If you’ve got goals, you’ve got a chance
WHY will Bourne mouth and Watford be playing in the Premier League next season? In a word, goals.
Clean sheets are all well and good. Middlesbrough and Wolves have kept more than anyone. But that’s not what matters in the Championship.You need good strikers and you need firepower.
It’s always been that way. I remember Neil Warnock saying you have to score your way out of this division. He made a massive thing of signing strikers and would sometimes have four of them on the bench.
Bournemouth and Watford have both scored 90-plus goals and it has absolutely blown their rivals out of the water.
Revived
Look at what happened to Derby.When Chris Martin was fit, they were top of the league. When he got injured, they completely fell off the pace.
Look at the way Norwich have revived under Alex Neil with the likes of Cameron Jerome, Lewis Grabban and Gary Hooper.
Look at Middlesbrough, who’ve scored just 68 goals in 46 games. That’s almost 30 goals off the pace and has literally cost them a shot at automatic promotion on the final day.
I watched Watford seal promotion at Brighton last weekend and it was a masterclass in counter-attacking football.
They’ve got so much pace and power on the break. Against Championship defenders, who tend to prefer a physical battle to a foot race, that is a fearsome weapon.
Even in the 90th minute they had players breaking their necks to get forward, as you saw with Matej Vydra’s classilytaken clincher.
I’m a huge fan of his, and the way he’s been used kind of makes Warnock’s point.Vydra’s scored 16 goals, but if he doesn’t play well, you’ve got Odion Ighalo (20 goals) to bring on. And if they both let you down, you’ve still got 21-goal skipper Troy Deeney to do the business.
It’s a great squad, with a great spine. Heurelho Gomes in goal, Craig Cathcart at the back, Ben Watson in the middle and Deeney up front.
That strength through the centre is vitally important. Chelsea may get stick for being boring but you look up the middle of that side – Courtois, Terry, Matic, Costa – and it is rock solid. They are the ones who keep the shape.
If your best players are your two wingers, that’s good for a few goals but it won’t give you a balanced side.
It’s like having a fancy roof and a nice front door but if the foundations are weak then your house is still going to fall down. Like Chelsea,Watford are built on solid stuff.
Will it be enough next season? I think they can mount a challenge. But to stay up will cost a bit of money.
Millions
Burnley have played more or less the same team and, with one goal in the last five games, I think that’s maybe caught up with them.
At the other end of the scale, QPR went up, spent tens of millions on big-name players under Mark Hughes and absolutely destroyed the dressing room.
You’ve got to sign players but it’s a very fine balancing act. If I’ve played 46 games in the Championship and the manager signs a centre-half without giving me a chance, I’d be pretty unhappy.
These are the challenges faced by Watford and Bournemouth but, with four or five intelligent additions, I think they’ll both compete.
Their counter-attacking style is perfectly suited to life as a small club in the Premier League and with 180 goals between them, they’ll be a threat to anyone.