Received wisdom is looking pretty foolish now. Watford have won their last four league games, Bournemouth their last three. In this calendar month alone the three clubs promoted from the Championship last season have beaten Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United twice. This was a remarkable match in isolation but still more fascinating in context, evidence of a league unshackled from the constraints of logic and free to run wild and thrillingly reckless.
That sense of freedom was notably absent from Liverpool’s play in what was, from the moment the teams were selected, a gloriously tactical battle. Watford again trusted their attacking fortunes to an old-school front two in Troy Deeney and Odion Ighalo, who since the first day of the season – when the Nigerian came off the bench to score at Everton – have been on the field together for 97% of the campaign, and Liverpool had another go with a strikerless semi-attacking trident.
The last time Roberto Firmino, Adam Lallana and Philippe Coutinho started a league game together with nobody ahead of them they ripped Manchester City apart in a 4-1 away victory that appeared to confirm Jürgen Klopp’s tactical genius. This time the same combination proved humiliatingly impotent, and though as the game progressed and an away win became an increasingly distant prospect the German tried a variety of formations it was telling that by the final whistle he had accepted defeat in more ways than one, ending the match with a Watfordesque pair of traditional strikers.
Ricky Gervais has been in Watford recently filming scenes for his forthcoming David Brent movie, so Klopp was not the first proponent of unconventional management techniques to be seen in Hertfordshire this week. But unlike a box set of The Office there were no improvised dances to be seen here – a home draw against West Bromwich Albion was deemed good enough for Liverpool to roll out their post-match celebratory hand-holding jig, but this game ended with little more than a bashful hand-wave.
He had been outthought and outdone by Quique Sánchez Flores. Watford’s victory was built on firm foundations and a defence that first faced a floaty front three, then a lone striker and finally a two after Christian Benteke joined the fray for the final quarter-hour, and allowed not one of those players a notable chance.
They nullified the starting trio by instantly closing down whoever was the first of them to receive the ball, with both defensive midfielders immediately snapping into them while the closest member of the back four raced forward to cut off the last potential means of escape. Time and again possession was lost in this pincer movement, though it came with one major drawback: the rush of players to one place left space elsewhere, on either the side and also behind. Liverpool profoundly failed to exploit these flaws; quick-witted combinations were rare, and through-balls led to many more offsides than opportunities.
At the other end life could hardly have been more different for Watford’s front two. There is a scene in the forthcoming film The Revenant in which Leonardo DiCaprio has an encounter with a wild bear that may for some viewers bring to mind Deeney’s treatment of Liverpool’s back line here, such was the savagery with which he tore into them. It was a one-sided battle even before a first-half injury to Martin Skrtel prompted a tactical reshuffle that led to Lucas Leiva filling in at centre-half, the Brazilian conceding less than two inches – and every single header – to Deeney.
Deeney’s goals – 20 or more in each of the last three seasons – secured his place in this side but it is his capacity to win the ball, to spot and find movement that is more vital now, with the way he wrestled possession from Lucas and fed Ighalo to create Watford’s second a case in point. After the rest of the team melted away from the ensuing celebrations the pair stayed together for a few moments, the goal like so many before it this season very much theirs to share.
The Nigerian’s menace is different to Deeney’s, focused on either denying space or racing into it, and there was another appearance for the trick that bamboozled John O’Shea and nearly created a goal against Sunderland last week, with an identical outcome. This time Mamadou Sakho was his victim, starting a torrid 10 minutes for the Frenchman in which he was left on the turf three times. His worst moment came though when he was nowhere near either striker, positioning which made Ighalo’s task in converting the substitute Valon Behrami’s cross a great deal easier, as he completed a victory that was both rather old-fashioned and also perfectly of the moment.
