Leeds professionally despatched. And with the big 6 pointer with Watford on the horizon, BillytheBee wasted no time in getting in touch with Kieran Callanan(@VitalWatford) – Editor of Vital Watford to discuss the famous Graham Taylor, the 1881 drummers and Luther Blissett.
Watford have had a great season on the pitch. Some big wins against Blackpool, F*lham and Charlton. Still excited?
This season has been excellent so far. And the wins you mention there have obviously been up there with the best of recent memory.
To take them one by one in chronological order.
The 5-0 win at Craven Cottage was a joy to watch, with Watford dominating a Fulham side that were admittedly down to 10 men for about two thirds of the game. An absolute peach of a goal from Almen Abdi was the highlight of a match that summed up what we could be when firing on all cylinders yet somehow still playing as if at a canter.
Then there was that 5-0 home win against Charlton. We were ruthless, not our polished best yet put a weak Addicks side to the sword in style.
And then that 7-2 against Blackpool. A perfect simulacrum of our season as a whole perhaps. We played poorly in the first half and were punished – 2-0 down at half time. We came back out after the break though and within about ten minutes we were 3-2 up. We refused to let up, eventually ending up with Ighalo on four goals and the Vicarage Road crowd as happy a they were stunned.
We showed our two sides in extremis. From letting ourselves get bullied by bottom of the league to some of the most fluid and beautiful football I’ve seen us play, all in the space of minutes.
So it’s certainly still exciting. This season has been far from boring. We’ve been blessed with goals up front (once again). But, adding to the excitement I suppose, we’ve been nothing if not inconsistent. Often shaky in defence, especially against the most direct teams (thankfully Brentford like to play their football on the deck), our Achilles heel is a tendency to get sucked into playing the opposition’s game.
It happened away at Ipswich, who looked nothing like top-six candidates but of course still beat us. It happened at home to Cardiff, and it happened a couple of days ago against Blackburn.
But we dug deep and got the three points. This Blackburn result was as satisfying as that 5-0 over Charlton for example, because it’s exactly the type of game we usually lose, and that bodes well for the final run-in.
You seem to have managed to negotiate the manager yo-yo quite nicely. Were you a bit nervous at one point it was looking a tad farcical?
There is no doubt it was a crazy few weeks earlier on in the season.
To recap, we started off with Italian Beppe ‘Fun Cool’ Sannino He was criticised for last season’s dire away form, but had the team playing really well, especially at home. He resigned after arguably our best performance of the season at home to Huddersfield, and before the subsequent international break was over, we had a new boss in Oscar Garcia.
So far, so (sort of) normal. Cut to a few days later (27 to be precise… I’m sure there’s a zombie joke in there somewhere…), and Garcia resigns following an extended stay in hospital. He had chest pains a matter of days into his tenure at the club and actually only oversaw one match from the touchline – an ill-fated trip south of the river to Charlton where we lost 1-0 to a very early penalty.
Our second managerial (well, head coach) change so far beckoned.
Up stepped Billy McKinlay. Hired a few days prior to Garcia’s resignation to be Garcia’s assistant, McKinlay took charge of just one match before owner Gino Pozzo backtracked and decided that he didn’t want an inexperienced head coach taking the reins of what was supposed to be a club on a charge towards promotion.
McKinlay reportedly never actually signed a contract to be head coach, such was the truncated length of his stint at the helm, but he did leave his position within the Northern Ireland national team setup to take charge here, and it certainly didn’t look good at the time.
In hindsight, I’m sure Mr Pozzo will admit that he was too quick to appoint McKinlay, and he should have considered his options before doing so. But at the end of the day, McKinlay found work very soon after – he is now assistant coach at Real Sociedad, helping David Moyes on his Iberian adventure.
And so finally along came a Serbian called Slavisa Jokanovic. And he’s turned out pretty well in my opinion. He’s not only said the right things, but he’s actually done the right things too – getting rid of a few alleged troublemakers (Dyer, McGugan, Andrews) being a particularly bold move that looks to have paid off.
Overall, it has been a bit of a merry-go-round here at Watford, but I’d argue that only one change of head coach was due to owner error, with the others being a standard mutual agreement style resignation and a resignation due to poor health.
It’s really not as dramatic as the figures make out (‘FOUR MANAGERS IN TWO MONTHS!’).
Watford are like Brentford … sh!t or bust. You have won 15 matches this season as opposed to our 16 with both of us losing 9. Sets this game up quite nicely does’t it?
Well you’re right. We do seem to share this tendency to win or lose but rarely draw. I’m not entirely sure why we don’t draw many games. Last season we conceded late almost without fail, but we’ve stopped doing that so much this year. That might have something to do with it, but I’m not sure.
We do seem to lose when we deserve it though so far this season. We have won more games than we are used to when not actually playing well (such as against Blackburn on Saturday), which is of course a bonus, and a sign of a promotion winning side so they say – ‘you’ve got to grind out results’ and all that.
Point is, when we do lose we usually haven’t put in a good performance, and so maybe aren’t worthy of a draw particularly often as we’re either really poor or very, very good.
When we play well we usually win, and win in a bit of style (those two 5-0 victories are pretty good examples of this).
We were pretty evenly matched at Vicarage Rd. You won the match with a dodgy penalty decision which was saved by Button but the rebound scored by Ighalo … and a worldie from Vydra. Did you think you were fortunate that match?
You played very well at our place, and we weren’t all that. Looking at the team we put out that evening though, I’m quite surprised by some of the names. Fabbrini and Dyer both haven’t played for the club pretty much since then, and Ekstrand has been out for a long time. The way we set up under Billy McKinlay is also completely different to how we’ve been playing of late. We’re back to a 3-5-2 nowadays and we’re better for it.
So there’s the penalty. I see where you’re coming from on Ighalo going down pretty easily, but there’s undoubtedly pretty hefty contact, and for me I don’t think I’d feel particularly hard done by if that’s given against us up the other end. It’s a penalty. I honestly don’t think I’m being all that biased when I say that.
Obviously Ighalo didn’t hit a great penalty, but reacted well, which has been his way of late, with his nine goals in the last six games almost all coming within the six-yard box and as a result of quick reactions and being in the right place at the right time.
Vydra’s piledriver of a half-volley that won us the match came against the run of play, but the game was fairly even on the whole. And if either team was going to win it in the end, it did feel like it was going to come from a piece of brilliance. We were just lucky that it was our night on that occasion.
I can understand Brentford feeling a dispirited. Coming away with nothing after a decent performance is never easy. But I don’t think ‘fortunate’ is the right word for our win. We didn’t get lucky. But we did win the game as a result of a singular piece of brilliance.
You have three top strikers in Ighalo (12 goals), Troy Deeney (11), Matej Vydra (8). That’s where most of your goals come from. Does that mean, cut the supply to these boys and yer struggling?
These three are all goal threats for quite different reasons. Deeney is powerful and has a good shot on him. Almost impossible to bully him off the ball, and when he isn’t getting the supply, he goes to get the ball himself.
Ighalo is the classic ‘fox in the box’, only with the added extra of being able to slink his way through defenders with an uncanny ability to fool everyone involved (spectators included) about which direction he’s about to turn. You’ll probably see this at least once tomorrow night and hopefully get what I’m talking about.
Vydra has blistering pace and is unbelievably cool in front of goal. His has a powerful strike (as you well know I suppose), and when he’s high on confidence you think the ball’s going in the net whenever he’s got it in the final third. He’s been lacking in confidence recently though, and will probably start on the bench.
Our team is full of goals though, and it’s not just these three who pose a threat up top.
Daniel Tozser has scored five beautiful free kicks so far this season, and it’s a matter of time before he finally scores from open play.
We’ve got Almen Abdi, who can score from anywhere, and we’re still waiting for our Central and South American imports to hit the back of the net.
But it feels like a matter of time before Miguel Layun and Juan Carlos Paredes get off the mark.
Then you’ve got Craig Cathcart and Gabriele Angella, who have been known to chip in with goals from the back (and, in Angella’s case, go berserk celebrating said goals as they go in).
Bees and Watford my have been big enemies back in the day. But your real rivals are Luton …who you haven’t really played for a while. Is it a forgotten rivalry or as there some lingering feelings?
I don’t think we’ll ever shake the Luton rivalry, but it has been so long since we last played them that it’s a possibility that whole generation of fans will know Luton as our rivals through the odd ‘Que Sera Sera’ on the terraces and nothing else.
I’ve never been that big on the rivalry beyond it being a massive game when they come to town or vice versa – it brings out the worst in some people, and you don’t like to see that. For the most part it’s pure stress, as if you play them you just don’t want to lose. Anything but lose… It felt like we’d won several games of football the last and only time I went to Kenilworth Road, when we beat them 2-1 in our promotion season of 2005/06.
And you have a singing section …. the 1881 movement … what’s that all about??? Please don’t tell us they carry a drum …..
We have got a singing section, yes. Started by one fan I believe, Roy Moore. The section grew out of frustration at not being able to seat the likeminded fans together at our Wembley play-off final of 2013, meaning that the atmosphere was pretty dire.
Since they started out they’ve done some amazing things. From organising a massive foil display for Remembrance Sunday, which transformed the Rookery End into a giant red poppy surrounded by black and white stripes, to having a load of gigantic banners produced that are held up before and after home games.
There is a lot of colour, flags, banners, and of course noise, in that section of the Rookery these days. You’ll notice it next time you’re at Vicarage Road I’m sure.
Yes, they often have a drum. But it’s much more than that, and I think they’ve done a great job so far.
Interested to know who are the worst team you have seen play this season? And who are the best?
Worst team is either the Blackpool side that came out for the second half the other week or Reading, who we beat at their place despite playing half the game with 10 men. They couldn’t hit a barn door and they refused to change the way they played all game despite chasing a result for a lot of the second half.
Best team I’ve seen so far are Derby. They were organised and had that bit of flair across the park. Steve McClaren has got them playing good football and they look a better side than Bournemouth despite them being top.
Here’s our made in Watford section
The famous Graham Taylor .. or The Pope (in Rome of course) … (referring to the )?
Well Graham Taylor is known as God round these parts, and we all know God’s bigger than the Pope.
Watford superfan Elton John or Luton manager John Still?
SIR Elton.
Luthur Blissett ot John Barnes?
Good old Luther still treats Watford as his home so it’s Looooofer for me.
Luton hero Mick Harford or Watford goalscorer Marlon King?
It’s a shame Marlon’s such a prick, because he was a high part of the reason we last went up to the Premiership. He seemed alright then, a reformed criminal and all that, but it turns out he was merely on hiatus from the life of crime and misogyny.
Luton Airport or Heathrow airport?
Have you ever been to Luton airport? Heathrow, no question. Nothing to do with the Hatters. Luton airport is the weirdest place on earth.
Head to head, Watford are ahead winning 25 games to the Bees’ 20 with 25 games drawn. Confident the run will continue?????
Quietly.
Give us a score prediction
3-1 Watford. I like to use my heart to predict, rather than my head.
We would like to thank Kieran for taking time out to give us he knowledge on the team, the managers and the drum. You can follow him twitter – @vitalwatford … or check out the Vital Watford blog right here.
