Gracia likes the high life but Zaha challenge riles Palace
For now at least, Javi Gracia has a team who are ahead even of his compatriot Pep Guardiola in the Premier League and the distinction of the best start to a Watford topflight season, better even than the manager whose name adorns a stand at Vicarage Road.
Graham Taylor never managed three straight wins at the start of a Divison One season, a run that puts Gracia’s team level with Liverpool and Chelsea at the top, and pegs them above champions Manchester City for the week. They might not have played any title contenders yet, but among those for whom survival is the first thought – Brighton, Burnley and now Crystal Palace – Watford have been ruthless.
The Pozzo family project at the club feels as robust as ever, with Gracia having named the same team for these first three victories, a side who are a little more familiar than those in the seasons when the squad were in what seemed like constant flux. There were five British players again, one of them, Ben Foster, who kept his team in this game with two magnificent firsthalf saves before Watford struck after the break. Those decisive goals were scored by Roberto Pereyra, his third of the season, and then Jose Holebas.
It was absorbing rather than a classic, fought out on a wet and cold August day in the tradition of bad English summers past, with the game’s most contentious moment occurring after just four minutes.
That was a foul on Wilfried Zaha, Palace’s goalscorer, by Etienne Capoue who would later assist Pereyra’s opener. On Sky Sports at half-time, the pundit Graeme Souness, a man who knows something about tackles both good and bad, described it as “100 per cent a red card”. In a splenetic analysis of the challenge, which drew just a booking from referee Anthony Taylor, Souness said: “He [Capoue] set out to hurt Zaha … it tells me one of two things. He [Taylor] has completely bottled it or he doesn’t understand football. He [Capoue] is trying to hurt him badly.”
Souness’s point was that Capoue targeted Zaha’s Achilles and could have caused a career-changing injury. Roy Hodgson, the Palace manager, more circumspect than after Monday’s game against Liverpool, said that at the time he had been glad Taylor had booked Capoue rather than let the moment pass because it had come so early in the game.
Hodgson’s regret was that Zaha had then drifted out of the action until the late stages, when he finished beautifully after exchanging passes with Max Meyer. Asked by the BBC if Zaha had been targeted, Hodgson said: “We have to get used to that. Players of his match-winning ability do get targeted. He was targeted by that foul but he got over that and his ending to the game was quite good.”
His team had not been able to push home their advantage when they were on top in the first half, mainly because of Foster, whose best moment was swatting away a header from Christian Benteke. By the end, the fans had voted Christian Kabasele their man of the match, a performance typical of the committed and focused Watford side. The moment of real quality came from Pereyra, though, and his goal changed the game.
He has either scored or assisted seven of Watford’s past 11 Premier League goals and this one was stroked past Wayne Hennessey with that elegant right foot into the far corner. It was made by Capoue’s powerful surging run from the right-back position, diagonally across the pitch, which on reflection will give Palace greater cause to regret his card was not red.