Tag Archives: Jan3

3rd January 2017- Premier League, Stoke City 2 Watford 0

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Stoke v Watford: Seven defeats from 10 for Hornets with Potters loss

Pressure grows on Walter Mazzarri after Hornets lose at Stoke

Watford boss Walter Mazzarri insists he is not under pressure after latest loss

Hughes: We had better quality

Hornets boss Mazzarri admits he took a gamble on Behrami’s fitness due to emergency

Gomes: We can’t keep our heads down too long

Stoke v Watford ratings: Hornets full of effort but short on quality at Bet365 Stadium

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3rd January 2010- FA Cup Third Round, Chelsea 5 Watford 0

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FA Cup holders Chelsea began the defence of their trophy in style as a vibrant display overwhelmed Watford.

The Blues led as early as the fifth minute, 20-year-old striker Daniel Sturridge staking his claim to fill the void left by African Cup of Nations absentee Didier Drogba by converting from six yards out after the visitors had failed to clear a Frank Lampard corner.

The second goal had a hint of farce but was just reward for Chelsea’s dominance. Joe Cole had volleyed Malouda’s cross into the Watford penalty area and triggered an extraordinary game of pinball. The ball cannoned between Adrian Mariappa, Frank Lampard and Scott Loach before finally bouncing off John Eustace for an own-goal. There was also a slice of luck about Chelsea’s third goal when Yuri Zhirkov’s shot deflected off Malouda and beyond Loach. But then Lampard scored a cracker from outside the penalty area and Sturridge calmly converted Ashley Cole’s cross for his second to seal an emphatic win.

The home side conjured 10 corners in the opening half-hour, and three goals within the first 22 minutes. Watford were spikier thereafter, but, by then, they could play with the freedom of a condemned side. Their defending hardly improved at any point.

Whilst it’s easy enough to be smart with the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to remember a Watford squad as ill-equipped to handle a match like this. That’s not a comment intended to downplay the very great achievements of the squad this season… but any recipe for a cup upset against any senior opposition (let alone the league leaders) really does demand a bit of physical presence and a bit of pace, and we have neither – quite apart from the superior quality, each Chelsea player was a good three inches and half a stone bigger than their opposite number. Our biggest asset (minus the sorely missed Helguson) is the movement and interplay of our midfield, but Chelsea are far more used to this sort of thing than our regular opponents and more adept at dealing with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9310_FA_Cup

3rd January 2009- FA Cup Third Round, Watford 1 Scunthorpe United 0

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Grzegorz Rasiak’s second half goal sent championship side Watford into the fourth round of the FA Cup at the expense of League One Scunthorpe.

We’ve seen some awful cup performances in recent years (in stark contrast to one era in our history in particular).  But this was a particularly disconcerting flavour of awful.  Lots of possession, very little penetration, an incomprehensible retraction back to a lone striker once we got ahead… it all felt a bit Vialli again somehow.

‘The band and the goal, that was all that was worth seeing’ I heard a bloke on the way out say and he was right. Still, its nice to be in the next round.

More games from 3rd January at https://oldwatford.com/tag/jan3

3rd January 2004- FA Cup Third Round, Watford 2 Chelsea 2

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Watford produced an outstanding display to secure a lucrative FA Cup third round replay at Chelsea.

Rich pickings for Watford

Desailly left chasing shadows as Hornets provide the sting

Sunday Telegraph, 4 Jan 2004
Independent, 5 Jan 2004
Evening Standard, 5 Jan 2004

This was astonishing. I mean, it was many things, and you can find a convenient list under “magnificent” in your thesaurus. But it was astonishing, first and foremost. There will be some comments about how the performance throws the rest of our under-achieving season into sharp relief, but they’ll miss the point. The point being that we could not possibly have expected eleven players to over-achieve in such an extraordinary manner. Not to that extent. Not for that long. Way beyond “spirited”, this was a brief and tenuous, but very real, bridging of that impossible gulf. It happened. Even more remarkably, it happened for ninety minutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003%E2%80%9304_FA_Cup