Arsenal v Watford: past games and a nice video from 2020.

Posted on by Tony Attwood

By Bulldog Drummond

Arsenal have played Watford 32 times  in the clubs’ history, with Arsenal winning 18 and Watford 12 – a higher number than you might expect at first sight.

Watford are not a club for trophy collectors, but a club for those who live in or were brought up in the town in Hertfordshire.  Their honours list involves winning League Division Four, Division Three, and League Division 2.  Across the years they have also been FA Cup finalists twice, and runners up the Championship, and each of Divisions One, Two and Three.

Thus until the next glorious moment comes along, probably accompanied by a load of money, survival is the name of the game.  And they did indeed survive five seasons in the Premier League before being relegated in 2020, coming 19th.  But then in 2021 they were immediately promoted back again.  Thus like Norwich it seems, they know that financial survival is the name of the game, and nothing aids this more than actually being in the Premier League – or when out, getting promoted again asap.

Relegation for both clubs is not welcomed but is not a disaster, because they have a model based on getting back up before the solidarity payments run out.

Watford have had one brilliant spell against us between March 1986 and April 1988 in which the clubs played each other seven times with Watford winning six of the games, and Arsenal one.  Here is that extraordinary set of results….

Date Match Res Score Competition
31 Mar 1986 Arsenal v Watford L 0-2 League Division One
1 Apr 1986 Watford v Arsenal L 3-0 League Division One
11 Oct 1986 Arsenal v Watford W 3-1 League Division One
14 Mar 1987 Arsenal v Watford L 1-3 FA Cup
21 Mar 1987 Watford v Arsenal L 2-0 League Division One
28 Nov 1987 Watford v Arsenal L 2-0 League Division One
15 Apr 1988 Arsenal v Watford L 0-1 League Division One

That final game in the sequence in April 1988 was indeed weird – as Watford were heading for relegation – which is in fact what they got.  And just to see how odd that was, here is the league table at that moment.  As we can see Arsenal’s one excuse was that the results didn’t matter; we were not going to win the league and they were trying to avoid relegation.

Team P W D L F A GD Pts
1 Liverpool 34 24 8 2 78 20 58 80
2 Manchester United 36 19 12 5 61 35 26 69
3 Queens Park Rangers 36 19 8 9 45 33 12 65
4 Everton 35 18 10 7 48 22 26 64
5 Nottingham Forest 34 18 9 7 58 34 24 63
6 Arsenal 37 17 10 10 52 34 18 61
7 Wimbledon 34 13 11 10 51 40 11 50
8 Sheffield Wednesday 36 15 5 16 46 56 -10 50
9 Coventry City 35 12 11 12 42 49 -7 47
10 Newcastle United 35 11 13 11 47 47 0 46
11 Southampton 36 11 12 13 45 48 -3 45
12 Tottenham Hotspur 37 11 10 16 35 45 -10 43
13 Luton Town 32 12 6 14 46 48 -2 42
14 Norwich City 35 12 6 17 36 45 -9 42
15 Chelsea 36 9 12 15 45 60 -15 39
16 Derby County 37 9 11 17 32 44 -12 38
17 West Ham United 35 8 13 14 33 46 -13 37
18 Charlton Athletic 36 8 12 16 33 49 -16 36
19 Portsmouth 35 7 12 16 30 55 -25 33
20 Watford 37 7 9 21 24 47 -23 30
21 Oxford United 36 6 12 18 39 69 -30 30

Watford’s prime problem, as I see it looking in from the outside, is not the lack of goal scoring prowess this season (which has been a problem in recent years, with for the last five seasons the top scorer only scoring something between seven and 13 goals) but the defence.   Only three clubs have let in more than Watford so far this season, Villa, Newcastle and Norwich.

Villa of course, as we know, because so many members of the AAA have been telling us, have the best keeper in the league, whom we stupidly threw out.   The fact that he is also a man who lets in lots of goals, and goes off to South America, not abiding by all the relevant regulations during a pandemic, and then tries to come back again, perhaps explains (along with Villa’s defensive record) why we didn’t keep him but kept Leno instead.

Anyway, Watford (the town) goes back to the 12th century, and was boosted in terms of population and importance by the arrival of the Grand Junction Canal and the London and Birmingham Railway – it is not a suburb of London as one or two people like to think.

And so…  as noted above they did have a very jolly time playing us up to 1988, but since then it has not been so clever.  We have had 16 games against them since that moment in 88, in the FA Cup and Premier League.  There has been one draw, three wins for Watford and 12 Arsenal victories.

Here’s the end of the list

Date Match Result Score Competition
31 Jan 2017 Arsenal v Watford L 1-2 Premier League
14 Oct 2017 Watford v Arsenal L 2-1 Premier League
11 Mar 2018 Arsenal v Watford W 3-0 Premier League
29 Sep 2018 Arsenal v Watford W 2-0 Premier League
15 Apr 2019 Watford v Arsenal W 0-1 Premier League
15 Sep 2019 Watford v Arsenal D 2-2 Premier League
26 Jul 2020 Arsenal v Watford W 3-2 Premier League

Here’s the reminder of what the last one looked like from the days when we weren’t allowed to go into the ground.   The point about this is not just that we won, but that we were 3-0 up in the first half, and then let that lead slip…

I think we need less of that.  There are, after all, older members of society in the ground.

Arsenal beating Watford – six great videos

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