Ladies, gentleman and Ipswich Town fans everywhere may I present to you bogeyland. Which for all you cryptic geniuses out there means only one thing.

Yep, you guessed it. Ipswich this weekend play our ultimate bogey side Watford. Our record against them in recent years is nothing short of abysmal. Since a 4 - 1 win on March 20th 2004, where if my memory serves me correctly, a certain Dean Bowditch banged in a rather dazzling hat-trick, Town have gained only seven points out of a hefty 18 league games. Plus a dreary FA Cup defeat too.

Yes, I remember Jaime Peters and Danny Haynes dancing like buffoons before realising that was not a goal. Do not remind me.

In this rather cringeworthy run, Town did, miraculously, pick up a win. I remember it well, August 20th, 2012, under the guidance of Paul Jewell. Gambling addict Michael Chopra netted a last-gasp winner. I remember being delirious and thus, going on to read how Jewell had assembled his 'best ever squad'.

What utter rubbish. We lost our next game 6 - 0 at Blackpool with that solitary Watford win being Jewell's last. Thankfully, this writer hastens to add.

So, the statistics do not lie. Clearly, Town are given the hibbie jibbies by Watford for some peculiar reason. Even at Portman Road, Watford have regularly had the better of almost every single game.

Personally, I am not a believer in this voodooistic belief of 'bogey teams'. The way Town are playing right now, why should we be doubting that another win cannot be achieved, leaving Watford and their random manager to dive nose back into Hertfordshire pointless.

This is by no means me demeaning Watford. Attackingly, they have some real quality in the likes of Vydra, Forestieri and Deeney. But they have, and always seem to be, weak not only in defence but also in midfield. With Keith 'the highly overrated maestro' Andrews a regular. Naturally, he'll probably score.

My point instead is this, if Town can stifle them out the way Birmingham did on Tuesday, yes Birmingham beat Watford 2 - 1, then Watford will struggle to adapt and play their game much the way Wolves did. Furthermore, Town are also playing exceptionally well at the moment. Daryl Murphy is playing well and with his beard growing, starting to look like the Messiah himself.

Therefore, let us not turn expect a defeat against a decent outfit, let's believe that we can add to this rather pathetic run of results against this side. I believe we will do so.

Then we'll lose the away game, of course.

Superblue95 added 19:54 - Nov 6 I was at that away match against Watford when chopra scored that last gasp winner from a fantastic Carlos Edwards cross, the away end went absolutely mental, I don't think anyone could believe we were actually about to beat Watford! I have to admit I do have a bad feeling about Saturday though. I'd take a draw given how good they have been this season and with the bogey team hoodoo. Think ur comment about Andrews is a bit harsh, thought he was very good here and in my opinion was the only player in the Irish squad who could hold his head up high after euro 2012

2

NoCanariesAllowed added 16:28 - Nov 7 Yup, I was there at Vicarage Road that night too. Made up for all the other preceding Tuesday nights at that horrible little ground watching us lose again and again. Of course the notion of bogey teams is nonsense, but Watford have probably had a stronger squad than us in recent years, so it's not completely unreasonable that they have had a better record than us. The thing that annoys me is when they've beaten us in years where they've been the poorer team, or when there wasn't much between us - still annoys me that they ground out a win at Portman Road to stop us having an unbeaten home campaign in 2007/08.

1

commuterblue added 17:49 - Nov 8 No more bogies :)
0

Blogs 298 bloggers