I watched Watford Ladies take on Arsenal Ladies last season so I knew just how tough this was going to be for us, but it still doesn’t drive it home until you actually see such quality up against your own players.
The Hornets did well in the Premiership National Division last season, finishing 7th behind the likes of Arsenal, Everton and Chelsea. And in that match I saw, the Arsenal Ladies dominance over Watford was impressive, so to see how well Watford dominated us here tells you something about how good a level that football is at.
To be fair, we didn’t have anywhere near our strongest line-up from last season and many of our new trialists were thrown into the deep end, with some of the youngsters playing only their second match at adult level. So, it was a big ask!
But even with our best team out we would have struggled to deal with a Watford side that gave us an outstanding lesson in disciplined and well-organised football. And their superior fitness levels told as well, which they used to their advantage.
We started quite brightly mind. In the opening 10 minutes we fashioned out a couple of decent opportunities and had our fair share of possession but were punished for sloppily giving the ball away in midfield and conceded to a great strike on the counter by one of the Watford strikers.
That seemed to suck a lot of energy out of us and a second and almost carbon copy goal by the same player just minutes later had us on the back foot. Watford started to open us up at will as we tried to respond but were careless in possession and gave the ball away too cheaply and it wasn’t long before they added a third before the break.
There was a brief period of serious Watford domination before half-time came where we were being picked off but we managed to keep the ball out of the back of the net and regrouped at half-time where we discussed some of the problems and offered solutions to them. The idea was to put into practice a defensive strategy for the next 45 minutes that would be useful for games in the future, irrespective of the result.
In the second-half we were better on the ball and dealt with the Watford threats with much better discipline, but we tired and conceded a further three goals without really managing to trouble them at the other end. But we did restrict them to a lot more long range efforts than playing in and around our penalty area and goal, which was a positive.
It was a real eye opener for some of the players and a sign of things to come this pre-season and while we won’t face teams like this every week in our division, there will be sides out there who can build up the play in the manner Watford did and therefore we will have no excuses other than to be prepared for the real thing when the season kicks off properly next month.
In the meantime this was an excellent and educational work out for us. We learned a lot of things about our players, both old and new and know what we need to do going forward to improve on what we saw here.
I liked how Watford pressed the play quickly and capitalised on even the smallest of errors we made and they showed up a few flaws and technical deficiencies in some of our players, which was to be expected. Their fitness levels also allowed them to play at a high tempo and the way they switched and mixed up some of their attacking play was actually quite sexy at times. I liked what I saw and hope they do well next season.
I can’t wait to see how some of our more regular and experienced players from last season cope with the challenging pre-season schedule we have for them ahead. They can only become better players for it and I’m expecting quite a few of them to elevate their game to a whole new level this season.
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