Watford 1 Huddersfield Town 2 (24/02/2024)

1- As I was slowly removing my layers having sloped back to the car after the game prior to facing the M1, a similarly beleaguered soul trod glumly past and spoke, half to me, half to himself.  “Well at least the car park is empty.  Because everyone buggered off early.  That’s something I suppose”.

When you’ve actively supported Watford – or any fair to middling side, I guess – for any length of time you can usually readily recall from the back catalogue at least one miserable defeat against any regular opponent.  Glancing at the top of the Championship table…  Leicester: any number of perfunctory 2-0 away defeats of course (Vardy, pen) but particularly our most recent Premier League game with boss-in-waiting Rob Edwards in attendance.  Leeds: I missed Elland Road this season, but the Dominic Poleon game surely the worst. Southampton? Being smashed by a Rickie Lambert hat-trick a year earlier.  Ipswich? This One. West Brom?  Any number of defeats at the Hawthorns in the nineties with Bob Taylor or Lee Hughes running riot.

But Huddersfield is different.  For some reason the Terriers are associated not just with bad defeats, but step-change defeats.  Often defeats that stank of trouble behind the scenes, a barney in the changing room.  Defeats incongruous by virtue of their absoluteness – the most recent Ivić’s final game three years ago, others linked from that report if you’re feeling morbid.  This was another for that absurd catalogue, a defeat utterly self-inflicted and oddly supine.  We’ve been bad a few times this season, vaguely inadequate in some way more often still.  But rarely has it been possible to question the character of a performance.  This one?  Absolutely.  This stank to high heaven.

2- The Norwich game had a whiff of general disquiet too, the first such under Val to my mind.  The crime at Carrow Road was in not putting out of their evident misery a team that desperately wanted to be put out of their misery – and in somehow losing 4-2 in the bargain (though nobody will convince me the first crossed the line, “technology” indeed).

Huddersfield must have been feeling a bit of that at half time, since our first half performance had gone unpunished despite being almost entirely pathetic – and this despite a performatively vigorous kick-off which had seen Emmanuel Dennis kneeling in prayer over the ball as “Your Song” heralded the start of the game before standing to hurtle after an aggressive, immediate forward ball.  This was the tone of much of Dennis’ first half on his long-awaited first start since returning on loan – charging after things energetically without interfering with play in any way.  

Our first half problems were many, but stemmed principally from two factors that synergistically affected the opening period.  First, a clear tactic of having forward players hugging the touchlines…  Asprilla and Sema in open play, Asprilla and Dennis left upfield on the touchlines while defending set plays.  Second, whether at the instruction of new coach André Breitenreiter or otherwise that most German of traditions, the psychotic press. (As an aside, another very German thing is the unbending straightforwardness of the pronunciation of their language, as the numpty commentating on the OS highlights would have done well to note rather than insisting on pronouncing the two EI’s in the new man’s name inconsistently throughout – both rhyme with the English EYE).

This press was pretty much the only weapon in Huddersfield’s armoury, they looked a very limited side, but it was a good one with Jonathan Hogg in his element.  It saw them overwhelm our stretched midfield leaving the wide men isolated and often irrelevant; Ken Sema’s alarmingly complacent pass across our half to set Burgzorg galloping through was only the first time we allowed Huddersfield to run through the middle of our pitch towards the goal and wouldn’t be the last.  On this occasion a good Pollock block saw the striker’s effort spin upwards and drop favourably outside of the posts but as against Middlesbrough there was little to impede the visitors’ progress down the centre.  This despite what more than one overheard conversation pre-match recognised as our best midfield trio being back in place together, but Kayembe managed to get himself booked whilst looking as if he was running through a ploughed field and Koné may as well not have been on the pitch at all.  Both were removed on 26 minutes, a public statement which might have felt bold and decisive, Action needed to be Taken, but somehow didn’t.  Instead, it contributed to the sense of disquiet.

3- Koné’s absence was keenly felt – or rather the absence of a functioning Koné was keenly felt since his ability to smuggle the ball past pressure and into space when his flame is on was exactly what was needed to bypass Huddersfield’s attention.  Instead he sulked off down the tunnel, and our on-pitch performance remained similarly sulky for the most part.  Chakvetadze demonstrated more application but to only occasional positive effect, hunched shoulders struggling against the tide of the game.  Elsewhere whilst we had plenty of inconsequential possession there was very little movement…  Ben Hamer was on several occasions chastised for, having collected a ball and looked for a quick counterattacking opportunity not following through and executing but in truth he rarely had a mobile target to hit.  On the two occasions when his accurate distribution found Dennis hurtling into space the suggestion of a chance quickly dissolved… and these were almost more disheartening for having existed at all, the sort of thing you try when under the cosh at Man City or Liverpool, not at home in a Championship scrap.  Meanwhile Mattie Pollock, whose poorest performances have often seemed to have their origin between his ears rather than on the pitch, was one of several hampered by anxiety rather than inertia, taking an extra touch, being careful, slowing it down.

Our one moment of incision in the first half came, inevitably, from the boots of Yáser Asprilla.  Tom Ince had come on with Chakvetadze in that startling early switch – not the first time we’ve fielded him in a more central role but the first time he’d done so for this long (albeit he drifted wide often in the second period).  His movement stood out in a side so badly lacking it, slightly perversely given the criticism for lack of effort he’s sometime received himself… here, his superb diagonal run was worthy of Asprilla’s extraordinary laser-guided through ball having briefly appeared to dull an attack by cutting inside from the right, but the shot was too close to the keeper giving Nicholls a chance when better placement wouldn’t have done.  A fine move that stuck out like a sore thumb.

4- Things improved in the second half as so often, albeit from a low bar, and Asprilla was at the heart of most of what was positive.  In the last few weeks stories have surfaced of high profile interest in the next cab off the rank, and whether the stories have fed his performances or vice versa, or whether by coincidence he’s beginning to look like a 90 minute, dominant character rather than a highlights player with bags of promise, despite our fumbling form.  As we began to display a bit of defiance and resilience and fed him more of the ball he stood out by virtue of a willingness to take responsibility, to rise above the morass.  Ten minutes into the half he received the ball wide on the right and displayed grace, control and resilience to allow a challenge to bounce off him before wriggling past it and surgically rolling a ball in to Dennis in a crowded area.  The Nigerian’s first touch was perfect and impudent, fooling two opponents and opening up a space that shouldn’t have existed before smashing a right footed shot past the helpless Nicholls.

This could have been a pivotal moment.  With the large caveat that whatever had caused us to stink out the first half wasn’t going to be dispelled with a good goal but…  having patiently waited for Dennis to gain fitness and sighed at his non-performance at Carrow Road here, suddenly, was a Watford side with a confident, dangerous centre-forward.  A goal might certainly have made all the difference to him, and having all but burgled a lead we were surely set up to take the game away from Huddersfield, spurred on by a relieved and newly energised Vicarage Road (three Huddersfield fans having without irony maintained a “football in a library” chant at regular intervals since kick-off).

This new dawn lasted about two minutes.   By this point Dennis was prone on the turf, with Asprilla indicating to the bench and around half the stadium that the Nigerian had suffered a groin injury.  Off he went and on came Mileta Rajović who has suffered more than anyone from our limited striking options this season.  He’s younger than his 24 years in football terms having had precious little competitive experience before signing…  by making him our headline New Striker, by giving him the no 9 shirt expectations were raised.  As a gamble, or a rough diamond to quietly polish in the background, someone to develop rather than rely on he’d have been fine…  his goalscoring record is deceptive but no fluke, and if the rest of his game badly needs work then there’s (very) raw material to work with there.  Whilst accepting that we play with one central striker, that these are expensive things and that that heaven knows we can’t stockpile them, a couple of injuries having such a devastating impact on the team’s effectiveness is surely unacceptable.

If Rajović is limited, then the confounding issue is that a player who keeps having his deficiencies pointed out to him is going to suffer a crisis of confidence at some point.  He’s seemed pretty resilient to that so far, but the twisting header to fellow sub Martins’ left wing cross that careered away from the goal was utterly forlorn – despite which, and albeit in a very different stage of the game, he got himself into far more frequent dangerous positions than Dennis had.

5- Valérien Ismaël stopped rather shorter of throwing his players under the bus in his post match comments than he had at Carrow Road, but suggested that we were knocked off balance by the equaliser to an alarming extent.  To my mind we were stumbling earlier than that, for all that Huddersfield hadn’t really threatened since the start of the half.

We continued to fashion chances.  Rajović won a rare flick on, Ince – who was crashing around a little recklessly for someone on a yellow but rather that way than the other – propelled the ball further left on its trajectory before arriving unattended in the penalty area to meet Martins cross, a roll across the box comparable to Asprilla’s earlier contribution but without the finish, Ince slipping his shot across the face of goal and past the far post.  Later he would meet a left wing cross after a rare barrelling run from Sema but lumped it over.  Rajović got his head on two more crosses, one he sent over, the other well directed downwards but without sufficient power.  Chakvetadze did his own trademark thing of cutting in from the left onto his right foot and shooting across the face and narrowly over.  Near-ish misses, but something.  Chances.  The failings weren’t at this end of the pitch.

Instead, the Huddersfield equaliser was a disgrace. The dereliction of duty that had characterised the first half reared its head again:  Ward’s header was a good one but executed under minimal challenge from a sort of covering Ken Sema, now filling in at left back, but the space that Yuta Nakayama had been afforded on the edge of the box to tie his laces, have a bit of a stretch, wave at friends in the stand and then pop a cross in was extraordinary.  The winning goal ten minutes or so later  – also scored by Ward, who like Hogg had played in Troy’s comeback match eleven and a half years ago – was a better goal, less of an invitation, but we’d nonetheless managed to give the game back to an albeit fully deserving Huddersfield side having somehow gotten ourselves into a position to run away with it with half an hour to go.

Having so unequivocally pinned my colours to the mast in my last report, it’s with some surprise that I’ve seen things accelerate downhill since, three points at Rotherham notwithstanding.  For the first time this season we’ve stopped looking like a team, and if it’s difficult to quiet the whisper at the back of the mind suggesting that this might have been on the cards as soon as Dennis came back, there’s no doubt that Val is now under pressure.  How this pans out will shed light on the permanence of our commitment to a little bit more patience with bumps in the road, but given the poisonous air to yesterday’s performance I must confess to a degree of concern that events might have overtaken me before I got to the end of this report.

Yooorns.

Hamer 3, Dele-Bashiru 2, Lewis 2, Pollock 3, Hoedt 3, Livermore 2, Kayembe 1, Koné 1, *Asprilla 4*, Sema 2, Dennis 2

Subs: Ince (for Koné, 27) 3, Chakvetadze (for Kayembe, 27) 2, Rajović (for Dennis, 59) 1, Martins (for Lewis, 59) 3, Andrews (for Livermore, 87) NA, Grieves, Sierralta, Ngakia, Bachmann