Watford 2-1 Southampton

Well, that’s one way to kill a summer’s worth of optimism in about half an hour.

Twenty-one games unbeaten. Twenty-one! We’d been carrying that streak around like a golden ticket, waltzing into Vicarage Road with the swagger of a side that had forgotten what losing felt like. Watford, to their credit, were only too happy to jog our memory. Iker Bravo opened the scoring on twelve minutes, and Amin Nabizada doubled it on twenty-nine, and suddenly our 65.8% possession looked about as useful as a umbrella in a hurricane. We had the ball. They had the goals. Classic.

The first half was, frankly, a bit of a horror show defensively. Daniel Peretz called it “a reminder” afterwards, which is goalkeeper-speak for “lads, what on earth were we doing back there?” He’s not wrong. You can dominate territory all you like, but if you’re switching off at the back, you’re just a very neat team that loses football matches. The stats tell an interesting story — we had 17 shots to their 16, eight corners to their four — but Watford were ruthlessly efficient with their chances while we were spraying efforts around like a garden sprinkler.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, mind. The second half was a different animal entirely. Cyle Larin pulled one back on 56 minutes, and suddenly Vicarage Road went from party atmosphere to squeaky bum territory. You could feel the momentum shift through the screen. We pushed and probed, penning Watford deeper and deeper. The problem? Their back line held firm, aided by a frankly heroic commitment to the dark arts — six yellow cards for the home side tells you everything about how they managed that second half. Kyprianou, Pollock, Nabizada, Doumbia, Maamma, Payero — the referee’s notebook looked like a Watford team sheet by full time.

Tonda Eckert stayed positive in his post-match comments, which is probably the right call when it’s game one of forty-six. This is a marathon, not a sprint, and one defeat — even a frustrating one — doesn’t rewrite the story of what this squad can do. But there are genuine questions to answer. We looked vulnerable on the counter, and for a side with aspirations of going straight back up, you simply cannot afford to gift opponents a two-goal cushion and then spend seventy minutes trying to claw it back.

The transfer window is still open, and Eckert’s comments hinted at more business to come. Finn Azaz’s name was mentioned. Reinforcements would be welcome, because if this season is going to be what we all hope it is, the defensive cobwebs need clearing out sharpish.

Still, it’s one game. One result. The unbeaten run is gone, which means we get to start building a new one. Preferably starting next Saturday, and preferably without giving ourselves a mountain to climb first. Oh, who am I kidding — we’re Southampton. We love doing things the hard way.