- Jeremy Doku scored first inside five minutes before Matheus Nunes’ strike
- Watford threatened to take it to penalties late on when Tom Ince halved deficit
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In something of a twist, Manchester City could have done with utilising the dark arts last night. A bit of time-wasting, running the clock down – because Watford threatened to take this to penalties for a few minutes.
Back here again. It’d only been 49 hours. Forty-nine hours since Manchester City bounced off this pitch, revelling in the Arsenal acrimony. Too soon to be back, for sure.
But that is where this ridiculous calendar is at. Either City played this tie here and now or moved it down to Vicarage Road. Pep Guardiola didn’t want to give up any competitive advantage – which is his prerogative – so 49 hours after the drain of Arsenal came a drain of a different sort and the night almost dragged on.
‘Do we have a game tomorrow?’ Guardiola asked flippantly afterwards. ‘I will give you guys a day off.’
Through, and with a first start of the season for Phil Foden – valuable minutes for John Stones and Jack Grealish too – so not all bad. And yet to the backdrop of player demands for more rest, the time between games must have left those involved feeling uneasy.
Not quite as uneasy as it might have been when Tom Ince scored to set up a lively finale. All the while, Rodri was 1,100 miles away in Barcelona hotel room after a third round of testing on the serious knee injury he sustained on Sunday. There awaiting surgery and Guardiola admitted that he is out for ‘a long time’ but they wait for second opinions in blind hope. City are fearing the worst, that their metronome will not be available for the remainder of the season.
‘He’s irreplaceable,’ Guardiola said. ‘But I will find a solution. There is an alternative, we will do it. When a team doesn’t play with the best midfielder in the world for a long, long time, it is a big blow.’
How they manage without him is for another day, given Rodri will not have featured against opposition who have stuttered slightly in the Championship after a strong start to Tom Cleverley’s first full campaign in management.
Nico O’Reilly will fancy that the No 6 spot could become his own in the years to come although right now feels too soon for a youngster who has burst to prominence over a summer impressing Guardiola.
Even so, it felt almost impossible to upstage a first professional start outside of the Community Shield for O’Reilly, a burgeoning talent out of City’s academy, but a 16-year-old somehow managed it.
Kaden Braithwaite is not a name 90 per cent of those inside the Etihad Stadium will have heard an hour before kick-off. He didn’t go on the tour of America in the summer and, while vice-captain of the Under 18s, somebody that before Monday had never trained under Guardiola.
Braithwaite wasn’t afforded an easy introduction: Guardiola had him moving between left back and centre half depending on when City had possession. Yet for a youngster who joined the club aged eight, like the veteran Rico Lewis on the other flank, that is probably all he’s ever known.
Braithwaite did breathe a sigh of relief when former Rochdale forward Kwadwo Baah barged him off the ball in a fashion deemed too zealous in the build-up to flashing past Stefan Ortega. A let-off and reminder of the jump in physicality. ‘For me it’s a perfectly good goal,’ Cleverley said. ‘It can look aggressive but it’s shoulder to shoulder. It’s disappointing.’
Another academy graduate, James McAtee, had already engineered City’s first after five minutes when harassing the Watford back line, ending in Jeremy Doku steering into Bond’s far corner.
McAtee was involved in the second, tenaciously keeping a move going and allowing Lewis to feed Matheus Nunes six minutes before the break – his first goal for the club.
Cleverley’s Hornets, a blend of young and old, were sharp on the break – aside from Baah’s disallowed effort, Vakoun Bayo bulleted a header wide – but City’s fringe did enough. Even after Ince had wonderfully curled into Ortega’s far corner with four minutes left.
‘This time last year I was managing the Under 18s away at Fleetwood,’ Cleverley added.’ ‘Every young coach is inspired by how Pep’s transformed football in this country. It was an honour.’
City will have Erling Haaland back in the fold for Saturday’s early kick-off at Newcastle United, after the striker was given compassionate leave to attend close friend Ivar Eggja’s funeral in Norway.
Foden filled the false nine role in Haaland’s absence, linking nicely with McAtee just off him, and there will come more nights when Guardiola needs to lean on old habits. Because Haaland cannot start them all. Such is the way these days, none of them can start them all. The guy who was most likely to has done his knee. Play many more with this sort of turnaround and a few more will do theirs.
