Even the stats nerds can’t explain Leeds vs Watford — Square Ball 22/10/24

Three is the magic number

Written by: William Almond

Leeds vs Watford. I see that fixture and I think 3-0. I suppose it’s like Pavlov’s dog, if instead of conducting experiments on dogs that included completely removing their oesophaguses, he inflicted the much more serious punishment of forcing them to support Leeds United between 2006 and the present day.

There might be some justification for it though. The stats nerds will tell you that a 3-0 scoreline occurs in roughly 6% of football matches, or about once every fifteen games. Leeds and Watford have produced four such scorelines in their last seventeen encounters, or basically one in four.

And in their own way, all of these three nils have been significant. So ahead of Tuesday night’s clash, I thought I’d have a look back at them to try to figure out what’s going on here.

Leeds 0-3 Watford — May 2006

Of course, there’s only one place to start. The Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, on May 21, 2006.

Going into the play-offs Leeds took just nine points from thirty available to finish the season, but after beating Preston in the semi a return to the big time seemed just about possible.

I’ll make this one quick. A return to the big time wasn’t possible. Jay DeMerit headed in the opener from a corner, while the second goal needs only five words to describe it: Chambers, Lewis, Post, Sullivan, Net. The third came from the spot after Shaun Derry tried to win the ball with a challenge I’m sure he’d blame on the disastrous Millennium Stadium pitch.

Even standing just one game away from a relatively swift return to the Premiership, Leeds United were already a club with problems. According to Kevin Blackwell, the club still owed £9m in wages to players long since departed. That said, knowing what came next, you do have to wonder about the sliding doors nature of this game. What if instead of DeMerit, Sullivan (og), and Henderson, the scorers that day had been Gregan, Sullivan (in the right net) and Hulse? Would it have ushered in a period at Elland Road defined by league and cup glory, or just the instant return to the Championship that Watford subsequently managed? Perhaps at the very least it would have been Blackwell, rather than Aidy Boothroyd, who led England Under-21s to glory in the 2018 Toulon tournament. Some comfort.

Either way, Leeds eventually walked through the door marked League One, so we took a few years off from the trip to Vicarage Road. That meant an eight-year gap until the next three nil.

Watford 3-0 Leeds — April 2014

The date is April 8, 2014. Massimo Cellino, noted guitarist and conman, has just successfully appealed against the EFL’s ruling that he is not a fit and proper person to run a football club, which really does go to prove the old maxim: if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

The football club he is apparently a fit and proper person to be in charge of, Leeds United, arrive at Vicarage Road off the back of four straight defeats. (Vicarage Road, incidentally, is 174 miles from Elland Road, which is a significantly shorter distance than the 500 miles Cellino moved former club Cagliari when he relocated them to Trieste.)

There’s a new man at the helm, but in many ways, things are just the same — Brian McDermott is still the manager, for example. This is technically a new era though and in the stands there’s some optimism. That lasts all of nine minutes. Almen Abdi heads home an abysmally defended cross, and the away end reverberates to the gallows melody of ‘let’s pretend we’ve scored a goal’.

The bleakest thing about this game is that Watford, who eventually finished 13th, weren’t really any good either. Ross McCormack tried to score from the halfway line (he did that a lot). Manuel Almunia tried and failed to let it in. That about summed things up.

Ikechi Anya nodded in Watford’s second after Tom Lees manfully attempted to head clear a ball sailing at least three feet over his head. Troy Deeney capped off the day by dribbling the ball straight through a Jason Pearce challenge that was barely there before slotting home. The commentator for the Youtube highlights of this game responds to that goal by screaming, “Oh how has he scored? That is magnificent.” Watch it back and you’ll certainly agree with the first half of that statement.

Welcome to our new era, Leeds fans, same as the old one.

If you believe in karma, you might think that the reward for such loyalty from the stands came in the form of the Bielsa years. Football sent from the gods to wash away the sins of an entire football club. You might even want to read about it now. Unfortunately, the only game the Argentine ever managed against Watford finished 1-0, so because of the scoreline, and because I hate joy, we won’t be discussing it any further.

Watford 0 – 3 Leeds — April 2022

Jesse Marsch took over the job on February 28, 2022. Two wins and two defeats later Leeds were precariously balanced five points clear of the relegation zone. Everton and Burnley, both with two games in hand, lurked below ready to capitalise on any mistake. Marsch’s men made the trip to Vicarage Road on April 9.

If Cellino’s era pushed the bounds of legality, this game felt like an experiment in just how bad a team could be and still run out 3-0 winners. Leeds were poor, Watford were worse. Future Barcelona captain Raphinha — a phrase that is still ridiculous to write — gave Leeds the lead with a pinger from the edge of the box on 21 minutes.

But it took until 73 minutes for Watford to truly press self-destruct. Full-back Hassane Kamara initially did well to intercept a Sam Greenwood through ball before passing it to centre-back Samir, who ‘miscontrolled’ it directly into the path of an onrushing Rodrigo. Spain’s (by this point former) no.9 gratefully accepted the gift, sliding the ball home before picking it up and belting it into the stands. I’ll leave it to Tony Dorigo on this one: “It’s one of those games where you knew it was gonna be a mistake, an absolute howler, that’s gonna make the difference. And it was an absolute howler.” Yep.

Jackie Harrison completed the rout with a genuinely brilliant finish, through the legs of Kabasele and across the keeper.

Leeds 3-0 Watford — September 2023

Between Marsch’s 3-0 victory and Leeds’ next game against Watford there were 532 days. In that time, Leeds United won one more home league game (five) than they had managers (four). This only works if we count Michael Skubala, and I’m not even sure Skubes does that, but anyway. The fourth and latest of those managers, Daniel Farke, had endured a mixed start up to that point — admittedly not helped by the players organising an impromptu general strike.

Against Watford though, Leeds were utterly dominant. That game is perhaps best encapsulated by the moment when the ball dropped out of the Elland Road sky and perfectly onto the instep of Farke’s “normal shoe” as he would refer to it after the game. The West Stand erupted, and Daniel, presumably doing his best to keep it casual, gave them a quick nod. ‘Yeah, good wasn’t it?’ At the time, it felt like the beginning of something special. And who knows, it might still be.

But it wasn’t just Farke’s game. This was undoubtedly Georginio Rutter’s breakout performance in a Leeds shirt. His assist for Jadon Anthony’s third was simply majestic, holding off a first defender, sending a second looking for his lunch, before sliding a perfectly weighted ball through an admittedly haphazard Watford defence for Anthony to run onto. In truth, all afternoon he looked bigger, stronger, more intelligent and more gifted than anyone else on the pitch.

Leeds 3-0 Watford — October 2024?

And so to Tuesday night. Could Farke really achieve the impossible and become the first Leeds manager in history to record two 3-0 wins over Watford? Leeds come into it off the back of an impressive win over ‘promotion rivals’ Sheffield United. Meanwhile, Watford lost their last game 3-0 to Luton, who are crap and 17th. A win for Leeds by that scoreline would be enough to take Farke’s men top of the Championship for the first time since March. More importantly, I will never be able to go past that services without thinking of that scoreline for the rest of my life. So, how’s your touch, Daniel?