The Return
My favourite thing about football fandom is the delirious reactions we have when our team plays. The overrating of players, the over hating of players, the scapegoats, the personal preference we take and opinions we have on certain players for reasons god only knows. The heat of the moment tweets or takes you have, in which you think you’re being level headed but you’re so far gone you don’t even realise it. This is me for my team. But for any other team you have rationality about your stances. I admire those who are able to take a step back and conveyor their thoughts almost immediately and take the sensible approach. Me? I prefer to lose my head. It’s part of why I started this substack. So I can watch back the game and more often than not have a completely different outlook to what I did as the game was going on.
Line-ups.
First half:
I think we can agree and Javi will admit he got the first half and line-up wrong for this game. I’ve made this point multiple times but the strategy and tactics deployed by both Gracia and Pezzolano have been good — they make sense in theory but football isn’t theory when it’s practical. Pep Guardiola had a quote “Football is not offensive and defensive. Everything is related.” Player line-ups have to make sense, they have to connect, have joined up thinking. Having Sissoko in the space where a fast winger should be or likewise Petris. Player instincts make or break a team and their game plan. In the opening half hour or so in this half, it was mainly West Brom being the protagonists on the ball and Watford dropping deeper and deeper as the half went on. Part of the reason why Irankunda got hooked will be because of his lack of understanding and timing of pressing. The gap between him and K9 at times was too big and he wasn’t noticing the spare midfielder going into space to pickup the ball. He got back into shape eventually and stopped the passing option centrally but he looked knackered and the timing was off. I have no problem with us being a team that doesn’t dominate the ball because we don’t have the players outside of a handful to do that — they’re much better when there’s space to run into.
Another issue when we were in possession was the lack of penalty box presence. Vata, Irankunda are late runners or want the ball to feet, K9 was the only player on the penalty spot for majority of the first half and that’s easy to defend against.
When we did have settled possession it was hard to build because having an immobile right footed left centre back means more touches and more time needed to make a decision. When the quick pass was on, well, it wasn’t. Irankunda and Vata would drop and float between winger and central midfielder to try and receive the pass but it rarely happened. Ngakia is having a nightmare half. From floated, hardly any power crosses into the box, to getting beat too easily by Johnston and then It was his poor pass which led to the strike from Price to put Baggies 1-0 up. What I would add to that is Pollock is caught on his heels as well and needed to close down the shot quicker. Good strikers of the ball will use the defender as a means to place their shot around and that’s exactly what happened. Luckily minutes later, from funnily enough a dreadful ball into the box by Ngakia, Louza managed to pick up the second ball and stroke it with top spin like a classic Federer shot over the keeper to make it 1-1. The fact it took 30 minutes for Watford to have a shot summed this first half up from both teams. A lot of nothingness and then two quality strikes. It was SO obvious what West Brom were trying to do. Keep the ball between their centre-backs, DMs and Gilchrist, drag Watford over and then hit a quick switch to Johnston on the far side to run into space with Styles on the overlap. Problem with that is the players they have aren’t capable of hitting that pass correctly, nor passing it quick enough into central midfield when the option was open. The number 10 in a 4231 vs a 442 press is the one who can tear it apart with his movement behind the two opposition midfielders and Price wasn’t finding the right pockets which is why Baggies weren’t able to sustain pressure and had a lot of stale possession.
Second half:
To be honest, I wanted to do this mainly because I wanted to rewatch the second half and see if what I thought was right or wrong. In my head I thought it was meh but the switches worked to some degree. Those switches at half time being Doumbia on for Irankunda and Ince on for Petris. Javi said himself after the game that he said he wanted us to be more aggressive off the ball. In fairness if that’s your intentions then I can’t argue with those two players. Both Ince and Doumbia will give you relentless running even if their performance with the ball is off. It also automatically by position puts another Watford player into the penalty box from crossing situations.
There is a clear difference from the start. From tempo and passing selection. Much better in the press, higher up the pitch and going a lot more direct. 14% of passes were direct in the first half, 19% in the second half. Going long to Doumbia was working and it’s how the second goal for Vata came about after good defending which led to Pollock going long to Doumbia who caused chaos and won the battle for Bola to pickup and burn past Campbell to put a ball in. I don’t really need to go into detail for much longer but it’s more or less a carbon copy of Watford 18/19 with the setup. Compact 442 shape, aggressive press in moments, tucked in wide midfielders, two strikers with one floating and dropping in with the other going beyond. Difference this time is the full backs aren’t as good going forward. Ngakia is poor attack wise and that shows in the numbers this season, Bola slightly better with his crossing but neither what I’d call Holebas or Kiko, which to my eyes means you can have a more attack minded player ahead of one of them like I don’t know… a Kwadwo Baah!
To round off this game — since Louza scored the goal to make it level, Watford dominated the shot count 14-6 and had a higher proportion of touches in the final third despite only having 38% possession. in terms of territorial dominance, Watford were +5% and West Brom were -5% (In non nerd terms, Watford had more touches in the final third than their own third and West Brom passed it around the back for 90 minutes). I think it was a solid 6/10 performance. The effort was there, the intentions were there but need to be better at creating chances and not being sloppy in the first half — won’t get away with this against Coventry and I’m not sure the shape is viable either; a change to a back three would be the most logical in my opinion. Or if not, you have to start Baah and use him as an outlet.
Back three is the way against Cov. Press in a way that means Thomas is the one who has to make the forward pass.