Watford’s fans made their way to bar earlier than normal at half-time on Saturday. Their team were trailing Blackpool by two goals and had shown little in the first half to suggest they might recover in the second. The team that had thrashed Charlton 5-0 the week before looked lost and disinterested. A few fans booed and a smattering made for the exits, but most just trudged to the bar for some liquid relief.
As the Watford supporters gathered for a pint or two, the Blackpool manager, Lee Clark, was impressing upon his players the need to keep it tight at the start of the second half. Blackpool had only won three matches in the Championship all season, and none away from Bloomfield Road, so Clark knew the importance of starting well in the second period.
“We talked about the first 15 minutes being crucial,” said Clark after the match. Within those 15 minutes, his team conceded four goals. By the end, they had conceded three more to make the score 7-2. That’s Watford SEVEN, Blackpool two. “We didn’t handle the setback well enough and it just went from bad to worse,” reflected their rueful manager.
The Watford fans who had seemed so gloomy at the interval spent a fair portion of the second half singing for Odion Ighalo, the man who scored four of their seven goals: “Ig-ha-lo! Oh! Always believe in your soul, yo’ve got the power to know, you’re indestructible!!! Always believe iiinn Ig-ha-lo.” The more philosophical Blackpool fans might have appreciated that wit, but few of them would have enjoyed the inevitable chants of: “Two-nil and you fucked it up.”
How quickly fortunes can turn on a football field. After 45 minutes it looked as if Blackpool might have pulled their season around, but after 90 they looked doomed. And Watford have now scored more goals in their last two games than Aston Villa have managed in 22 Premier League matches this season. You won’t see these words on this website very often, but sometimes you have to fall back on the old cliches: this was truly a game of two halves. Have you ever seen anything like it?
What is the best second-half performance you have ever seen?
