Watford's revival grinds to a halt

13 April 2012

Watford walked into a lamp post at Vicarage Road. After a distinctly so-so start to the season, Gianluca Vialli's team found themselves unbeaten in five matches and seeking an ego-boosting fourth victory on the bounce.

Having secured the first away win of the season at Grimsby on Saturday, Vialli felt confident that his players had turned the corner. And so they had. The problem was that Nottingham Forest were waiting there, and Watford went smack into them.

It need not have happened. For the first quarter of the match Forest barely got a look in, and some of their passing was toe-curling. Watford got off to much the brighter start, crawling all over the feared Forest defence - among the most miserly in the First Division - with Tommy Smith in damagingly creative form. Both he and Gifton Noel-Williams went close, and Darren Ward was obliged to save well from Stephen Glass's volley. So far so good.

Then, midway through the first half, Forest suddenly found their touch. David Johnson had three narrow misses before the break and there might have been more opportunities for Forest were it not for their peculiar taste in short corners. By then the Watford attack was repeatedly breaking down in the final phase and their notoriously unreliable defence looked disturbingly vague.

But after yet another dangerous effort from Johnson, it was Watford who opened the scoring in the 53rd minute when Noel-Williams slotted home a rebound. The home fans' relief was tangible.

Crisis over, surely. The foundation was laid for that fourth straight win. Now all that it required was a little cementing.

Alas, the supposed victory was built on sand. Watford waved goodbye to their lead after a mere seven minutes, when Neil Cox's mistake in the box let in - who else? - Johnson.

The Watford faithful hung on to the consolation of extending the unbeaten run to six matches but even that was snatched away in the 83rd minute when Stern John, scorer of a hat-trick at Millwall on Saturday, pivoted round Cox and cracked the ball into the net from an acute angle. Watford were too bruised to respond.

"We should have done better," Vialli admitted. "We thought we had turned the corner and were on our way up. We have quality in the side but it didn't show in this game. Having worked so hard to get in front we shouldn't have given up so easily. Instead of hiding, we should get to the ball and make things happen.

"What you saw here is not what we're capable of. Our final passes were not good enough. We weren't aggressive enough in the first half. Tiredness didn't help in the second half. We gave them too much time on the ball."

Saturday's trip to Bradford suddenly looks daunting, even though it is only two weeks since Watford's comprehensive third-round Worthington Cup victory over them at Vicarage Road kicked off their now defunct run of good form. If only they could have held on to their lead last night, Bradford would have been an appetising test of their new confidence. Now that confidence is in pieces again. Clearly rebuilding Watford to Vialli's blueprint is a long-term project.

"The play-offs?" Vialli shrugged. "We don't make plans. We don't care.

"We just want to get three points all the time. We have made changes and it will take time for them to gel. We know we should have done better so far.

"As long as we don't finish with any regrets it will be a successful season."

Not asking for much, then. The manager who finishes a season without a single regret has yet to be born and if Vialli already knows his side should be doing better, then to finish this season without regrets is even now an impossibility.

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