THE VARDER THEY FALL
Quique’s second spell at Watford had no magic.. and no luck from VAR either
AT the requiem for yet another Watford manager, Quique Sanchez Flores became English football’s first VAR martyr. Shafted by the vagaries of a system which is unfit for purpose, the urbane Spaniard slumped deep into his touchline seat with the resigned air of a man who knew what was coming. After just one win in 10 Premier League games, Hornets owner Gino Pozzo did not disappoint him. Watford are propping up the Premier League because they are deficient at both ends of the pitch, but the latest VAR cock-up which hastened the end for Sanchez Flores was a disgrace.
It is of no consolation to anyone at Vicarage Road that Danny Ings’ equaliser would have been ruled out if the bunker at Stockley Park had been sent a full set of replays when checking the goal’s validity.
One definitive view proved unequivocally that Moussa Djenepo’s assist included scooping the ball clearly with his hand (circle, above). VAR is a nonsense when goals are chalked off because a striker’s armpit is offside but handiwork based on putting out the cat is missed.
And no club has been screwed by VAR more than Watford this season.
They were robbed when officials failed to spot an obvious handball leading to Newcastle’s equaliser in August, again when Gerard Deulofeu was denied a penalty at Tottenham and now they have been robbed at St
Mary’s. Sanchez Flores was so distraught about his impending appointment with the firing squad he could not even be bothered to protest about the legitimacy of Ings’ sixth goal in eight games.
In truth, his second coming at Watford felt strange from the start. Fans who warmed to the brio of Javi Gracia soon tired of Sanchez Flores and his fixation with “solid” formations, negative substitutions and a chronic shortage of goals. And leaving talisman Troy Deeney as a spare part on the bench as Saints turned the tide was like a letter of resignation.
Deeney bust a gut to recover from major knee surgery in three months and had a face like thunder as Ings and James Ward-Prowse’s free-kick snatched an unlikely home win after Ismaila Sarr’s first Premier League goal for the Hornets.
That is 11 managerial departures at Watford since June 2012, but upheaval has served Pozzo well: Four bosses in one season did not stop the Hornets from winning promotion in 2015.
Midfielder Will Hughes struggled to contain his frustration at the debacle which became the epitaph for Sanchez Flores and his 85-day stopover.
He said: “If you’re going to have VAR, it has to be consistent. That’s the third handball decision which has gone against us this season and it’s cost us a few points.
“Perhaps we should have killed the game off earlier, and the result is partly of our own making, so we have got to look at ourselves as well.
“There’s a reason why we’re bottom of the league, and we’re under no illusions: we haven’t been good enough.”