By Red Army
November 1 2020

  A fantastic strike from skipper Alex Mowatt secured all three points for the reds against a Watford team recently relegated from the Premier League that cost more than £100 million to assemble.

Whilst Watford dominated possession I felt that they didn’t really create much. In fact I don’t recall either keeper making any saves of note.

There was a bit of last ditch defending on our part a few times. They seemed to have a lot of joy between our left sided centre back and left wing back.

Andersen had a poor game for me, especially given his recent form, but I will take that type of poor game from him as opposed to what we became accustomed to in the first half of last season.

Odour struggled defensively when he came on. The commentator felt he did a lot better than Tuesday night. I disagree. Despite a troubled start on Tuesday, he got better as the half went on and was coping well by the end and for me unlucky to be taken off. Yesterday I felt he struggled throughout. He is clearly a talented player, when he first came in to the team he seemed as good defensively as going forward. At the moment he seems to be struggling defensively. I think it’s a confidence thing caused by Struber taking him off at half time at after 20 minutes in games last season.

Walton did well getting down to a few low crosses that could have been dangerous and I felt the other two centre halves were solid. Brittain again looked good before his injury and Styles looks good wherever he plays. Even though he should be in central midfield.

Chances were at a premium for both teams. Watford should have scored from a header from a corner and Miller should have done better with the chance he had and should have also attacked that ball in to the box when he just stood there and let the defender head out for a corner.

Despite that, I think he looked better than Schmidt and at least held the ball up a few times. I thought the front three were all pretty poor really but I suppose the service wasn’t there with Watford having a lot of the ball.

Despite the domination in possession I still felt Mowatt and James played well in midfield and despite being outnumbered for the most part they had periods when they were the dominant force in that area.

I’m not usually one for stats as I like to just watch the game and form an opinion of what I have seen but I found this one interesting:

Barnsley forced Watford into losing possession 216 times (2.29 times per minute).

That just shows the effort and intensity that we have to play at to get results against these teams. It could also be a reason we are seeing a lot of injuries at the moment.

We couldn’t have asked for a better start under the new gaffer and I honestly believe we have more than enough in this squad to stay out of a relegation battle this season.