Big crowd to greet the Clarets

Hornets’ manager Aidy Boothroyd, who apparently is still looking up, has been extremely busy in the last couple of days and has added another couple of players to his squad. He moved quickly yesterday when West Ham cancelled Malky Mackay’s contract and the 33 year-old former Celtic and Norwich defender has joined them.

Today it was Leeds United midfielder, and former Burnley target, Matthew Spring and that has cost Watford a fee of £150,000. In both cases they are players that Boothroyd has worked with, Mackay at Norwich and more recently Spring at Leeds.

The manager, who took charge of Watford for the first time towards the end of last season at Burnley, had already brought in seven new players during the close season to boost his squad after they avoided relegation last May by just two points.

Two of those are loan signings and three of the five permanent signings have cost transfer fees. Jordan Stewart, who was linked with Burnley, cost £125,000 when he signed from Leicester, another Leeds player Clarke Carlisle cost £100,000 and Gillingham striker Darius Henderson came in at a cost of £450,000.

Another player constantly linked with the Clarets, Cheltenham’s Martin Devaney, and Brazilian striker Junior who was released by Derby, were brought in on free transfers whilst Nottingham Forest’s Marlon King and young Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster are on loan. Foster had been at Old Trafford for less than a month after joining them from Stoke before moving out again in this deal.

Junior though was there for less than a month. After the validity of his passport was question by Denmark where Watford enjoyed pre-season games coupled with him not having the legal papers necessary for him to be employed in Britain the club cancelled his contract.

To enable all the new players to come in a total of fifteen players have left the club since the end of last season including some high profile names such as Sean Dyche, Neil Cox, Bruce Dyer, Jermaine Darlington and Brynjar Gunnarsson. To add to that list Heidar Helguson left for Fulham in a £1.3 million deal.

Although they were beaten at home on the opening day of the season against Preston they recovered to collect four points on the road last week, drawing with Plymouth and winning at Cardiff as week ago tonight in front of the television cameras. King has been amongst the goals, scoring three times in those two games.

It has left them in eighth place in the league ahead of tomorrow’s game, their second home game of the season.

Click HERE to see Watford’s results to date.

Boothroyd is expecting a tougher game tomorrow than his side faced last week at Cardiff and he could go into the game without three players. Adam Griffiths, Toumani Diagouraga and Devaney are all likely to miss out with ankle, knee and thigh injuries respectively.

Although the Watford manager said he would be happy to change a winning team it is believed he is unlikely to do that which would mean the two new players on the bench.

If that is the case Watford will line up: Ben Foster, James Chambers, Clarke Carlisle, Jay DeMerit, Jordan Stewart, Paul Devlin, Gavin Mahon, Dominic Blizzard, Ashley Young, Marlon King, Darius Henderson. Subs from: Alec Chamberlain, Hameur Bouazza, Junior Osborne, Alhassan Bangura, Anthony McNamee, Malky Mackay, Matthew Spring.

Click HERE to see Watford’s full squad.

We’ve apparently got some worrying injury problems ahead of the game tomorrow with three players not having trained. Whether that is in addition to Danny Karbassiyoon is not clear but if not the three most likely are Frank Sinclair, Wade Elliott and Chris McCann.

It leaves Steve Cotterill with some major worries as to who could play although he does add one name to his squad from last week with the inclusion of loan signing Karl Bermingham who is expected to be on the bench.

It’s anyone’s guess but I suspect Elliott will be out of the running which means if everyone else can be patched up the team will probably be the one that played the bulk of last week’s 4-0 win over Coventry and that would be:

Brian Jensen, Michael Duff, Wayne Thomas, John McGreal, Graham Branch, Garreth O’Connor, Micah Hyde, James O’Connor, Chris McCann, Gifton Noel-Williams, Ade Akinbiyi. Subs from: Danny Coyne, Frank Sinclair, Kyle Lafferty, Karl Bermingham, Mark Yates.

It’s just over a year ago since our last visit to Vicarage Road, the second Saturday of last season and a day that brought Steve Cotterill’s first league win as Burnley manager.

We were the better side in the first half, had few if any problems at the back but didn’t create too much going forward. It was all to change in the second half as the Clarets dominated with Tony Grant in superb form in the midfield.

We won it 1-0 with the only goal of the game coming from Ian Moore with a header that was so reminiscent of that famous miss at Deepdale in 2001.

Robbie Blake was put clear and hit a superb shot from the edge of the box that keeper Richard Lee could only parry into the air. In came Moore and he headed the rebound into the empty net.

It could have been more and we had a blatant penalty turned down when Blake had his shirt almost ripped off his back but we had to settle for a 1-0 win, making it five points from three games and a good start to the season.

The teams were,

Watford: Richard Lee, Jermaine Darlington, Neil Cox, James Chambers, Paul Mayo, Paul Devlin (Hameur Bouazza 67), Brynjar Gunnarsson, Gavin Mahon, Neal Ardley (Ashley Young 61), Bruce Dyer (Heidar Helguson 54), Danny Webber. Subs not used: Alec Chamberlain, Dominic Blizzard.

Burnley: Danny Coyne, Michael Duff, Frank Sinclair, John McGreal, Mo Camara, Ian Moore, Micah Hyde, Tony Grant, Richard Chaplow (Lee Roche 89), Graham Branch, Robbie Blake. Subs not used: Brian Jensen, Matt O’Neill, Joel Pilkington, Ryan Townsend.