Watford 1 Huddersfield Town 4 (16/12/2017)

1- I was in a pantomime this week.  You know the sort of thing…  slapstick humour, bedlam both on stage (planned) and off it (less so).  People running into each other, frantically trying to work out where they were supposed to be, getting into a kerfuffle, trying to improvise frantically when things went wrong.

You can insert your own metaphor here, if you like.

In the build up to showday the challenges built up.  Short-notice audits at work took out a cameo and threatened cast and crew.  We were underrehearsed, naturally.  Then the snow, threatening access to the venue amongst other things.  The discovery that the road to the venue was being resurfaced during showweek was the point at which I stopped panicking and started laughing.  By Tuesday night, the day before the dress rehearsal, things seemed to have turned around.  It was going well.  Challenges navigated.

Then came Crystal Palace.  One-up early on, all going swimmingly until, suddenly, it wasn’t.  Listening to Jon Marks, in my precarious emotional state I saw potential parallels as Tom Cleverley was dismissed and made a Faustian pact.  I was willing to trade Watford’s lead against Palace for a successful panto, “nothing going wrong at the last minute”.  Sorry, but sue me… you weren’t there, I was and I had to make a snap decision.  So in my head, I made the sacrifice, with only a smidgeon of guilt.  And as is traditional when dealing with the devil, I suddenly find myself paying back more than I’d bargained for…

2- It’s not always Huddersfield, but it does tend to be Huddersfield quite a lot.  The notorious end-of-season calamity under Beppe Sannino was worse than this, except that it probably mattered less.  Then there was an incongruous defeat in West Yorkshire during our promotion season when Miguel Layún got rinsed on his debut and promotion felt less than a done deal.  And then there was this one  almost exactly seventeen years ago;  the nadir of the collapse of GT’s last season afforded appropriate disdain by my co-editor who had the good sense not to come up from Hastings on this occasion.  Him and a good number of others, the nominal and now traditional 20k gate including a good number present in Season Ticket but not in body.

Huddersfield showed up though, both on the pitch and in a particularly and understandably boisterous away end.  And much as Newcastle at St James Park had been our ideal opponent – blunt, but with an unconstrained urge to push forward because they were at home to Watford and that, leaving them open to counterattack – Huddersfield were our worst nightmare.  Direct and aggressive without ever (needing to be?) crossing the line they swarmed all over our increasingly tentative possession and attacked with purpose and bloody-mindedness from wide positions, overloading our wing backs.  Yes, the opening goal offside in several different ways – this was an awful afternoon but not all of it was our doing – but the defending was still an utter calamity and thereafter we caved in like a house of cards.  I could strive for creative outrage but frankly I’m just too tired (the after-panto party was a fine thing, as witnessed by my still being hung over two days later…).  Read that last linked report above if you need catharsis.

3- A key factor in this defeat was the attitude and competence of our opponent (see above).  And yes, the officials did play a part, though bitching about bad decisions is even more tedious than excessive introspection.

But there are, clearly, sources of concern here.  Some aren’t new.  The team has looked wonderful at times this season, wonderful in general perhaps.  But in the same way that the midfield never really worked last season, the role of Troy/Andre Gray is yet to be fully resolved this.  Yes, Troy came on and bullied Arsenal but that reflected their failings as much as his success.  Here, even before Troy’s (latest) moment of madness he was ineffectual.  And this… reflects uncertainty in his role, since lack of conviction has never been a reasonable accusation in the past.

Then there’s injuries.  Yes, boring.  Every team gets injuries, and actually two big losses were suspensions and therefore within our hands.  Nonetheless, you can make a good argument for the back five being weaker than the back five ruled out (Femenía, Zeegelaar, Cathcart, Kaboul, Britos) and ditto, more contestably, the central midfield (Chalobah, Cleverley).  You’re tempted to blame bad luck, except that this is the second season blighted by injury;  you have to wonder again at our ability to either keep players fit or to evaluate their robustness on recruitment when comparing our injury list to Huddersfield’s, whose notoriously high energy game nonetheless leaves them with a much more manageable injury list.

Finally, most fundamentally, there’s our approach and Marco’s flexibility.  We’ve won plaudits for and revelled in our expansive play this season, which has been great when it works well.  Glorious, even.  Thing is…  when that’s the only string in your bow and your players get leggy, injured, low on confidence and you’ve no means of keeping games tight and giving yourself something to build off… well, you get dicked like this.  We looked, amongst other things, horribly flimsy.

4- Troy aside, but that’s not really what I had in mind.  I’ve not seen the replays, but consensus and my view at the time was that whatever contact was made, jumping in like that was fuckwitted and unnecessary in the circumstances.  I mean, what the hell, Troy?  A few weeks after a suspension for losing his rag against Stoke?   It gave the referee a decision to make;  maybe Troy might have gotten away with it on a good day, but this certainly wasn’t one of those.

A peculiar coincidence that Jonathan Hogg followed him off the pitch in similar manner in the second half.  Coincidence in that both skippers were leaving the pitch, but also in that Hogg’s last competitive touch at Vicarage Road prior to today had been a memorable cushion down for Troy to convert under the watchful eye of the same official, Michael Oliver.  He was afforded a warm reception before the game and a slightly bemused one as he left it, reaction to a slightly harsh looking second yellow being glee before sheepish realisation that it was Hogg that had seen the red.

By this stage we were a miserable three down, and without a focal point were making precious little progress towards the Terriers’ goal.  A bit like when someone makes a run at the wall in Ninja Warrior, gets a third of the way up and you just know that anything that follows is futile.  Andre Carrillo was at least showing signs of fight and life, taking responsibility, but too little was working around him and the contrast between Capoue’s heaviness and the buzzing energy of Cleverley was stark.

But as Hogg went off a chink of light opened, if briefly.  The pressing game is hard to maintain with eleven men, let alone without your midfield general and captain.  In the pre-match restaurant the Huddersfield fan suggested that if Jake Livermore’s in the England squad then Hogg should be too, to which we quietly agreed whilst thinking that the same applies to my Gran, and she’s German and nearly 90.

So suddenly we had some of the ball and it felt like a fight in which we could land blows again.  With some relief the whole stadium rallied, supporters on their feet happy for the familiar “come on-ness” of it that had been missing, the team suddenly pulling their opponents around a bit.  We did strike back too, an extraordinary drive by Doucouré out of the air through a crowded box that deserves more than to be buried in an episode of MotD that few Hornets will want to watch.  Briefly, we believed.

5-  It fizzled out, though.  It fizzled out before the late penalty, dispatched by comfortably the best player on the pitch in Aaron Mooy, just by not quite being sharp enough or lucky enough, through Huddersfield not being rattled enough.  Shots cannoned around the box, an exquisite move ended with Huddersfield defenders falling over themselves and Andre Gray driving across the face of goal.  Signs of life, right up until Roberto Pereyra thundered the last kick of the game towards the top corner, Lössl clawing it away.  Not enough, not even close.

A miserable afternoon, then, and one best confined to whichever box we put the other Huddersfield horror shows in.  Some issues to be addressed – injured, suspended players will come back (though we miss Zeegelaar, Deeney and also Doucouré for the trip to Brighton) but some more fundamental issues need addressing, not least the conviction of the squad which looked questionable for perhaps the first time this season.

As for the panto…  that was awesome.  A welcome dose of people pulling together, and recognising that laughing at frustrations is more effective than bitching about them.  There are easier times to do it than in the cold after a 4-1 defeat to Huddersfield, mind.

Have a good Christmas.  Yoorns.

Gomes 3, Janmaat 2, Holebas 1, Mariappa 2, Prödl 2, Kabasele 2, *Doucouré 3*, Capoue 1, Carrillo 3, Richarlíson 2, Deeney 1

Subs:  Pereyra (for Mariappa, 29) 2, Gray (for Capoue, 64) 1, Okaka (for Holebas, 82) 0, Wagué, Watson, Sinclair, Karnezis