“It’s just like Wembley again!” roared the away fans in the moments after the only goal, and they certainly had a point. When the teams last met, in the 2013 Championship play-off final , Palace had the better of the chances but scored only once, after Wilfried Zaha was tripped in the area by the Watford right-back, winning a penalty that was thumped into the top-left corner. This time, though the Hornets played better than at Wembley, the key moment was uncannily similar.
Allan Nyom was the culprit on this occasion, the only question being whether Zaha was inside the box when contact was made. “It was a penalty,” insisted the Palace manager, Alan Pardew. “The ball was travelling just outside the line, I thought, but the point of impact was inside the box.”
From the spot Yohan Cabaye went the same way as Kevin Phillips had at Wembley, with an identical result. Palace have now lost only one of their last 10 matches at Vicarage Road and sit sixth in the Premier League table, borne upon a tide of victories on the road. Pardew now has 11 wins in 14 away games as Palace manager, and three from four this season.
“We’ve got good players for an away team because we’ve got pace,” he said. “I said to the guys today: ‘Let’s not retreat in any way today. Let’s take the game to Watford . ’ It made the game very even in the first half, though not great entertainment. That made us grow in confidence and in the end we found some hot pockets, which we exploited.”
They had to work hard to find those hot pockets, rotating their attacking players with dizzying regularity. Jason Puncheon played on the right in the first half and as a centre-forward in the second; Bakary Sako started on the right, moved to the left, then to the middle and finally settled on the left; Yannick Bolasie spent most of the first half on the left and much of the second on the right.
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