Watford 3–0 Birmingham City: Hornets banish their blues and the Blues
It’s indicative of Watford’s season that having promised I’d write after every game I watched or attended that I — much like the team — gave up some time ago.
So here I am after the first win of Chris Wilder’s reign, crawling back with a renewed sense of optimism. Up to a point. I couldn’t strike up the enthusiasm to commit pen to paper after the former Sheffield United and Middlesbrough boss replaced Slaven Bilić following the insipid stalemate against Preston North End.
In short: a short, sharp shock is only that when the act is shocking. Nothing about Watford booting Bilić and going for the third head coach of this so-called ‘cultural reset’ season is shocking. Not one thing. So is it any wonder the players continue to perform so miserably? Ismaïla Sarr has had 10 (count them, ten) head coaches since joining from Rennes in 2019. They might be paid handsomely — still not enough that you can deduct £300 for subsistence without warning, Gino — but they are humans. Anyone who has 10 bosses in less than four years is going to struggle to perform to their best, whether they’re an international footballer or work in an office or factory.
It came as little surprise then that the display at Queens Park Rangers showed no improvement on the debacle against PNE. In fact, it was somehow worse because things happened and it was all bad. It’s impossible to blame Wilder and, while the Hornets have managed to collect another largely feckless group of individuals, it’s not entirely their fault either. The club is culturally bereft and having gone through Rob Edwards and Bilić this season, would you try a leg for a bloke given what is effectively only a guaranteed 11-game contract? Me neither.
Adam Leventhal’s story about deducting money from the salaries of players and staff without warning to increase their contribution to the food laid on at London Colney is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the sort of amateurish thing that makes Watford look like a small-time club, rather than an outfit trying desperately to get back in the Premier League at the first time of asking. I’ve worked at a football club and in football long enough to know that A) These sorts of things matter to players and B) The industry is small enough that it travels.
In spite of all that and notwithstanding any of it either, Watford actually bucked their ideas up for the visit of John Eustace and Troy Deeney’s Birmingham City. Let’s get it out the way, the Blues were miserable; a budget tribute act to the Hornets side of the last two weeks. They were missing Deeney — who rightly drew a great ovation when he ‘snuck’ along the front of the Rookery — as well as other important players. They were passive, poor in possession and offered next to nothing. In the first half at least.
By contrast, Watford were zippy, incisive, deliberate and positive. Adjectives that I’ve had to dust off after months in hibernation. All too often this season we’ve lacked any urgency or conviction; what Quiqué Sánchez Flores would call ‘verticality’ when I was covering the club. Heady days.
A goal inside five minutes helped. Enormously. A second after 16 minutes only doubled down on that. Not least because it came via the sledgehammer left foot of the much-maligned Keinan Davis, shrugging off a five-month goal drought to put in arguably his best display of the season.
More than all of that, there was an identifiable plan. Watford moved the ball quickly, got wide, stretched Birmingham and switched the play regularly. Jeremy Ngakia and Ken Sema might not be natural wing-backs but they stepped in admirably. In fact, Ngakia was another to deliver a career-best display in yellow. Pigeonholed as a defensive full-back with Lloyd Doyley-like qualities, the former West Ham United prodigy linked up well with Ismaël Koné and co. down the right flank and drove inside regularly. It was like watching a Pep Guardiola full-back and clearly something he had been instructed to do, joining in with the attack at will and thrashing one off the face of the post from 25 yards to cap a memorable display.
Yet after the break, it all fell apart. A Birmingham side who had not so much as laid a glove on their hosts clicked from the first minute. Had Scott Hogan not been introduced from the bench at half time, he might have been more alive to an immediate chance and halved the arrears. That gave the Midlanders a much-needed lift and they rallied. Profligate finishing and, later, a pair of smart stops from Dan Bachmann preserved the clean sheet and win.
After 45 minutes, this was Watford’s best performance since the Luton Town anomaly. After 90, it was the kind of Jekyll and Hyde display that has typified this season. Plenty of good, and plenty of bad. The job for Wilder now is to work out what happened in the first 15–20 minutes of the second half and ensure there’s no repeat.
Ultimately, performances are outweighed by results at the business end of the season. Watford need to find a way to squeeze into the top six. There are no pictures on the final table and no one will remember if they sneak into the playoffs on the final day with a goal that bounces in off someone’s arse — or, in the case of Britt Assombalonga, their stomach after missing the initial chance to make it 3–0 from close range.
This isn’t the best Hornets squad ever assembled at this level. It certainly isn’t the most mentally resilient, full of characters or together. But as we’ve all pointed out at one time or another, there are enough match winners available to win games. That Watford are only the 10th-highest scorers in the Championship, and that after rattling in three against Birmingham, says it all. They have found scoring goals incredibly difficult this season. If Wilder can find a way to get the best from Davis, Sarr, João Pedro, Yáser Asprilla and co., he will be halfway there.