Forest 2:4 Watford

Unfortunately, as big a case of morning after lethargy as you’re ever likely to see. A continuation of Saturday for the first & last five minutes of the first half but apart from that, absolute garbage.

Five minutes of passing football reverted to plan B, hit long balls in the vain hope Dele ‘makes Grant Holt look good’ Adebola can flick them on. This should be an option, not our main tactic.

Watford took the lead when ‘big’ Wes Morgan was out-jumped at the far post. Forest should have had a free-kick and a possible Watford dismissal for as blatant a handball as you’re ever likely to get, but to blame the defeat on that would be churlish, we got exactly what we deserved out of this, bugger all.

Still we insisted on hitting it long to Adebola, still without any reward. Then, with injury time approaching, a change in attitude, balls on the floor and suddenly we’re level. Their keeper will think he should have done better, Blackstock shinning it in from a yard out, but a goal’s a goal and the speed at which the ball was returned to the centre spot at least showed that the players weren’t simply interested in being level.

Second half and again, the long balls were sent up to Adebola. There’s a pattern emerging here. Long balls don’t get results, passing it on the floor does.

Billy Davies came up with a master-stroke midway through the second half. Realising that launching long balls up front to Dele ‘QE2’ Adebola would be aided by the simple fact of Dele ‘worse than me’ Adebola actually playing rather than sitting on the bench. Little Rob Earnshaw isn’t going to win balls in the air, so why bother.

Watford scrambled a fortunate second to retake the lead, but there was nothing fortunate about the third two minutes later, an unchallenged shot from the edge of the box beating Lee Camp fairly easily.

Adebola pulled one back to kick-start the possibility of a come-back, thwarted in injury time by Watford’s fourth, in front of a fast emptying City Ground.

So why were we so poor when we were so much better on Saturday ? Personally I believe the match was already lost at the weekend, the Watford scout sat in the stands saw Nathan Tyson as our main threat & major outlet and decided to close that avenue off, leading to previously competent players giving the ball away on far too many occasions ultimately leading to a hoof-ball mentality without the necessary players up front to pull it off. Billy Davies is going to have to start winning these tactical battles otherwise worse teams than us on paper, such as Watford, will club together and beat us where it counts.

Hopefully the QPR scout sat in the stands last night will have noted how poor Nathan Tyson was last night and not bother with him on Saturday. Fingers crossed.