At the start it looked like we were cruising to an easy victory, but Watford came back at us, and at the end we were relieved to hear the final whistle
We took only four minutes to get ourselves in front. Firpo collected the ball on the left of the area, and played it back to Ramazani when the Watford defence forced him away from goal. The Belgian cut inside and curled a right foot shot towards goal which Bachmann really should have dealt with.
But the Watford keeper could only palm the ball over his head, and the technology ruled that the ball had crossed the line before he could reach back and knock it clear. It made a pleasant change for us to benefit from a goalkeeping error for once. We could have gone further in front from a Gnonto shot that fizzed across the face of goal and just wide, but the second goal did arrive in the seventh minute.
This time Bachmann got to Gnonto’s cross, but could only palm the ball into the path of Aaronson, who smashed the ball into the net as Piroe got out of the way to avoid being offside. It certainly wasn’t the Watford keeper’s night, but it has been suggested that he was carrying an injury which might have affected his performance.
Daniel Farke had named an unchanged starting line-up once again, but was forced into an early change when Ramazani fell awkwardly after being challenged while trying to race down the wing past a number of opponents. Luckily Solomon is back to fitness, so we had a like-for-like replacement ready on the bench.
We continued to dominate, and Gnoto beat several defenders on his way into the box, but shot straight at Bachmann. Perhaps that was worth a try, as their keeper might have let it got straight through him after his nervy start to the game. At that stage it looked like we would give Watford a right tonking, like our 3-0 win at a similar stage last season, but gradually the visitors began to get a foothold in the game.
At first they didn’t produce a great deal from the amount of possession they started to enjoy, but as half-time approached Meslier was forced into a good save by a curling shot from Chakvetadze. And they forced a series of corners, which were swung in towards a number of big men right in front of Meslier, one of which led to a header just over the bar.
And they started the second half in a similar vein, and reduced the deficit only two minutes after the break. Baah’s surging run to the byline took him past Struijk, and though he was lucky that the ball came straight back to him after his cross, he reacted quickly as he got his foot to the right angle to steer the ball into the net.
For the first time our new midfield was starting to struggle as Rothwell looked like he was running out of energy, but Tanaka covered a lot of ground once again as he got back for vital interceptions but still drove the team forward when he could. The anxiety levels went up another notch as Meslier saved from an Ince free kick, and we clearly needed another goal to secure the win.
That nearly arrived when a wayward Bogle cross came back off the post, but Piroe couldn’t get the power he needed from the rebound, possibly distracted by Aaronson close by. It wasn’t the Dutchman’s night, as earlier he’d wasted another good chance when he almost tackled himself after getting his feet in a muddle, though his cause would have been helped if Gnonto had passed to him occasionally.
It was no great surprise when these were the two to be replaced on 72 minutes, as Farke tried to give his team a bit more life. The Italian looked unhappy to be ‘hooked’, but he had been guilty of giving the ball away on several occasions. The introduction of James and Joseph started to turn the game back in our favour as the pair created a series of chances, but unfortunately without converting any of them.
Joseph reached to head a James cross over the bar, when Aaronson would have had an easier chance behind him if he’d left it. Then Joseph set up James in return, only for the Welshman to shoot straight at Bachmann. As did Joseph from the easiest chance of the lot from a superb James cross from the right, when he would have scored if he could have just guided his header into the corner of the net when he had half the goal to aim at.
The young Spaniard wouldn’t have scored a hat-trick for his country’s under 21s with finishing like that. Watford continued to threaten occasionally, and as Firpo was caught out once again his foul collected the booking that will keep him out of Saturday's game, much to the delight of his critics on social media. But perhaps the effort was too much for the visitors, who went down with an unbelievable number of injuries during the second half.
So eight minutes were added, and to bolster the defence Farke sent Byram on for Solomon as he opted to sit on the lead we had. There was another stoppage after Struijk landed awkwardly, so further time was played after the initial eight minutes. One of those occasions when we could do with the board being held up again, so we knew how much injury time of injury time to expect.
We were past the 100 minute mark when the final whistle eventually came, and we had held on for the win that took us to second place in the table, for 24 hours at least. When it was all over Daniel Farke admitted to the BBC that it had all been hard work, and he was relieved that we’d been able to grind out the result. "First of all I'm really, really happy with the three points”.
"I was worried after 10 minutes when we were 2-0 up I have to say. Last Friday was more or less a magic night and everybody was praising us and then you go into the next game against a really good opponent and then easily go 2-0 up and it can lead to a situation where you do one step less and you end up dropping points”.
"We missed an unbelievable amount of chances and if you don't score the third goal you still have to be awake and play without any mistakes. I have to pay compliments to our fans too as they were excellent and made sure we kept playing on the front foot."
The events of this game mean we will have a couple of enforced changes for the trip to the Brizzle City wurzels on Saturday, but also showed that we’ve got players in the squad who can come in and do a good job when need be, so we can be confident of keeping the unbeaten run going for a while longer.