Feliz Nabizada

Rather than doing outright tactical and performance breakdowns of every match, I want to write pieces on how the match was either won, drawn or lost. It’s a shorter format, and you won’t get bored to death reading the nuances of football - short, snappy and easy to understand is what I’m going with, and to cap each Substack at a maximum of 1,000 words.

But firstly, to set the scene, there’s been a lot of noise outside of Watford this season with predictions, fan unrest, lack of ownership interest, constant soundbites by the hierarchy, and then failing to deliver any of what they’ve said - and that is a problem regardless of the result and performance today. But, as I’ve been saying for just over a month now, the performance and result today vs Southampton should not be a surprise to anyone who actually watched. The starting XI that was out today - 8 of them started the first pre-season game against Boreham Wood on the 11th of July. The shape you saw then was identical to the shape you saw today - the difference was that the execution was much better because, well, that’s what preparation is for. The signings of Udinese players have also come into criticism, again for the wrong reasons. If you think multi-club ownerships are wrong for the game, that's completely fine - but if you’re dismissing these players because they’ve come from Udinese, then you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. I don’t, for one second, believe this was in the owners’ thinking; by the way, it’s my logic of it all. But if you’re bringing over Zemura, Bravo, Payero - they don’t need adaptation periods for the league, nor the team, because they’ve already played together hundreds of times- then you add the way they fit into Dionisi and his way of playing; it’s not a coincidence they all know what they’re doing. But let’s get into the game.

How the match was won.

Watford, off the ball, were immaculate in the first half. Southampton had only 6 shots, 3 of which were blocked outside the box, accumulating to an xG of 0.3. The key to this approach was blocking the central passing options and essentially forcing Southampton to give the majority of the possession to left-back Ryan Manning.

Tonda Eckert mentioned in his post match press conference about the positional switch for Leo Scienza in where he moved centrally. He said “We knew that we were going to have some spaces inside today, especially with the way that Watford jumps with both of their sixes and we wanted to have that space for Leo today to go one against one.”

The issue that Southampton faced was Watford combatting this - although Bove did ‘jump’ at certain moments, Nabizada would drop back rather than push up and would pass over Scienza to Kyprianou when the ball went from left to right. Scienza didn’t have much joy because of it. Southampton just couldn’t get it through or go around, and when they did Watford recovered quickly.

In possession, Watford still kept the core structure positionally from pre-season. Kyprianou drops to receive, Bove stays on the right side ahead. Zemura/Bola and Maamma are close together, and the right side of Traore stays wide, ready for the switch, with Nabizada offering the option diagonally.

The difference was the actual play in possession. It was almost a decoy to lure Southampton in. In pre-season, Dionisi was fuming with the amount of long balls we’d play and wanted everything to be played out - be calm and composed, stay controlled. Not today - Watford were direct for a reason; 19% of passes were long. Why? well Southampton more or less left two at the back, and that’s it. Go long, if you don’t win first contact, flood forward and pick up the second ball.

So whilst Eckert saying it was them playing poor passes to give goals away might be true, Dionisi and Watford planned for something to happen. Manning was targeted, makes an error for a goal. Southampton flood men forward and defend with fewer numbers at the back and that leads to them conceding.

There was a notable drop-off in the second half - partly because Southampton changed the way they played with the ball. Downes went to a wide centre-back position, Azaz would come deeper to receive, with Bree and Matsuki being closer together in possession to play quick passes to one another. But who gives a shit, as it didn’t work - they had the ball more and scored through a slice of luck with the ricochets - but apart from the goal, they didn’t create much for their attackers, bar the chance for Hardwood-Bellis at the dying embers of the game. A well-deserved win for Watford, who should have scored more and won by a more comfortable margin, especially given the chance Bravo had in the second half after a wonder trivela pass from Othmane Maamma. To end this, I thought Kevin Keben was man of the match for me. Took responsibility on the ball to the best he could, was aggressive in his duels and defending. Would like an upgrade there of course, but today he was back to the Keben we were all excited about after the start of his campaign last year.