Luton Town 3 Watford 0 (19/10/2024)
10/20/2024 07:55 AM
1- It’s 7.15. An early start for something that’s supposed to be “entertainment”, lunchtime kick-off or no. Daughter 2 seems to be asleep when I knock on her door, though the phone whistling innocently next to her on the bed is a bit of a giveaway. Either way and despite the inclement hour for a weekend she is following me out of the door clutching a slice of toast fifteen minutes later.
In one sense, I shouldn’t complain. That the day’s logistics demand ticket collection from Vicarage Road before picking a coach a couple of hours’ later is a colossal pain in the arse of course, based as we are at the northern tip of Bedfordshire but it’s much easier to criticise the decision to acquiesce to the police request that seems to have prompted the resumption of this charade if you’re not the one with the responsibility of making it, or of defending a decision to do otherwise should Something Go Wrong. And of course we didn’t have to come at all, but having done so and sacrificed the many £ and extra hours of driving that the unusual arrangements incurred, being vaguely grouchy about it doesn’t feel overly self-indulgent.
It would have been helpful if it had been possible to run a coach or two from further north. From Milton Keynes Coachway, for instance, where northbound coaches habitually pause to pick up stragglers on their way to games in Yorkshire or Lancashire. It would have saved us and no doubt others a lot of hassle if feasible and bought the club some brownie points… though I guess the police might not have liked that either so again, begrudgingly, I can concede why this concession might not have been possible.
What’s less forgivable altogether, I fear, is failing to respond to either of my emails over the last month enquiring after this option, each sent to two addresses advertised by the club as contact points. To not even bother rattling off a “thank you but regrettably…” fob-off is really very crap indeed. I’m not desperately important in isolation of course but I can only presume the lack of response, the lack of willingness to even pretend to give a damn is typical and smacks of complacency, even contempt for the fanbase when viewed alongside other circumstantial evidence such as the much lamented farcical catering at the stadium. This needs sorting. In the meantime, cut the “thanks for your fantastic support” until you mean it.
2- We’ve pre-booked a driveway near the stadium, off Harwoods Road. By 9.15 we’re on a coach… Daughter 2 rejected the suggestion that she bring something waterproof and is consequently soaked despite having skulked in the Hornet Shop as I trotted down Occupation Road to find our tickets. She also rejected the suggestion of “snacks” as we passed suitable emporia en route, another decision made by a teenager in haste and regretted later. Consequently I leave her on the coach to join the queue at Wenzel’s, stand stock still in the drizzle for ten minutes and then give up and return to the coach empty handed.
Laborious though the charade is, the coaches and police escort works well, the coaches departing in convoys of four of which we’re in the first. Our fellow travellers are more Loose Women than Football Factory and endlessly more entertaining for it; Daughter 2 is even moved to remove her earpods so as to be able to pay better attention (“Oh look Mum, that one’s doing a wanker sign. Hello, dear!”). There’s a brief delay as we enter Luton before a member of the constabulary raps on the front door to speak to the driver. “You’ve never been escorted before? Well, when the coach in front moves you follow. We’ll hold the lights, keep straight because one of us might come up alongside you. Don’t stop for anything”. Daughter 2’s eyes are popping out of her head. “What is this….?”.
She’s never done this or known it of course, the one accessible home encounter in her lifetime limited preparation for an away trip. It’s eighteen years since I was here myself having missed the trip two years ago, a far cry from the too frequent visits in the nineties. But more broadly the reason that football isn’t generally like this any more is because… well, trivially, because it isn’t like this any more. It stops being a thing that feeds itself, people get out of the habit of behaving in quite such an absurd way even if different forms of idiocy take over and so football hooliganism mercifully dies out with its generation (he says, fully aware that he accused other people of complacency further up the piece).
3- Kenilworth Road is quiet as we arrive, which provides a window for Daughter 2 to appraise her surroundings with a disdain that, in all fairness, isn’t reserved for our local rivals. The David Preece stand, trying to force its way into the stadium at the far corner like an unwelcome guest at a pub table, is a particular source of fascination. Kenilworth Road doesn’t feel as if it’s moved on much since 2006; the notorious Bobbers Stand to our left still looks weird, £10m overhaul or otherwise. The closest we get to hooliganism is a bit of banter with the home mascots, one of whom is readier to engage than the other with predictable if affable enough consequences. On the pitch itself, vast volumes of water are pushed off a sodden turf by a small army wielding brooms.
The volume is slow to build, suppressed by the drip feed of bodies as the coaches arrive and by a noisy tannoy system but Robbo’s first appearance back in Watford livery lights a fuse and by the time the players are warming up directly in front of us with Mattie Pollock waving a fist, snarling, and Ken Sema grinning unconsciously in anticipation it’s loud and boisterous. We’ve surely only been able to sell as many tickets as there are seats but the steps between seats are full and braced for the action.
I’m not going to give a detailed blow-by-blow. I doubt that many of you would want to read one in the circumstances. Inevitable perhaps that the early pressure would come from the home side, that we’d be attacking on the break and the early exchanges offer something in terms of encouragement, a decent chance for Chak, a Bayo run that wasn’t found.
But very quickly Luton are putting us under pressure, particularly through set pieces and deep crosses safe in the knowledge that the ball will hold up in the wet turf when overhit allowing the attacking side a second go. When the opener comes it owes something to luck… Holmes’ scuffed shot hits Clark who knows little about it; the deflection helps the shot but come half time the only straw to cling to is that we’re not further behind, still in the game. As an aside, in the build up to the corner that lead to the goal Jordan Clark made a bee-line for Daniel Bachmann and engaged him in conversation… didn’t appear to be aggressive or provocative, just a friendly chat but it looked at the time like a deliberate ploy designed to affect his concentration. Whether it was or it wasn’t it surely had little impact beyond Clark being in a convenient place to deflect a shot that Bachmann consequently couldn’t have reached… but the home side were simply better at this stuff than us, not in a particularly malevolent way (they’re not Southampton, whose comical defeat to Leicester was one of the afternoon’s few silver linings) but enough to influence a weak refereeing performance and to build on the sense that the world was against us.
4- Daughter 2 sulked with a Twix at half time. After a half that had offered little encouragement there was more sulking than defiance in general, the goal having broken the hitherto barrage of noise from the away end resulting in occasional flurries invariably halted by the next Luton attack. Any remaining defiance exited with Carlton Morris’ second for the home side, criminally unattended to dispatch another deep delivery from Doughty at the very start of the half.
There is really no saving grace, no positive spin on the result, the performance or the afternoon. Even the better individual showings were merely slightly less inadequate… Chakvetadze trying to find a gap (if failing too often), Dele-Bashiru giving the ball away frequently, yes, but often through trying to do more than merely get the ball clear, to get us playing football. Elsewhere there was less mitigation.
A central problem, a more general problem away from home, is that the side isn’t equipped to withstand pressure. Vakoun Bayo isn’t completely hopeless, he contributes to our better performances as Tom has been keen to point out, but holding up the ball isn’t a strength to put it mildly. In our last three away games in the League, games in which three different players have started at the apex of the attack, we have been unable to keep the ball up the pitch and have shipped ten goals against sides who hadn’t started the season well. Elijah Adebayo may not have a goal yet this term, but you’d take his ability to use his physicality to protect the ball over our own non-scoring centre-forwards every day of the week. Nor is there enough protection from the midfield for a defence which, Ryan Porteous’ rushes of blood notwithstanding, is at least adequate as a unit, even on a bad day.
There’s no lack of character in the side. Our recent home wins have showcased that resilience. But we were outfought today, bullied by a team much better equipped to employ their physicality productively. We were a soft touch in too many areas of the pitch, and this will continue to be a challenge away from home unless or until we tweak the system, or can change (some of) the personnel. In the meantime the shameless nihilism of the Man City performance seems as good a bet as any. Things could scarcely be worse away from home.
5- In a derby of course that lack of fight is not forgiven, particularly in the context of a heavy defeat. Perhaps if, as Tom implied, we had focused on playing our football we might have achieved a better result without “fighting”, but such a performance would have required a different sort of bravery of which too little was on offer. As Jacob Brown scored a third – a fine goal from his point of view, pathetic from ours – half of the away end left the arena despite having nowhere to go with Oak Road blocked and contained at both ends. The lowest of the days low points came after the final whistle when Tom, Mattie Pollock, Moussa Sissoko and Daniel Bachmann fronted up to a hissing, snarling, furious barrage from the away end. Quite what either party should have done differently isn’t clear… beyond “play better” of course… the players can’t have expected a tolerant reception, perhaps sloping off quietly would have been less problematic, cowardly or otherwise. It felt poisonous, horrible… as ever, you learn most about a head coach’s mettle when they’re up against it, and this will take some coming back from, particularly with a trip to Leeds that we could really have done without in the circumstances on Tuesday evening.
It felt as if the coaches left quite quickly. Maybe I was just in a stupor. Certainly a rare moment of joy was provided by the sight not just of Luton’s highways but also the southbound M1 itself being halted to facilitate the egress of 20+ coaches in convoy. Any time saving here was rapidly offset by the decision to take the convoy down St Albans Road, which takes long enough in a car on a regular Saturday let alone in a massive column of coaches with the consequence that getting into Watford took vastly longer than getting out of Luton. Supporters were disgorged in miserable pockets along the route; by the time we finally reached the stadium a sulky bollard was seen flying across a Vicarage Road pavement, capturing the prevailing mood. As we returned up the stretch of the M1 from J6 to J11 for the fourth time of the day, a vindictive final blow saw us directed back through Luton itself in order to avoid a hold-up and get home in a timely manner. Had I not been on the clock I think I’d have stayed on the motorway and sat it out.
I think the barrage of abuse that Tom got pisses me off as much as the performance, much as the latter surely fed the former. He’s a young manager with a sub-optimal squad and we’ve got to give him space to mess things up.
Not doing Leeds, all power to those who are. See you on Saturday.
Yooorns.
Bachmann 1, Andrews 2, Sema 1, Pollock 2, Ogbonna 2, Porteous 1, Sissoko 2, Dele-Bashiru 2, Kayembe 1, Chakvetadze 2, Bayo 1
Subs: Baah (for Kayembe, 53) 2, Jebbison (for Bayo, 53) 1, Ebosele (for Sema, 65) 2, Vata (for Andrews, 82) NA, Ince (for Dele-Bashiru, 82) NA, Larouci, Morris, Sierralta, Bond
