Like a boxer who has pushed their opponent around the ring for 11 rounds and is massively ahead on points, the danger of being hit by a sucker punch and ending up beaten is what Watford experienced at Oxford yesterday.
There was a patently obvious gap between the two sides, both to the naked eye and in the statistics.
The Hornets dominated possession, found it relatively easy to get the ball back when they lost it, and spent regular and sustained periods in and around the Oxford final third.
Watford had 62% of the ball, they completed more than double the number of passes compared to their hosts, had twice as many attempts on goal and more than three times the number of touches in the opposition box.
They won more duels, they had vastly more successful dribbles, their success rate in tackles was considerably higher and they forced twice as many saves.
Everything about the game at the Kassam said Watford win – or at least they don’t lose – except the one piece of information which, ultimately, is the only one that counts.
It finished Oxford 1, Watford 0.
Like that boxer, the Hornets were throwing all the punches, moving forward as their opponent backed off, jabbing effectively and even took the odd glancing bow to the chin without flinching.
The problem was, for all that they dominated, Watford didn’t hurt Oxford often enough. Of their 16 goal attempts, only four were on target and none of those were in the second half.
For 80 minutes there only seemed two possible ways the game was going to end: either Watford found a winner, or it stayed 0-0 and they went home frustrated.
There were distinct echoes of the recent away game at Stoke, except on that occasion two things didn’t happen: Watford didn’t have a man sent off and the home side didn’t score.
For the second successive game, Tom Cleverley fielded a team without a recognised striker.
In midweek, the decision to leave Vakoun Bayo out was predicated by the fact he had become a father earlier in the day, and nobody could be certain if he would even get to Vicarage Road.
Yesterday it was pure selection, with the midweek win and the relative success of Edo Kayembe playing up top leading the head coach to leave Bayo on the bench again.
It is somewhat ironic to read the comments of many fans who, when presented with the actuality of their previous remarks that playing with no striker would be better than picking Bayo, suddenly find they want him in the team.
The striker is a divisive figure, of that there is no doubt, but what is harder to be sure about is if Watford would have fared any better with him on the pitch from the start yesterday.
A bobbly playing surface and a swirling wind made it tricky at the Kassam, but the old adage that it was the same for both sides is accurate – the pitch nor the weather prevented Watford turning possession into points.
Their two best chances both came in the first half and, on a different day, may well have led to a goal.
Tom Ince’s intelligent little through-ball got Moussa Sissoko in behind the Oxford defence but heading slightly away from goal his attempt to flick the ball over Jamie Cumming was blocked by the keeper.
Perhaps the clearest chance fell to Francisco Sierralta, starting a game for the first time since January 21 due to Mattie Pollock’s absence as he attended the impending birth of his first child.
The big Chilean defender got plenty of meat behind his header when he met Imran Louza’s free-kick, but the ball was straight at Cumming who palmed it up and away.
In between those two openings, Oxford had an equally good chance as Ben Nelson met a corner with a firm header that cleared the bar when he probably should have got it on target.
The second half followed a similar pattern of Watford bossing the ball, except now they were floundering in and around the box.
The data tells part of the story – the Hornets attempted 11 crosses during the game but only one was successful. A 9% success rate on crosses is a clear indicator of where work needs to be done.
Equally, what chances did come their way were wasted – Edo Kayembe snatched at a loose ball in the box and fired way over the top when anything on target could have broken the deadlock.
The game was to begin to change course in the 80th minute.
James Abankwah had already been booked for his part in some puerile pushing and shoving, so when he lost the ball 10 yards inside the Oxford and decided to tug the sleeve of the breaking Przemyslaw Placheta, he was giving referee Mr Madley the opportunity to show him another one.
It wasn’t a hard tug of the shirt, it was only brief, but it was in full view of the referee and his assistant – and Abankwah was duly heading down the tunnel.
As a side note, the match highlights clearly show Placheta waving the imaginary yellow card in the seconds before Mr Madley brandished the real one – always an unedifying sight and one that was apparently supposed to be clamped down upon by officials.
As Watford defended the subsequent free-kick they were still shuffling the players they had on the pitch to try and plug the gap.
Down on the touchline, they were readying James Morris, but it took a few minutes for the defender to make it onto the pitch – and in that time the home side scored.
Cleverley said after the game that the fourth official was slow in accommodating the change – maybe it’s in moments like those that one of the wise old heads in the team goes down with an ‘injury’ which forces the game to stop and allows a substitution.
That’s stretching the rules rather than blatant cheating, and the sort of thing we see in pretty much every game. And if it prevents a goal, then it almost justifies stepping into that particular grey area.
As it was, Morris was stood watching from the side as Jeremy Ngakia was sucked in from the flank to try and contest a long ball.
He only succeeded in wiping out U’s striker Mark Harris for what would have been a certain free-kick, but referee Madley played a very good advantage (for Oxford) and Siriki Dembele collected the loose ball, saw a chance to shoot as three Watford players failed to shut him down sufficiently and sent his effort past a motionless Egil Selvik and inside the far post.
Had Watford left Oxfordshire with a point it would have been a very distinct case of letting two get away.
To head home empty-handed was therefore bitterly disappointing, though discussion will always come back to what the Hornets did with all the possession they had and why they failed to work keeper Cumming more than twice from their 16 attempts.
After the game it felt pertinent to ask about the fact that Rocco Vata only entered the pitch with six minutes of normal time remaining.
Certainly, during a second half where a Watford breakthrough began to look increasingly unlikely, it felt from the press box at least that it needed some new threat to provide the spark that would finally light fires in the home defence.
The travelling fans sang Vata’s name for some time but by the point the Irish Under-21 international was on the pitch, Watford were a man and a goal down.
Understandably Cleverley said that substitutions are not something he makes based upon what is being sung from the stands, but he also proffered the thought about what might have happened had he got Vata on the pitch when it was 0-0.
Attacking options are clearly limited in this Watford squad, though having had the whole of January (and many months of planning as the Sporting Director told us) to do something about that and choosing not to means sympathy is thin on the ground.
However, with Oxford consistently pushed back into their own half and Watford seemingly unable to find a way to unlock them, then while it may have been a risky move, sending Vata on with Bayo would have given all their attacking cards more than 20 minutes to come up trumps.
Perhaps the main gripe was that Watford didn’t seem prepared to take more of a gamble to try and win a game that was very much there for the taking.
If there is to be a late and dramatic surge to the play-offs then such gambles will have to be taken.
Currently there is a five-point gap to make up with eight games to play, and it’s pretty clear Watford will need to win at least six of them to have any hope of extending their season deeper into May.
Only twice in the last decade would 70 points have been sufficient to secure a play-off place, and that is an indicator that not only is this season’s Championship a bit weaker outside the top three, but not finishing in the top six this term would be a chance missed.
However, there’s a need for reflection too: those in August who thought not making the play-offs could be deemed a failure were surely in a tiny minority.
The Hornets have not been below halfway in the table, even during that recent bad run.
And they will return from the international break still in the top 12 and with a chance, if somewhat unlikely, of being involved in the play-offs.
Rather like the game at Oxford yesterday, if they fall short then while there has still been very clear progress – on and off the pitch – that nagging feeling will be there that the Hornets might have got what they craved had they been prepared to take some risks in the pursuit of glory.
