WATFORD UP THE JUNCTION
Rudderless Hornets on the brink after a City battering
WAS it just an illusion or had the stadium decorators pulled a little too hard on the cloth covering the seats in the stand?
Either way, Graham Taylor’s smile, depicted on a giant yellow banner overlooking the halfway line, suddenly seemed unnaturally tight and forced.
Perhaps it would not have been remiss of them to stretch the corners of the fabric down a little bit for their legendary manager to reflect the bemused sadness that has suddenly engulfed this corner of Hertfordshire.
City can do this to any team but they particularly like doing it to Watford. Twelve goals in all this season, a joint Premier League “aggregate” record, and that comes on the back of the 6-0 FA Cup final victory in the last game of 201819. What is worrying is that there is an uneasy feeling that it is precisely what the club deserves. Nigel Pearson seemed to have taken them to the brink of escaping all this before the unexplained decision by the Pozzo family to sack him with two games to go.
Now the Hornets go into the most nail-biting match of all without the one manager who seemed to know what he was doing at the club this season.
For this game, it was left to caretaker-manager Hayden Mullins to pick up the pieces and try to keep City at bay.
His endeavours lasted 31 minutes.
It took a brilliant fingertip save by Ben Foster to keep them in it after Rodri’s shot had deflected off Gabriel Jesus and looped towards the top corner.
But too much ballwatching in the heart of the defence meant Raheem Sterling was left unmarked 15 yards from goal and, when Kyle Walker picked him out, the England forward finished with an
effortless venom. Then, when Sterling stepped inside Will Hughes in the 40th minute, the Watford defender hacked him down for a penalty.
Foster saved Sterling’s spot-kick brilliantly but the ball dropped straight back down for the City man to dispatch it cruelly. That was goal No31 for club and country this season.
Craig Dawson bundled the ball tamely towards goal from Hughes’ free-kick in Watford’s best chance of the first period, but these were crumbs of comfort.
Moreover, any sort of team talk was almost undone within seconds of the restart – a horrible backpass put Jesus through on goal only for Foster again to keep this respectable for the Hornets.
The veteran goalkeeper produced another fine save to keep out a Kevin De Bruyne free-kick and although he denied Sterling moments later, he could only watch helplessly as Phil Foden, left, tidied the ball into the back of the net from the rebound.
Then, when De Bruyne curled in a delicious cross from another set-piece, Foster could hardly be blamed for Aymeric Laporte’s easy header given none of his defenders had bothered to mark the City centre-back.
Amazingly, the score stayed as it was. Jesus headed the ball into the net in the last minute of added time but, quite rightly, the City striker was flagged offside.
That one goal could yet prove significant as Watford’s battle against relegation makes it all the way to the final day of the season at Arsenal on Sunday.
Whether Mullins himself makes it that far remains to be seen.
Or maybe the Pozzo family will be onto their fifth different manager by then.
Goodness knows quite what Taylor would have made of that.