Gray just loves fl ooring former bosses
ANDRE GRAY’S pop star girlfriend Leigh-Anne Pinnock won the X Factor with Little Mix – now Watford’s supersub is king of the ex-factor.
For the third home game running, Gray sprang from the bench to score the winner and shoot down a former Hornets manager.
Everton’s Marco Silva came a cropper last month and Brendan Rodgers’ baptism with Leicester stalled at the last gasp a fortnight ago.
This time Ray Lewington (below) – Roy Hodgson’s assistant at Crystal Palace, who led Watford to the FA Cup semi-finals in 2003 – was in Gray’s firing line.
It’s a unique feat, and now the Hornets are marching on Wembley.
At £18m, record signing Gray was slated by the Twitterati as a flop last season. Social media’s knee-jerk tendency is not slating him any more.
Long-serving defender
Adrian Mariappa, who Yp D@B< N8CK<IJ answer his calling as a preacher this summer.
And at Wembley, Hornets head coach Javi Gracia may need some pastoral guidance to settle a familiar goalkeeping conundrum.
Semi-finals seem to bring out Watford panic attacks where keepers are concerned, from wine bar sommelier Gary Plumley’s bizarre one-off appearance against Tottenham in 1987 to Costel Pantilimon trumping Gomes against Palace three years ago.
Now Gracia must wrestle with the dilemma of choosing between Gomes and Ben Foster, one of the Premier League’s outstanding keepers this season, for the gloves at Wembley.
He said: “I trust all my players and I will decide what is best for the team.”
Despite missing talisman Wilf Zaha with a hamstring strain, Palace had looked the likelier winners when Michy Batshuayi cancelled out Etienne Capoue’s opener.
But Watford found their second wind and Gray’s seventh goal of the season condemned another ex-Watford manager to disappointment.