New Watford Boy

I have brought new support - in the shape of my son - to the Watford family.  Today we went to Wembley for the Semi-Final of the cup. There was no way I could have got him tickets for the quarter final - up the road from us - but we were within roaring distance of the Emirates Stadium at the Sobell Centre and then the Finsbury Park bowl when The 'Orns got a surprise 2-1 victory on the holders' turf six weeks ago.  We watched some of the second half at the bowling centre and celebrated, with Gooners everywhere. I promised him then we would go to Wembley and he has been singing the song ever since.

When I saw how the tickets would be released, I felt I had to play down the possibility that we could go in case my lack of a recent buying history (last match I went to was against today's opponents in the same stadium three years ago). I got online at the right time and sweated through minutes of waiting to get three tickets. Later that evening I saw tickets were still available and today anyone could see hundreds of empty seats in our half of the stadium.

My son loved it. When we went out to our seats an hour before kick off and with mere hundreds in their seats, he opined, "Best place in the world". At four and two-thirds, he wasn't expected to stay interested but he managed it.

It was a much better game today than three years ago but our defending was a little poor and though we countered well at times, we never really troubled the Palace keeper. They scored early and then again straight after Troy Deeney had equalised in the second half. Three headers.

My little Watford Boy sang "Watford till I die" and his cute, solitary voice turned a few heads. I let him down a bit on the singing, a headache developing once I started shouting off my big mouth and making it painful to continue to do so. I hope to have plenty of opportunities to make up for it in the future and also hope he will have the chance to come back to Wembley soon. It's my fourth time (Everton FA Cup final, 1984; Bolton Play-Off Final, 1999 and the two Palace games) and I've also been to three other FA Cup Semis (1984, 2003, 2007 at Villa Park) and a 2006 Play-Off Final in Cardiff. 8 big games in 37 years or so of supporting the Yellows, but with 6 since 1999 so he should have another shot by the time he's 10...

Crashing out

The Pozzo's football team was involved in big cup action today at home. That was Udinese in the Champions League. Their English team was involved at a slightly lower level, fielding a second string at home to Bradford in the Capital One Cup. I glimpsed at the text service on the BBC a couple of times and left it when we went 1-0 up in the 70th minute. When I looked again, we'd let in two and lost to League Two opposition.
The eternal excuse is that we are concentrating on the league. With six points from the first three games, we've had a good start (beat Palace away, lost at home to Ipswich and beat Birmingham). We're in fifth, three teams are unbeaten and Blackpool have won three out of three. At the other end, Palace and Peterborough are yet to get off the mark. Our real aim is for new manager Gianfranco Zola to take us higher than the eighth that the sacked ex-manager Sean Dyche took us to last season. Playoffs would be nice.

Round up and away

After a dismal home performance against Scunthorpe, which we lost 2-0, it was even harder to convince myself to return to Vicarage Road on my birthday and final whole day in the UK for another year or so. Truth is though that this Watford Boy lost his passion for the matches a while before we left in 2008 and the sole reason for my continued attendance is a bit of time with my nephew.

Nevertheless, with the Hornets involved in a “thrilling” 3-2 away defeat (Portsmouth) and having beaten Ipswich at home in a game I did not get to (rain and broken bike stopped play), I was able to put aside the mauling at Derby and hope for a timely gift from the Golden Boys in the match against Nottingham Forest.

Jordan Mutch provided one after three minutes and my optimism held out another quarter of an hour before the Reds equalised. Another dull game finished all square but at least it was not as excruciating as the previous home match. A second “thrilling” 3-2 defeat (at Selhurst Park) since then has seen us slide into thirteenth and though the number may not bode well, most fans would take that as a final position, given a choice.

Eight hours ahead of GMT as I now am, many of the scores for the rest of the season will be looked up after a night’s sleep. This blog has become less a football diary and more a travel journal. Until the younger Watford Boy takes over the match reports, it will remain so. In the meantime, I cross my fingers for today’s trip to Turf Moor and hope for the fans’ sake that we can win a thriller again.

Survival of the just-fit-enough

Watford romped past Reading 3-0 on Saturday to ensure Championship survival in what every fan hopes was their nadir season. Danny Graham scored either side of a Heidar Helgusson left-footer. The Sheffield Wednesday v Crystal Palace match this Saturday will decide which of those two drops with Peterborough and Plymouth. Watford´s result at Coventry will be irrelevant for both teams.

As the manager and local paper have emphasised over and over, "survival" was all we hoped for this season as the mismanagement of the funds from an-always-going-to-be-one season in the Premiership with which this blog began left us worse off than if we had never won the single most lucrative game in world football. How the fuck does that work? Ask Graham Simpson.

Colleagues of mine who shared Friday drinks from the few years before I left London will know that I am an arrogant pedant who is too keen on the invitation “Wanna bet on it?”. My favourite win until recently was against a Russian friend who told us that she had been to the Kazakhstani capital. I won a couple of quid telling her that she hadn´t.

Watford´s guarantee of Championship football in 2010-11 along with a poor season for Oldham in League 1 means that I have won a two-and-a-half-year old wager with Luke that the Latics would (not) be in a higher league positon than the Hornets on 7th December 2010. I was sweating on it for a while but – good sport that he is – I received a congratulatory message from him following our victory.

Oh, and a hundred pounds is not to be sneezed at by someone who hasn´t had a full time job for two years.

It was all yellow...

I may have been at South America´s largest market (Otavalo, Ecuador) but despite the multi-hued blankets, belts, bags, bracelets and bowls, my mind was focussed on just one colour. 

In three weeks, Watford have lost two six-pointers (at Hillsborough and home to Palace) and drawn our other three games: two home points against Boro and Brom, one brought back from Deepdale. Three points in five is relegation form so today´s Vic victory against second-bottom Plymouth only brings temporary relief (whilst sealing Argyle´s fate). Our three main companions in the fight against ending twenty-second in the Championship (the two mentioned first, and Scunthorpe) all lost today. QPR, by beating Palace, are now probably safe on 51 points, barring some significant form-breaking results.

The bottom looks like this:

Team	Pld	GD	Pts	Fixtures
Watford	42	-10	48	QPR (a) Leicester (a) Reading (h) Coventry (a)
Scunthorpe	42	-24	47	Bristol C (h) Reading (h) Donc  (a) Forest (h)
Crystal Palace	43	-3	46	Derby (a) West Brom (h) Sheffield Wed (a)
Sheffield Wed	43	-19	45	Sheffield United (h) Cardiff (a) Palace (h)
Plymouth	43	-19	41
Peterborough	43	-28	31

Watford have three away games in their final four matches while Scunthorpe have three home ones out of four. Cystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday each only have three matches left, with Palace travelling twice and Wednesday once. Palace are only where they are because of a 10-point administration deduction but it is already clear that the final relegation position will only be decided on the final day, when they travel to Sheffield. I am not going to make a prediction. I just hope my fingernails hold out. How do the words go? “For you I bleed myself dry”...

As Good As It Gets?

Another month has passed in the Hornets´ season and I have heard nothing from the younger Watford Boy about his views on how our season is shaping up: we lost 5-0 at West Brom in early November but followed that up with two home wins, against Preston (2-0) and Scunthorpe (3-0). Loanee Heidar Helguson got three of those goals, Danny Graham and Tom Cleverley one a piece. The two home wins were followed on successive Saturdays by defeats at Crystal Palace (3-0) and Newcastle (2-0) before victory at home to billionaires QPR tonight, 3-1 – with Lloyd Doyley scoring his first professional goal – took us into the play-off places (albeit for no more than 24 hours).

That, I believe, is probably going to be the highlight of our season. It is true that the Championship is looking very much like a two-horse race at the moment and Newcastle and West Brom will likely end up in the 90 to 100 point zone, while the other four places look increasingly open as teams stutter, start and stop again. Although we seem, in theory, to have as much hope as Leicester, Nottingham Forest, QPR, Swansea or Blackpool of a top six position, (Cardiff and Middlesborough may be inconsistent but have more in reserve), I am just happy that relegation this season now looks highly unlikely and will not be complaining about a mid-table position come May.

It is not that our present position is undeserved, or merely the fact that Watford are the only team in the top half of the division to have a negative goal difference. It is not simply that we have been thoroughly outclassed by other teams in the running like Cardiff and West Brom. It is more to do with the fear that we have a thin squad already and it will probably only get thinner come January. Apparently we are playing some of our best football ever (let´s hope Hoofroyd´s tactics are gone forever) and with a Chelsea 3^rd round FA Cup tie on the horizon and Luton languishing in the Conference, Watford fans should enjoy what we have. Keep the expectations low and we cannot be disappointed. And Malkay, I owe you an apology for doubting your managerial abilities.

Three on the trot

We arrived in El Bolson, Argentina, yesterday. Our Bible, Lonely Planet, describes it as Hippie Heaven (or something along those lines) but apart from a market that is not so different from any traveller-oriented one, I can't see why. The mountain setting, though, is breathtaking. Planned to leave tomorrow for Bariloche and Spanish lessons. That plan may yet change. Think we are both happy to be in short sleeves and open shoes again after the cold of Patagonia.
At the Vic, Watford beat Palace for the second time in 2009, winning 2-0 for the third game in a row and easing our relegation fears still further. Another new boy, Don Cowie, scored one and assisted with the other. With so many of the thirteen remaining games against teams right around us, home wins will ensure our safety.

Going to the dogs

Crystal Palace v Watford

Saturday 9^th August

Even before we’d been defeated by eventual play-off winners Hull City at the end of last season, Jordan Stewart had been allowed to leave. Nathan Ellington was loaned to Derby, where he joined Stewart, after one season as our record signing and departed with some words about the style of play he preffered. Danny Shittu seemed poised to join Rangers all summer but went to Bolton for £2 million a week or so ago and Darius Henderson left for the same fee to rivals Sheffield United, where he has already scored in pre-season. Other peripheral players left too and coming in we had Jon Harley from Burnley on a free. Meanwhile the chairman has announced that we have somehow spent all the money that we earned in our premiership season and from the sales of Ashley Young, Hameur Bouazza (now at Charlton) and Marlon King (now at Hull in the premiership).

There is talk that we may need to offload Tommy Smith and Jobi McAnuff this month too while the need for a striker was underlined by the nil-nil draw we got at Selhurst Park today. While there were “handbags” during a game we dominated, I was with Jun and friends in Chinatown pretending that going sixths on dim sum was a fair deal for a vegetarian before Rod gave three of us a lift to Walthamstow Stadium for one of the last evenings of greyhound racing there. I’d happily have traded the few pounds down I was on the races for a point away against a team that finished above us last year. It might just be that I’m unduly pessimistic.

Congratulations (but not for the football)

Andjelka's Wedding
Watford v Crystal Palace
Saturday 19th April

Leaving it late as usual, we had to catch a (loathed) black-cab from the wrong direction we'd been sent after Pimlico station but we arrived at Sacred Heart Church on Horseferry Road before the bride-to-be, which is all that matters. Our subsequent movement from (rushed) groom’s side of the church to (correct) bride’s precipitated motion in others yet it was more gratifying to see we weren’t the last in.

I hadn’t been to a wedding (bar my own) since my mum’s in 1991 so it was no surprise that I found ten-year-old artefacts in my jacket pocket. What I was doing with a “Subway” card, though, I’m not sure. Andjelka came in with her mother, sister and bridesmaid (Martin was waiting with his dad and best man) and we proceeded to take the obligatory photos of the back of the soon-to-be-married couple’s heads. The service was largely in Croatian, which seemed fitting since the most devout members of the congregation seemed to be on the same half of the aisle as us.

After the vows pictures were taken on the street and said some hellos before boarding a double-decker for the reception in Epsom. Jun and I waved regally from the front of the top deck as pedestrians looked up in surprise. Champagne was provided and later so was a Balkan spirit whose “bouquet” was sufficient to discourage me. We took more pictures at the hotel and started on the champers they had there ahead of the meal. With so much to organise I felt complimented that a vegetarian option had been ordered.

After the bouquet had been caught by the bridesmaid, I called Joss, who told me – before the score – that it had been a good game, thereby getting my hopes up only to crush them with the news that we’d lost two-nil. It didn’t ruin a great evening though. We toasted the happy couple, ate, drank, danced and gambled on roulette and blackjack tables before catching a late train back.

...and we're playing at home

Watford v Crystal Palace (FA Cup 3rd Round)

Saturday January 5^th

Whichever end of the table a team is at, it has become routine for the question to be posed of whether a cup run is a “distraction” from important league business, perhaps because it is unlikely to be little else (a lucrative distraction at most) for any but the top four clubs. Waiting outside the stadium for Joss, I was pleased to hear our team was at full strength, not least because it gave us another chance to break this terrible run of home form. Today was not meant to be taken as a distraction.

Crystal Palace have been the form team of the division, not having lost since we went to Selhurst Park at the end of October (which also marked a turning point in our fortunes). Betty won the Manager of the Month Award, often portrayed as a curse, after that month of victories, and Palace’s Neil Warnock comes to the Vic having just been given the same accolade. All the omens are in place, then.

Joss and I took our seats a few rows from the back of the Rookery (you can change for cup games) and saw Watford boss the early exchanges with the fans right behind them. So far, so much like our last home outing but only half way into the half we take the lead when Danny Shittu heads in a corner; it has been seven games since we’ve gone ahead at home and we agree we’ve got a much better view of it.

Watford’s style of play has been derided as “hoofball” by many, including some of the Watford supporters, and there are shouts to “get it on the ground” at every match. Today, though, we played some better passing football and were less reliant on the long ball. Jobi McAnuff attacked well and Tommy Smith also had the better of his man though both Marlon King and Darius Henderson were unable to profit from the crosses coming in.

Supping on our rapidly-cooling hot chocolate at half-time (a one-litre flask seems too large to do its job) we felt confident the ‘Orns could win the match against an opposition that had made several changes in an attempt, perhaps, not to be distracted from the league. The second half mirrored the first in many ways including Shittu’s second goal. With ten minutes to go King and Henderson were substituted for Nathan Ellington and Tamas Priskin, the latter of whom showed some fantastic touches whereas the “Duke” seemed nonplussed. With a few minutes left we serenaded Shittu off to the African Cup of Nations with his song: “Chim-chimaney, chim-chimaney, chim-chim-cheroo: Who needs Sol Campbell when we’ve got Shittu?” and he saluted us back as he left.

Fourth round, here we come. I’ll take a home draw against anyone outside the big four (or away to one of them). In the meantime, we have to negotiate the transfer window. Gavin Mahon has now become a QPR player and we’ve signed Lionel Ainsworth in full (two loan deals made permanent). We need someone to cover Danny and we’re all hoping that Marlon will stay.