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.

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.

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.