Abbreviated View From South Texas -- Fulham v. Watford

I taped this just before I left for a gig and didn't finish watching it until 2300 Saturday night. Grumble, grumble.

First of all, I hate them damned Dirty Yellows. The Hatter in me has never had any good thoughts about that crew, and today didn't change my mind.

Having said that, I've seldom seen such a textbook display of quality passing as we saw from Watford. Long, short, back, forward, sideways -- all of them clear, smooth, and accurate. With that passing acuity against a 10-man squad, it was always going to get ugly early. And so it did.

From the beginning it was obvious that something was not right with Betts. His crap decision making almost cost us a goal early on when Budurov had to jump in and concede a free kick. He completely lost his rag in giving up the penalty. Since when does an early red card become the better option? Whenever the keeper is sent off, two players suffer. With the exception of his weak distribution, our young keeper has impressed me so far this season. Today, it looked like he left his brain hanging on a hook with his civvies.

Fulham throughout looked confused and out of sorts. Watford looked like a calm, top table side, even given their four game losing streak, and man did their finishing match their passing. That 4th goal was stunning. Fully six Hornets caught the eye, but I'm not going to mention any of them. They'll be in the playoff picture at least with this squad. Fulham? I've seen some great performances from the Whites this season, but today was about dispirited mediocrity. Down 2-0 inside 25 minutes is tough, but a resolute side would have stopped the bleeding and made Watford pay for every yard of turf. Today we never looked like causing even a single threat.

This season, there have been several Fulham players who caught my eye from time to time. Today, the only two players in white I thought put in a decent shift were Grimmer and LVC. The rest looked lost.

I still think we're going to finish in the top half. I never thought we would be relegated. I never thought we were going to get promoted, but I really had hoped that we were going to stop playing like our manager was Martin Jol.

Oh, and my hat is off to the 2-300 Fulham supporters to stuck around for the bitter end. With the place apparently half full at best, there never was much atmosphere to dissipate with early exits.

There's obviously no HatterDon Man of the Match in this abortion, but I'm also not going to single out any one person as responsible for this debacle. I'm hoping there's a bunch of players looking hard at themselves and asking, "Couldn't I have done more tonight?"