Watford 3 West Bromwich Albion 2 (20/02/2023)

1-   Midway through the first half, the ever more loveable Ismaël Koné launched into one of his precision harpoon tackles to retrieve the ball, improbably, from a startled opponent.  He surged at a backpedalling defence, the home stands roaring their appreciation, as skittles tumbled nervously in his path before decisively lumping a pass to his left and into touch.  In so doing he encapsulated a ridiculous game of football.

It was violent.  Ryan Porteous and Brandon Thomas-Asante locked horns in the first minute, the whirligig West Brom striker all but ripping Porteous shirt off him – in, one assumes, response to a less visible transgression from one of the two new bastards in the house.  The other was subject to attention at corners – either from someone who’d been watching on Tuesday evening or just because that’s Hoedt’s thing.  Referee Robinson didn’t so much let the game flow as nip off for a pint or two, or three, lumbering back into play for a cursory “now now boys” every half hour or so.  A hatchet job on João Pedro very late in the game, a crude swipe long after the ball had gone, went mystifyingly unpunished.

It was also rubbish.  Wesley Hoedt has the turning circle of an eight-carriage Thameslink.  West Brom’s Yokuslu found the ball boy on the halfway line in front of the GT stand more frequently than he found a teammate.  Several of the goals were based in inept defending…  a Premier League game this wasn’t.

And yet it was completely brilliant and dynamic…  aggressive, purposeful, exhausting nonsense that left throats sore and fingers in scalps as, by the second half, both sides were hurtling after whatever was left of the game.

2- Slaven Bilić had intimated that it was time we started scoring a few more goals;  this was as true off the pitch as much as on it since an official crowd of 18634 failed to reflect the increasingly sparse home stands (not so the right hand side of the Vic Road End, where Albion have taken every seat).  There’s a cumulative effect of, in practice, watching successive relegation seasons and flattering to deceive in this, what should be the one fun season in two.

There was little promise of a goal glut for the first quarter of the game, in which a bright start was stifled by Albion dropping deep and smothering space.  No mystery about this blueprint, no blame to attach either since it’s worked against us so many times before – you wouldn’t voluntarily give our forward line space to fly into. This never felt futile however…  quick movement and bold, forward passes – with Koné again prominent – offered encouragement as did James Morris’ duel with Marc Albrighton.  The young left back had a big job on against Albion’s brightest spark in the first half but stood up to it well and made the most of the opportunity offered by the latest hamstring injury, this one afflicting Hassane Kamara.

So when we broke the deadlock midway through the half it was a relief, certainly, but no bolt from the blue which is progress in itself.  Mario Gaspar might conceivably have slipped to fourth choice right back once injuries to Ferreira, Ngakia and Dan Gosling gave him another opportunity but he’s done a very solid job ever since… his overlap down the right finally unpeeled Albion, a square ball found Keinan Davis who snapped a shot at goal which Phillips pushed to his left only for Ken Sema to gobble up the loose ball and lift it into the net.

3- Albion howled out of the blocks at the start of the second half after two subs at the break, displaying an attacking aggression that hadn’t been suggested to that point.  Bachmann made a showy stop to deny Swift and a vital reaction save from Thomas-Asante but little surprise and no little trepidation when Conor Townsend took advantage of some clunky defending to flick home.

But from this point the game untethered and never settled again.  Nine days ago there were glimpses of the flooding attack that our riches ought to have realised a whole lot more often but this was much more in evidence here….  Davis and Sarr bundled a chance, Sarr took it on cutting diagonally into the area from right to left before turning and shooting back across the face and off the far post.  Five minutes later João Pedro fed a galloping Morris whose cross was cleared as far as Koné.  The Canadian scuffed at goal, his shot was blocked but not cleared and Sarr gobbled it up to drive home.  That our forward line ought to be capable of more of this, of generating scruffy goals simply by virtue of which way the table is tipping, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy it when it happens.

4- We went to see “Noises Off” in the West End on Saturday, and the closing spell of the game had every bit of the accelerating uncontrollable chaos of a well executed farce.  Tumbling down a staircase with his shoelaces tied together, figuratively speaking, was Daniel Bachmann who played a slack and overconfident pass to a flat-footed and surprised Hamza Choudhury that West Brom’s urgent and rather desperate pressing gobbled up.  Replays suggested a marginal offside, but we can have no complaints for conceding after such slack defending.

The bottle of whiskey being chucked around the stage with astonishing speed and dexterity was Ken Sema.  Ever a force for good, Sema’s rugged, good-natured persistence was a deciding factor here.  He had made the move into the box to deftly flick the lively Sarr’s cross back to Davis, whose hammered shot was deflected and spun back towards Sema who re-entered the field of play to hook home.  The flag was up immediately, and correctly since Sema was beyond Albion’s keeper when Davis’ shot came in… but whereas with Albion’s second equaliser we should have gotten an offside but didn’t deserve it, here we were rightly offside but didn’t deserve that call either.  This was finally Watford putting an opponent to the sword, the offside call sheer bad luck and nothing to do with anything that the hapless Albion defence had contributed.

But the farce had one more slight of hand, one more chuckle to deliver.  It was instigated by Koné, who stuck out a foot to intercept a West Brom ball into the Watford box and brilliantly executed an immediate pass to his left to release another one of those galloping attacks on the break.  We had good numbers up, it appeared to fizzle out when Sarr’s cross was blocked but the winger retrieved the ball from the touchline and slipped it to Sema who looped in what was probably supposed to be an in-swinging cross from the right but Erik Pieters was falling through a window with his trousers around his ankles to deflect the ball inside his near post.  It looked an oggy to me, but nobody was denying Ken his moral hat-trick.

5- There was still time for more fingers-in-scalps stuff up the other end – tho Albion, in truth, didn’t come terribly close to salvaging parity for a third time – and for another screaming counter-attack which resulted in Sarr flying down the right, JP screaming onto his cross to force an heroic denying block and Keinan Davis performing a touching Devon White tribute with an optimistic but failed overhead kick. 

Tremendous fun.  The more so given the result, obviously….  Albion fans won’t remember the evening as fondly.  But much as it was three points that could easily have escaped us it’s a win that we thoroughly deserved.  Indeed, in contrast to most games of late, a game where we could and perhaps should have scored even more goals and won more comfortably.

Late in the day, sure.  But another step in the right direction, building on the suggested encouragement of the Blackburn performance and the near-miss at Turf Moor in the week.  Not finished.  Not done.  But the end of the season could be quite fun however it turns out;  Saturday’s trip to Bramall Lane could have fallen far worse.

See you there

Yoorns.

Bachmann 3, Mario Gaspar 4, Morris 4, Porteous 4, Hoedt 3, Choudhury 3, Koné 4, Sarr 4, João Pedro 3, *Sema 4*, Davis 4
Subs: Bacuna (for Koné, 81) NA, Louza (for Sema, 84) NA,  Assombalonga (for Davis, 91) NA,  Araújo, Martins, Kabasele, Hamer

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