On the road

The Horns aren't doing too bad in Yorkshire. A 6-1 win at Elland Road on 10th of this month was followed up with a 4-1 win at Hillsborough tonight. We've gone undefeated in the month and moved right up to 8th. Not going too bad: the team seems to have gelled.

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”...

90 + 7

In our recent season in the Premiership, Watford conceded the latest goal of the entire season (96th minute) in their away game at Bolton to lose the match. Today, the ref has gone a minute better and Sheffield Wednesday have equalised at the Vic three minutes from the ton. What with the phantom goal against Reading, surely the Horns have a claim to be the unluckiest side in the land?
The younger Watford Boy - and doubtless thousands others - saw it differently. His text, which was as succinct as ever, in its entirety: "2-2 ref not fit 2 ref". Anyway, Derby lost 4-2 so we moved up a place in the table on goal difference. It`s not all bad...

Symmetry

Sheffield Wednesday v Watford

Saturday 13^th September

A full weekend in London started with London CAAT’s second Merchants of Death walk – shortened to ten Central London offices – starting at Victoria (and INSYS Lockheed Martin) as before but ending with MBDA and drinks at the Chandos. The decision to do the walking tour on a Saturday may have been one of the reasons why more than twice as many people turned up but Edda’s PR work undoubtedly contributed. There was no escort today, though I’d received a call earlier in the week from someone at Charing Cross police station and we were asked what we were doing outside Aegis (opposite Scotland Yard) and I was told to put my sign down in “a royal park” (outside Buckingham Palace).

At home, Jun had already fed my mum and Brian when I returned and I checked the score (WFC went down 2-0 at Hillsborough), we caught a bus (Oysters and passes) to Waterloo Bridge and the Thames Festival. We started on Thames Beach and then walked east along the South Bank (taking in some Korean taekwondo as part of their Ch’usok or Harvest Moon festival) and had drinks at Doggetts by Blackfriars bridge. We were too late for the Feast on the Bridge so crossed London Bridge and caught a taxi to Chinatown.

On Sunday we played a little Wii and then did much the same route for the second day of the festival. We caught a little parkour and some Indian dancing, though the highlight for mum and Brian seemed to be the drunk guy who joined the Bollywood-style boogie. More drinks at the same pub led to a number 17 home and Jun’s cooking. We saw them off with vases, jars of sauce, a camera and a phone and said “see you on the other side of the world” (Beijing in 40 days).

Wii won away (again)

Sheffield Wednesday v Watford

Saturday 22^nd December

While I whiled away an afternoon on the wii with the wife, Watford went and won at Wednesday. Jobi McAnuff scored his first goal for the Horns and not before time. Stoke beat West Brom 3-1, which means that we are top for Christmas Day at least, and close to fulfilling my prediction of being top at the end of the year (if we can improve our dire home form).