30th August 2014- Championship, Watford 4 Huddersfield Town 2 Leave a Reply Beppe Sannino’s final programme notes. http://watford.fcdb.info?id=5126 Championship side Watford scored twice after being reduced to 10 men to secure a 4-2 win against Huddersfield. Keith Andrews headed in a corner after Gabriel Tamas’s 65th minute sending off and Almen Abdi curled in a late right-footed strike to secure the points. Watford-4-2-Huddersfield-Town-BBC-SportDownload There had been questions before the game, more were raised during the ninety-plus minutes and we’ll get to those, I suppose. But for the moment revel again in that fabulous final half hour or so, which in the manner of a cup-tie blew away all concerns, quibbles, tactics, formations. Primal, ferocious and utterly captivating entertainment. Who could fail to be carried away by it? While I’ve been writing this report, the news of Beppe Sannino’s departure has broken. In my few encounters with Beppe, I found him a very engaging man, but I hadn’t always been a fan of the way his teams played. There were a lot of dreadful performances last season and the last encounter with Huddersfield was certainly one in which you felt that the players had no respect for the manager. That was also my impression at the end of season dinner. When Beppe took the stage to make his speech, there was little warmth or respect emanating from the tables of players who were just next to us. I was amazed that he was still in charge at the start of the season. The fact that he has now left suggests that the Pozzos have found his replacement. Someone described the contrast of the Zola and Sannino reigns as being from a holiday camp to a boot camp. I hope that the new manager is somewhere in the middle. We have a huge amount of talent in this team, with some organization and discipline we could be unbeatable. Share this:TwitterFacebook
29th September 2009- Championship, Watford 2 Coventry City 3 Leave a Reply http://watford.fcdb.info?id=4879 Coventry striker Leon Best scored twice late on to help his side stage a stirring comeback and beat Watford. This was, of course, what we were always at risk of with our thin and inexperienced squad. The continued absences of Helguson, Demerit and (effectively) Severin deprive us of experience where we have little to spare; the additional absences of Ellington, Jenkins, Cathcart and (ultimately) Hodson left us looking very sparse indeed. But it’s lack of nous that’s the issue really… there’s no way that points should have been dropped from half time onwards against a lamentable Coventry City side. Share this:TwitterFacebook
25th September 2004- Championship, Watford 0 Reading 1 Leave a Reply If we were somewhat flattered on Tuesday, we were plainly insulted on this occasion. The weather was strange. It didn’t know whether it wanted to rain or not. On fourteen minutes, Mr Webber didn’t know whether he wanted to score or not, and throughout the match we never seemed to grasp whether we were playing at home or not. http://watford.fcdb.info?id=4618 Share this:TwitterFacebook
27th November 1999- Premier League, Watford 2 Sunderland 3 Leave a Reply A late winner from midfielder Gavin McCann moved Sunderland back into the Premiership top three after lowly Watford threatened an upset in a controversial five-goal thriller at Vicarage Road. The distance between where we want to be – and Sunderland spent most of the game sending us “WISH YOU WERE HERE” postcards – and where we actually are is huge and getting no smaller. There’s plenty of fight still, the need to overcome our limitations growing more urgent by the week. We’ve not going to give up, that much is clear. And, with things remaining tight as others continue to struggle just as badly, we’ve no reason to give up. We were also honoured with Sir EJ’s first visit of the season. Just goes to show, folks, money can never buy you everything – not freedom nor the flexibility to spare the odd ninety minutes. We started like we’d all known we needed to – and finally got the rewards that Coventry and bad refereeing had denied us in previous games. Ah, bad refereeing…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. http://watford.fcdb.info?s=40802&id=4378 https://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=1999-11-27 https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/premier-league/27-november-1999/ Share this:TwitterFacebook
1st January 1992- Division Two, Watford 0 Tranmere Rovers 0 Leave a Reply https://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=1992-01-01 https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-division-two/01-january-1992/ Share this:TwitterFacebook
9th November 1985- Division One, Watford 1 Aston Villa 1 Leave a Reply http://watford.fcdb.info?s=36899&id=3628 Share this:TwitterFacebook