FULL TIME: Watford 0-3 Arsenal
And that’s that. There’s no point thrashing Manchester United 3-0 if you don’t follow it up with a win at a newly promoted side. For a while, it looked as though Arsenal were going to drop points. Watford gave as good as they got for an hour. But Arsenal were too strong, and their quality shone through in the latter stages. They reclaim second spot, and theirs is a title challenge that looks very much the real deal.
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90 min +2: Oxlade-Chamberlain scampers into space down the left. He cuts the ball back for Giroud, who blooters the ball miles over the bar. The French rugby team would take a few of those against the All Blacks this evening.
90 min +1: There will be three added minutes. The first has already passed without incident.
89 min: Deeney cuts in from the left, having won the ball off Bellerin. He exchanges passes with Ighalo and attempts to lash a shot into the top left from the left-hand edge of the Arsenal D. He doesn’t catch it at all. He looks thoroughly dejected, but he’s played well tonight.
88 min: Oxlade-Chamberlain twists in a baroque manner down the right, and wins yet another corner. Arsenal take a quick tapped one, despite sending up the centre backs. They faff around, and are fortunate to earn another corner. Cazorla hoofs this one into the mixer, and all of a sudden you can understand why they sometimes play it short.
85 min: But Arsenal are soon coming back at Watford. Coquelin, of all people, channels his inner Garrincha and dribbles down the inside-right channel to win a corner. Watford deal with this one in a fuss-free fashion. Arsenal are threatening to turn the scoreline into an embarrassment for Watford, who don’t deserve such a fate. But champions need to be ruthless, and Arsenal, having battled to get where they are, appear to be in the mood to prove a point.
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83 min: Bellerin turns on the burners and wins a corner down the right. He’s a marvellous young player. Cazorla takes the set piece. Giroud attacks the ball with gusto, and powers a wonderful header towards the top right. Gomes is behind it all the way and punches clear for another corner, which is dealt with by Watford.
81 min: Paredes comes on for a tiring Anya.
80 min: That’s Sanchez’s last act of the night. He’s replaced by Oxlade-Chamberlain, while Ozil is swapped for Arteta.
79 min: Cazorla pitching-wedges a lovely ball down the middle, very nearly releasing Sanchez. Gomes is out quickly to make himself big. The pair clash, but within the rules. No foul. Sanchez gets up and chases after the ball, which is bouncing to the left of the unguarded net. He can’t quite reach it before it flies out of play.
77 min: Deeney rather brilliantly kills a long punt down the left stone dead with one touch, then lifts a cross into the middle. It very nearly finds the in-rushing Berghuis, but Mertesacker has positioned himself well. Watford are well beaten now, but there’s a small reminder that they sparkled in attack for the first hour or so, and gave Arsenal plenty to think about.
75 min: Ibarbo comes on for Abdi.
GOAL! Watford 0-3 Arsenal (Ramsey 74)
But suddenly they spring forward. Bellerin bursts past a couple of half-arsed challenges down the right. He slides the ball inside for Ramsey, who is just inside the area. Ramsey pokes the ball goalwards, and it’s deflected into the bottom-right corner, where it nestles rather apologetically, having only just bobbled over the line.
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73 min: Arsenal are quite happy to pop the ball around the back right now. Textbook clock management, with Bayern Munich in mind.
71 min: Watford were looking reasonably assured, but the spirit is broken. Capoue hoicks a long ball forward, but Cech’s the only player ever getting to that.
69 min: Berghuis comes on for Nyom.
GOAL! Watford 0-2 Arsenal (Giroud 68)
Arsenal ping it around some more. Sanchez cuts in from the left and slips the ball inside for Ramsey, whose shot is deflected wide right of the target. Ozil is first to the loose ball, and cuts it back for the substitute Giroud, who sweeps home. Watford had gone toe-to-toe with Arsenal for so long, but they’ve been suddenly blown away.
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66 min: Arsenal have started to ping the ball around a lot. What a difference a goal makes.
64 min: Watford are livid, but the referee got those decisions correct. Giroud comes on for Walcott.
GOAL! Watford 0-1 Arsenal (Sanchez 62)
Watford look the more confident team right now. Capoue takes a shot from the left-hand corner of the Arsenal D. It’s blocked. He then tries to burst into the box and stumbles along with Coquelin. He claims a penalty, but he’s not getting it. Arsenal stream up the other end. Ozil is released into the area, and is upended by a sliding Anya on the penalty spot. Before the ref can whistle, Sanchez pitching-wedges into the top left!
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60 min: Deeney powers down the left and is stopped in his tracks by Coquelin. That could easily have been a booking for the Arsenal midfielder. He’s perhaps saved by Watford taking the free kick quickly. The ball’s shuttled in from the left wing to Capoue, who looks for the bottom-right corner from the best part of 40 yards. Nope!
59 min: Mertesacker is stripped for pace down the left by Ighalo. He sticks out a leg to bring his man down, and that’s a booking. And a free kick for Watford in a dangerous position. They load the box. Abdi hoicks an awful effort into the mixer, at the perfect height for Cech to claim with ease.
57 min: Nyom lifts a pass down the right to release Deeney into the area. Deeney thinks about lashing a volley goalwards from a tight angle, but opts to control and wins a corner instead. The set piece is half cleared, though Ighalo soon comes back at Arsenal down the left. His cross is powered clear by Koscielny.
56 min: It’s an absolutely belting atmosphere at Vicarage Road, by the way. The volume goes up as Watford win a corner down the right, and doesn’t fall back when the home side make a pig’s lug of the set piece.
54 min: Sanchez returns the favour, clipping a tasty pass down the left channel to release Ozil into the area. Ozil’s pass into the centre is clumped out of play by Prodl. The resulting corner comes to nothing. But Arsenal are beginning to press Watford back now. The last three or four minutes have been a possession masterclass. It’s been a long time coming, though.
53 min: Ozil slides a lovely pass down the middle of the park to find Sanchez in a pocket of space by the Watford D. Sanchez snaps a shot goalwards, but it’s charged down. Watford are making life very difficult for Arsenal right now.
50 min: A long ball down the middle. Deeney goes up for it, and is clumsily clattered by Koscielny. A free kick, 35 yards out, in a central position. Abdi scoops it onto the head of Prodl, on the right-hand corner of the six-yard box. Prodl heads across the face of goal, but hope rather than accuracy is the top note here, and Mertesacker can clear.
48 min: Arsenal haven’t exactly come out re-energised. Sanchez tries to get them going by racing down the middle and sweeping a pass wide right for Ramsey. But Ramsey dawdles, and the impetus is gone. Soon enough, they’re passing the ball back to Cech. Watford will be happy to rinse and repeat for the rest of the half.
46 min: Deeney sweeps Sanchez off the ball. Sanchez sits on the floor with his legs spread straight out, confused, like Jason Dufner. Good lord. Deeney whips a ball in from the right, and isn’t far off finding Ighalo, but Mertesacker has read the danger and intercepts well.
And we're off again!
Watford get the second half underway. Neither team has made a change.
Half-time entertainment: Here’s Watford doing for Arsenal in the cup at Highbury in 1987. John Barnes was some player, and VHS quite the format.
HALF TIME: Watford 0-0 Arsenal
Time for Ramsey to go for a spectacular goal from just inside the Watford box on the right, but his attempted lash into the top left is wild and high. And that’s that for the first half. A highly entertaining match, despite the lack of goals. Arsenal looked in total control for the first 15 minutes or so, but Watford grew into the game, and could have had a couple themselves. It promises a fascinating second half. No flipping!
43 min: A long ball down the middle confuses the hell out of the Arsenal back line. Deeney gets ahead of Koscielny, and hopes to round Cech, who has rushed out of his goal. But Cech, his boots fairly high, deflects the ball away from danger. The Watford faithful scream for a red card, but that’s come off the Arsenal keeper’s leg and onto his shoulder. It certainly didn’t look like a hand ball. That’s certainly the conclusion the referee has drawn.
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42 min: Bellerin swings a ball into the Watford area from the right. Sanchez gets his head on the ball, but there’s no power on the effort. Gomes comes out to claim.
39 min: Deeney, with the ball at his feet on the left-hand corner of the Arsenal box, chips inside. The ball’s deflected towards Cech, though Ighalo very nearly nips in to intercept. Arsenal don’t look wholly comfortable here.
37 min: Monreal makes good down the right and into the Arsenal box. He fires across for Bellerin, coming in from the left. It’d have been a tap-in, were it not for the sliding Nyom. Ramsey takes up play down the right again, and earns a corner, from which Koscielny fires hard, low and wide right.
35 min: The play stopped, Capoue gives Sanchez a playful brush across the jowls. Sanchez considers crumpling to the ground, which would have been beyond pathetic. He thinks better of it, but gives the referee a mouthful instead. The ref takes both of them aside, and reminds them they both left infant school a long, long time ago. Grown adults, the pair of them.
32 min: Watford are seriously threatening Arsenal here. Ighalo skedaddles down the right, reaches the byline, but can’t find Deeney in the middle with his pull back. The home side should be leading this game. But they’ve not taken their chances.
31 min: Anya flicks a loose ball down the right-hand channel, and releases Ighalo into space. He’s clear on goal! But he’s got Monreal on his shoulder, pressurising. It’s too much to cope with. He enters the area with only Cech to beat, and surely must score, but screws a dreadful shot wide right of goal. He has the chutzpah to claim a penalty for the lightest of brushes by Monreal, but he’s never getting that. The claim borne of embarrassment.
29 min: Sanchez, gliding in from the left, lifts a gorgeous diagonal pass towards Ramsey, who is bombing into the Watford box from the right. It’s a perfect ball, dropping onto Ramsey’s boot, and the Arsenal man is going to get there ahead of Gomes, coming off his line. But Ramsey doesn’t commit, and clumsily knees the ball over the bar from close range. Three rugby points. And what the Welsh would have done for them; they’ve just been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.
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27 min: Arsenal win a corner down the left through Sanchez. A game of head tennis takes place in the box. Koscielny, now fully recovered, flashes a header across the face of goal, from right to left, but there’s nobody in a red shirt in position to take advantage.
25 min: Koscielny takes an awful clatter on the jaw as he slides into Ighalo’s outstretched arm from behind. Arsenal threaten to kick off, 1989 style, for a few seconds, but calm down when it’s realised the whole incident was accidental.
24 min: And up the other end, Arsenal’s early attacking verve has been lost. Ramsey and Walcott take turns to make something happen down the left, but the passes into the box aren’t sticking.
23 min: Arsenal are making problems for themselves. Cazorla is caught dawdling in the midfield, allowing Abdi to tear towards the Arsenal box. He’s got Anya in acres to his right, but dillies and dallies, and he’s bundled off the ball. The visitors looked short at the back for a few seconds there.
21 min: Watford are full of confidence now. Ighalo, taking a pass from Deeney on the edge of the Arsenal D, tries to Le Tissier one into the net. But his chip up and volley is shanked miles wide right. Full marks for ambition, though.
19 min: Watford should be ahead. Ake sends Deeney into acres of space down the left. In the middle, Koscielny and, behind him, Ighalo. A decent cross, and it’s 1-0. But the ball’s straight at the Arsenal defender, who is able to slide the ball out of play for a corner, which is wasted. Great defending, though he should never have been allowed to make the interception.
17 min: Capoue, Anya and Ighalo combine in a very fluid fashion down the right, some gorgeous little triangles. Ighalo finds himself on the byline to the right of the Arsenal goal, and pulls a ball back for Anya, who shuttles it on to Deeney on the penalty spot. The ball’s not perfect, snagged under his feet, and he’s soon crowded out of it, unable to get a shot away. But for a second there, it looked as though Arsenal had been prised apart. Lovely play.
15 min: There’s a lovely open feel to this game, and Watford are playing their part. Anya nearly finds Deeney in the Arsenal box with a pass inside from the right wing, but the ball’s intercepted.
14 min: Arsenal are trying their best to destroy Watford’s high line. Now it’s Ozil’s turn to slide a pass down the left channel for Walcott; again the flag goes up for offside. But there wasn’t much in that.
12 min: Coquelin slips a ball down the inside-left channel to release Walcott on goal. Walcott slips the ball past Gomes, on the edge of the Watford box, but his shot squirts inches wide of the right-hand post. The miss matters not, because Walcott was a couple of yards offside, and the flag went up.
11 min: Deeney steals the ball off Coquelin, proper candy-from-pram-dweller stuff. He batters a wonderful shot towards the left-hand portion of the net, but that’s not getting past Cech, who parries with strong fists.
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10 min: Sanchez dances down the inside-left channel, drops a shoulder to nudge the ball inside, and looks for the top-right corner with one of those risers that did for United a couple of weeks back. Gomes stands up to it. Great football all round.
9 min: Arsenal still with the passing. Ramsey has a skitter down the inside-left channel, but can’t quite open Watford up, not even with Monreal and Cazorla backing him up. Capoue comes back to help Watford out. Meanwhile, Simon McMahon has been getting misty-eyed over the preamble. “What you’re saying is that Watford are basically Dundee United to Arsenal’s Barcelona. Right?” You could set your clock by it, couldn’t you. It’s 5.39pm.
6 min: Arsenal are enjoying the lion’s share of possession. Watford are struggling to get into the match. “Quique Flores might have meant complicated in the sense of complex angles, but it’s much more likely he was using the false friend from Spanish: complicado = difficult, hard, tough,” writes Charles Antaki. “Or perhaps he was thinking of complicated as in Arsenal’s penalty-area choreography: elaborate, mazy and unresolved?”
4 min: Arsenal are up for this. Ramsey whips a cross into the Watford box from the right. He flashes a header on target, but Gomes is behind it and catches without fuss.
3 min: ... nothing occurs. Ramsey gets his eyebrows to it, and the ball’s easily claimed by Gomes.
2 min: Good work from Bellerin down the right, as he nips the ball past Ake. His deep cross is headed behind by Nyom. Corner to Arsenal on the left. From which ...
And we're off!
Arsenal get the ball rolling. Ramsey is almost immediately making a nuisance of himself down the right, and very nearly wins a corner, but Ake and Anya combine to crowd him out. After that Manchester United victory, the visitors have turned up very much on the front foot.
Here come the teams! Watford always come out to the theme to Z-Cars, a habit they share with Everton. On the day of Howard Kendall’s passing, an already haunting piece of music carries an added poignancy. Watford sport their famous yellow shirts, although this season’s version has - arcane TV reference #2 - a dodgy horizontal hold. Black lines running right across it. Arsenal are in their red-and-white garb. We’ll be off in a minute!
Now it’s the turn of Watford’s head coach Quique Sanchez Flores. “It is going to be difficult for us. They are a very complicated team. But maybe we can do something well. The players have confidence that we can win.”
The Sanchez problem. In addition to his hip injury, the Chile star only came back from international duty late on Thursday. Arsene Wenger didn’t bother trying to hide his player’s resulting lack of match sharpness in the pre-match interview. “To rest at the start, or to take them off if they are tired?” he pondered aloud. “I have chosen the second solution.” Wenger also admitted that the upcoming Champions League match against Bayern Munich is “the most important game”, but he was quick to show his respect for Watford, praising their ability in defence and on the break. “This is also a big game for us. We need a brilliant performance offensively to score a goal.”
Watford winger Ikechi Anya starts, despite missing Scotland’s international-break heartache through injury. As for the visitors, Alexis Sanchez, fresh from ripping Manchester United apart but not so fresh as a result of a hip problem, makes it despite his malady. Laurent Koscielny was also a doubt, due to a tweaked hamstring, but he’s made Arsenal’s starting XI too.
The teams are in
Watford: Gomes, Nyom, Prodl, Cathcart, Ake, Ighalo, Watson, Anya, Deeney, Abdi, Capoue.
Subs: Britos, Behrami, Gilmartin, Paredes, Ibarbo, Berghuis, Holebas.
Arsenal: Cech, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Cazorla, Coquelin, Ramsey, Ozil, Sanchez, Walcott.
Subs: Debuchy, Gibbs, Arteta, Giroud, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Chambers, Macey.
Referee: Mike Jones (Cheshire)
In their 1980s heyday, Watford really did have Arsenal’s number. Here’s an astonishing statistic. The Hornets spent six seasons in the top flight during that decade, between 1982 and 1988, meeting Arsenal 12 times in the league. They won eight of those matches. Eight out of 12! They also knocked Arsenal out of the quarter-finals of the FA Cup at Highbury in 1987. Has another member of English football’s aristocracy ever been worked over in this manner, again and again and again, by the same member of the insolent lower classes?
But times change. In the Premier League era, the teams have played four matches, and Arsenal have made off with the spoils on each and every occasion. Throw in an FA Cup victory for the Gunners at Vicarage Road during that period, and Arsenal really have delivered the big payback.
That trend’s expected to continue this evening. Arsenal are favourites to make it six wins in a row over Watford, having won seven of their last eight away Premier League fixtures. They’re also coming off the back of league victories against a couple of in-form teams. Arsene Wenger’s side put five goals past Leicester City, then three into Manchester United’s net, and suddenly all the talk is of a title challenge. Three points this afternoon will turn a couple of good results into the beginnings of a meaningful run.
Newly promoted Watford won’t be a pushover, though. They like to keep it tight round Hertfordshire way: the four games at Vicarage Road so far this season have given up a grand total of two goals. Odion Ighalo folds some attacking threat into the mix. Meanwhile Alexis Sanchez might be rested on account of a sore hip, while Arsenal have one eye on a do-or-die Champions League tie with Bayern Munich on Tuesday. So it could be a closer call than many expect.
Can Watford build on their solid start to life in the Premier League? Or will Arsenal maintain their early title momentum? We’ll find out very soon.
Kick off: 5.30pm.
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