Dave's take on firing blanks...
Resident Clarets Mad match summariser Dave Thornley suggests Watford are not a football club that is easy to warm to. They seem to exist perpetually on the fringes: geographically on the fringes of London, and in footballing terms, on the fringes of Premier League security without ever being able to lock it down.
In pursuit of this security of Premier League tenure, they adopt a policy of a constant churn of management appointments, reducing the image of the club to little more than a punch line. The constant revolving door to the manager’s suite ultimately proves unsuccessful, due to the fact that none are given the time required to bring any sort of success.
Where Burnley cherish consistency and continuity, Watford prefer turmoil and confusion. The latest incumbent of the managerial ejector seat at Vicarage Road is the former manager of England, and just about everywhere else. Roy Hodgson whose world-weary, lived-in visage graced the Turf Moor technical area for yesterday evening’s much delayed and twice postponed Premier League relegation six pointer.
With reduced ticket prices on offer, a home fan-base starved of recent action, a crucial and perhaps pivotal fixture and a new signing to inspect, Burnley fans turned up in great numbers despite appalling weather, desperate to play their part in urging their team on to ***** victory. It is with great sadness therefore that I must report that the team failed to respond and what ultimately transpired was a miserable match played in miserable conditions.
Burnley were able to call once again on the services of Maxwel Cornet following his return from international duty for the Ivory Coast and also gave a debut to Dutch striker Wout Weghorst. Weghorst will, I’m sure, go on to score many goals for Burnley, but he is unlikely to recall his debut with much fondness. He had two presentable shooting chances; the first looped high off a defender’s boot and dropped onto the crossbar and the second he sliced badly after a surging run from James Tarkowski had set the chance up.
As for Cornet, he drew two sharp saves out of Watford keeper Ben Foster, but, like Weghorst, suffered from a lamentable absence of service from the wings and from the central midfield pairing of Dale Stephens and Ashley Westwood, who are unlikely to draw any serious comparisons with Spain’s Xavi and Iniesta as a creative force.
As for Watford, they almost scored from a goalmouth scramble, when no fewer than three Burnley defenders came within a whisker of nudging the ball over the goal line; and on the stroke of half- time, they appealed vociferously for a penalty as the ball struck Conor Roberts’ arm. By the time VAR had concluded that there was no case to answer, Burnley’s players had dispersed to the warmth of the dressing room. And that, save for a late Jay Rodriguez header which went narrowly wide, was just about that.
So, Burnley failed to secure the win that would have lifted themselves out of the bottom three and continues the distressing sequence of failing to win against the teams around them in the table. Any escape route out of their current predicament that Sean Dyche may have plotted will have been contingent upon Burnley picking up three points from Saturday night’s fixture. That they failed to do so has made an already difficult task a whole lot much harder.
Relegation now looms large for Burnley Football Club; Clarets fans have come to expect they receive no special favours from the EPL. Next up are Rangnick’s Manchester United as the revised fixtures come thick and fast.
Now is the perfect time to invoke the spirit of Robbie Blake; Sean Dyche needs to somehow invoke a bit of Robbie’s mercurial talent into a team of players that are continually and depressingly firing blanks. We live in hope.
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