Watford 1 Middlesbrough 0 (11/09/2020)

1- “Heidi’s climbing on my head.  She’s just got back.  She says she won at ballet”.

This was always going to be a season like none that went before it, and the pre-match conference with my brother is fittingly unusual.  By this time we’d seen the team, and blinked several times.  The Spurs eleven was already sparse but never felt consciously experimental… this is where we are, at least for now.  But from that side we lost Estupiñan, Dawson, Dele-Bashiru and hamstring victim Gray with Perica also missing despite his signing having been confirmed in the week.  Jerome Sinclair is on the bench for goodness sake, which is something that none of us thought we’d see again.  As of maybe three years ago.

The official justifications for our many, many absences – 17, reportedly… that it’s hard to keep track tells you everything – range from injured to ill to unfit, often vague and understandably so.  There’s injured and there’s “injured”, one suspects. Twitter rumour claims that Craig Dawson has refused to play, which if true given his miserable half-arsed effort against Spurs is comparable to Andy Cole’s notorious retirement from international duty.

As for whoever has had their agent whining to the Daily Mail about having to work too hard in training….  underperforming last season, being part of a relegated side is a stain on anyone’s reputation but far from beyond redemption.  Not at the very least being prepared to put a shift in whilst you’re still at the club, risking undermining the rebuilding of the side in the process by publicly clutching at your pearls at the prospect of hard work?  Weak.  Shut the door on your way out.

2- Back on the pitch, if the cast has changed then the set-up is unrecognisable from last season.  A back three, wing-backs, two sitting midfielders and two attacking midfielders loosely either side of the forward.

And we look OK.  We look get-attable certainly, at least initially…  Assombalonga and Fletcher have scruffy half-chances but too many of them, and scruffy half-chances can become scruffy goals if you concede too many of them.  Nonetheless… when Wilmot strides forward or Femenía screams down the left we attack like sandsnakes, wriggling into space and opening Boro up during this opening period.  From one of a number of corners Quina changes the angle by laying off to the dynamic Sema who is quickly closed down, but not quickly enough to prevent a beast of a cross. Cathcart thunders in, brutally exposing and ripping open a moment’s lack of concentration.  The merciless precision of the move made Hall’s transgression look worse than it was.

3- We’re going to be quite good at being a goal up, I suspect.  Here we are after the most chaotic of pre-seasons with a squad spinning like a mobile in the breeze, with a new boss running his first training sessions in a new language without his assistants in tow just yet.   And for the rest of the game… no, we don’t look significantly better than a tough, dogged Boro side but we don’t look significantly better whilst being one-nil up and rarely looking like being anything else.  That’s a hell of an achievement on the part of the new boss.

The second half sees us sit much deeper.  The occasional rapier runs are much less frequent, but so is any suggestion that Boro will equalise.  It’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility…  Hall sends a volley over, there are a couple of awkward bounces in the box and probably more set pieces than you’d like to be facing but Cathcart, Kabasele and Wilmot keep the visitors at arms length for the most part.  We concede a single yellow card when Britt Assomablonga tussles his way past Ben Wilmot via a grip on the most delicate of leverage.  You can’t unsee that, approach replays with caution. Rather that than being on the receiving end though, an understandable transgression on the young defender’s part.

4- Looking at individual performances, there’s a lot to like from the new(ish) faces.  Wilmot, as above, digs in and is much more robust than his 20 years and slim frame suggest.  Ngakia’s passing is wayward but his energy is tremendous, and he’s involved at both ends of the pitch.  Quina is mobile but gets smothered too easily, too often the point at which attacks break down.

But João Pedro is the surprise package.  Sort of, and not really, obviously… he’s been in our minds since long before he was allowed to sign, long before Liverpool and Barcelona were sniffing around but we got him anyway.  Just a surprise in that…  such prodigies haven’t always quite become the superstars that they were going to be in our heads.  The Brazilian still might not, but this wasn’t half a promising full league debut.  Eighteen and slim but somehow spinning and holding the ball up and battling and sweeping through balls and getting kicked but lasting ninety minutes.  If by some miracle we hang onto Sarr – and reports today suggest that Liverpool will have to save all their pocket money in order to sign him in January – then my word.  Sarr running off the Brazilian?  Yes please.

5- Whilst there are other strong performances from experienced players – Chalobah has his best game for what, given the last six months, pretty much equates to living memory, Tom Cleverley is again every inch a captain alongside him – the collective whole only works up to a point.  Defensively, as above, we look as good as could possibly be expected in the circumstances.  Going forward, the good bits – and there are good bits – don’t quite fit together.  Don’t all quite lock in place.

But good god.  This is the very definition of work in progress. We needed a win any which way today, a win with so much to admire about it is more than good enough in the circumstances.  We have a list of absentees that is, perhaps goalkeepers aside, vastly superior to the squad we were able to put out. We won the game anyway.  A team, playing a game, under a manager that was completely unfamiliar.  We won at ballet. For the timebeing, that will more than do.

Bring on the next one.

Yoorns.

Foster 4, *Cathcart 4*, Kabasele 4, Wilmot 4, Ngakia 3, Cleverley 4, Chalobah 4, Femenía 3, Quina 2, Sema 3, João Pedro 4
Subs: Murray (for Sema, 66) 3, Navarro (for Femenía, 76) NA, Phillips (for Quina, 89) NA, Sierralta, Pussetto, Sinclair, Bachmann