Watford 2 Bristol City 2 (29/11/2011)

1. I’ve recently finished reading Jonathan Wilson’s engrossing and thoroughly educational “Inverting the Pyramid”. It’s a rare book, in that it enlightens the game of football itself rather than merely (although it’s never really merely, obviously, as the minute’s silence for Gary Speed poignantly reminded us) the people involved in it. Its history of football’s tactical evolution from formless roots through countless refinements of formation and approach sheds fresh light on all manner of famous teams, matches and fundamental changes in balances of power. Whether it’s light that you want to shed on the average Championship match is another matter…sometimes these things are best left without illumination, much as the local sewers don’t smell any better if you know how they were built….

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.

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