Watford won the toss on their visit to Cardiff City Stadium tonight and did what I’ve always thought more away sides should against us- turn us around so that we’re playing towards the Canton Stand in the first half.
City then promptly showed that maybe things like which end you play towards aren’t as important as I make them out to be by scoring four times before halftime in a match which was being labeled as must win by some on the messageboards.
Mind you, Watford looked so short of belief, strength and confidence that I don’t think that the score would have been any different if we’d seen a “normal” type match with us playing towards the Family Stand for the first forty five minutes like we normally do. For City to win a game that had all of the signs of being a real scrap between two teams looking over their shoulders at the bottom three by a score of 5-1 suggests one or both of two things, we were great and/or Watford were rubbish.
I’ll not do us down after we’ve won our second match of the season while suggesting that, when we play at home at least, we look like a proper Championship side. However, I have to admit that I feel this was an occasion where the swingometer would have shown the opposition being crap verdict came out on top above the winners being brilliant one.
With us having been in a different division last season, I wasn’t as up with the Championship as normal, so I didn’t know that Watford had not won any of their last eight matches in 2025/26 and had lost their last five that season with a 1-16 goals figure.
I’d watched the Hornets’ deserved 2-1 win over Southampton on the opening day of this season and had been impressed, but, with just a win and a draw since then, it’s pretty clear that result was an outlier.
Something is clearly seriously wrong at Watford currently. Following Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to a Burnley side that had been looking for their first win, club legends Elton John and Troy Deeney took to social media to criticise the running of the club, as did a former Assistant Manager I think it was, plus a former Director of the club – even the Lord Mayor of Watford weighed in as well!
If you’ll indulge me a little here, watching the game tonight my mind went back forty three years to the 83/84 season. Len Ashurst’s City side, that had been promoted back to the Second Division after a single season in the third tier, faced Cambridge United who had been a solid Division Two outfit for a few years at that time, but, like us, were too close to the bottom of the league with the season about a quarter completed..
We had an under strength, injury hit team and were generally well short of goals, but Cambridge collapsed completely after going one down as we led 4-0 at the interval before going on to win 5-0.
Cambridge were woeful that day and it was no shock to see them dropping miles behind the rest of the division, apart from Swansea who were on their way to a second straight relegation after all of the spending of the early part of the John Toshack era came home to roost.
As for us, we were never in serious relegation trouble as we finished in lower mid table with a team which was more solid at the back than this one, but had little of the current team’s attacking fluency.
On the evidence of all of our home games so far , apart from Wrexham maybe, we should be able to at least match the 83/84 side’s finishing position, but we’re in serious danger of becoming one of those sides that are a lion in their own ground and a lamb when they play somewhere else.
While you’d like to like to think we can take great heart from this impressive win for the testing trip to Middlesbrough on Saturday, that didn’t happen following our win over Charlton in which I’d say we may have played a bit better than tonight and good home showings against Sheffield United and Stoke didn’t do us any favours when it came to the following away match.
Still, twitchy City fans can take heart that while we aren’t as good a side as we looked against, say, Stoke’s expensively assembled outfit, we also aren’t as bad as we looked on Saturday or at Portsmouth and QPR.
There was still no Rubin Colwill and Yousef Salech in the squad which was also still lacking the suspended Krystian Bielik, so, despite the poor showing at Blackburn, there was only one change as we went in without a recognised striker. Jack Moylan, playing more like a proper number nine than a false one, took over from Callum Robinson and Chris Willock came in on the wing.
At least we had Dylan Lawlor back, but not for long. Lawlor only lasted twenty nine minutes during which he played a back pass too short with the score at 0-0 and was grateful to Nathan Trott for the first of too many good saves he had to make as our defence showed again why they’re finding it impossible to keep a clean sheet. The young defender had a near post header from an Alex Robertson corner brilliantly tipped over by Watford’s expensive new keeper Federico Ravaglia.
However, Lawlor appears set for another spell on the sidelines after picking up what looked like a hamstring injury in an innocuous looking challenge in front of the City dug out.
Thankfully, City did have some centreback cover this time as Will Fish came on to play his first competitive football of the season following his hernia operation and generally did a solid job alongside Gabe Osho.
I’d said we’d looked weak and naive on Saturday, but here we were the stronger side physically as Watford were guilty of cheap mistakes and what I’ll call schoolboy errors. For example, after Moylan had a crisp twenty five yarder saved on ten minutes, Ravaglia opted to play out from the back and a few seconds later, the ball was presented to Oliie Tanner who fed Moylan who dummied to shoot before being brought down by Watford’s skipper Mattie Pollock for an obvious penalty which Moylan took himself and scored despite the keeper getting close to the shot.
You won’t catch me talking much about “body language” on here because, generally speaking, I think it’s a much overrated and over discussed commodity, but I have to say that Watford’s was terrible once they went a goal down. They have some gifted individual players and were able to cause us quite a few problems when they attacked, so I don’t see them having a Cambridge United 83/84 type season, but they look the worst team in the division on this evidence.
Another misplaced pass on thirty five minutes gave Cian Ashford plenty of room to run into and his neat pass freed Moylan, who looked close to being offside, to go on and make it four goals for himself in two home matches by slotting past Ravaglia via a post.
Things got worse for the hapless visitors shortly afterwards as three defenders and their goalkeeper went for a Joel Bagan corner in the face of a couple of hardly aggressive attempts by City players to challenge and the ball rolled slowly into the net off the unfortunate Pollock.
The Lawlor injury meant there was six minutes added on in the first half and in the fifth of them, City came up with the goal of the game as Tanner cut in from the right to score a similar type goal to the famous one he got against the jacks to cap a good performance from a player who has got his share of stick this season, most of which I think is undeserved, right from the first friendly game for things like his body language.
Tanner is a typical Championship player in that I think he’s capable of very good things, but is inconsistent. In many ways he mirrors the team, in that when he’s good, he’s very good, but then he’ll probably go to Middlesbrough on Saturday and struggle like he has done in our last two away games.
As they often are when one team has a big interval lead, the second half was an anti climax, but there was a moment of controversy when Chris Willock was brought down by a daft Edo Kayembe challenge and referee John Busby correctly awarded us a second penalty.
It should have been a chance for Moylan to complete his hat trick, but, instead, Willock took it and his weak effort was too close to Ravaglia who got down to turn the ball aside as boos began to ring out from some in the crowd.
I can’t think of many times when I’d boo one of my teams players, but I had some sympathy with those who booed here because I still can’t understand how Willock ended up taking it.
Since typing that last paragraph, I’ve heard BBM say that he did not know why Willock took the penalty. He indicated that Yousef Salech was adamant that he wanted to take all penalties, but did not know what happens in his absence- speaking as someone who is very rarely critical of our manager, this is something that should have been sorted out before the Blackburn match.
There was also a suggestion from a journalist to the manager that a rule was in place that the player who was fouled should take the resultant spot kick. As mentioned earlier, BBM knew nothing about this, but it’s a line I have heard before and had dismissed it as garbage because of its clear absurdity. For example, what happens with penalties awarded for handball, who takes them? The person stood closest ‘to the ball at the time the offence took place?
If you take this rubbish to its logical conclusion, Joel Colwill, not Rubin Colwill, would have been taking that 98th minute free kick against Wrexham.
Whatever the reason for the switch, it seemed pretty clear at the time that Moylan wanted to take the penalty, but so did Willock and prevailed. My view is that, even if you ignore the fact that he was on a hat trick, Moylan should have taken the penalty – it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Willock’s was playing for himself, not the team.
Callum Robinson had not been on the pitch long when he showed a lot of perseverance to work himself into a position where he could get a shot away and the ball flew in at Ravaglia’s near post.
After that, there was time for Trott to make a great save to deny a Pollock header which may or may not have been disallowed for offside. However, a few minutes later, an unmarked Hector Kyprianou glanced in a near post header from a free kick to deny Trott a first clean sheet of the season with the fourth month of the campaign coming up on us fast.
To finish, elsewhere there was a 1-1 draw for City’s under 21s at QPR today with no details yet as to who scored our goal. Also, while City were playing, the Welsh Women’s team were beating Albania 3-0 at Llanelli in a World Cup qualification Play Off to secure a 4-0 aggregate win. Wales now face the highly rated Norway side manager by their previous boss Gemma Grainger in their bid to secure a first ever qualification- Mayzee Davies put Wales ahead before half time and Elyse Hughes, then Hannah Cain added to the lead in the second half.
