Watford 2–0 Reading: Royals killed off by Brazilian brilliance

Goals change games and João Pedro’s decisive late strike means I’m queuing to pay in Gade Car Park feeling positive after Watford saw off Reading 2–0, instead of inevitably succumbing to a late equaliser from Andy Carroll.

Yet for long periods, Watford clung on grimly to a single-goal advantage. That’s ‘clung on’ in the sense that they showed little urgency to extend that lead. We’ve all seen this game enough times: Watford go ahead but never really threaten to build on their advantage before the visiting side, having offered absolutely nothing for 89 minutes, grabs a scrappy late equaliser at the death.

So disaster avoided with a makeshift defence and the train back on track. Here are five thoughts…

João Pedro the difference maker: On a night when Watford barely managed to underline the difference in quality between themselves and their opponents, Pedro rose above the mediocrity to secure three get-right points against the Royals.

While all around him his teammates failed to grab the game by the scruff of the neck or show the intent required in possession, the Brazilian was the catalyst. It wasn’t his best game in Watford colours by any stretch of the imagination — there were moments of sloppiness and excess. But he wanted to get on the ball, run at Reading defenders and get shots off. It was he who tried an impudent first-time effort when the ball broke loose 30+ yards out and spotted keeper Dean Bouzanis off his line. It was he who saw a deflected effort spin agonising wide of the far post deep in the second half. In short, anything good involved the Brazilian.

And yet, there’s a debate among some of my Watford-supporting friends about his quality and value to the side. The detractors claim that if he were called ‘Joe Pedro’, no one would bat an eyelid. But that isn’t true. He has grown again this year. Into his third season at Vicarage Road, Pedro is the leader of the band. The maverick. The joker in the pack. One shudders at the idea of this team without Pedro, had he joined Newcastle United when he had the chance last summer.

Ismaïla Sarr cruising to the World Cup: I don’t generally buy into these sweeping and unfounded generalisations. But in a fortnight’s time, Sarr will be spearheading Senegal’s World Cup campaign and, given his recent lacklustre displays, it’s an easy assumption to make.

We have seen Sarr tear this division apart. We have seen him annihilate Premier League defences, too. Tonight, he looked like someone holding something back. Someone with a World Cup shop window a fortnight away. If that is the case, it’s only human to protect yourself this close to a major tournament.

But a good body of work in winning promotion will also aid his cause to finally escape Vicarage Road. You can’t blame him for wanting to leave (if, indeed, he does). Two seasons in the Championship was not the sales pitch when he joined from Rennes in 2019, after all. If we’re being brutally honest, being here in 2022 probably wasn’t in that proposition either. A couple of seasons in the Premier League preceding a profitable move to one of the big six was the ideal scenario.

For balance, it has to be said he does not look fully comfortable on the left-hand side. It worked in the win over high-fliers Norwich City with Sarr driving at the heart of the Canaries’ defence and playing the inside forward role. But it has not been as effective since. It was no coincidence that his brightest spell in the game came when Samuel Kalu took over on the left and he was freed up to return to the right.

We know this division is beneath him. We know he can walk faster than most full-backs sprint. But he doesn’t have to prove it every time he gets possession. Time and time again his nonchalance sucked the life out of Watford’s attacks — which were already cumbersome and half-hearted more often than not. What he does have to prove is that he is better than the Championship — by a distance — and at the moment, that’s a hard sell.

Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard: Over 90 minutes, the gulf in quality between Watford and Reading was vast. In fact, it was a chasm. The Royals showed little ambition, even less urgency than their hosts and didn’t trouble Daniel Bachmann in the Watford goal.

But Watford — like Sarr — seemed to want to win this game by expending the least amount of energy possible. There might be an energy crisis, lads, but it doesn’t extend to you! It felt like they knew they could win without working up a sweat and were determined to do so just to prove how superior they were.

The tricks and flicks looked great when they worked — and this is one criticism of João Pedro, who decided to do the fancy thing when the simple thing would have sufficed on several occasions — but the overplaying and show ponying often resulted in sloppy losses of possession.

We know what the Championship is about: hard graft and doing the basics well. Do that and you earn the right to bring out the party tricks. Not the other way around.

As I said at the top, goals change games and Pedro’s 87th-minute strike put this one to bed. But in a parallel universe, Watford will play like this again against inferior opponents and be punished.

Hamza Choudhury steals the show: Since making a man-of-the-match debut under the lights against Burnley back in August, we’ve gone on a journey with Hamza Choudhury which finally went the full 360 against Reading.

His work rate out of possession, energy and unrelenting enthusiasm to throw himself — particularly those long legs — into any and every situation in pursuit of the ball is laudable and endearing. We’ve probably not had someone like that in midfield since Valon Behrami. He is indefatigable and he has broken up more attacks than I care to remember.

But he is not a playmaker. Alongside anyone else, that wouldn’t be such a problem. But alongside Edo Kayembe it sticks out like a sore thumb because neither is progressive in possession.

Yet against Paul Ince’s men, we saw a new side to the Leicester City loanee. Perhaps it was because Reading were passive and gave him time to demonstrate a never-before-seen range of passing and vision. In fact, it almost certainly had something to do with that. But it’s clearly there, in the right circumstances. There were several big, impressive switches of play that found a man in space and opened up the pitch. We need more of that, please, because Choudhury and Kayembe at home against a poor side isn’t penetrative enough.

A quick word, too, for Kayembe who, in the last two games (I didn’t make time to write post-Coventry defeat) has shown more impetus in possession than we’ve seen from him. He’s still more destroyer than creator but there’s been a welcome shift.

We missed Ken Sema: Not a sentence you’d have expected to read last season — or any time we’ve been in the Premier League — but a big factor in our lack of oomph in the forward areas came from the fact our Swedish King was deployed at left-back as Hassane Kamara served a one-match ban.

There was some talk on the Do Not Scratch Your Eyes post-game Twitter Space that Sema had now leapfrogged Kamara as the first-choice left-back. That is fanciful. As well as Sema did, we need him further forward to stretch the play and provide what Quique Sánchez Flores would have called ‘verticality’. Our best moments before the introduction of Kalu — there’s another surprise— came when he broke from the back and overlapped.

There’s nothing too nuanced about Sema. In the way Sarr, Pedro and Yáser Asprilla have a variety of tricks up their sleeves, Sema is a blunt instrument by contrast. But you don’t always need a chisel — sometimes it takes a sledgehammer.

On his performance at left-back, he did well, albeit against very limited opponents. He proved he won’t be a disaster there next time Kamara is suspended or unavailable — and given how he plays, there will be a next time. But moving him backwards takes too much away from the attack and if Sarr is restored to the right, Sema should benefit too.