Watford 2 Stoke City 0 (08/05/2023)

1-   A much considered philosophical question demands, “if a tree falls down in a forest and there is no-one near to hear it, does it make a sound?”.

If a tree were to have fallen in the Graham Taylor Stand concourse at 2pm there would have been precious few folk around either to hear it, or to wonder quite how it got there.  Most sensible people have far better things to be doing with their time than getting to the ground over an hour early but such has been our routine this season: get in early, buy chicken and chips and a pint of Side Pocket, mooch around and chew the fat for an hour or so with Dad and whoever else is about.  Population density can be judged by how easy it is to find a space along the shelf at the back of the concourse.  No issues today.  Any number of trees, noisy or otherwise, could have slipped in with their own pre-match nourishment of choice without cramping anyone’s leaning space.

Watford’s difficult season is something most in the home stands are acutely aware of but unlike the sound of the falling tree it indisputably exists whether or not one chooses to bellyache it about it so quite why so many of the patrons seem determined to reconfirm its existence, as if failing to do so makes it even more real – the opposite of saying “I believe in fairies” to confirm their existence – is beyond me. Which isn’t to pretend that everything’s just lovely because of course it isn’t, and each to their own in terms of whether and to what extent one chooses to persist with it. 

But so many of the voices fail to reflect either any gallows humour (which can be dull, but less dull), or the possibility of the afternoon going well, or the fact that things could be and have been far worse.  Keen to give voice to the misery and to distance themselves from those accountable for it.  Not entirely consistent to sing songs about “since I was young” and “Watford ’til I die” and variations on the same theme and then act as if someone’s died when we finish mid-table in the Championship.

2- The match is preceded by a low-key awards ceremony.  Difficult to get the tone right of course, but hard not  to feel that apologetically slipping the voting form out less than a week before the game (and inconsistently so, I wasn’t the only one not to receive one) contributes to the gloomy narrative.  In an unsurprising turn of events the team’s stand-out player, Brighton-bound João Pedro, walks away with the Player of the Season award.  He’s only two months older than Young Player of the Season James Morris, but the rules governing such things have always been pretty fluid and nobody seems to object.  JP’s acceptance speech is polite and perfunctory, with the rather detached efficiency of a Christmas card from an accountant (I don’t have an accountant, or know many accountants to receive cards from but I’m guessing). 

By the time the match starts the stands are… still sparse, but not as sparse as that empty concourse had portended.  There is nothing as pedantic as a teenage daughter of course, and Daughter 2 witheringly reflects on the inaccuracy of my prediction at some length.  Our team selection sees a further thinning of the ranks, with Hassane Kamara joining JP in the out-tray, Yáser Asprilla (and Matheus Martins, irrelevantly) released for international youth-level duty and any number of others missing in action, presumed injured or bored or maybe wandered off while nobody was looking.  Ryan Andrews is of course tremendous, but what happened to João Ferreira?  Edo Kayembe, Francisco Sierralta, Samuel Kalu?  Good grief, Maduka Okoye?  You can’t play everyone of course and it’s a good thing, if hardly fulfilling optimistic expectations that Jack Grieves makes the bench, even if Adrian Blake being awarded the possibility of a League debut is odd.

Stoke City, meanwhile, inhabit that post-Premier League purgatory that we sense we’re being sucked into.  Every inch a Championship side, replete with nearly-weres (that’s you Dwight Gayle) and never-quite-will-bes, garnished with a bit of quality but not enough to cause offence.  There’s also the veteran star in the shape of Phil Jagielka – an impressive 40 (pushing 41), this was his 812th and surely final senior game.  He was being sent off against Watford (at Bramall Lane in the post-wage deferral game) before the younger members of today’s matchday squad were born.

3- The other marker of where Stoke are at is the level of excitement provoked in the away end by a scruffy little rat on loan from Bournemouth, for whom “sign him up” chants greet even wild slugs over the bar.  His first effort is a better one however, getting everything behind a right-footed drive from outside the box that is heading for the postage stamp before Daniel Bachmann intervenes.

This sets up an afternoon that is pretty much made for Bachmann;  our three-man central defence is utterly chaotic but energetically so, meaning that City both have a lot of chances but largely either rush them or take them from distance.  They’ll end up with seven attempts on target, all of them repelled by Bachmann who is troubled relatively little with crosses, since neither of the wide forwards Smallbone and Campbell are natural wingers.  Perhaps the closest they come throughout is through two rare such instances in the first half, neither troubling the “shots on target” counter… two balls from the left, the first reaching Smallbone flying in beyond Bachmann’s far post and shovelling narrowly wide, the second brilliantly intercepted by the keeper, flying forwards across the face of the ball’s path to steal it from the toe of Josh Laurent, who acknowledges the achievement with that highest of all praise, a tap on the back on the way back upfield.

The Hornets meanwhile are creating chances themselves at the other end where a slightly higher level of all-round competence is on show from both sides.  Imrân Louza will both start and finish the game strongly…  he expertly loads bullets for first Sarr and then Davis, the first with an evil through-ball that Sarr, inoffensively diligent throughout, screams onto before flicking a shot that is deflected wide, the second taken with his weaker right by Davis after hesitating with the initial chance as he will for much of the afternoon, more comprehensively deflected off target.

There’s an easy incompetence about the whole thing which, again, is characteristic of the middle of the Championship.  The half finishes goalless despite all best efforts to the contrary, our defending not least.

4- Stoke have brought a load of coaches and appear to have filled the away “end”, which is a very respectable effort in the circumstances and contributes to the fanciful official attendance of over twenty thousand.  Unsurprisingly they’re making a fair bit more noise than the lazily mutinous home stands but even this begins to fizzle out midway through the second half (the comedy highlight being “there’s only ten of you singing!” in mockery of a rare home chant, relayed by a maximum of ten members of the away end. If you’re the instigator of that chant realising your stupidity do you give up quickly and hope everyone forgets, or push on regardless?).

The scoreline being broken is preceded by two developments… the first the fitful chanting from the away end dying out altogether to lend the afternoon even more of the air of a pre-season friendly (but more so, since at least a pre-season game tends to feature players who will be seen again however irrelevant the outcome).

The second is a double substitution that removes Ismael Koné and Christian Kabasele and introduces James Morris and Henrique Araújo.  Koné has achieved the remarkable feat of more than an hour on the pitch in central midfield without affecting the game (or possibly touching the ball) at all while Kabasele, extraordinarily, has looked the least chaotic of our centre-backs but has received a knock – Wesley Hoedt appears to become the latest custodian of the armband.  Araújo will again look kind of useful but not quite right, which observation prompts the thought that this is really the best that can be said for any of the out-and-out strikers that we’ve employed this season and that maybe that’s a problem.

But the main consequence of the substitutions is a change of shape from 3-5-2 / 5-3-2 to 4-4-2.  It’s easy to read into the fact that we’re two goals up within ten minutes and never troubled again a tactical masterstroke and certainly we look more confident and effective, but in reality Stoke throw in the towel from the moment that Louza curls a lovely shot beyond Sarkic after Davis has scrapped to retain possession.  Four minutes later and a poor Stoke clearance finds Sema, whose wicked crossfield pass sets up Davis to once again take a shot on his weaker right foot, this time a helpful deflection off Fox taking it away from the keeper.  The game, to all intents and purposes, is over with a top-half finish (and finishing above Norwich) slim reward.

5- On the plus side, the kids are alright.  Grieves and Blake have little time to impress, but Ryan Andrews again looks the part (until he gets all excitable late on and sees an ambitious shot and an equally optimistic cross end up in the Rookery) whilst James Morris’ half-hour cameo involves a tremendous saving tackle on the edge of the box, and a Louzaesque laser-controlled humming knee-height pass that is bisecting City’s defence until a lunged limb deflects it out of harm’s way.

On the downside…  if few tears are shed at Millwall’s failure to make the play-offs then Sunderland’s ascent, with their late equaliser a week ago proving critical, demonstrates again that whilst automatic promotion was way beyond us, you didn’t really have to be hugely impressive to make the play-offs.   We’ve undersold ourselves dramatically this season, another six points was well, well within our grasp several times over.  Quite how expensive our inability to reach that target will be we’ll never know – a play-off place is only of ultimate value to one team in four after all – but we’ll get a feel over the next couple of months.  

Those who stayed long enough to witness the circuit of the pitch, wisely introduced as “a chance for the players and management to acknowledge the support”, saw a long goodbye from Sarr, and waves from Kamara and Wilder that left no doubt as to their departures.  Koné, oddly, was also vigorous in his gesturing to the stands which suggests either a more surprising exit or a young man keener than most to convey his appreciation.  As a horde of young Bachmanns and an even younger Sema took to the pitch in front of the Rookery, Daughter 2’s eye rolling finally had the desired effect and we exited the season.

Enough, frankly, said.  See you next year, obviously, and enjoy your summer.  All the usual summer stuff to follow on this Blog.

Yoorns.

*Bachmann 5*, Andrews 3, Sema 3, Porteous 2, Kabasele 3, Hoedt 2, Choudhury 3, Louza 4, Koné 1, Sarr 3, Davis 2
Subs: Araújo (for Koné, 66) 3, Morris (for Kabasele, 66) 4, Blake (for Sarr, 86) NA,  Grieves (for Sema 86) NA, Bacuna (for Davis, 92) NA, Ngakia, Hamer

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