No answers but what was the question?

Watford 1 Gillingham 2

Perhaps Gillingham’s decision to dress like Chelsea unsettled the Hornets? Photo by Getty Images.

On the walk away from Vicarage Road on Tuesday night I overheard someone say: ‘I really thought we had a chance of beating Arsenal on Saturday but I don’t after that.’

It was a strange comment because the ‘Watford’ that lost 2-1 to a spirited but limited Gillingham team in the excitingly-rebranded EFL Cup is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the ‘Watford’ that will take the field against the Gunners on Saturday.

And yet it was an entirely understandable response because, stripped of its context, a defeat against a League One side that had been thumped 5-0 by Scunthorpe just a few days before does little for morale. The fact that Walter Mazzarri made nine changes to the team that had performed well, albeit without getting a point, against Chelsea gets somewhat lost amid the recriminations.

The day after Watford’s customary defeat in the early rounds of the League Cup should henceforth be known as St Littlewoods’ Day, (or St Rumbelows’ Day, or take your pick from the competition’s sponsors over the years). It should be declared a public holiday in south-west Hertfordshire, so that those who have sat through the previous evening’s 90 (or more likely 120) minutes of misery can do something enjoyable to get over the trauma.

And there should also be a local by-law barring any football-related discussion, in person or on social media, so that knee-jerk reactions to the performance or the result – such as sacking the head coach if the next three games don’t show an improvement, or clearing out the entire squad – can be avoided.

Anyone breaking the by-law should be forced to watch, back-to-back re-runs of all the worst League Cup ties from the past 20 years. There’s plenty of them:

1996 Cambridge at home, drew 1-1, lost on aggregate
2000 Notts County at home, lost 0-2, sneaked through on away goals
2002 Luton at home, lost 1-2
2003 Bristol City away, lost 0-1
2006 Accrington Stanley at home, 0-0, won on penalties
2008 Darlington at home, won 2-1 in extra time
2010 Notts County at home, lost 1-2
2011 Bristol Rovers away, 1-1, lost on penalties
2012 Bradford City at home, lost 1-2
2014 Doncaster Rovers at home, lost 1-2
2015 Preston North End away, lost 0-1

There’s a pattern here… It’s almost as if Tuesday’s result wasn’t a surprise after all…

Having lost count of the number of times I’ve resolved not to bother with the League Cup until the clocks go back, and having sat through most of the drivel served up in the matches listed above, I have no one but myself to blame.

It was the lure of seeing some new faces and the chance to reassess those who have been out of favour, lulled into the belief that they have been out of the team for reasons other than not being good enough.

And so we watched a collection of individuals chucked together for one night only perform like a group of strangers and wonder what on earth is going wrong behind the scenes.

The players who are held up by some as the cause of all ills carry the can again and perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Mazzarri, like Quique before him, was simply using the match to see who could do it on a flat Tuesday night against Gillingham before deciding whether they’re worth taking any further.

After all, following the 1-0 defeat against Preston last August, Matej Vydra, Fernando Forestieri, Gabriele Angella and Miguel Layún all left shortly afterwards having been deemed not good enough. I suspect, had it been left to the supporters, Miguel Britos, who was sent-off on his debut, would have joined them, but he returned to the team in the autumn and was one of the most impressive and consistent performers.

The point is, the match told us very little of consequence about Mazzarri or the players, it simply ended one of the only two realistic chances of seeing the Hornets win a major trophy this season and perhaps ended one or two Watford careers.

But greater significance is placed on the result and performance of a second-string team than perhaps should be.

There’s a growing murmur that the players aren’t fit enough – the first caller on Tuesday night’s phone-in to Talksport was a Watford fan who made precisely that point – and that the captain returned as much as a stone overweight (if WDSport’s unnamed source is to be believed).

On the face of it, that sounds as plausible a reason as any. How else do you explain throwing away the lead in three consecutive matches?

But we don’t know because there isn’t an energy bar displayed on the big screen showing us how fit the players are or how fit they should be. How should we be measuring the players’ fitness? All we have at our disposal are our own eyes and a sense of perception.

If Deeney is overweight, then we must assume that the issue is being dealt with and that the head coach and fitness staff are relatively unconcerned, but we don’t know for sure.

The frustration comes in the quest for The Answer, one easily-understood reason to explain the team’s deficiencies and so we scour a match like Tuesday night’s for clues.

At half-time in extra-time, with the Hornets trailing, I watched as Mazzarri looked agitated to the point of combustion beckoning the players to huddle up quickly as they ambled over casually. Odion Ighalo didn’t appear to listen to any of the instructions, hanging back from the huddle and taking a swig of drink. Taken in isolation that could be perceived as a sign that Mazzarri does not have the attention of the players but that would be a dangerous assumption to make.

After the match, Abdoulaye Doucouré revealed that Mazzarri did not speak to the players in the dressing room. Taken in isolation this could be perceived as a breakdown in relations already, but it could just as likely be that Mazzarri prefers not to blow his top in the heat of the moment but make his points when the dust has settled. We don’t know.

But one thing we do know is that we will walk back to Vicarage Road on Saturday full of renewed hope, excited that Pereyra or Janmaat or even Kaboul might be The Answer and Tuesday’s dismal offering will be forgotten for the irrelevance it largely was.

LB

THE NEXT BLOG… will be posted on Monday and will focus on how Watford piled the misery on hapless Arsene Wenger.

Tales from the Vicarage is a series of books about Watford FC. Find out more here.