Watford 0 Crystal Palace 2 (16/10/2011)

Pausing only briefly to apologise to those who took the time to comment on the Millwall post and whose posts went unacknowledged and, until now, unpublished (gmail decided to start sending comment notifications to my Spam file after 5 years of accepting far less pertinent comment…)…  thunks….

1- We like to think we resist the temptation to exaggerate here at BHaPPY.  So in response to the predictably excitable pronouncement of “a new low” from over my left shoulder one should perhaps concede that Forest was worse.  Worse in its stultifying ineptitude, worse in the pathetic calibre of the opposition who were giftwrapped the result.  Palace at least did what they had to do (not much, we’ll get to that), and earned the win.

But this was still grotesque.   Hogg’s increased willingness to push on, a key factor in the victory over Millwall, was completely absent from this afternoon’s showing, with Eustace and Hogg again sitting behind the ball.  So this isn’t just about individual performances… both had useful touches.  But with NOTHING coming into the gap between the opposition midfield and defence the strikers are playing perpetually with their backs to goal;  the ball goes wide, then back to midfield, then wide, then we lose it.  Palace did exactly what every opponent with half a brain will do until something changes quite radically… sat back and let us smack our very blunt heads against them. And then broke on us.

With a big, solid side and defensive players in midfield positions Palace were well equipped to do just that.  They offered little going forward and might well not have gotten the winner but rarely looked like conceding either; the excitable Zaha picked out an absolute pearler, Palace immediately settled back into their banks of four and the game was over.

2- Of the many concerns, most fundamental is the lack of an apparent plan.  We’re in mid-October, and I’m still no clearer about how Sean envisages chances being created by this midfield than I was when it was first fielded against Birmingham.  Reservations about the Hogg/Eustace combo were expressed then… with the rider that this was one game based on little training ground time, an understanding would take time.    Getting of for two months on, it’s not clear what we’re expecting to happen.  Hogg occasionally pushes forward, normally to positive effect, but generally we’ve got a back six.  It’s not that things are being tried but not working.  It’s not that the team plays badly but you get the idea.  It’s that the individual vim of our attacking players is being sapped by the ineffectiveness of our attacking shape.  Nowhere is this more evident than in Marvin Sordell;  streaky last season, it nonetheless feels like no coincidence that his bullish start to the campaign, the focal point who we relied on to dig out a goal and who seemed desperate to step up in the absence of his erstwhile partner now looks like a passenger.  This doesn’t reflect well on him… but it’s hard not to sympathise with someone working with such scraps.

3- Hope comes in the shape of Joe Garner.  On the odd occasion when we got the ball in to his feet as he dropped deep… suddenly we looked potent, dangerous.  This was most evident in the first half; Michael Kightly looked hugely positive early on before fading… he wandered inside and slipped a beautiful pass into Garner whose shot beat Speroni but crashed off the post.  It has to be said that we didn’t always play to Garner’s strengths;  one wonders if, having heard Joel Garner (sic) announced as the teams were read out, we half expected to see a ten foot West Indian pace bowler up front and aimed our balls accordingly.  No, I don’t know anything about bloody cricket, ig told me.

It has to be said, however, that Garner doesn’t appear to adhere to Corinthian values.  Quickly gauging Mark Halsey’s fussiness, he’s adept at bouncing off the slightest bodily contact, will give a little shove to gain himself space, use his hand if he thinks he can get away with it.  Frankly, we have weightier things to worry about at the moment than this… but I’d like to like my team, even as they’re struggling a bit…

4- Did you ever play arcade football games, back in the day, where there’d be a bug, or glitch, such that certain stock moves could be guaranteed to deliver a goal?  And how, much as you tried to resist the temptation to fall back on this get-out-of-jail free you just couldn’t help yourself?  So… it’s churlish to criticise over-reliance on one stock tactic, we’ve all been there.  Except that it’s not as if the long cross-field ball to Forsyth is actually getting us anywhere very often.  Perversely, he’s at his most effective with the ball at his feet – a little ungainly, but tidy, there’s something there.  Not something that’s justified him playing every minute this season until the 67th minute mind.

5- Most of all, it’s just boring.  As was observed pre-match… a fairly forgiving Watford crowd, or at least elements of it, will seize upon any hint of encouragement, is just desperate for it.  It’s not there.  The atmosphere was dead – in the home end – from the first minute, the inevitable sarcasm from the away end almost not worth the effort.  Yes, of course it’s quiet.  We f***ing know.  It’s desperate.  I’ve got a pass-out to go to Leicester on Wednesday;  the only justification I can conjure is that with zero expectations I can’t possibly be disappointed.  A more pressing personal decision is whether to bring my 5-year-old daughter to the Peterborough game, her first proper match.  She has a ticket, but I can’t imagine that the nonsense we’re being asked to watch at the moment is going to sell the experience to her.  Depressing stuff.