Category Archives: Ray Lewington

28th December 2004- Championship, Watford 0 Cardiff City 0

Watford’s winless run continued as they were held to a draw at Vicarage Road by relegation-threatened Cardiff.

It only takes a second to score a goal. True, apparently. It takes an absolutely enormous number of seconds not to score a goal. Also true, from immediate personal experience.

https://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=2004-12-28

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-championship/28-december-2004/

11th December 2004-Championship, Watford 1 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1

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4th December 2004- Championship, Watford 0 Stoke City 1

Perhaps the true measure of the strength of any club’s youth set-up is how many players progress to professional status, whether at their own club or elsewhere. Just as Ray Lewington’s fledglings have been getting attention for helping Watford reach the semi-finals of the Carling Cup, it was old boy Gifton Noel-Williams who undid them with the only goal of this game.

Given that we had to play a fixture on the Saturday after the cup heroics, I don’t know who I’d have rather we faced. A weak, but attacking side, short on confidence, short on aerial ability, yet suicidally adventurous when in the lead. There’s not many of them about. Those are not, er, typical characteristics of sides in this division; more to the point, they are completely the reverse of how Stoke play. And they have Gifton Noel-Williams, a former player and thus guaranteed to play well against us. So it was easy to be negative about this game, with the likelihood of a Lord Mayor’s After Party very slim, and the home support mainly concerned with singing about future trips to Anfield or even farther away. It’s rarely a chore, though, watching this Watford team, and it took a long time to rule out the possibility of another great result in this most gratifying of seasons to be supporting them.

http://watford.fcdb.info?s=41418&id=4634

30th November 2004- League Cup Quarter Final, Watford 3 Portsmouth 0

BBC Sport

Portsmouth’s traumatic week sunk to new depths as they were knocked out of the Carling Cup by Watford.

Mirror, 1 Dec 2004

Evening Standard, 1 Dec 2004

guardian

Watford would seem to specialise in compounding the problems of troubled south-coast clubs, but Portsmouth’s first-team coach Kevin Bond did not bemoan the impact of Harry Redknapp’s departure as manager last week.

BSAD image

Three BSAD reports including…Despite recent events, Portsmouth are a much better side than the last round’s victims, and this success required the intense, concentrated implementation of a well-prepared gameplan. Required it, got it…and weagain, astonishingly and spectacularly, arrived at the point where we’d put the game out of reach with half an hour remaining.

http://watford.fcdb.info?s=40850&id=4633

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More games from 30th November at https://oldwatford.com/tag/nov30

https://oldwatford.com/2010/03/16/16th-march-2010-championship-watford-2-ipswich-town-1/

20th November 2004- Championship, Watford 0 Rotherham United 0

Your glass is definitely either half-empty or half-full at the moment if you are a Watford fan, depending on your point of view.

We really ought to have won it, obviously, yet never quite did enough to turn theory into fact. Not the first time and probably not the last either, and it says much about the division that we can make a habit of such indecision while comfortably maintaining a position just below the playoffs. When we take our chances, we’re capable of being a frightening side; much more often, we’re poised on the brink, unable to make the leap. That’s all right, mind: such potential, even unrealised, is a great and unexpected improvement after recent struggles. People booed this, but they’re the people who’d do the same even if we’d hit the woodwork seventeen times, had nine realistic penalty appeals refused, three perfectly good goals disallowed, forced the keeper into an endless series of miracles, and had a shot cleared from a yard over the line. With nine men. In this instance, we were some way short of that, clearly. Some way short of previous seasons’ atrocities too, though.

http://watford.fcdb.info?s=39599&id=4630

https://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=2004-11-20

https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-championship/20-november-2004/

6th November 2004-Championship, Watford 2 Derby County 2

BSAD report:I don’t know how many words there are in Icelandic for goal, but there must be quite a few for determination.

BSAD report:Unfortunately, my battle to scribble notes in a straight line in the rapidly failing light meant that I was looking down at my pad when Derby scored the equaliser, so I can’t tell you how it happened, except that it was, I think, Ian Taylor, from a rebound.

BSAD report: The man next to me by Richard Scrimshaw

report by a Derby fan

http://watford.fcdb.info?s=36348&id=4627

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