Brighton and Hove Albion 1 Watford 1 (28/10/2013)

1. Things I’ve learnt in the last two or three days:

a. There’s no sleepless night quite like the sleepless night in a tall house on a big hill next to the sea during a gale. Especially if you’re in the process of replacing the roof and there’s nothing but a layer of felt between you and the raging elements.

b. If you put scaffolding all around your tall house on a big hill next to the sea, the aforementioned gale makes it vibrate like a giant tuning fork.

c. The trees you’d like to blow down are rarely the ones that do. I can do you a poster with that on if you want.

d. The apples borne by our rather ancient apple tree were the last, for it’s now resting its head gently on our lawn.

e. Nobody tells rail passengers anything. It’s only a matter of time before train companies simply hand us pieces of paper with “P.T.O.” written on both sides.

f. Expectations were always likely to drown this Watford squad at some point. That point is right now, that line has been crossed. Time to start swimming, boys…

2. You saw the game, you already know what you think. There are times when writing these pieces requires no more than an attempt to echo the general feeling, to try to capture an essence of what everyone felt. There are other times when, frankly, there’s no point at all if we’re not poking and prodding at some lazy assumptions and half-baked certainties, if we’re not risking pissing people off a little bit. Guess which one this is…

There’s an inevitability to all of this, has been from the moment when that Palace penalty went in at Wembley…but it’s depressing and tedious nevertheless. There’s a bit during the second half when we’re surrounded by blokes bellowing at various players about…well, about what? There’s a lack of specific detail but plenty of fackin’ and cantin’, quite a bit of spittle and sputum. It involves quite a lot of anger management issues, but I bite my lip rather than suggest some kind of therapy group with weak tea and cheap biscuits. I know people who’d have a psychological field day here.

And above all, it involves English football’s solutions to absolutely bloody everything: show some fackin’ passion. Everyone on this island ought to be force-fed Jonathan Wilson’s “The Anatomy of England” with its piercing dissection of our national obsession with effort and commitment and urgency. It changes your landscape, that book. Football is a simple game, perhaps, but mercifully not so simple that the only means of attacking is to get numbers in the fackin’ box for fack’s sake. Halfway through the second half, the ancient chant of “fack ’em up, get into ’em” goes up and its disconnection with modern football – hell, with modern life – is so vast that it might as well be a crackly music hall recording played on a wonky gramophone. We’ve got some catching up to do, evidently. I include myself in this: I am unable to look at Diego Fabbrini without telling him to get up, even when he hasn’t yet fallen down.

3. Don’t misunderstand: there are indeed things that aren’t yet quite right with this Watford side. But the memory plays tricks if it isn’t watched carefully: you can instantly conjure up Matej Vydra’s superlative goal in last season’s ruthless drive-by, I imagine. Something of a turning point for the season, that…and in late December, pertinently. We didn’t ever look back. But there was no shortage of flaws in that performance, rough edges and work-in-progress and all of that. For example, we were, again pertinently, persisting with Iketchi Anya as a rather frail, vulnerable wing-back in the face of what appeared to be common sense and better options. These things don’t always work out, of course, but there are times when that kind of persistence pays off several times over. There are times when it’s necessary. A team is never finished, and especially not in October.

The quick-quick in our slow-slow-quick-quick-slow was particularly quick that New Year night. We lack that, obviously, and it got us out of plenty of trouble that we’ve probably forgotten about now. We’re trying to push on from last season, but it isn’t as simple as merely turning it up a notch: opponents are wiser and more cautious, our options are different, the second album is always more difficult than the first. We’re developing a more patient, slower style of play to cope with what we’re expecting to come up against; it isn’t as immediately satisfying and it may not even turn out to be as successful, but the process is necessary.

The bloke behind us has a voice as soothing as someone scratching their name on a piece of glass with a rusty nail, amplified over a faulty PA system to a relentless, ear-splitting scree of sound. He has opinions to match. Among them, towards the end of the second half, is the suggestion that Josh McEachran should show for the fackin’ ball. Josh McEachran has done almost nothing but show for the fackin’ ball, an ever-present option for a give-and-go in a way that immediately moves our work-in-progress on a couple of steps. While Fernando Forestieri is nearly the match-winner, it’s McEachran who points the way forward: unless teams happen to defend as badly as Barnsley, we’re going to be trying to shade games, edge them with a bit of carefully-applied quality. We’re going to have to keep probing away, then make the key moments count.

We should’ve won this, y’know. And contrary to inflated expectations, it would’ve been a very good result.

4. I’m a bit bored of the over-the-line discussion already. Thing is, the introduction of video technology changes that incident from something which is judged by the human eye to something which is judged by computer. As in tennis, it becomes a matter of millimetres, the margin of error reduced to nearly nothing. What looks in isn’t necessarily in: whole of the ball, whole of the line. Seeing a bit of grass between the line and the ball isn’t enough; unreliable testimony, your honour.

In other words, I remain completely unconvinced that technology would necessarily have found in our favour. I remain fairly convinced, however, that I would’ve missed my train. That’s progress for you.

4 1/2. Note, reader, how I’m managing to capture the rather disjointed and puzzling nature of the game with a set of thunks that are similarly disjointed and puzzling. Oh yes.

5. I do have two complaints. Sorry, two fackin’ complaints. Firstly, if we’re working on the basis of shading tight games, we ought to be making more of set pieces than this: Gabriele Angella’s two-goal haul against Bournemouth seems very distant, as does the time when Lewis McGugan made up for his sometimes over-casual midfield play with consistently lethal delivery. We currently give the impression that scoring from corners is a bit working class.

Secondly, there are spells – and moments – when we do drop our attention level. It cost us against Derby, a sloppy and avoidable defeat, sublime goals undermined. It should’ve cost us more dearly here too, really: Brighton were guilty of wasting far more opportunities than we managed to create and Manuel Almunia made the key saves of the game. We can’t afford that. We can’t be as defensively slack as last season’s attack-minded team while not being as free-scoring; that doesn’t work at all. We can’t have spells like first half injury time, when we wandered off the pitch before the game had actually stopped, brains in the dressing room three minutes before our bodies.

6. But we can be a team that’s still growing, still developing. We can afford that. And as fans, we can give that a chance rather than writing it off because QPR have got fifty-seven points, or something, already.

Hell, I’d argue that we should want it. It can be good fun, that. If we’re not careful, this isn’t going to be fun at all.