Watford 3 Leicester City 2 (14/02/2012)

Five thunks.  Ha.  Like that was ever going to suffice.  No apologies for stuffing them full on this occasion.  24 carat lunacy at Vicarage Road…

1-Valentine’s Day is rubbish.  Period.  Depending on one’s circumstances it can be utterly depressing, or provoke actions borne of nervous obligation, or at best something that could quite easily and almost certainly more cheaply have occurred on any other day of the year.  Worst of all, judging from the swathes of space around the stands, including that normally occupied by otherwise reliable attendees, it caused a whole load of people to miss this screaming, wailing banshee of a football match.

Home ties with Leicester are becoming unmissable (remember this one?  Or this one?), and this stood comparison with any of them.  Indeed, if the quality of the football wasn’t always the highest, the level of excitement and drama was unparalleled.  It was Prison Break as a football match, rejecting credibility in favour of a script that rolled ludicrously from one side to the other affording any number of dramatic cameos and contributions and leaving all those in attendance, surely, buzzing on adrenaline and reliving the highlights in their heads long after the match had finished.  This, as I wrote after the corresponding fixture last year, was what you bloody go to football for.

The first half rattled backwards and forwards.  Both sides looked happier going forward than defending, and in both cases the quality of the attacking play – rather than merely slack play at the back – was the key.  For the Hornets, the increasingly assertive Kacaniklic and the impossibly assured Murray buzzed around on either flank.  Murray in particular provided an extraordinary amount of control, both in active play and from dead ball situations.  Extraordinary in a seasoned pro, let alone an 18 year-old second year scholar.  When Garner won a free kick there was genuine expectation, already, after half a dozen games.  That’s what Youtube does to you.  And there was devil in the ball that Murray flicked to the near post, Leicester utterly deceived by the move, Mariappa finished decisively in front of the Rookery.  We looked confident, we looked in charge.  Then Leicester scored, turning the table back the other way… Nugent’s finish appeared to be from very wide and narrow on the left, Loach’s concentration yet again called into question.  Suddenly Leicester are well on top, and there’s no stopping Nugent’s second, a thumping drive… having noted how important it was for us to be ahead, how so much better we are at defending rather than chasing a lead, we felt hollow for the only time in the evening.

For ten minutes it was all about holding on.  Leicester swarmed at us, we resorted to the easy, lazy outball towards Chris Iwelumo, strong and willing but not mobile enough to chase hurried passes.  Until suddenly we get the ball down, and Alex Kacaniklic goes down on the edge of the box after being fouled by Mills, who is booked for his protests.  We get a break, Murray’s curling shot deflects off the edge of the wall, wrong-footing Schmeichel entirely.  Murray’s first senior goal, far from the last one suspects.  The half ends level but with the Hornets in the ascendancy, flicking and darting again, and Murray pulling the strings.   We all need a rest.

2- The players come out for the second half and it’s a different game entirely.  Again.  No sign of the diminutive Murray, instead Craig Forsyth lines up wide in midfield.  Often the subject of grumbles and impatience from the stands, now Forsyth has to cope with the added burden of not being Sean Murray.  It’s a pivotal development, since Murray’s departure leaves us struggling to hang on to the ball in Leicester’s half.  The visitors gradually impose themselves and turn the screw as the half progresses.  Here our robust gang of four in the middle come into their own – Mariappa, Nosworthy, Eustace and Hogg.  Some have had better games than they did last night, but that’s one hell of a unit to play through or around.  All over the pitch it becomes about determination as much as quality;  we’re on the back foot but we’re getting feet in and chasing and closing and not giving up.  It’s not one-way traffic, we’re breaking and sometimes threatening when we do so but the boot is on Leicester’s foot, we’re hanging on. As the crosses fly in and Loach remains rooted to his line, captain Eustace has words.  This is frantic stuff.

Through all of this, Forsyth has struggled.  Game as ever, he nonetheless looks wide-eyed and hapless as the maelstrom rages around him, standing off to allow Beckford room to turn in the box, struggling to cover his man as Leicester spread the play relentlessly.  He plugs away, he keeps working… but he’s struggling to make an impact.  Until.  Until we break, and John Eustace , who has had a curling, cheeky lob tipped over by a stretching Schmeichel, almost beaten despite being barely off his line, feeds Forsyth on the left.  He’s galloping onto the ball in much the same position as he struck against Bradford.  The result is the same.

I remember prior to the Cup Quarter Final at Home Park in 2007 telling a Plymouth friend that his side would do well not to allow Hameur Bouazza space with the ball facing the goal.  So it proved, and similarly here… once might have been fortunate, but that’s twice in just over a month that Craig Forsyth has pulled out a finish like that: surgically precise, with enough force to flatten an elephant. Craig pulls level with Troy as the leading scorer in the squad.  Meanwhile, naturally, the roof has come off at Vicarage Road.

3- There’s still time for a bizarre turn from the officials.  A crazy denouement, as if the script writers feel the need to outdo themselves with a big finish.  Again, it’s in front of the Rookery;  Jermaine Beckford receives the ball and goes down easily in the box.  Clearly in the box.  And the referee, hesitating, points vaguely in a nonspecific direction.  It might be towards the penalty spot, it might not. Has he made up his mind?  He has, it’s a free kick.  Peculiar on two levels – one, it’s questionable whether a foul took place or whether Beckford, eager to hit the deck throughout, had gone down easily again.  Two, it was well inside the box.  But the referee, who had increasingly lost control of the game in the final half hour, had barely started.  The next thing we see is a red card being waved in Lloyd Doyley’s direction.  Baffling on several levels – a foul, if such it was, was hardly depriving Beckford of a clear goalscoring opportunity with other defenders in attendance.  Baffling also since Lloyd was nowhere near the incident.  Incensed, the normally mild-mannered full back takes some time to leave the pitch, and appears to be ready to turn around and take issue again as he reaches the touchline before being persuaded otherwise.  Sean Dyche opts to make a change immediately – perhaps inadvisedly, that old thing about not making a change as you defend a set piece?  Whatever.  Alex Kacaniklic takes an age to get off the pitch, genuinely exhausted rather than running down time; with the board having already gone up, referee Webb (not that one) is never far from his stopwatch.  But instead of cajoling the winger off to speed things up, the referee allows the kick to be taken as Dickinson enters the fray, half the pitch away from the set piece he wants to defend.  Adding insult to injury as Webb loads the bases in favour of the visitors, we are defending the set piece with nine men.  And it’s frantic, the shot hits the wall as it comes in but the danger isn’t cleared and the ball pings around unti Neil Danns shanks it into the stand, leaving his teammates glaring at him.  The pressure is released.  The game is up, and everyone knows it.

4- Stepping back from the chaos briefly, it’s worth reflecting upon our forward line.  Both acquitted themselves rather better than they have been;  Chris Iwelumo is not the deftest of strikers and provides next to no goal threat.   At times it’s like playing with a wardrobe up front as the ball bounces haplessly off him.  And yet… he’s battling, and occupying defenders, and knocking people over, and drawing fouls that, if less cleverly perpetrated in front of a more competent official would have earned Sean Murray yet more target practice in the first half.  More than that, he’s encouraging and talking and clapping, giving Craig Forsyth in particular plenty of vocal support before THAT strike.  Joe Garner, meanwhile, once again delivers his best performance in a yellow shirt to date… gone is the tendency to hit the deck, he’s doing the running of two men (which is handy, since Chris isn’t moving anywhere very quickly), looking for an outlet, harrying defenders.  He only occasionally looks like scoring either… but this least likely of forward lines plays its role in a famous victory, ultimately.

And yet it’s clearly not enough.  Much is made of the relative proximity of the play off zone vs the relegation places, but we only have three strikers, none of whom have been prolific.  All it took was one injury and suddenly, with Massey and Whichelow both on loan, we have no strikers on the bench.  Surely an extra body is a priority.

5- Sean Dyche has already made this point in his post match reflections, so this will be brief, but to review this match without highlighting the guts, the character of the side, particularly in the second half, would be inappropriate.  Because it was, in case I haven’t been clear on this point, an utterly extraordinary performance delivering verve and wit in the first half, and plenty of balls in the second.  Quite clearly fighting for each other, and that’s wonderfully inspiring.  Leicester, in contrast, appear less than the sum of their parts even if they can consider themselves unfortunate not to have taken at least a point.  There’s quality there, but it’s in isolated pockets.  No number of impressive names in the side, on the bench, in the stand, make up for a lack of team spirit.  We had that in bucketloads this evening.  Utterly fabulous.