By Andy Baggott
May 22 2006

If any good came out of yesterdays performance, it’s the evidence that we are quite clearly not good enough to go up. If we had won yesterday, without a brand new team, we would, without doubt, come straight back down You have to fear for a poor Watford side, who deserved their win, but, set pieces apart, showed little quality.

The main difference yesterday was that they had a tactic (boot it as far as you can, see what happens), and we didn’t. In terms of quality, it was poor game. The one tactic that to me won the game for Watford was corners. They took a spare man to stand next to the corner flag. This meant that we had to take one of the men off the posts for every corner. Their first goal would have been stopped by a man on the line. In the second half, we had a corner, Derry’s header was stopped, as they had both posts covered-little things like that win matches…

Blackwell, in my opinion, got his tactics wrong. A half fit Hulse is not the right man to play up front on his own – he really needs some support, and not from an out of form left winger, and a right back playing right wing!!! Our strength, as every one tells us, is our array of forwards – we should have used them. Our bench was full of quality – Healy, Stone, Blake and Bakke are, along with Kelly, our most experienced players – surely this was their stage?

As the disappointment wears off, at least we have something to look forward to next year – we have hope. The team, with the right players brought in, should be challenging for the title – if we’d gone up, there is every chance we’d have done a Sunderland, and lost week in week out – which is no fun at all..