The ACN Match Review – Watford (a)

The atmosphere

“I wasn’t at the game today Neil…” because I watched it in the pub. The atmosphere within was one of bemused surprise to be two goals up early on, without a hint of conviction in the celebrations. The Watford fans starting to boo their own team was audible via the TV coverage and yet roughly 15 minutes later the scores were level.

The line-up

An unchanged line up in the hope that David Wagner could keep papering over those San Andreas Fault-sized cracks. The early Batth (early bath – hoho!) goal did little to favour Wagner’s judgement given he seemed to only get into the team as an absolute last resort.

Club hypeman status or not, Hernandez’s inclusion continues to be an indictment of our squad depth, just as it was more than a year ago.

Hurrah moment

Hwang’s pop over the keeper from distance was the high watermark tonight. My celebration was more “oh, that’s nice” as opposed to any belief that three points were already in the bag. At the time, I saw the positive in Ui-Jo’s injury, or “Hwang-string strain” (copyright Cameron Huggett) as I thought the introduction of Ashley Barnes would ensure 70 minutes of shithousing and holding the ball up nicely. But no, I didn’t once come close to saying hurrah for the rest of the game.

Boooo moment

Adam Idah’s substitution didn’t seem to go down well.

Overall, I would offer a continuous hour-long boo for the dire state of the coaching of this team.

Having got ourselves a two-goal lead, we did our familiar, collective shitting of the bed and offered absolutely nothing for the next 60+ minutes. Terrible for 25 minutes before half-time with no upturn or reset after the break. I was just starting to think how getting a draw would be daylight robbery when Watford finally went ahead. I didn’t think Watford were particularly good either – in front of a partially filled stadium of indifferent fans, the game stunk of two teams who are going to be playing each other at this level for some time.

Hero of the match

The cameraman who picked out Attanasio in the crowd to give us some hope that somebody might be watching with the ability to change things for the better.

Our post-match takeaway

Injuries or not, recency bias or not – we continue to look like one of the worst-coached Norwich teams I’ve ever seen. Mentally, tactically, reactively to in-game situations – I struggle to remember worse and I have watched teams with Megson, Hamilton, Roeder, Grant etc in charge. We fully deserved to lose tonight and hopefully now, minds can be focused on making the changes needed sooner rather than later.