Tag: Lenny Pidgeley

14th January 2004- FA Cup Third Round Replay, Chelsea 4 Watford 0

Chelsea brushed aside Watford to book a fourth round tie with Scarborough.

The Watford manager Ray Lewington wished Scarborough good luck in a tone of comic pity, yet his own side took credit for the vim shown despite the unavailability of their injured forward Heidar Helguson. The Icelander was rumbustious in the 2-2 draw at Vicarage Road that had slotted into a sequence of troubled games for Chelsea.

This should be no surprise. After all, it’s what everyone expected to happen, what was tacitly being written into the history books before the game kicked off. The surprise was the draw in the first game, a game we might even have won… and the enormity of that achievement was only underlined by the degree to which we were ultimately outclassed in this replay.

https://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=2004-01-14

18th October 2003- New Division One, Watford 1 Bradford City 0

Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth goal of the season gave Watford a deserved victory against their fellow Division One strugglers. The Hornets dominated but had to wait until the 61st minute for the breakthrough when Fitzgerald converted Micah Hyde’s cross.

It would be very easy indeed to get carried away by this most comprehensive of victories. We shouldn’t, for it is impossible to escape the fact that Bradford were utter drivel, barely bothering to turn up for a match that quickly became almost farcical. Before kickoff, you looked over to the Vic Road end to pick out a few meagre handfuls of away supporters, clustered like flea-bitten regulars around the bar of a particularly dingy, long-forgotten backstreet pub. After kickoff, you realised that travelling hundreds of miles to watch such a sorry bunch might not come top of your things-to-do list either. They were simply dreadful.