Assistant manager Ray Lewington has accepted that the Watford players succumbed to the ‘fear factor’ as they failed to hold on to a lead in their home defeat at Burnley. The ‘Orns came into the match having lost their last ten games at Vicarage Road in a row and conceded twice late on to lose 2-1 against the Clarets. Speaking to the press, with Roy Hodgson not well enough to fulfil media duties,
Ray Lewington said: “Well, there’s a massive fear factor here. Which we’ve found since we first come here, particularly a home. And that comes from losing matches. There’s a fear factor at any club when you’re losing lots of matches, which Watford have been doing. I thought today, you could see it at its extreme. First half we were on the front foot, playing in the opposition’s half, creating chances, looking good. Crowd were really good, getting behind us. And we went in at halftime fairly pleased. But I think that players do is that they look at the clock, and you know, they can see that there is roughly 30 minutes to go, they start to drop off a little bit, try to protect the lead. Which we said at halftime was the most important thing that we don’t do, is that we try to start sitting back. Because then you allow balls to go into the box a lot easier. And then you’re playing Russian roulette that you can defend them crosses, which we didn’t do. You could see visibly how much we dropped off at the end. And I’m afraid that’s caused us the defeat. The best way to defend a lead is playing the opposition’s box, which we did in the first step. We played in their half, got the ball forward, but you could see us visibly drop off. And then you open Then you’re taking a massive risk.”
In the end, Watford’s inability to make the most of a strong first-half performance, before then succumbing to a disastrous collapse, seemed to neatly sum up what has been a difficult season. Indeed, much positivity was promised with an opening day win over Aston Villa, but since then, two more managers have been hired and none of them have been able to do build enough momentum to keep the club from looking like relegation candidates. Lewington spoke about that as something he and Hodgson had certainly experienced since taking over in late January,
Ray Lewington said: “I think it’s summed up the time we’ve been here. It’s definitely a trait that we were very, very nervy. We don’t seem to be able to even put two passes together consistently, which is always a sign of a team that is having a tough time in the division. It’s an unforgiving division. Every week the top teams obviously give you so many problems but even sides like Burnley in the bottom are still very good teams. They’re well organised and they’ve got good individual players. So there’s no let off in the Premier League, you have to really just keep going and if you’re if you’ve been losing it makes it doubly difficult.”
