Are you thinking about the first half incident? Jon Marks reported that it had been looked at by the Watford staff on video and they said that that no punch had been thrown.
One of the flattest first halves for a while. 2nd half we got better certainly once Anya came on. Cannot complain too much about the result - didn't work their goalie enough although Almunia wasn't over-stretched either. Missed Abdi somewhat and we did look fairly light at times which teams will take advantage of.
Sounds like we need to improve on Tuesday night, although Donny are a decent footballing side which may suit us.
But for some poor finishing we would have won that game 3-1, but that would have been tough on Charlton who probably deserved the draw. Man of the match for me was McGugan who gets better every game...shame the same could not be said for the officials. The ref and the lino in front of The Rous were very poor, but took their eyes off the game and missed an awful lot. The lino did not look along the line and missed at least 3 times when the ball went out but played continued - and that was for both sides! Whilst the ref missed a lot after the ball had gone..
Some of the things the ref missed were to our advantage, such as the dreadful body-check by our defender (Ireney?) on their attacker near the end of the game, which would have been a free kick in a dangerous position. I guess we had more "near misses" than they did, but the teams seemed closely matched. We are far from a dominant force in this division. Though this team is better than the one that started last season it does not seem better than the one that ended last season.Everyone says it, but we miss Vydra and Chalobah and I cannot see anyone better than them among the new players. Deeney does not play as well without these two (or Abdi) in the team; he thrives on good service, which he did not get yesterday. How do we interpret the "new" formation? Zola being bold in making a tactical change, or Zola struggling to find the best combination of players/tactics with the resources he has this season? The next few matches are becoming more significant than I expected , and I am approaching matches now a bit more nervously than I thought I would.
Another below par performance from the third team on the pitch. Come to expect it, but the failure to apply the law is utterly unacceptable. What constitutes a foul may well be "In the Opinion Of the Referee" but when we have an abject failure to apply the law then the authorities need to question the quality of the officiating. Striking or attempting to strike is sanctioned by sending the player off. It is not that hard. Either something happened or nothing did - in which case both players have been wrongly cautioned. An amateurish cop out, not good enough at professional level or even feeder level. Also his cautioning of Belkalem - if I waved a YC at a player like that on a Sunday morning then frankly I would expect his forehead connecting my nose in a rather rapid fashion. Talk about small man syndrome. Less than impressive body language - I am the big I am - through out. Once again I'd love to see the assessors report. All that said a draw was arguably a fair result. We had chances to win it and didn't take them. Again, last season we would have lost that match - indeed we did!
