Watford 4 Queens Park Rangers 0 (05/08/2023)

1- It doesn’t feel like the first game of the season.

It’s supposed to be sunny, isn’t it?  This being early August, not late October as befits the humming drizzle.  Nonetheless, here we are in the busy concourse of the Upper GT…  Dad’s away and the Chicken Emporium is ominously closed but this is still the pre-match venue of choice and we’re soon enjoying being back into the rhythm of matchday.  Daughter 2, who declared Saturdays without football to be “rubbish” early in the summer, cements her credentials as a lifer by complaining about the ladies’ toilets:  “They’re tiny!  And they were last cleaned, like, two seasons ago! And the mirrors don’t work!?!  How can mirrors not work?”.

But these are the happy grumbles of a return to the routine.  Back in the Rookery, while compere Richard Walker is subjecting the day’s young mascots to a gentle grilling, there are hands to be shaken and backs to be slapped and acquaintances to renew once more, even if the gaps in the stand reflect holiday season as much as dissatisfaction with The State of Things.  On the latter score, a summer break will do wonders for the state of mind and if reservations about the size and quality of the squad remain then the positive spin is that we’re mercifully liberated from the burden of expectation.

Instead there’s curiosity at the jungle-drum suggestions of a plan, of all things, new-fangled and hi-falutin’ as that would be.  The screen defiantly broadcasts the strong WeAllies anti-discrimination video which might annoy some, but only those that deserve to be annoyed.  A rehashed “Gangsta’s Paradise” precedes the players’ arrival, which works.  Not sure Gangsta’s Paradise was written with West Hertfordshire in mind, but then again neither was Z-Cars which dutifully greets the players.  Crowning a tremendous build-up is “Your Song” as the players warm up, but Elton is interrupted by the stroke of kick off.  “My gift is my song….” and cut, as if he too is holding his breath in anticipation.

And then it begins.

2- Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first off.  QPR are terrible.  They were expected to be terrible, and they do not disappoint.  There are manifold reasons for this, and far from all of them lie at the feet of Gareth Ainsworth.  Many of these involve money, or rather the absence of it;  the sight of erstwhile director of football Les Ferdinand quietly letting himself out of the back door over the summer was ominous in the extreme.  So too was seeing Gareth Ainsworth, who had deplored the lack of fight in his charges at the tail end of last season whilst vocally anticipating a rebuild, finding himself in charge of largely the same bunch three months on, minus goalkeeper Samy Dieng and key centre-back Rob Dickie.  Two further senior centre-backs are missing here, which means we face a pairing of two left-sided defenders, one of whom reportedly half fit and the other making his full debut.

Nonetheless, we faced terrible teams last season and didn’t manage to steamroller them in this fashion.  Hell, we lost to this particular terrible team in Chris Wilder’s first game in March.  And we do steamroller them.  We won games by big scorelines last season but not, for my money, since the last time we were 4-0 up at half time – on that occasion against an even closer local rival – have we thoroughly eviscerated an opponent to this extent.  It’s brutal, merciless and absolute, and executed in a fashion that reflects the grubby, wonky vehemence of the new home shirt.

3- If QPR at home is an accommodating first fixture for us then this game is absolutely the very last thing that the visitors need in the circumstances.  For one thing there is – and I’m going to use this word once, now, and get it over with – an intensity about our play that brokers no debate, no discussion, no “let’s just run through that again”.  It’s intoxicating, and all the more so for its novelty.

When was the last time that you saw a Watford side sending runners through ahead of the ball on a regular basis?  Here we’re at it after 30 seconds, and if much of what follows must be caveated by the visitors’ mental and physical fragility no such footnotes are needed for the first goal.  That was all about us…  and if Louza’s precision through-ball was breathtaking then Bayo’s sharp lay-off-and-roll-away that fed him and cleared the path for the pass was no less vital.  And there was TDB galloping through on the first of those runs that came from everywhere and defined the performance, conjured through on goal with a magician’s slight of hand.  We were ahead before some in the Rookery had taken their seats… as above, the very last thing that QPR needed.

The size of the chasm between the two sides was evident soon afterwards.  Jeremy Ngakia, of all people, popped up on the edge of the area in far more space than QPR should have been comfortable with.  He sent the ball wide via Martins to Morris who escaped to the byline criminally unattended to pop a ball to the far post for Vakoun Bayo to crash a header – again under minimal pressure – low inside the post for Begović to block, the first of many for the veteran keeper.  Ngakia and Bayo are two names that, clear out or not, I wouldn’t have expected or greatly desired to see in the starting eleven on opening day but each benefitted from having a clear job to do that suited their capabilities, and each put in comfortably their best 45 minutes in a (sort of) yellow shirt in the opening half.

QPR looked stunned and giddy.  Minutes later Imrân Louza was given far too much space in a midfield easily pulled apart by a quick passing move; he slung a low shot cruelly around Begović’s outstretched right arm and into the bottom corner.  Celebration followed, but the game was already up.  Louza’s outrageous opening half hour concluded with a precision dipping pass into the path of another TDB gallop… he took it on the volley, a routine parry out for Begović but the visitors were being overrun.  From the corner Matheus Martins, looking more muscular and robust than in his brief first team spell last season, stooped to loop a header over the helpless goalkeeper to make it three.  There was fortune in that one, but when you’re creating a load of chances you’re going to get lucky sometimes.  That’s how it works.  By now the boos from the away end were intermittently audible above the dizzy revelry in the Rookery.

Francisco Sierralta meanwhile has, as has been widely discussed, been repurposed by Valérien Ismaël into the role at the back of the midfield.  This made some sense instinctively…  if you expect to be pressing the opposition’s possession then you should expect a greater proportion of rushed clearances, to which end a massive bloke who wins every header is a useful thing to have in the middle of the pitch.  What was perhaps less expected was to see him galloping through on the right side of the box and squaring – not shooting as the replay clearly betrays – for Bayo to bundle in at the far stick, which he’s done often enough now to be able to claim as a trademark goal.  Still time for the same player to lob a shot only inches over before the break by which time everyone needed a sit down.  Lucky chocolate not strictly needed on this occasion, except for some reassuring sense of stability.

4- If we ripped QPR apart in the first half, the second saw us toying with them as a cat plays with a half-dead mouse.  Gareth Ainsworth would later claim credit for his side’s better management of the game which is understandable given his need to find positives to build around.  In reality our own insane persistence had been dialled down in favour of a more relaxed stroll in what was now sun.  

71% possession tells its own story, although it won’t have gone unnoticed that with precious little threat or possession in our final third, QPR made us look more nervous than you would have liked.  It would be wrong to extrapolate from here to all problems being solved…  sub Sinclair Armstrong in particular displayed a willingness to run and chase and harry that saw Daniel Bachmann, clearly briefed to play a long way up the pitch in general, nearly made to pay for a gallop off his line.  QPR fans were stirred into a brief rendition of “4-0 and you still don’t sing”, which was a bit rich given that they’d been booing their own team not an hour earlier.  In any case, as all fans know, it’s difficult to get too worked up over a practice match;  the stiffer challenge awaiting in Stevenage on Tuesday will up the decibels.

Most of the action was still at the other end, the Rookery deprived of all the goals on this afternoon but not the fun.  Louza nearly added a delicious fifth when again afforded space but this time from a silly distance, his venomous dipping shot beating Begović but coming back off the underside of the bar. The Moroccan was taken off to an ovation after 66 minutes for a bit of a rest, along with Sierralta and TDB.

Ken Sema, a force for good as always, very nearly got on the scoresheet also after a rolling move from the right and a stepover from sub Koné gave him a window to club a shot goalwards from which Begović produced perhaps the best of his ten saves to push the effort out of the top corner.  A bullish Wesley Hoedt forced another great stop, a tip over from a point blank header, the Dutchman furiously berating himself though an offside flag would have deprived him in any case.

Two subs played particularly significant roles in the second period.  Ryan Andrews, a half time replacement for a presumably ailing (though also carded) Morris that saw Ngakia switch to the left  spent the half galloping onto overlaps on the right flank, often the spare man in attacks.  The criticism could be that given the number of times he was clear on the byline we really should have profited from his assertiveness at least once though we came close, not least from a slugged shot into the side netting.

The other sparkle was created by Giorgi Chakvetadze who took up positions first in the midfield three and later in the attacking trio as Martins was replaced. In both positions he displayed a matador’s verve and poise to sidestep challenges, and seemed determined to mirror Louza’s earlier goal, curled low from right to left with his left foot, by doing the same left to right with his right.  He too came close, though not close enough.  Earmarked for high jinks already, though.

5- Four-nil then, mirroring that other four-nil by pairing a first-half demolition with a holding-pattern second.  And all of this, for all the talk of revolution, with a starting eleven of players who were here last year as has been highlighted elsewhere.  But an eleven injected with purpose, discipline, shape, belief… who’d have thought that such technicalities could make such a difference.  Meanwhile all the new guys are still to come – based on today’s evidence, former national level middle distance runner Jamal Lewis should enjoy playing in the wide open spaces on the flanks generated today.

So much for “freed from the burden of expectation”, quite obviously.  On the grinning amble back down Vicarage Road towards the town, the bloke behind me was heard to airily explore the possibility of going the full season unbeaten.  One step at a time, maybe.

By that point the spring in our step had been buoyed further by a parting gift on the big screen, the overdue claiming of a club anthem to suitable visual backdrop that will demand waiting in position to celebrate after every victory.  Whatever comes will come, but you can’t not enjoy days like this for all they’re worth.

Yoorns.

Bachmann 4, Ngakia 5, Morris 4, Porteous 4, Hoedt 5, Sierralta 5, *Louza 5*, Dele-Bashiru 4, Sema 4, Martins 5, Bayo 5
Subs: Andrews (for Morris, 45) 4, Koné (for Louza, 66) 3, Chakvetadze (for Dele-Bashiru, 66) 4,  Livermore (for Sierralta, 66) 3, Kayembe (for Martins, 82) NA, Healey, Asprilla, Pollock, Hamer