Happy Days!

A trip to Watford and Vicarage Road and a definite
chance to get our first away win since what feels like, the dawn of time.
Hopefully the positives from a good performance at Chelsea and mid-week will
not be lost and it will be interesting to see if any of the star performers
from that game find their way into the starting line-up today. The bad news is
that Armando Broja is injured, so there will need to be some rejigging of the
attack. The obvious replacement is Che Adams, bursting with confidence after
scoring from six inches on Tuesday,

Watford are of course a ridiculous club. They yo-yo between the Premier League
and the Championship and have at least two managers every season. They have
just appointed Claudio Ranieri in place of the previous guy who got sacked
despite Watford not being in the relegation zone.  I have no idea who the previous manager was
because I don’t even bother to learn who they are now. I have heard of Ranieri
though of course and he is a genuinely nice guy who presided over one of the
genuine miracles of modern sport when Leicester won the league under him in
2016. There’s a few referees bank accounts I’d like to check from that season,
not to mention betting patterns but as that investigation will never happen…
fair play to Claudio.

One of the things that used to stay constant with Watford was Troy Deeney as
their centre forward and captain but even he’s gone now and their new focal
point is Josh King who we were linked with once upon a time but thankfully, if
rumours are to be believed, he wanted too much money.  He’s got a hat-trick last week as Watford
smashed Everton 5-2 but personally, I don’t think too much can be read into
that because Everton were clearly playing to get rid of Rafa Benitez as their
manager and any team that makes Josh King look like a world beater seriously
cannot have been trying that hard. Ben Foster has earned a recall to the
starting 11 which means he’ll have slightly less time to make videos for his You Tube Channel.

In the event it’s only KWP who has played himself into the starting line-up as
he is preferred to Romain Perraud to play against the dangerous Ismaila Sarr.
From the 11 names we look to have gone back to the 4-2-2-2 formation because
both Adams and Adam Armstrong are included. Redmond and Elyounoussi are on the
wings and JWP comes back into the team in place of Diallo. I do wonder where
the goals are going to come from. Of the front four, Armstrong and Elyounoussi
have one goal each this season, one more than Redmond and Adams.

Saints kick-off and attack down left-hand side where courtesy of a couple of
deflections, we find a crossing position for Redmond and his cross is met by
the sliding Cathcart and it momentarily looks like it’s going to be the
quickest own goal in history but Foster does well to drop onto it.  Cathcart was the defender who blarted the
ball against Shane Long for his 7 second goal a couple of years ago.

Saints are by far the better side in the opening portion of the game and we are
finding a ridiculous amount of space down the left-hand side where Ngakia is
not getting anywhere near either KWP or Redmond.  Originating from that side, there’s a
scramble in the box, Romeu has a shot blocked before Adam Armstrong fires wide
from the edge of the box.

Adam Armstrong has the next chance as well and this really should be a goal as
KWP gets down the left superbly, unhindered by Watford defenders and pings over
a cross with his left foot and Armstrong meets it at the back post and should
try and cushion it back across the goal into the far side put instead of that,
heads over the bar.

You would expect the Watford fans to try and wake their team up but there’s
nothing.  On 20 minutes, Saints play the
ball forward to Adam Armstrong who spins and runs at the Watford defenders on
the edge of the penalty area.  He passes infield
to Adams but it looks behind him so Che moves to the ball, then kind of
pirouettes around it then casually, with no back lift, strokes into the far top
corner giving Foster absolutely no chance. That is an outrageously brilliant
goal.  There was no anticipation from the
fans as he moved away from the goal…. Then he does that.

Watford are proving themselves to be somewhat limited and this is illustrated
by the next attack as Foster claims are JWP corner and immediately skims a drop-kick
into the path of King on the left wing and he fires the cross over to Sarr on
the right, who squeezes a shot in between McCarthy and the near post but there
is KWP back on the line to block it with his arse. There is a horrible moment
whilst the referee is checking his watch … don’t beep you bastard… to see if
it’s gone over the line but thankfully, it hasn’t.

Having had that scare we go straight up the other end and Adam Armstrong picks
up the ball and gets into the box on the right and hammers over a cross which
is met by Che Adams, 3 yards out with an open goal. To be fair, it’s one of
those that’s at a height where you don’t know whether to head it or kick it but
how on earth he’s managed to bounce that down off a part of his face and up and
over the bar is beyond me completely.  We
are going to have some serious contenders in the Match of the Day Miss of the Month.

There is another chance straight away as Romeu picks up a shit clearance from Foster
and feeds Redmond who in turn feeds KWP and his cross into the box is cleared
but it’s interesting that Adams is taken down by Troost-Ekong but there doesn’t
appear to be any sort of VAR review to see whether it’s a penalty or not. Again,
we win the ball back through Salisu, then Redmond finds Adam Armstrong who
again tries his favourite curler into the far corner and is only a foot wide.

Another easier chance comes before half time as KWP again pisses past Ngakia on
our left before pulling it back to Armstrong about 10 yards out but it’s a lazy
waft of the left foot that shats it over the bar.

Half time, 1-0, it should be at least three.  I’m taking in the surroundings.  This is my first visit to here in person for
a long time and the ground has changed completely. We are at the Vicarage Road
end of the ground in the left-hand corner and just off to my left is a Sensory
room and a line of wheelchair users in front of it. The design of the stadium
is not the best though because that corner has no roof on it so if it rains,
the guys in the wheelchairs are going to get wet. It’s pissing down.

The second-half starts in much the way the first half ended with a Redmond
cross, Elyounoussi heads down and Adam Armstrong connects sweetly on the half
volley.  It’s one of those one’s where
you expect the keeper not to move and it to nestle in the far corner but no,
this is Southampton and it flies wide.

Watford do finally build up a bit of steam but Saints are standing firm and
restricting them to long shots and Kucka is never going to beat McCarthy from
there, skiddy pitch or not due to the continual pissing rain.

Can we please put this fucking game to bed? 
Armstrong jinks past a couple of players in the box before seeing his
shot deflected narrowly wide with Foster going completely the wrong way.  Fucks sake – Arma can’t buy a goal at the
moment.

As we hit 70 minutes it’s time for the first change with Elyounoussi, who has
had a quiet match replaced with Stuart Armstrong and so we get a rendition of
the Yaya / Kolo chant, reworded for our Armstrong brothers (sort of).  The next sub is a bit of a surprise with JWP
coming off to be replaced by Diallo. 

The next 15 minutes kind of drift by before the inevitable pressure at the end.  Honestly, it will be ridiculous if we don’t win
this.  Watford are ramping it up to try
and earn an unlikely point and Sissoko bursts past Romeu and when the cross
comes in, substitute Fletcher turns and shoots and McCarthy has to plunge into
his right to push a it away from the bottom corner. It’s ridiculous that
Watford are still in this game at all.

Romeu does look knackered but it’s still a major surprise when Lyanco comes on
to replace him. Bringing on Lyanco seems like a very good move but why not take
off Redmond or one of the strikers. This leaves us with a central midfield of Diallo
and Stuart Armstrong who becomes our third captain of the day.  We defend for the last few minutes and get
there.

And it’s over and thank Christ for that.  My word we make heavy weather of putting poor
teams away. It really should have been simple and we really should have been
out of sight at half-time but the chances we miss are ridiculous. We had one
shot on target all game that got through to the goalkeeper and that went in.  Other than that, Foster only had to drop on
Cathcart’s attempted own goal in the first 30 seconds.  There will not be much footage of us making
Foster work on the Go-Pro, though there will be more than if he’d
stuck the Go-Pro up his arse, which was a popular request from our fans
throughout the second half.  Actually, there won’t be any because the Premier League won’t let him use any game footage, which is a shame.

Today’s winning goal by Che Adams is an absolutely brilliant goal which came
out of nowhere but then he misses a simple one later on, Adam Armstrong misses
a simple one and we end up indebted to a good save from Alex McCarthy in the
90th minute to preserve the three points.

Fair play though, we got to the final whistle which in one sense means that we
managed the game well but it certainly didn’t feel like it for the last 15
minutes. The substitution of JWP was a surprise though with him being on a
yellow card, may be an explanation. Bringing on Lyanco for the last six or
seven minutes was a good idea but taking off Romeu seemed really strange.  Ralph said afterwards that he can’t remember
many times as Saints manager when we have had a comfortable last 15 minutes
having already won the game and today was certainly another one to add to the
list.

The standout performance today was by Kyle Walker-Peters who was absolutely
superb on the left, constantly causing Ngakia endless problems at right back
for Watford with his willingness to go both inside and out and there was better
delivery with his left foot today. I’m guessing that he knows that he’s going
to have to work on his left foot crossing in order to stay in the team. Next to
him, Salisu again was excellent.

It was a good win but there’s still more to come – Elyounoussi and Redmond both
worked really hard but didn’t have the final piece of creativity needed on many
occasions. If Nathan Redmond could play a pass with the right weight, he would
be near the England squad. Every ball is either under hit and gets intercepted
or over hit and runs out of play. He did some really good things in build ups,
combining with KWP etc but when it comes to the final ball, it wasn’t there
today and that was frustrating. Adam Armstrong again worked his nuts off and
was very unlucky with a couple of shots and Che did what he always does, scored
the worldie but missed the sitter. JWP was playing in a slightly different way
to how he normally does in that he seemed to be playing as a third centre back
when we were in possession.

We apparently haven’t won an away game for 17 games before this so that’s one
particular monkey off our back. Watford were pretty basic opponents, so this
was an ideal opportunity but given that they would’ve been on a high after
their big win at Goodison last week, it was nice to get the three points. They
were a strange set of fans as we barely heard a peep out of them for the entire
94 minutes. Dickhead of the day is the Watford winger Ismaila Sarr. I tend to
lose patience pretty quickly if the only trick a player has when he’s up
against a good defender is throwing himself to the floor. He didn’t seem to
defend much either, judging by how exposed the right back was.

It’s interesting that today’s win took us above Aston Villa in the league table
who are our next opponents on Friday when they visit St Mary‘s. Danny Ings may
have only seen us as a one contract thing so it would certainly be nice if our
upward trajectory is maintained next week and Villa’s one in the opposite
direction, carries on as well.