Roy Hodgson
Roy Hodgson has expressed his disappointment after Watford fell to a 2-1 Premier League defeat against Brentford at Vicarage Road. With the game in the balance, Pontus Jansen headed in a 95th-minute winner that adds more woe to the ‘Orns relegation troubles. While speaking in his post-game press conference, Hodgson accepted that a draw wouldn’t have been the perfect result, but felt the defeat was cruel, especially after Watford’s missed late chances.
Roy Hodgson said: “After coming so close to winning it, to actually lose it with the last action of the game, the freekick and the header, that was hard to take.”
While a draw may have felt like the fair result, the ‘Orns made things difficult for themselves after putting in a tepid first-half display. Indeed, they went in at the break 1-0 down, but did turn things around, somewhat, in the second half.
Roy Hodgson said: “That’s what football is, you know. Unfortunately, you prepare the game and you dream of the performance and you visualise the performance. But it’s not always the performance you get. And unfortunately, we really needed each and every player, right from the very first minute, to be at the top of his game. Now that was by no means the case. But we did remedy to some extent in the second half some of the worst aspects of our first-half performance. And we gave ourselves a chance. We equalised and we could even have got that winner, but it would have been nice if we could have done it from the very first minute because then maybe we wouldn’t have been behind at halftime..”
In the end, the game was settled by two set-piece goals for Brentford – who had few opportunities from open play – but Hodgson refused to blame his defence for any lapses. Instead, he pointed to the physicality of the Bees players, as well as the quality of Christian Eriksen.
Roy Hodgson said: “Well, no, one’s never happy when teams score against us from set plays, even though I must say, they are quite dangerous from set plays. Apart from anything else, they’ve got five or six players in the team who are over one metre 94. So it’s not easy to defend against them. We don’t have many one metre 94 defenders, in fact we don’t have any. So it was never going to be easy, especially with the delivery that Eriksen has with his feet from freekicks and corners, and of course the enormous amount of long throws that they are able to get. But I would just give you one statistic, you know, I think that In terms of freekicks and corners kicks, we clearly have more than they did. Which would suggest we limited him to not having that many, because we certainly had more, and we looked quite dangerous ourselves. And unfortunately, if you play against a team that is very good at set plays, and they are good – especially the second goal more than the first one – that risk always exists, because the quality of that ball in, ends up being a one v one duel. And if their guy is a bit bigger, stronger, more aggressive than yours, it’s gonna be a goal. But we did our best to block them. And we didn’t give them loads and loads of chances. And we knew that if Eriksen was getting on the ball for corner kicks, wide freekicks, central freekicks, within danger. And quite frankly, he didn’t get in that position very often. And when he did, he showed his class.”
