Rhinocéros
By Nick Grundy
This was a game of arses. The most obvious ones involved were eleven of
the fourteen players Watford used: what they thought they were effing doing
I have absolutely no idea, but it wouldn't even have been very good had
they actively been trying to parody the playing of a game of football so
intense was their collective awfulness. The Huddersfield players were also
arses, only less so, and the combined sheer ineptitude of the two was
exemplified by the fact that the most significant factors in a game of
football were, you guessed it, arses. The referee was only a bit of an
arse. There's a couple more sets of arses I'll come to later.
It's indicative of the game that I can remember almost nothing coherent
about it. I don't have any real memory of events in a logical order. Like
some surrealist play, things happened, people arrived, people left, people
did things, but nothing was effective at making any sense of it all. The
goals were a case in point - our ridiculous, dreadful, almost embarrassing
equaliser, where a hopeful ball into the box by our only genuinely
effective player was nodded home by a hapless Huddersfield defender. It
was the sort of goal that normally you'd be delighted by. In this instance
it wasn't even much of a relief, as there was still the knowledge at the
back of your mind that the Huddersfield right back had just taken Watford's
only noteworthy chance of the first half, and that reminded you just how
bloody terrible our strikers and our midfielders had been for forty-five
minutes.
And the defence, of course - yet again we were atrocious at the back.
Huddersfield's first goal read like the Alan Hansen book of piss-obvious
things not to do in your own half. Exhibit A: allow a cross from the left
(Cox) to travel all the way across the penalty area without intercepting it
(Ward, Palmer) in spite of the fact that it's travelling below headheight.
When the ball arrives at the back post, shin it all the way back across the
face of your own goal in a cringeworthy attempt to clear (Robbo). From the
resulting corner (remind yourself at this point how easily it could have
been an own goal), half-clear the ball several times (everyone), before
pushing up late and individually (everyone), allowing one of their strikers
to latch onto a headed ball back into the box that should have been cleared
anyway and dink it over the goalkeeper.
Their second was even worse. Huddersfield had spent the whole of the
second half running at our defence. Ndlovu aside, it wasn't as if they
were any good on the ball at all (and it wasn't as if Ndlovu being able to
dribble can have taken anyone by surprise), but we'd already seen I think
Facey - or some big, brutish, bludgeon of a player - take the ball past
three or four of our players without the hint of a challenge. It wasn't
even really as if he had to take it past them: rather he'd just run with
it, a Watford player would run on his shoulder for a while, and would then
drop off, leaving him for the next man to do the same thing. Inexcusably
dreadful. Their goal was shambolic: Baardsen beaten at his near post, both
full backs yet again conspicuous by their absence, Palmer and Ward
continuing their recent form by falling on their arses rather than
clearing/challenging/doing anything.
Other turds that stick in the pipe include the memory of Robbo picking up
the ball just inside Huddersfield's half, Allan Smart making a brilliant
diagonal run from the opposite side of the box into the left hand channel
while screaming and gesticulating for the ball, and Robinson aimlessly
clouting the ball onto the forehead of one of Huddersfield's defenders in
the area of the penalty box Smart had vacated about three hours previously.
He was at least better than Cox, who continued his recent defensive tactics
of (a) advancing too far up the pitch, (b) without ever adopting
threatening attacking positions, (c) failing to make the attacker go inside
or out by standing much too square to him, (d) attempting to tackle by
prostrating himself hopefully in front of said attacker and (e) chasing
manfully back from the positions he shouldn't have bloody been in in the
first place. Hell, at the moment I'd pick Gibbs and that kid Neill in the
youth team who's supposed to be promising ahead of Cox, and that bigoted
git Perpetuini and Danny Braithwaite ahead of Robbo.
In fact, Paul Robinson is my bloody hero (see other articles I've written
in the past if you can be arsed), and unless he gets at least back to the
form he showed two years ago I think we should sell him and buy someone
else. Two years ago he looked like a player with the potential to play for
England, if he was careful, dedicated, thoughtful and lucky. Sure, he was
out of position a lot of the time, but he made up for it by tackling like
Stuart Pearce on dexedrine. Now he never bloody tackles any more, he looks
like Dominic bloody Ludden (only less of a tosser, harder, and like a
professional footballer rather than an amateurish pub player - couldn't let
that comparison stand).
While I'm on this character assassination lark - Darren Ward is starting to
look like David Holdsworth, so can we please resign Colin Foster pretty
damn sharpish? Allan Nielsen looks like the sort of ex-Premiership player
who Wolves should pay silly money for, Carlton Palmer looks like he should
stop giving interviews to the press about how he's not here to make friends
and play some football, Mooney spends much of the game not looking like
anything, Vernazza looks like he's made a terrible mistake, and Peter
Kennedy just looks lost. By the way, what formation are we playing,
Graham?
GT was a bit of an arse, too. Think back to the start of that Second
Division campaign, if you will. The one dramatic difference between that
side and Kenny Jackett's side from the season before was shape: the players
looked like they knew what they were doing. With that came intent, with
that came purpose, and with that came a team which transcended the
limitations of its individuals every single week. This team has no shape
at all, we don't have width while seeming to lack numbers in the middle, we
look like we're trying to play possession football and on the break at the
same time, and our free kicks are an absolute embarassment (two things:
one, Robbo kicking the ball into Steve Palmer's arse ten yards away
(another arse). Two, why the hell is Robbo taking attacking free kicks
while Peter bloody Kennedy, the best crosser of a ball at the club by a
country mile, is on the pitch?). There's no sign of Nordin Wooter, who at
least looks dangerous and who at least can run with the ball - sure, often
there's no final product, and sure, he's often hopelessly out of position,
but when there's no final product and no one looks like they have positions
anyway we might as well play him. We know he can instill sides with shape
and with spine and with a playing method that works: why isn't he? I don't
have the answer, and suggesting going "back to basics" is ridiculously
simplistic, but at the moment we might as well be putting some of the
players whose names have been bandied around for years a chance. Stick
Matt Langston or Danny Braithwaite in the team; they can't play worse than
the current incumbents are. Anyway, onto the final set of arses.
The crowd. Listen up you pack of feckless f***ing idiots: I stood up when
Allan Smart left the field and clapped him off, not because I thought he'd
played well but because I was so f***ing ashamed of the imbeciles
surrounding me who were cheering his sustitution. Any of you who cheered
him leaving the pitch aren't fit to call yourselves Watford fans. Has
Wembley escaped your tiny little minds? Has the entire season that
preceded it? Have Chelsea and Tottenham at home - surely you were at those
games, at least? Why were you cheering him leaving the field? There'd
have been more reason - and I absolutely mean this - to chant for Tommy
Mooney to leave the pitch - at least I noticed Smart making runs in the
first half, and at least I noticed him getting into dangerous positions.
Mooney's only noteworthy contribution to the first half was when he tried
to get booked for squaring up to Vaesen. It comes down to this: Allan
Smart was marginally the better of our two very bad strikers in the first
half. He played better than several other members of a team which was
performing worse than I can remember it ever performing, noticeably better
than players who cost many times what he did (Allan Nielsen, for instance),
and he has already proved his worth and his commitment to the club a dozen
times over. If you cheered him being taken off the pitch you are either a
grade A moron or you are actively setting out further to worsen the
situation we find ourselves in by unsettling and lowering the confidence of
players whose confidence is already very, very low indeed, and you should
think very seriously about what supporting a team means to you.
The team were embarrassing on saturday, but not half as embarrassing as the
fans. I felt no desire to apologise to the Huddersfield fans after the
game for the behaviour of my team.
Rant over. To return to the game. At the moment our play reminds me of
the worst periods of Kenny's reign (and don't get me wrong - I think he was
and remains a good manager). However, at least then we had excuses. Back
then, we had serious injuries (Holdsworth until we sold him, and SuperKev
to name but two long-term ones) and no money to spend. We were relying on
journeymen like Keith Millen and Gary Penrice (and jesus, I don't remember
one single time I was embarrassed by either of those players - even when
they were awful they took the trouble to look like they cared), or
unblooded rookies like Andrews, Ward, Robinson, even Flash. And back then
those same players looked like they wanted it. Flash only made one
appearance, in that 4-1 defeat up at Turf Moor, but at least he ran around
and looked like he cared. Even when we were losing a twentysomething
unbeaten run away at Peterborough on a foggy march night, and were playing
in a way I described as "pathetic" and "embarrassingly crap", at least we
were trying. At least we weren't embarrassing because we looked like
spoilt little ex-Premiership rich kids struggling to deal with the harsh
and continuing realities of a ferrari-free existence. At least we weren't
embarrassingly detached from the fact of our inadequacies.
I don't mind my team - the team that I and so many others have supported
for so many years - being embarrassing because they're not quite good
enough. I'm familiar with not quite good enough - we've never had a team
of the best players in the league, and in many ways I hope we never do,
because I don't want us to become like a Chelsea or a Fulham or whoever. I
can cope with that sort of not quite good enough, because at least you know
that those same players are doing the best they can, and that the older
ones who're reaching the end of their career can maybe play one or two
games when they're a crucial part of a team better than they ever thought
they could be part of, and can help the young players at the club avoid the
mistakes they made, and that the young players can get a game and come
through the ranks and make it as pros or not, but at least improve as
footballers. Maybe that's what we need. Maybe we need someone like Keith
Millen or Colin Foster precisely because they know their limitations and
don't believe they have some divine right to play for a Premiership side.
The only players who can hold their heads up after Saturday's game are
Paolo Vernazza, who looked very good and played out of position for half
the game looking like he was bloody glad to be playing at all, Stephen
Armstrong, who at least tried to give us some shape by playing wide, and
Tommy Smith for the same reason.
At the moment the problem has nothing to do with how good or bad our
players are; few would disagree that we've got a group of individual
players at the moment who are better than any we've had at the club in more
than a decade. The problem is that their hearts aren't in it. We - or
rather, the club staff - must find out why that is and sort that problem
out very, very soon. After the shame of the past month or so, I'd be quite
happy to see us sell half a dozen senior players in the long-term interests
of the club, even if it means we do nothing for the rest of the season.
Accuse me of a lack of ambition, but I'd rather see youngsters playing
above their ability and therefore improving in a losing side than watch
people play below their ability in a winning one.
Of course, watching good players play below their ability in a losing side
is - well - arse.