Stoke 2 - 0 WatfordStoke’s Peter Crouch strikes again to give Watford the cold shoulder
Home team scorersRyan Shawcross 45 +2:59
Peter Crouch 49
Mid-table momentum can be everything at this stage of the Premier League season and while Stoke City won for the first time in a month, a fifth successive away defeat continued Watford’s alarming nosedive. They may have put in a much more concerted effort than in the humiliation by Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday but the points count was the same.
Goals from Ryan Shawcross and Peter Crouch, his second in successive games, compounded the belief that even at nearly 36 the former England striker would warrant another year’s contract as he enabled Stoke to maintain their good home form.
Walter Mazzarri’s position must be coming under after a run of four points from 24 at a club where managerial security is seldom held sacred.
The last thing Watford would have wanted after their recent run was a cold and windy Tuesday night in Stoke. With five defeats from their previous seven games and nine players missing, Walter Mazzarri’s claim that his side were over-achieving had everything to do with their early-season form and nothing to do with the current harsh realities biting deep.
Their eighth manager in the past four and a half years responded to the ignominious home defeat by Tottenham two days earlier by retaining his deployment of three central defenders but asking his wing-backs to stay narrow. This was damage limitation in the extreme.
Even though Stoke started a point worse off and without a win in five matches, their approach reflected far better spirits. At least they had performed well in losing at Chelsea and Liverpool.
With Marko Arnautovic returning from a three-match suspension to play in the hole behind Crouch and the fit-again Jonathan Walters, Stoke also started with three men at the back.
But these included Glen Johnson, hitherto a rampaging right-back, and the manner in which Mama Diouf manhandled Jose Holebas to the ground to earn his 19th-minute yellow card indicated he remains more of a striker than a right-wing-back.
This is a critical spell for Watford, with this the first of four games against teams from the bottom half of the table. Mazzarri may be right that finishing above the relegation zone was a mutually satisfactory target for the season with president Gino Pozzo but the Watford owner has not been slow to ring the changes before; any more downward momentum would surely bring the former Inter Milan manager’s position into serious question.
The Watford players certainly appeared to give their all for Mazzarri in an erratic first half but the manager still left the field shaking his head and ringing his hands together as if in prayer.
For with virtually the last kick of the half, Shawcross half-volleyed home as he ran unmarked on to Charlie Adam’s corner. It was the Stoke captain’s first for almost exactly two years.
Such is how Watford must feel their luck is going at the moment. Yet just as Adlene Guedioura let his man go, so the Algerian should have put Watford ahead 15 minutes earlier, only to delay getting his shot off when picked out by Abdoulaye Doucoure’s pull-back.
Then again, Arnautovic had been sent clear down the inside-left channel by Joe Allen and opted to square when Walters was marked, and Stoke looked far more comfortable with their plentiful possession.
Watford went for broke at half-time, introducing a second striker in Odion Ighalo for Valon Behrami, and almost immediately Doucoure forced Lee Grant into a superb diving save.
But within four minutes Peter Crouch, starting his third successive game, scored his 98th Premier League goal when Sebastian Prodl missed Adam’s cross.
Crouch should have scored again, 15 minutes from time, but almost comically mistimed Ibrahim Afellay’s cross for the ball to fall to square to Walters, who also failed to convert.
Prodl headed wide in a short burst of Watford pressure late on, but Walters and Shawcross both went close as Stoke saw the game out comfortably.
Guardian