Our ramshackle defence consisting of Chris Gunter, Wes Morgan, Joel Lynch, and Chris Cohen had coped well enough against Bradford City and West Brom, but Watford really tore us apart in the last fifteen minutes last night. Once the midfield lost its shape following a series of substitutions, Forest were all over the place. Even Gunter, who is usually very solid at right back looked like he had never played there before. He gave the ball away time and time again. Morgan is usually fairly dependable, but he and Lynch were absolutely awful, and Cohen, who obviously is no left back, was left dreadfully exposed with nobody helping him out in midfield.
Forest were forced into an early substitution when Lewis McGugan, who had been given his first start in the League, was stretchered off with a fractured cheekbone 25 minutes into the game. And little over five minutes later, Watford took the lead through a close-range header from Danny Graham. We didn't really deserve to be losing as we were applying plenty of pressure, although again our finishing was not very good. But we finally made the breakthrough just before half time when Dexter Blackstock scored his second goal of the season to equalise from a few yards out. That goal really spurred Forest on and we finished the first half with a flourish with Rob Earnshaw coming close to giving us the lead. This really raised hopes amongst the 18,000+ Forest supporters that we'd be in for a good second half.
Unfortunately for one reason or another, Forest failed to live up to expectations in the second 45 minutes. Certainly they were not helped by the referee and linesman's dubious officiating, or Watford's timewasting tactics, but unlike on Saturday against West Brom when we had been very unlucky, our problems last night were largely down to tactical ineptness more than anything else. While our defence was always likely to struggle, they had not been doing too badly until Billy Davies replaced Paul Anderson with David McGoldrick just after the hour-mark. As a result, the midfield really lost shape. Anderson was not playing too badly, and was helping out defensively in midfield, but as soon as he went off, and McGoldrick was asked to play out wide on the right wing, Watford started exploiting the gap in midfield, and they started to run us ragged, which they simply had not being doing all evening. Forest were left completely exposed at the back and looked like a bunch of schoolboy amateurs playing their first game together. Watford put three past us in the last fifteen minutes, scoring twice in the space of three minutes before substitute Dele Adebola gave us brief hope when he netted his first of the season three minutes from time, only for Watford to make sure of the points in injury time when they restored their two-goal advantage thanks to more dreadful defending from Forest.
While it's certainly a bit premature to be taking the league table seriously after three games, we should definitely not ignore the early warning signs that our defence is not good enough as it stands for us to be able to compete at Championship level. Why we didn't sign a central defender in the summer, I don't know. We did try to sign one or two, but the deals never materialised. I don't think it was necessary to buy so many forwards. There is now a huge imbalance in the team, where we have some positions covered by three or four players, while in defence there is a real lack of competition. There isn't a single central defender at the Club who you can say is definitely worthy of playing at this level. Hopefully that will be rectified in due course, because otherwise we will be sucked into another relegation battle, and that is the last thing anybody would expect after splashing out more than £5 million in the summer.
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