Watford 0 Bolton Wanderers 1 (23/11/2013)

1-  Unusual to be starting with the “big picture” stuff, normally the domain of thunk 5.  Relevant here though., because however dispiriting our recent form has been…  things could be worse.  No, really.  I mean, you know that, right?   You remember Bassini?   Not being able to afford Keith Scott or a Stevenage-era Barry Hayles in Division One?  The financial abyss post-Vialli?  This?  Whatever’s wrong is small potatoes in comparison.  And even if one accepts that there are major problems with the team – we’ll get to that – we have owners with a demonstrably sound plan, and a degree of security.  And some very talented players, albeit we’re not seeing the best of them at the moment.

Indeed, it’s difficult to conceive of any Watford squad of the past that could have accommodated this sort of injury list as well as we did today.  Yes yes, I know, and we’ll get there… but it’s surely beyond dispute that if one considers the players missing by the end of the game, when illness had forced Manuel Almunia’s half-time withdrawal, the absentees could have formed a stronger side than those available.  And incidentally, given the signings late this week of Hector Bellerin and Fitz Hall we perhaps shouldn’t be expecting Gabriele Angella, Lloyd Doyley or Ikechi Anya back anytime soon.

We’ve had injury crises in the past of course… there were periods of our 1999/2000 season where you could have made similar statements about the strength of those available versus those missing.  We were a top flight club then though, and coped rather less well in those circumstances than we did today, at least until the twenty-seventh minute.  We were the brighter side  in the opening period; if Bolton had begun to enjoy some possession they’d not threatened, whilst Thorne, McEachran and Acuña had all had half-chances.  This wasn’t Brazil 1970 by any stretch… but it wasn’t bad;  we’d started smartly enough in difficult circumstances.

2- Which isn’t to suggest that the last hour of the game was anything but sheer bloody purgatory.  Quite how much Manuel Almunia’s second expensive slip in two home games owed to the clattering he’d earlier received from Jermaine Beckford, or to the illness that reportedly provoked his withdrawal at the interval we can only speculate.  Either way, and more so than against Leicester, it was absolutely pivotal.  Whether Bolton are really as limited as they appeared – a considerably less impressive outfit than the side that lost here last season – or whether in sticking rigidly to a successful game plan that always looked a safe bet in the circumstances they simply had no need to showcase what they could do, they came across as a very average side.  By gifting them an unearned one-goal lead we had effectively cordoned off a parking bay for their bus in the penalty area and they parked and manned it diligently.

For all that his form has been, generously, variable of late, the loss of Deeney was the greatest challenge in the circumstances.  Picking your way through an obstinate and well-organised rearguard has so much greater a chance of success if mixed with a bit of welly, an option that really wasn’t open to us with the personnel available.  Acuña showed early willingness and aggression which earned him a yellow card, but again suggested that he too would rather be the creator than the bloke on the end of the cross, and whilst Davide Faraoni was one of our brighter performers in the first half there was too often little to hit with the space he found on the right.  Nor was our midfield particularly equipped to pick a lock… in McEachran and Battocchio we had two willing water-carriers; fetchers, bustlers and layers-off but none of the incision that an Abdi, a Murray or perhaps a McGugan might have offered.  For all that we had the lion’s share of possession we managed to carve out next to nothing in the way of goalscoring opportunities.  It was miserable, futile stuff… almost precisely what a badly-executed passing game looks like, precisely what we’d feared at the start of last season.

3- Which doesn’t excuse some of the idiocy going on in the stands. The low point of this came from an unfamiliar voice behind me who, after first Forestieri and then Pudil had had shots charged down in quick succession implored “when are we going to have a bloody shot?”.  On a later occasion successive sideways passes we greeted with wails of “shoot”, and when Battocchio did just that and in doing so failed to find the pinpoint accuracy and power required to test Andy Lonergan from an unsighted position outside the area, he was rewarded with sighs of derision. Here’s the thing, see…  if breaking down a packed defence was an easy thing to do, something that was just a matter of mustering the willpower to have a shot irrespective of the number of bodies amassed between you and the goal, opponents would have ceased employing it as a tactic years ago.  We weren’t not taking shots out of rejection of the tactic, we were not taking shots because we weren’t engineering, or being permitted to engineer, shots to take.  Those cries of “shoot!” actually represented a translation failure between the brain and the vocal chords… instead of “shoot!”, the message was “score!”, which is not quite the same thing and represents even more limited tactical insight.

4- On the bright side, George Thorne looks a bit of a player.  Very much in the Chalobah mould, he was physically imposing but comfortable with the ball, bringing it out, finding space and setting the tone like the conductor of an orchestra.  During his last season, Adrian Mariappa earned a standing ovation for a Bobby Moore tackle against Leeds…. Thorne executed two of these in the second half, somehow bruising and imperious without making any contact with his opponent at all, an exercise in bullish timing.  More to come as he rediscovers sharpness after nine months out, one suspects, and you’re left already wondering whether his loan might be extended.  Meanwhile, the return of Nos to the centre of defence was hugely welcome, bringing some of the uncomplicated brutality that our forward play could have done with. He lasted an hour before a positive but fruitless substitution saw Fabbrini enter the fray.  Good to see you back, sir.

5- There’s no doubt that, injuries aside and for all that we have greater strength in depth than last season (see 1) there are cogs missing that make the starting eleven, injuries aside, less effective.  The loss of Vydra’s pace in particular makes us much easier to defend against;  Abdi’s injury and Deeney’s loss of form expose our reliance on key players, something that a relatively clear run with injuries exposed less last year – although which is chicken and which is egg in terms of our injury record and form is perhaps open to debate.  Either way, on and off the pitch we resemble a morose teenager who has just been dumped for the first time and is wasting his time moping around and getting all introspective and probably composing awful poetry or something – instead of getting out there and doing something reckless.  We need to snap out of it.  We need a good slap.  And we need a lucky break to turn the tide.