Match report- heroic Jeff drinks salty Watford tears for fun

Begovic- 7 solid enough. Not too much to do. Looked shaky occasionally dealing with crosses.
Kelly- 8 much improved. Frustrating really because when actually he drives forward with the ball he looks very good, just doesn’t do it enough. Dealt comfortably with the man who is proclaimed to be ‘the best winger in the league.’
S Cook- 8 solid throughout, didn’t do an awful lot wrong. A very good showing.
CCV- 7 see above, only with a few individual errors dotted in which fortunately went unpunished.
Smith- 7 defended well enough and got forward when he could.
Lerma- 10 the man is now a God in my eyes. Don’t even care that he’s not the best at football.
Pearson- 9 MOTM what. A. Player. This guy quite simply has to start every game. The kind of player that makes an entire team look better. How on earth did we convince him to join our sh*t show?
L Cook- 6 was it just me, or did he slip over virtually every time he had the ball. Hard to rate a guy who played a professional football match while wearing slippers tbh, but he did work hard.
Stan- 6 neat and tidy. Tried to make things happen. Not a lot came off for him today.
Danjuma- 8 now this one might seem like a controversial mark, due to the fact that describing his first half as non existent wouldn’t even touch the edges. However, I’m trying to rate him based on the type of player he is, one who will be innocuous for long periods but provide the spark at pivotal moments. And today, love him or hate him, you can’t argue that he provided a spark that few else in the squad could.
Solanke- 7.5 worked hard and held the ball up well at times.
Long- 6 ran around a bit.
Wilshere- 5 looked off the pace tbh.
A very good report on the mark.Nice to see a team that played as a team, with a lot more grit. Pearson for me is the glue that makes this team play together. Wiltshire wanted a early bath, never have I seen him so fired up. 3 well earned points.
 
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You can always bet that no matter how badly we’re playing that you can always bank on a bit of entertainment when we come face to face with our scummy foes from Hertfordshire, right? Woodgate went back to basics for this one, disposing of the horrific back five that we have been subjected to far too many times this season, in favour for a back four. Rico dropped out (praise the Lord) in favour for the shaggy figure that is Ben Pearson. This meant a midfield three and an attacking trio, with Solanke making a both surprising and welcome return to the starting eleven.

The early stages of the game were mainly played in the Bournemouth half, Watford looking in control without ever really threatening. The half was uneventful in terms of goal mouth action but what was refreshingly pleasing was the work rate and fight shown by the Bournemouth ten (sorry it’s hard for me to include Danjuma in this.) The side seemed to be galvanised by a back to basics approach, and Ben Pearson in particular fought like an absolute warrior for the cause. The best chance of the half fell to us, a neat one two between Smith and Stanislas on the right flank resulted in the latter drifting infield and switching the ball to the on rushing Kelly, this was subsequently met with a venomous and swerving strike that was helped over the bar by ‘Not Ben Foster.’ The half petered out in scrappy fashion, the sides deadlocked at the interval.

The second half is where things start to get interesting. This time it was Bournemouth that came out on the front foot and started to push higher and press more aggressively. It’s almost as if we had come to the sudden realisation that the opposition weren’t actually very good. This resulted in a couple of very presentable opportunities, with Danjuma (who had all of a sudden decided to turn up for the second half) instrumental in creating them. Firstly a lovely mazy run down the left flank saw him turn his marker inside out before unleashing a left foot drive past ‘not Ben Foster.’ Unfortunately for those of a Bournemouth persuasion there was a covering Watford defender who was able to divert the ball behind for a flag kick. As good a chance as this was, an even better one presented itself to Danjuma moments later. The high press again paid rewards for Bournemouth, Lerma picked the ball up twenty five yards out and Danjuma set off on one of his trade mark under lapping curving runs inside the full back and the centre half. Lerma picked him out brilliantly and Danjuma’s first touch to set himself was exquisite, the hard part had arguably been done. Unfortunately again for those of a Bournemouth persuasion, as is often the case with the erratic but at times unplayable figure that is Arnaut Danjuma, the end product was on this occasion lacking and he shot tamely into the arms of ‘not Ben Foster.’ (Yes I really can’t be arsed to look up his name.) Bournemouth were nearly punished for this almost immediately. The game had suddenly erupted into a frantic end to end encounter. A quick Watford break away saw Cleverly urm ‘cleverly’ played in on goal with only the keeper to beat. Hearts began to sink and just as we were about to rue opportunity’s missed, Begovic (as he has done numerous times this season) came to the rescue to save a tame cleverly effort with his feet. A let off and in truth Cleverly (like Danjuma before) should have done a lot better. Either way the game had suddenly burst into life.

The game then transitioned into what I like to refer as ‘the Lerma phase.’ This is definitely deserving of a paragraph to itself. The fun really kicked in around the sixty minute mark. While defending a fairly innocuous throw in on around the half way line, Jeff decided it was an opportune time to take a nice playful piggyback on his Watford counterpart Chalobah. Just a bit of harmless fun. Resulting in an unfairly awarded free kick to Watford, or did it? The scathing and quite frankly out of control Chalobah (who probably has no friends and so is not used to such playful antics) suddenly lashed out violently in the direction of Jeff, like a man possessed, swinging his fist towards the face of the innocent and unsuspecting Lerma with all his might. Hearts sank as our brave hero collapsed to the floor, his very life hanging in the balance. All this while the evil Chalobah peered menacingly over him with evil intent in his eyes. Even recanting it now is quite emotional for me tbh so apologies if I’m not doing the pure horror of the incident justice. To the relief of all Bournemouth fans (and anybody with a heart or sense of morals come to the point) Jeff rose to his feat, reminiscent of a Titan of war. Not to be defeated by the forces of evil that plagued Dean Court in this dark day. To the amazement of almost everybody watching, the referee decided to to brandish the red card to Chalobah, instead opting for just a yellow. He did however decide to give the free kick to us instead, which was admittedly jolly generous of him but didn’t even come close to making up for the treatment we had to suffer. Fortunately for us the Watford players all seemed to become rather frazzled by the previously mentioned events, as a hopeful long punt from the resulting free kick left their back four napping. Danjuma at an almost impossible angle decided to shoot (because this is what he does) instead of squaring to the well positioned Solanke for a tap in. Fortunately for us, the chap in the Watford goal seemed to momentarily forget that the ‘near post’ was a thing. The miss hit effort from Danjuma almost apologetically squirming into the net at the near post, with ‘not Ben Foster’ making quite an amusingly dramatic attempt to salvage the situation. So the cherries were ahead and more importantly justice had been done!

The latter stages of the game were all about Bournemouth holding firmly to what they had, not offering Watford a lot of space to play in and in truth limiting them to mainly half chances. Sarr on the right had a couple of bright moments but I’ll tell you what, if he’s worth 40m then we underpaid for Jordon Ibe. Unfortunately we had to witness yet more disturbing and heinous scenes, as out of control Watford players threw themselves at brave Jefferson at any given opportunity, clearly with the intent to fatally wound him. This eventually resulted in a red card for some Brazilian guy and it seemed like the fun was over. As it turned out it had only just began, a furious Wilshere could no longer keep his cool and leapt to the defence of his fallen warrior. This resulted in a mass brawl which in all honesty was far more entertaining than ninety percent of what we’ve had to endure this season. The traitor Gosling seemed central in all of this, clearly already brainwashed by the anti AFCB propaganda that is hung up at the Watford training ground. He let himself big time and I imagine will take a long hard look at himself when he has time to reflect. The conclusion of this brawl astonishingly resulted in a second yellow card for Wilshere, when in reality he deserved a medal for bravery and not his marching orders. (It is worth noting that he’d been booked earlier for taking too long to take a throw in, which was only the case because no Bournemouth player wanted the ball.) Fortunately all of these shenanigans distracted from the game somewhat, and we managed to see out the win fairly comfortably as proceedings edged towards the hundredth minute by this point. And so it was, a day that will be remembered down the ages, in which good finally triumphed over evil. In which darkness was outshone by the purity of light and righteousness. Up the fuc*ing cherries!!!

Apologies for the long read. Player ratings to follow
Great report Waz, really appreciate your effort.
A double like from me too for "Not Ben Foster". Absolutely loved it !
 
I thought Pearson was immense today. Got in the way of everything the Pikeys tried to do and then followed it up with a simple pass to get things moving in the right direction. He needs to be in this team from now till we defeat the Watford scum in the play-off final.
Somewhere within Kelly is a really good defender. I'm hoping JW, as a top defender in his time, can bring this out to its full potential.
Today showed how much we have missed Solanke.
 
Good report, good tactics, great performance and result.

Is it me but did Kelly play better because he had someone of pace against him, i.e. because he couldn't count on pace to bail him out he looked to be fully on it.

Midfield were excellent. Nothing to add on Pearson and Lerma, plus I get the L Cook slippers issue, but it was evident today that his job was to mark Hughes out of the game, which meant Hughes simply couldn't get on the ball, in a way Billing,Wilshere or Stan can't.

I hope Joe Jordan will point out how much space is available for the corner goes over everyone to far post.
 
Good report, good tactics, great performance and result.

Is it me but did Kelly play better because he had someone of pace against him, i.e. because he couldn't count on pace to bail him out he looked to be fully on it.

Midfield were excellent. Nothing to add on Pearson and Lerma, plus I get the L Cook slippers issue, but it was evident today that his job was to mark Hughes out of the game, which meant Hughes simply couldn't get on the ball, in a way Billing,Wilshere or Stan can't.

I hope Joe Jordan will point out how much space is available for the corner goes over everyone to far post.
I hadn’t noticed that about L Cook until you pointed it out- it’s the sort of thing that’s harder to pick up from tv. makes complete sense
 
Hi all,

That was a tense game - the xG suggests we were lucky to win it, although doesn't incorporate Stan's air kick, and the big gain in the first half for Watford was due to the Pedro header that Bego might have got to first. It's about time we won a game that maybe we shouldn't have, although I can't be proud of some events.

The key fact that has had scant mention (although a couple have highlighted it) is whether the Ref blundered for our goal. After the kerfuffle, I was thinking we'd need our heads on to defend the free kick - surely Lerma had fouled Chalobah before the skirmish??? If so, we took advantage of the strange decision to break and score. Again the xG may be skewed as if Arnie had squared it for a Solanke tap-in we'd probably have gained about 0.4.

The xGs from other games are interesting reading too, as I suspect most only note the scores for other teams. Stoke seemed better than Brentford, Cardiff created next to nothing, Rotherham better than Reading, and on another day Swansea could have smashed Bristol City - seeing this gives me more hope for Wednesday.

Watford.JPGCapture.JPG
 
Replacing Dan with Pearson seems like brilliant business. He could be the new Harry After we have been missing (the good version of Harry, not the crap one nowadays)
Everyone played well yesterday, hopefully it's a sign to the squad that working hard will bring rewards.
The back 4 were very good but special mention to Kelly, probably his best game for us. We must try and get CCV permanently too, simple uncomplicated and no pissing about
 

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