Vata glorious way to secure a rare victory on Boxing Day
Never mind two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree – on the second day of Christmas, Watford gave to us limbs. Mad, mad limbs.
Any win is great but getting the winner five minutes into stoppage time having been a goal down at half-time provokes the sort of jubilant, chaotic, quite brilliant scenes that enveloped every corner of Vicarage Road bar one – from where chants of ‘is there a fire drill?’ as some home supporters left early were still echoing when Rocco Vata poked the ball home.
It was a magnificent end to a game that hadn’t been much of a spectacle at all, not helped largely by Portsmouth’s attempts to spoil, slow down and ultimately stop anything Watford tried.
While perhaps understandable, given their league position and the fact they were in front, they were tactics that ultimately played a part in their downfall.
A goal up and buoyed by some of the noisiest away fans for a while, Pompey looked able to add another as once again Watford were caught cold early on.
For those old enough to remember the days before fuel-injected cars, watching Watford is too often like trying to start a cold car without pulling the choke out.
They take far too long to warm up, and in the meantime the game doesn’t stop from happening around them.
It’s something that has to be improved upon, because the Hornets simply cannot repeatedly dig themselves out of holes created by them taking upwards of 30 minutes, and often a whole first half, to click into gear.
They had carved out a very good chance early on.
Daniel Jebbison was given only his third start, perhaps understandably in a home game against a team near the bottom in a period where player rotation becomes a necessity.
The striker gave his best performance for Watford to date, albeit having set the bar pretty low with what he had shown before yesterday.
And when he stole the ball in the centre circle, cleverly nodded it forward and then accelerated away from two Portsmouth defenders, it looked like he would give Watford the early lead they craved and boost his own confidence at the same time.
Confidence was the key though – or lack of it. Jebbison did all the preparation extremely well but, having got to the edge of the D, chose to shoot early and keeper Nicolas Schmid made a fairly routine save.
Would an in-form striker, brimming with confidence, simply continue into the area and either taken a shot from nearer or even gone round the keeper?
Either way, it was a chance missed, but on the whole Jebbison did look more like the player described in the summer – certainly something to work with.
The miss was felt even more in the 10th minute when James Morris, who had a pretty uncomfortable first half on the left of the back three, was caught in two minds as Jacob Murphy’s cross came in from the flank.
Control it? Clear it? Morris did a bit of both, and the ball ran loose whereupon Zak Swanson took his chance with a well-controlled volley across goal and inside the far post.
The goal rocked Watford back, and clearly put wind into the visitors’ sails.
The ‘play up Pompey’ song boomed out of the away corner, and had they probed and pushed a bit more they may have found there was another goal there for them.
Instead, even at a very early stage, there were signs of timewasting, a bit of needle and a generally more negative approach than the situation merited.
Watford had a lot of the ball and created not much. They found Pompey’s high and energetic press tricky to play through, and when they did counter-attack the visitors made life uncomfortable.
However, preservation of what they had rather than overtly attempting to add to it was the path Pompey chose, and that led to a one-way second half.
Watford had 72% of the ball after half-time, and made nearly four times as many successful passes as the visitors.
The Hornets had 36 touches of the ball in their opponents’ box overall, higher than when they scored six at Sheffield Wednesday and a figure bettered only once this season (38 at home to Coventry).
What they needed was a breakthrough, and it came – but not without a dollop of controversy.
Kwadwo Baah had been a threat all afternoon, and throughout the first half his forays down the right led him to be running directly at the visiting fans.
They, in turn, directed a mixture of chants and comments in his direction. That’s football. It happens. Sadly it led to a moment of madness from Baah after the game, but more of that later.
Baah was given the ball in the 57th minute and had the chance to run directly at Freddie Potts.
As Baah surged towards the area, Potts lunged in. There was little doubt the latter brought down the former, and it was obvious to the naked eye that Baah fell in the box.
Referee Mr Eltringham below his whistle, but didn’t award either a free-kick or a penalty. Instead, he moved towards his assistant while players from both sides attempted to share their opinions with him.
It seemed to take an age before the penalty was awarded, during which time the media had the luxury of seeing the challenge from a few angles.
Was it a foul? Yes. Where was Potts when he made contact? Pretty much on the line of the box. Where was Baah? On his way into the box, in mid-air when Potts made contact and inside the box when he landed.
It was one of those you’d demand for your own team, and feel miffed if it was given against you.
The delay, it turned out, was because the communications equipment had faltered which meant the two officials had to speak directly in order to reach their conclusion.
The only person not bothered by it all was Edo Kayembe, whose penalty was confident, firm and straight into the top corner.
However, the midfielder then tried to wrestle the ball from keeper Schmid, who had picked it up out of the net and wasn’t in a hurry to let it go.
That led to another melee, during which there was plenty of pushing and shoving with Pompey boss John Mousinho claiming punches were thrown by Watford players.
There are no replays to confirm or deny that – if there were, then the Hornets were fortunate.
However, by holding onto the ball, Schmid knew what he was doing, and the Watford players foolishly reacted to his provocation.
With the momentum Watford looked the team most likely to go on and win the game, but as chances came and went, the prospect looked increasingly unlikely.
Schmid made a top-class save to palm away a curling effort from Baah, and then the keeper got the slightest of touches to Ryan Andrews’ driven cross, changing the path of the ball enough that it appeared to run between the feet of the incoming Jebbison.
It looked a bad miss, but that touch from Schmid made the difference. However, had Jebbison already got a dozen for the season you feel it would probably have hit him on the ankle and shot in the net.
Pompey threatened to nick it against the run of play when Bachmann stretched to push away Owen Moxon’s goalbound toe-poke and the ball looked set to run for Paddy Lane.
Andrews stepped across and managed to get his body between Lane and the ball, a challenge Mousinho would later claim warranted a penalty.
Having looked at the replays, a spot kick there would have been even more harsh than the one his team conceded.
Indeed, none of the nearby Pompey players, including Lane, appear to appeal for anything more than a corner.
Time was running out, and the five minutes of stoppage time Mr Eltringham indicated felt low, given the breaks in play for the penalty decision, various fouls, treatment to injuries and substitutions.
Who remembers the start of the 23/24 season, when such an afternoon would probably have seen stoppage time in double-figures?!
Most of those five minutes had elapsed when Bachmann sent a long pass downfield and sheer bloody-mindedness from Mattie Pollock saw him somehow manage to glance the ball forward into the path of Vakoun Bayo.
As the striker controlled the ball on his chest, fellow substitute Moussa Sissoko made a run towards the Pompey box and pointed where he wanted a pass placed.
Bayo lobbed it where Sissoko indicated, and as he tussled with Ryley Towler, the ball ran away from them both and the advancing Schmid palmed it out.
There were more black shirts than yellow as the ball ran loose, but the one that reacted quickest was worn by Vata.
That sort of predatory, ‘Johnny on the spot’ instinct isn’t something that can be coached into players – Vata clearly moves naturally in the moment.
He poked the ball through the crowd and into the net – cue those mad limbs, with all the players on the pitch, and many in the dug-out bundling into fans at the front of both the Sir Elton John and Rookery Stands.
It’s those moments that make football fandom the great thing it is. Replays even show Imran Louza putting on a pair of glasses that must have fallen off a fan.
A tremendous feeling – and even press box etiquette was momentarily dispensed with as this correspondent realised he was on his feet, arms outstretched, bellowing ‘yeeees’, but wasn’t actually in the Rookery maelstrom but surrounded by fellow scribes.
A touch of festive indulgence, which was hopefully understandable.
While mentioning Louza, it needs to be said what an epic performance the Moroccan midfielder gave.
A year ago he was about to be loaned to Lorient in France, with a permanent departure in the summer seemingly likely.
Twelve months on, and Louza is in a patch of imperious form.
He plays with a confidence and self-belief which pervades through his teammates when he is on the ball – seeing Louza in possession gives a feeling that everything is good in the world, the ball is safe and something positive is about to happen.
Unless he goes off the boil, surely the question for now is who partners Louza in the centre of the park. His form in recent weeks has been that good.
Let’s now look at what happened after the final whistle…
Baah is young, he’s feisty, he’s confident and yesterday he was a footballer who had just been part of a team that had scored a last-gasp winner.
The whistle blows, and clearly he remembers that the away fans had been taunting him.
At that point, he would have been well advised to let the scoreboard do the talking for him. Instead, he took the wrong path and ran towards the Pompey fans, making hand signals (that weren’t offensive) and doing a dance.
Was it funny? Yes. But it wasn’t clever either, and it drew the sort of reaction one might expect from the Pompey fans and players.
The way to judge such things is to ask, had that been an opponent doing the same thing in front of Watford fans, would they and the players have been equally angry?
We would be conning ourselves if we didn’t answer yes to that question.
Baah tried to play the part of a jester, and ended up looking a fool.
There will be far, far worse crimes committed on the pitch (the second-half foul on Pollock that only resulted in a yellow card being a prime example), but there could be no arguments with the yellow card in Baah’s direction.
An avoidable action, a stupid mistake, a one-game ban as a result, and hopefully a lesson learned (in the same way that those of a certain age learned that Baah wasn’t randomly jigging and was, in fact, performing the ‘Take the L’ Fortnite dance, apparently).
It was no surprise that Mousinho was hacked off when he spoke to the press, though suggesting had Baah been one of his players he might never have picked him again was well over the top.
It was a classic case of being prepared to take a bit of what you dish out.
Pompey, in their own way, riled the home fans and players with their timewasting, fouls and overall approach to a game that, had they been more expansive, might have earned them a point or more.
Had they got that point, it’s unlikely Mousinho would have been telling the press he regretted the tactics.
It was an unsavoury ending to a game that got better the longer it went on, and which once again showcased the spirit, unity and desire Cleverley has engendered within a group of players who are surpassing all reasonable expectations.
The victory lifted Watford back into the top six and with the luxury of a game in hand which, should it bear three points, could open a gap wider than a win between them and the teams outside the play-off places.
Boxing Day has traditionally been the time for giving where Watford are concerned. Yesterday was only the fifth win in the last 20 years on December 26.
A year ago, we were picking through the bones of a 4-1 home defeat to Bristol City while also picking over the Christmas Day dinner leftovers.
With one more game to go in 2024, it has been a year that started low and is ending high, and for that we largely have Cleverley and his progressive thinking, man-management and passion for the club to thank.
There is every chance Watford could head into 2025 in a play-off position.
And then, what happens in January off the pitch will undoubtedly have a huge say in whether they stay there.
