Line-Ups

Referee: M. Messias [W Yorkshire]
Assistant Referees: 
4th Official: 

Attendance: 16802

Match Round-Up: {Below}

Stats:

Possession: Watford 52%, Burnley 48%

Goal attempts: Watford 11, Burnley 10 [5 and 8 on target]

Offsides: Watford 1, Burnley 4

Corners: Watford 7, Burnley 4

Fouls: Watford 15, Burnley 10

Steve Cotterill's Post Match Comments:

‘We don’t know about Brian Jensen’s condition at the moment. It’s a neck or throat injury but we’re absolutely gutted. It came at a bad time in the game for us as well. There were three players out there making their League debuts today and they have something to be proud of.’

A Match Report and View from TMP

The pre-match euphoria in the Pub was soon turning to despair in the Ground when we realised the extent of the injuries and the team selection. We however started off brightly and looked like we were at least holding Watford before their first goal on 11 minutes.

To Burnley’s credit, they kept their heads high and were rewarded for their pressure with a penalty when Foster brought down Ade. Most of us felt that the goalie should walk or at least be given a yellow card. The ref having a bad one ignored all our chanting of ‘Off!’ and didn’t even seem to give him a talking too. At least Garreth O’C neatly put away the penalty to make it 1:1 on 16 minutes.

Already with players trying to cope with positions that were not their usual ones, the situation was made even worse when Sinclair pulled up with his dodgy hamstring again and had to be replaced by Lafferty! Yes, Lafferty, a FORWARD! This seemed to rock what little momentum we had after getting the equaliser and five minutes later we found ourselves 2:1 down when Mahon got a lucky deflection that beat the Beast on 30 minutes. 2:1 down at half-time and not a bad performance from a team decimated with injuries, with a young kid, Bermingham making his debut and playing out of position and with one of the strangest defences I have seen for sometime.

The second half events were dominated by the Beast incident but until that point I thought that if anybody was going to score it would be Burnley. Enough has been said about the rights and wrongs of a referee letting the game continue with our goalie in a potentially serious and life threatening situation and whether Watford should have done the decent thing and put the ball out so he could get attention.

It seemed an eternity between Jensen going down hurt and Watford scoring;  I would say at least 45-60 seconds.

However the game did continue and Spring scored their 3^rd on 83 minutes. The final score of 3:1 flattered to deceive in my opinion and although Burnley were struggling in a number of departments for obvious reasons, they played with spirit with Hyde as usual being a commanding figure with McCann and Lafferty again showing promise.

My thinking at the moment is that if we could have fielded the team which played against Coventry the result would have been very different, but clearly Steve Cotterill has some work to do by the end of August to get some new faces on board. I fear he has left this too late and somebody needs to carry the blame for the ridiculous situation we find ourselves in with a pathetic squad decimated by injuries and already having lost 9 points out of 12! A team that could play consistently like they did against Coventry with adequate squad numbers to cover for injuries I believe could finish in Top 10. I also fear if the current situation doesn’t significantly improve in the next 10 days we could be keeping a close eye on the relegation spots!

Other Full Time Scores:

View a Printer Friendly version of this Story.

Bookmark or share this story with:

• Digg
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon