It’s two o’clock in the morning, I’m not home yet, and I’m still trying to work out how Lincoln City managed to lose a game that had 0-0 written all over it.
I’m dictating this article in the car, and with the benefit of a night’s sleep, publishing. I wasn’t impressed with the performance at the time, and I thought that might ease, but it hasn’t, not really. I’m balancing my critique against a number of factors, but I think a handful of players let us down last night.
Tom Shaw was furious about the refereeing decision that led to Watford’s winner, and I do think he had every right to be. However, I’m equally frustrated by what we did with the other 89 minutes, because for all the controversy surrounding the goal, we didn’t play well enough to win. We’ve come away from Vicarage Road with nothing, and it feels like a missed opportunity as much as an injustice.
I’ll start with the goal, because there’s no point pretending it wasn’t a defining incident. From where I sat, the throw-in belonged to us. Watford took the throw before the referee appeared to have indicated which way it had been awarded. Nobody knew whose ball it was, nobody was set, and seconds later Stephy Mavididi was curling an effort towards goal that deflected off Sonny Bradley and past George Wickens.
I can already hear the argument that we still had chances to stop it, but that doesn’t excuse what happened beforehand. If the players don’t know which way the decision is going, how can they be expected to organise for the restart? Tom was livid afterwards, and I understood every word of his frustration. In a game this tight, one mistake from an official can change everything.
What I would point out is how the moment circumvented one of our key tactics, and why it is more than just a poor decision. We tend to keep the pitch tight, allowing the opposition to have a spare man on the opposite side of the field to the ball. Our job is to prevent the big switch, or to be able to react when it happens and shift across, to again create the overload. When this decision isn’t given, but it’s taken, we’re not set, and Watford can hit that switch to Mavididi. Rightly, six of our players know that’s our throw and are contesting it, while the referee doesn’t award it immediately. Watford take it, and if you watch closely, the ref is about to raise his whistle to blow for it to be retaken, but as it is thrown, he stops. They’ve done their homework, they know the switch is key and it’s the only time they hit it all night.
That’s two moments, in my mind, VAR look at and overturns in a matter of days. I don’t want VAR, but I don’t want to travel six hours round trip to be undone by another really poor decision, irrespective of what the rest of the game is like. Yes, there is a chance to close Mavididi down, yes, it’s deflected, and yes, there were 89 other minutes in the game. But what was the score? 1-0. Where did their ‘one’ come from? A moment created partly by a yellow shirt and partly by the black one.
That’s where I want to draw a distinction, though. The decision cost us what looked like a point; it didn’t rob us of a magnificent attacking performance or a victory we had thoroughly earned. I thought we were defensively sound, certainly far better in that respect than we were against Birmingham, but I never felt we were going to score. We could have played for another half an hour and I’m not convinced Watford’s goalkeeper would have had much more to do. I’m not questioning the endeavour, because there was plenty of it. I’m questioning the quality.
Watford were poor as well, which makes it harder to swallow. I didn’t see a side that deserved to win, and I certainly didn’t see one that consistently threatened us. Outside the goal, which came from a situation where we couldn’t properly set ourselves, we restricted them to very little. Edo Kayembe had an opportunity after we surrendered possession in midfield, and there were a few blocked shots, but hardly anything to suggest a team taking control of a Championship fixture. They didn’t deserve to lose either. It was the most nil-nillest game that didn’t finish nil-nil I’ve seen in a long time.
The first half was almost a non-event. We started reasonably positively, with Freddie Draper making a good run down the right and Ben House helping create an early opening for Yunus Konak, but those moments never developed into any sustained pressure. We won corners, forced Federico Ravaglia into one slightly uncertain moment and occasionally got the ball into useful areas. Yet too often the delivery was cleared, the next pass was misplaced or the opportunity simply fizzled out. We kept reaching the point where something needed to happen and then failing to make it happen.
I know the long-ball debate will resurface after a game like this. People will talk about aimless clearances and insist we need to keep the ball on the floor, but I don’t buy the idea that the approach itself is the problem. Direct football is how we got here. Nobody was particularly offended by a long ball when it was helping us win at Bolton, Preston or Bristol City, and nobody complains when one lands on Mikkel Ladefoged’s head and creates a goal. We can’t celebrate the method when it works and then act as though it’s some terrible new invention when it doesn’t.
What I will criticise is the execution. There’s a difference between playing a purposeful ball into an area where a forward can compete and sending one that gives him very little chance. Even when we found a target, our work around the second ball was often poor. Several players gave possession away in promising positions. It happened across the team, and at this level that carelessness adds up. They were a bigger problem than whether the ball travelled 10 yards or 50.
It was the set pieces that really annoyed me. We had free kicks in excellent positions, including one won after a lovely combination between Cheo Ogbene and Daniel Oyegoke, who got beyond his man and was fouled. That should have put Watford under genuine pressure. Instead, the delivery came to nothing: we’re meant to be a side that creates chaos, gets bodies into the box and makes defenders uncomfortable. We had the opportunities to do that and simply didn’t deliver the ball well enough.
There were glimpses. Deji Elerewe got on the end of a second-half corner, and the ball struck the top of the crossbar, while Rob Street had efforts blocked as we tried to find a way back. Ravaglia didn’t always look completely assured, particularly when dealing with balls into his area, and I thought he might have been vulnerable if we’d asked him more questions. Instead, we kept letting him off. Our throw-ins didn’t cause their usual problems either, which meant another potential source of pressure disappeared. For all our territory and effort, we produced precious little to make a goalkeeper genuinely worried.
It felt different to Burnley, and not merely because of the final score. Burnley went ahead against us, and we found another gear, playing some excellent football in the second half to turn the game around. At Watford, once we fell behind, I had very little belief we would do the same. I didn’t feel Watford had worked us out tactically or were doing anything particularly clever to stop us. We just didn’t have the quality in possession, particularly in wide areas and around the penalty box, to turn our work into chances. That’s more disappointing than being outplayed by a clearly superior opponent.
Individually, there were some performances that left me wanting more. Ogbene was disappointing given what we hoped he would add as a marquee loan arrival. He showed one or two flashes, including that combination with Oyegoke, but didn’t affect the game often enough. Tom Bayliss struggled to provide the quality we needed from midfield and dead balls. Konak had moments that frustrated me too, particularly when he lost possession in dangerous areas, although I suspect a closer look at the numbers might tell me his overall contribution was better than the mistakes that stuck in my mind. Two incidents shouldn’t define 90 minutes.
Draper and House, on the other hand, worked tremendously hard without much reward. They chased, competed and tried to make something happen from service that was too often inaccurate. I thought Draper was unlucky not to get into better positions on a couple of occasions, but the reality is neither striker had much they could realistically turn into a goal. It’s hard to score when so little arrives in the right place. Equally, hard work alone isn’t going to keep us picking up Championship points, and that’s a challenge for the whole attacking unit rather than just the two men at the top.
I hoped the substitutions might give us a spark, but they didn’t. Street had a couple of shots blocked and Reeco Hackett didn’t really impose himself on proceedings. Later changes came and went without altering the feeling that we were running out of ways to threaten Watford. That prompted the question I put to Tom afterwards: are we now a little threadbare in attacking areas? With Ethan Wheatley and Mason Melia unavailable, we’re missing two players brought in partly because they might offer that extra touch of pace, power or unpredictability when games get stuck.
I’m not suggesting either would have come on and scored. We shouldn’t turn injured players into guaranteed solutions. But would they have offered different options? Would one have started with Ladefoged missing entirely, or been the player we turned to when we needed something new? Quite possibly. Those injuries feel important when we assess what the coaches have available, especially in a week with three demanding fixtures. They don’t excuse the performance, but they help explain why our options looked limited.
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