EFL Championship Match 20 - Watford 1 Southampton 1

 

Is the Big Dog Back?

Today we make the trip to Vicarage Road to play Watford who are in their second season in the Championship and are on their 300th manager (approximately). The list of Watford managers page on Wikipedia is now officially the largest page on the internet (allegedly). I wonder how many managers that they’ve sacked, they’re still paying.

Mind you, Saints can look away when that accusation gets thrown around because I’m pretty sure we are still paying Ralph Hasenhuttl and Nathan Jones who have been happily not working since they left us in the past year or so. At least we had the sense to only give Ruben Selles a contract until the end of the season.

Since the Pozzo era started at Watford, only one manager has lasted longer than a year and that was Javi Gracia about four years ago. Before him, the last manager who lasted a year was Sean Dyche over 10 years ago and very few people can even remember him being manager of Watford.  The current incumbent is Valerian Ismael, who I vaguely remember being manager of West Brom briefly. He is fully in line with the Watford approach having been manager of a Cypriot club for one game before getting sacked over a clash with the club hierarchy.

However, this approach of constantly looking for a new manager bounce, has served Watford pretty well over the past 10 years with trips to Wembley and a decent run of seasons in the Premier League before it all unravelled 18 months ago. Now they are in a situation where they have Wesley Hoedt playing at centre back.

Wesley hit the news last week with a goal from 45 yards, drawing back that magnificent left foot of his and pinging it over the goalkeeper from the halfway line. To be fair, it was a brilliant goal and he one hundred percent meant it. Hoedt was of course signed to be our long-term replacement for Virgil van Dijk in 2017/18, a season saw some of the greatest transfer window activity in Southampton FC history with the arrival of Hoedt, Mario Lemina and Guido Carrillo who combined and succeeded only in draining the wage bill for the next four years.

Hoedt has all the physical attributes you need in that he’s decent in the air has a great left foot on him and he has that little nasty streak that top players needs. However, Wesley had a problem in that he thought he was miles better than he actually was and we have to play on that today. He’s 29 now so we might have grown out of it but the indications are that he hasn’t. Wesley has an ego and he will want to prove to the Saints travelling fans just how brilliant he is. There is a high chance that there will be a mistake similar to the one he made in his last ever game for Saints went at Craven Cottage he tried to dribble out of his own corner, lost the ball and lost us the game.

Wesley - Shortly Before He Never Played For Us Again

Other notable Watford players include Jake Livermore who bizarrely, won a few England caps a few years ago but this year in the Championship, since he returned from injury, he has been earning rave reviews. Watford are on a run of only one defeat in nine games and that was against Leicester. Having made a dismal start they are now sitting in mid-table and will be looking at a run to the playoff positions but similar to other mid-table clubs, we should be too good for them if we play properly for the whole 90 minutes.

It’s been a slow news week at St Mary‘s with no major squad news to report so I thought of turned two recent trips to Watford which included a goal in seven seconds by Shane Long, Abdoulaye Doucoure punching in a goal to equalise in the last minute, a brilliant goal by Che Adams on our last visit and John Barnes singing Elton John songs on the pitch at half-time, which was truly one of the more bizarre episodes of recent times.

Team news and Flynn Downes isn;t here and is replaced int he starting XI with Joe Aribo, giving us a midfield three of Shea Charles, Stu Armstrong and Aribo.  That's a bit of a worry I have to say.  Hoedt starts for Watford and not only that, he's captain. 

Away we go and from the outset it looks like it’s going to be a decent game with both teams looking to get on the ball and pass it but there’s nothing much happening in either penalty area. Wesley looks magnificent however in his captains armband because he’s always set such a great example, model pro and all that.

Watford win a free kick to the side of the penalty area has Stuart Armstrong somewhat carelessly carts someone over and it’s fired in by Sema and Bass has a bit of a flap at it before a Watford player hooks it onto the post and away but the ref has spotted an infringement of some sort so happy days. Wesley has his head in his hands.

Saints are getting caught out a little bit on occasions in midfield and Shea Charles shows that he’s lost none of the cynicism that they teach you at Manchester City by clipping Kone’s ankles and giving the referee the easiest yellow card decision that he’ll ever have. From the resulting free-kick, delivered by Sema, the big donkey centre-forward should really get a touch at the back post but he can’t get his feet sorted out and it runs off for a goal-kick. Wesley throws his arms about as all captains shouldn’t.

Saints have created absolutely nothing so far but that changes as Aribo has a dart down the right hand side and bundles his way past two defenders and along the goal line before winning a corner.  In it comes from Manning from the right, knocked back into the mixer by Bednarek and Adam Armstrong tries a back heel flick which sends the ball narrowly over the bar.

That’s it for us as an attacking force before half time but Watford build up superbly from the back and suddenly we are struggling as Sema gets put through behind KWP and with just Baz to beat, drills it straight at him and it hits Baz on the chest and bounces away.  Great save.

And that’s half-time and quite frankly we’ve been a bit shit. Lots of nice possession but practically no sight of the opposition goalkeeper, whereas Watford are forced Baz into action on a couple of occasions and have looked dangerous from set pieces. Some of our players just haven’t turned up. Alcaraz has been a constant possession recycling machine for Watford and looks like he just doesn’t fancy it.  One player who has turned up is Jan Bednarek who has been excellent at snuffing out threats before they happen with excellent reading of the game. I'm having thoughts about a point maybe being a decent return from this game.

Russell Martin clearly agrees with me regarding Alcaraz and Charly doesn’t emerge for the second half and it’s replaced by Ryan Fraser which moves Che into the middle and away from his left wing position where he is absolutely terrible.

Wee Man Fraser is immediately involved as he fights off the full back to pick up THB’s long diagonal and Fraser holds the ball in the corner before knocking it back to Stuart Armstrong who plays a cute ball inside the fall back and Che Adams hits it first time lash with his left foot and it goes across the goal and narrowly wide. The key thing here is that we actually looked dangerous.

Back at the other end and more Watford pressure and we allow two crosses into the box, one from Sema which is cleared and Watford work it back out to Lewis on the left and he digs out a cross which is headed clear and Asprilla volleys it goes down into the bottom corner and Baz takes off to make an absolutely outstanding save to his right.

Baz is having a good day so far but he nearly gets caught in possession as he takes a Manning back pass but he drinks his way round the big Donkey centre forward and gets the ball to THB. THB picks out a low diagonal to Stuart Armstrong and we’re away with Stu running with the ball before releasing Fraser in a good crossing position and he chips the cross to the back post where Adam Armstrong nods down and Che cushions away from the defender with his first touch and drives into the middle of the goal, through the last-ditch dives by Wesley and the goalkeeper. Brilliant goal.

What have Watford got? Well, not a lot with Adam Armstrong winning the ball in defence and driving forwards, finding Fraser on the left, who lashes it and Hamer makes a bit of a meal of it but managed to shovel it over the bar.  We are really controlling the game quite nicely until Charles gives a tired looking pass away on the halfway line which results in Kone getting played in and having a shot which is blocked by THB.

Substitution time and Mara is warmed up and ready.  Even before I’ve seen who is coming off I’m not sure about this and even more so when it’s Che’s number that goes up.  He’s having his best half-a game of the season in the second half and holding the ball up well and letting Wesley know that he’s not all that. The shithouse games are starting as well as Saints put the ball out to allow Manning to receive some treatment and Watford respond by not giving us the ball back.  I wonder if it was on orders of the captain, who has got increasingly ragged as the game has gone on, trying to hit Hollywood passes and just giving us throw-ins.  This is of course in response to being rattled by the continual abuse coming down from the Saints end of the ground….because he is and always was a bell-end.  Another cross in the box and Watford substitute Tom Ince gets on the end of it and shoots straight at Baz.

Elaborate Time Wasting Gamesmanship Ahoy!

Stu Taking As Long as He Needs to Get Off the Pitch

As we approach the 90 and with us looking a little bit tired, Stuart Armstrong and Joe Aribo are replaced by Smallbone and Bree and we seem to have gone to a 4-4-2 with KWP on the right of midfield.  The clock ticks by and we get to the 98th minute and Watford centre-back Porteous just clubs the ball up the pitch and THB doesn’t win the header and it drops down and Watford sub Healy scuffs a shot which goes straight through Baz and ends up in the net. Fucks sake.

Well fuck off. What an absolutely shit goal to concede to throw away two points.  Thought I'd have been happy with a point at half time, this is a proper kick in the bollocks. We were absolutely comfortable and Watford didn’t look like they were ever going to score but then a simple straight long ball and a combination of a defender making a bad decision and the goalkeeper making a mistake and two points go down the drain.

In a good run that we’ve been on, both of the centre backs have judged really well when it's time to not head the ball, but leave it to run through to the goalkeeper or leave it and pick it up themselves but THB has had an absolute shocker there as he almost seemed a duck under the long ball which allowed the Watford player to get a touch. Even with that one mistake, we would’ve got away with it had Baz not shown his achilles heel again with the low shot to his left going under his wrists. If THB doesn’t make mistake, the second mistake doesn’t happen but the combination of both means that you don’t get away with it.  It is such a shit park-football goal. It isn’t even a particularly good ball forward just a straight clump up the middle and the shot at the end is bollocks as well.  It must be so gutting to have worked so hard and played pretty well for 98 minutes, only to fuck it like that with 30 seconds to go.

So we made a mistake and dropped a couple of points but that’s not the only story here. Leicester, Leeds and Ipswich – the thre teams we are trying to catch – were four, two and two goals to the good as the clock reached 90 in their respective games.  So they were comfortable as they’d scored a second and therefore not susceptible to the late goal conceded like we were. Until we start scoring more goals, then we are always going to be in danger of this sort of thing happening. It was a great goal today by Che Adams, who took it really well after a superb build-up but as usual, I’m asking myself how many other times we made the goalkeeper work. I remember he save one from Ryan Fraser and there was one straight down his throat from Stuart Armstrong but that’s about it.

It was impossible to disagree with anything Russell Martin said about the game afterwards – we needed the second goal, we played really well and defended really well up to that point, we’ve made two mistakes and it’s a really bad goal to concede. One important thing that he said was that it was important not to batter the players because the two in question have been very good for a number of weeks.  Baz in particular has improved so much and until the last minute today, was comfortably our best player.

A positive from today was the form of Che Adams int he second half and the fact that he scored what was a very good goal.  Che has always been a streak player so after nothing in ages, the hope must be that he bags goals in a run of games now and gets that Big Dog mentality back.  Like Adam Armstrong, he's proved before that he can do it in this division and now he has to prove that he can do it again on a regular basis.  Joe Aribo did ok in midfield and worked hard throughout and at least wasn't a liability.  I still think though that using him a replacement for Stuart Armstrong when tired / injured, is probably how Joe will end up being used.

The mad Championship schedule gives us another chance to make up for today’s disappointment in just a few days time, as we take on Coventry City who have just had the gift of a win from playing Wayne Rooney‘s Birmingham. So, their tails will be up and our challenge on Wednesday is to slap them back down again. Up the fucking Saints.