-chewingly tedious chorus of boos that greeted the Scot’s every touch seemed inevitable.  It didn’t come, but to say that we were rather fortunate to be on level terms at the break would be something of an understatement.  Not that we didn’t have chances too… but we should probably make a mental note of Peter Whittingham’s low drive that rebounded off the inside of the post and into Loach’s arms, and of Aron Gunnarsson’s whistling shot coming in straight down Loach’s throat when an inch either side would have been crucial, before bemoaning our luck in future.

3- That we kept our head above water early on owed much to an extraordinary performance from Jonathan Hogg.  Under Aidy Boothroyd, Al Bangura was employed in a very specific role away from home… a goal up, Henderson off, Bangura on as a cork up the arse of the midfield, sitting behind the four and stamping on anything that made it through.  Bangura excelled in this very specific role, but it’s not being overly harsh to point out that it’s rather easier to look good when you don’t have any specific marking responsibility beyond a general watching brief in front of the back line.  Thing is, Hogg does the same job despite having a man to mark.  And still finds time to put his foot on the ball, calm us down, get us moving forward.  The tighter a spot, the more reliable his control and decision making.  That the benching of our team captain and one of our best and most popular players is attracting precisely zero comment or questioning speaks volumes.  Driven on by Hogg but supported by particularly strong performances from both the increasingly confident Hodson and the increasingly competent Dickinson, we dragged ourselves off the ropes and were more than punching our weight by the time Sordell made a fool out of his marker down the left, pulled back from the touchline to Buaben who drove under the keeper just as the chance threatened to disappear.  Neither player had their best outing in yellow, but the goal was a thing of beauty and was celebrated accordingly.

4- It was suggested later that we might have brought on one of the two defensive midfielders inexplicably sharing places on the bench to clog up the midfield a bit, shut the door behind us so to speak.  In reality there had been next to no threat since half time;  if we’re comparing this Cardiff side to last season’s Watford, the most glaring omission is a Danny Graham to stick the ball in the net and we weren’t under any kind of pressure. Nor should a long but unremarkable throw have presented a problem, but it was no great surprise that Cardiff, guided by plenty of local knowledge after all, had been sticking tall players in front of our indecisive custodian.  Nor that they brought on the colossal Rudy Gestede to add to their aerial threat.  And it paid off, a depressing addition to the tally of points lost to stupid goalkeeping errors.  No consolation that a draw was more than fair on balance;  this was there for the taking from a winning position.  One narrow defeat in ten is a good stat, but too often we’re still not rewarding strong performances with wins.

5- Something of an aside… but during what was ultimately a thoroughly enjoyable and open game I found myself missing the departed “multiball” system.  There are weightier issues in the world to spend one’s time chewing over, to be sure… but it’s a shame that the unavoidable scope for abusing the system couldn’t be overcome.  There was no suggestion of either side wanting to slow this one down, and the ability to keep the action coming at pace was limited by intervals for the ball to be chased around the derelict East Stand by lumbering stewards.  Cheap Christmas laughs are no substitute for breathless excitement.

1- Let’s put the final exchanges of the game to one side for a minute.  They constitute an incontrovertibly key detail, of course, and we’ll get to them but they shouldn’t be at the front of our minds when looking back on today, not once the seething frustration has died down.  For this was a monstrous Watford performance;  not always pretty, and self-evidently not perfect, but vigorous, confident, bullish and single-minded.  Quite comfortably the best display of those witnessed by your BHaPPY correspondents this season, irrespective of the result.

Having bitched endlessly on these pages about Sean Dyche’s decision to ditch the attacking, youthful ethos of last season, it’s only fair to acknowledge that last season’s side wouldn’t have coped anything like as well with the physical challenge that the visitors provided;  they didn’t in fact, in the corresponding fixture early in the last campaign when Leeds took the lead early and bullied us out of the rest of the game.  That didn’t happen here; we started on the front foot and were the better side throughout.  That we bossed it physically will in particular be no small satisfaction;  Jonathan Hogg was phenomenal in midfield, catapulting himself into challenges, emerging with the ball at his feet and almost thriving on the lack of space in midfield, receiving the ball in tight positions, moving it on, moving it forwards.  Each of the defenders played well… Mariappa’s arrogantly dismissive Bobby Moore tackle on Becchio meant that half the home crowd was already on its feet for Kightly’s fine goal, Nosworthy’s vital header prevented a rare Leeds chance, Hodson was irrepressible, perhaps his best performance for the ‘orns, and Dickinson, after an iffy 20 minutes, comprehensively won his duel with Snodgrass, who drifted into irrelevance…

2- …but the key change in this performance was up front.  I’ve defended Chris Iwelumo on these pages, I don’t think his contribution is as black-and-white as has been painted.  There’s no denying the startling impact that Troy Deeney had on our forward play, however.  Defensively we were again solid enough – if we were to give away late chances we nonetheless limited Leeds for the most part;  with Deeney’s mobility and focused aggression we suddenly had a forward line to speak of too.  He’s gently and indirectly appealed to be played in his preferred position in recent interviews; it’s difficult to see any other forward pairing bar Deeney and Sordell for the foreseeable future on this evidence.  I don’t think it’s fanciful to draw comparison with Deeney’s erstwhile Walsall teammate Tommy Mooney, who learned to focus his power and enthusiasm to mature as a player over the seasons after his arrival

3- Having said all of which, you could sense the equaliser coming.  Not through Leeds’ creativity, which was all but non-existent;  their pressure as the game closed was all urgency and no guile. But we’d missed chances, good chances… Sordell’s penalty on being felled by Kisnorbo, pushed onto the post by McCarthy;  the same player had wasted a fine opening after being put through, betraying his inexperience with a bad decision and pressured finish, over the bar, when the supporting Deeney was in space.   Kisnorbo making amends for his error with the penalty with an astonishing clearance under pressure as we pushed for that crucial, conclusive goal.  Leeds’ chances were all of our creation;  Becchio twice being given the ball in a dangerous area, threatening to ruin all our good work.  Both chances spurned, the second prompting my co-editor to hope that no more gifts would be forthcoming.  Sadly there was one last parcel at the foot of the stocking… Nosworthy might have gotten away with his challenge on another day, it was a harsh award from an increasingly erratic official.  Stupid, needless challenge though, and got the visitors out of jail as their fans were keen to point out.

4- For a side with such an impressive recent record, particularly away from home, Leeds looked surprisingly mundane;  admittedly they’d lost two senior members of their midfield, Michael Brown relegated to the bench and Howson out altogether after injuries last weekend.  Nonetheless, they looked blunt and clumsy, and once again you’re asking yourself whether they were just having an off day, or whether the fact that so many sides have played badly against us is more than mere coincidence.

5- If you’re braving Bloomfield Road next weekend, all power to you.  BHaPPY will not be represented;  as such have a splendid Christmas and we’ll see you with Turkey sandwiches (or your own choice of seasonal equivalent) at midday on Boxing Day…

1999/00  Mark Williams (22+2,1)

2000/01 Stephen Brooker (0+0, 0), Tom Neill (0+0, 0)

2001/02  Jerel Ifil (0+0, 0)

2002/03  Elliott Godfrey (0+1, 0)

2003/04  Stephen Kelly (13+0, 0)

2004/05  Johnnie Jackson (14+1, 0), Danny Cullip (4+0, 0)

2005/06  Les Ferdinand (0+0, 0)

2006/07  Sheku Kamara (0+1, 0), Cedric Avinel (1+0, 0)

2007/08  Theo Robinson (0+0. 0)

2008/09  Lewis Young (1+3, 0)

2009/10  Billy Gibson (0+0, 0)

2010/11  Danny Drinkwater (3+9, 0)

2011/12  Jonathan Hogg

Savile Rogue scarves (it says here…) give a nod to football terraces of yesteryear, shunning in-your-face logos and cheap nylon in favour of a traditional bar design and the comfort, quality and warmth of top grade wool.

A bit nifty, in other words. To get your hands on a Watford scarf, here’s the question….

In the thirteen years in which we’ve had squad numbers, sixteen players have been awarded the 32 shirt (note not all of them actually wore it in action…).

How many of them can you name?

The largest number of correct guesses by the evening of Thursday December 8th wins the scarf.  Only the last sixteen names you nominate will be considered;  in the event of a tie, the fastest response wins.

Note that Saville Rogue are only dispatch the prize to a UK address.

Enter by replying to this message.  Entries will not be published until the closing date.

That is all.

Taken as part of that ever-shifting tactical evolution, Watford v Bristol City was…well, some distance removed from the Barcelona model, shall we say. It’s like Swan Lake performed by brickies, all of that Spanish elegance and movement…and our interpretation is to pass it sideways for a bit as if we might at any moment conjure up something sublime from our collective imagination, then realise that no bugger’s bothering to make a run beyond the halfway line, knock it back to Nyron and get him to chuck it in the mixer by bouncing it off the moon.

Of course, Barcelona are already yesterday’s news. Eye-catching and memorable, certainly, but the reaction has already begun: we’ll be spending quite a lot of time next summer watching Spain laboriously trying to thread a way through some kind of gluey variation on an 8-1-1 formation. On which basis, we’re not so far behind after all, for this remains a Watford side with caution at its core, with protection of the area in front of the defence as its regimental badge of pride. I’d rather watch Peterborough, frankly.

2. And all of that hard graft? All of those training ground hours, days, weeks spent on defending as a unit, with the excellent Jonathan Hogg ahead of the back four and the wide midfielders tucked into the space in front of the full-backs? All of the rigour and cohesion and structure that Dyche has tried to bring to the party? (Are those things you bring to a party? No matter…) Hard not to wonder whether it’s all been worthwhile when you concede two goals as gormless as these, throwing away three very handy points in the process.

Oh, I know the second was a nonsense on any number of levels…but if you ask me, the first was even worse, a much more basic and just as avoidable failure of concentration at a stage in the game where all we needed to do was remain switched on until half-time. Dreadful. Given the lacklustre, patchy nature of our performance, it’s hard to put much of a case for an emphatic victory…but an emphatic victory was within our butter-fingered grasp nevertheless.

3. It came to be so because we rather gave up on the idea of getting ball-plus-people anywhere near their goal, having spent twenty stupefying minutes building moves from equal parts clumsiness and inaccuracy, Chris Iwelumo and Craig Beattie lumbering after passes – loose term – that Marvin Sordell might’ve struggled to fetch. The lack of pace up front was never clearer than when the ball occasionally landed at the feet of the compact, aggressive Michael Kightly, suddenly roaring at defenders with genuine threat and intent; it was as if time suddenly sped up in those moments, as if everything happened quicker, seconds compressed, distances bridged. And then back to someone else, illusion rudely shattered by a clanking, shuddering return to reality.

So after a while, we decided to try something different. Rather than trying to play our way through the final thirty yards of the pitch, we stopped at the threshold and just wanged the bloody thing at the goal as hard as we could. And it went in. Twice (kind of). See, who needs tactics?

4. Extraordinarily, given that we’ve signed so many players I can’t remember them all, the squad appears to have as many gaps as when we started. Different gaps, I grant you. But how on earth can it be that the second choice forward line is comprised of two players who, like chalk and chalk, complement each other only in the sense that they provide the same service twice over? How can you look down the list of options – Troy Deeney, honest and likeable and a bit more mobile and no more likely to hit the back of the net; Joe Garner, the obvious choice for someone to play off a big fella and yet falling down the pecking order by the week – and see nothing that doesn’t make you pine for Marvin Sordell (and Danny Graham)?

And while we’ve managed to create competition for places in some areas – Jonathan Hogg is rightly keeping John Eustace out of the side (and thank heavens we’ve got away from playing them together in a midfield four) – there’s none whatsoever elsewhere. Either Prince Buaben plays – and struggles, on last night’s evidence – or there’s no-one behind the strikers. Despite heavy reinforcement of the squad, thereby pushing the youngsters back into second-string football, we seem incredibly restricted; what we’re left with are unimaginative interpretations of a very odd, unconvincing assortment of players.

5. But let’s end on a vaguely upbeat note. Because for all of that, we no longer look like the forlorn relegation fodder of the early season. There is something coming together; it might not be pretty and it isn’t terribly exciting, but there’s been some character and resourcefulness and, occasionally, some skill in the recent improvement…and we deserve some credit for not allowing a resurgent City to take control of the game after that disastrous equaliser.

And indeed, we might’ve won it at the end…which is precisely the kind of delirious coming together that it feels like we need, something to start the story of this team, something that you would’ve missed if you hadn’t been there. Something to remind us that it’s about more than just survival. But survival would be a start.