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.

Schadenfraude too

I have been gone too long. After two months of insufflation in La Paz, we have all but completed two weeks of volunteering at animal refuge La Senda Verde near Coroico in Bolivia (the website will be improved in the near future). In the meantime, Watford have sold all their best players (Tommy Smith eventually went to Portsmouth and was followed by a petulant Mike Williamson, Tamas Priskin went to Ipswich, Jobi McAnuff and Grzegorz Rasiak followed Brendan Rogers to Reading). The latter two players combined to put Reading ahead in our Saturday showdown but Danny Graham continued his scoring form (six already in nine matches) to get us a point at the Madjeski. There is great satisfaction at seeing Ipswich and Reading poach from us and now struggle in the bottom four while we sit in a far better-than-expected seventh (Newcastle are threatening to run away with it), which makes us closer in position to bottom-of-the-Premiership Portsmouth than to either of our championship rivals.
We got old-boy Heidar Helguson back and he scored twice in a recent 3-3 "thriller" with Leicester and although now injured, I´d back him to beat Saturday´s red-carded Nathan Ellington in the goals tally even if H didn´t find the net again all year. Coventry at home tonight and if we can send them back pointless to whence they came, we might even nick a play-off position. Okay, okay: it is early days.