Millwall 3–0 Watford: Hopeless Hornets torn to shreds in Lions’ den

For reasons known only to my body clock, I awoke at 5am this morning. I will be getting up at 3am tomorrow for a stag do. So the desire to pen my thoughts post-Millwall debacle is not high.

But, unlike the team we support, I will put in a shift. After all, bad news sells — and this was bad news.

No messing around, let’s get into it…

The Championship is nothing if not predictably unpredictable

I try not to say ‘I told you so’ — something that’s made easier by the frequency with which I am wrong. But in my post-Norwich piece (read it here if you want something positive!) I struck a note of caution:

The Championship is all-too-familiar territory for Watford fans, though. If you think for one second you’ve cracked it, it will sock you one right in the mouth when you least expect it. But if you can get that precious commodity of momentum, you’re laughing.

And so it proved.

After clipping the Canaries’ wings, Watford entered the Lions’ Den and were torn to shreds. A midweek trip to Millwall was the perfect test of this side’s mettle and a good warm-up for Sunday’s derby with our friends up the M1; a taster of the intensity and hostility ahead of the first derby attended by supporters since 2006.

Bullied. Harassed. Outworked. On this evidence, it would be easier for all parties to just declare now. I’m not prone to acts of cowardice but these players are and it might spare blushes all around if we just wave the white flag at this point, save the possibility of public disorder (don’t be stupid, folks), and pretend this never happened.

Nathan Jones’ side are everything Watford aren’t — and they have been for a long time. Well run, well organised, and well coached. They have recruited for a manager they believe in and back, and he has got every last drop out of a squad that hasn’t cost much to assemble.

Gulp.

Millwall then… if we must

Even by Watford’s standards, this was feckless.

It might be a cliché but this league is one big cliché: you know what to expect from Millwall and it ain’t going to be tiki-taka. They were direct, physical, and up for the fight. All things the Hornets were not.

And it showed after just eight minutes. Tom Bradshaw — who only opened his account on Saturday — seized upon Mattie Pollock’s misplaced header and thrashed home a superb outside-of-the-foot finish. It was an egregious error, the like of which William Troost-Ekong or Christian Kabasele would rightly have been crucified for. At this stage, I think most supporters would rather see Pollock, at 21 and making his maiden Championship start, commit the mistake for the first time than anyone else for the hundredth.

The Lions roared and Watford cowered. Two virtually identical goals followed with Troost-Ekong haring forward and failing to win the initial header in both instances. The fault does not lie with him alone. Any one of the players in the box could have dealt with the second ball but — twice — failed to do so and Bradshaw pounced.

At kick-off, co-commentator Don Goodman claimed Watford could have done with Kabasele — ‘one of their big defenders’ — but this keystone cops defensive performance was an apt tribute act. Rather more prophetically, it was stated that Bradshaw was a streaky player and having opened his account on Saturday, might be on target again. He must have been licking his lips at the prospect of this weak Watford side, primed for the kill, wandering onto his turf.

Toothless in attack

By full-time, Watford had 67% of the ball. Yet they mustered two efforts on target and I can’t for the life of me remember either.

Service to Keinan Davis — particularly in the first half — was non-existent. Apart from a couple of early breakaways where he was left isolated and inevitably crowded out, he could not get in the game. The same went for Ismaïla Sarr and Ken Sema, so effective in the win over Norwich City that already seems a lifetime ago.

In fact, it came as a surprise we registered as much as 67% of the ball — a figure doubtless different at the break. By that point, Watford had been running scared for some time, unable to hold onto the ball or progress it.

Whether by design or not, Millwall allowed their prey to have the ball just enough in the right areas to commit self-harm. The number of times Troost-Ekong, Pollock, or Dan Gosling received the ball before shanking it forward aimlessly — usually straight to a Lions player — was as depressing as it was predictable.

The early loss of Imrân Louza did not help. We now wait with bated breath to find out the extent of his injury after going off clutching the outside of his left ankle in the first half. His tenacity was a miss too. Despite his stature, the Moroccan has a bit of snarl in him and would have helped the resistance had he lasted longer than 18 minutes.

Samuel Kalu!

It would not have been hard to come on and make an impact given how poor the first half had been. It’s the ‘oldest trick in the book’ to come out for the second half after a bollocking and put in an improved display against a side that’s quite happy to see the game out.

But for the second match running, comedy figure Kalu put in a cameo appearance that suggests there may just be a player in there.

Having helped run down the clock against Norwich, he showed the other side of his game here, charging at Millwall and trying to make things happen. He almost exclusively picked the wrong option whenever he got into the box but showed the urgency and directness that had been missing prior to his introduction.

Sarr — or even Sema — he is not. But there is something about Kalu. He is uninhibited by past failures. Perhaps it is the air of mystique about a player who cost only £500,000 and then clocked just 222 minutes last season (I’m stunned it was that many) but he has shown he could be of use.

Promotion, at all costs

I’m not going to labour the point here. We were crap. We got what we deserved.

Overnight, football finance expert and Price of Football podcast co-host Kieran Maguire had another grim update for Hornets fans. The details — and the ensuing thread — are below but the summary is this: Watford have borrowed from Macquarie bank to cover the sales of Gerard Deulofeu, Adam Masina and Roberto Pererya to Udinese.

Macquarie, as Kieran has detailed on his podcast time and time again, do not have a good reputation. Hence the vampire and kangaroo emojis in his tweet.

As a practice, it’s not uncommon to borrow against guaranteed future revenues. We know football clubs almost never pay a full transfer fee up front and when it’s between Watford and Udinese, it’s like moving money from your right pocket to your left… or is it?

We’ll leave it there.