THERE IS THE WHIFF OF West Bromwich Albion in Plymouth Argyle’s grinding, grafting relentlessness. After two promotions in three years, victories come naturally. A team that knows each other well — only one member of Saturday’s starting line-up, Stevie Crawford, was a new signing — knows how to win. Which made it all the more surprising when, in the lead and looking comfortable, they ended up losing, and losing badly.
In the second half, Watford outmuscled and outhustled Plymouth. And, in the shape of Danny Webber, outclassed them. Webber, the 22-year-old forward, scored two well-executed, self-assured, goals. He had two spells on loan at Vicarage Road from Manchester United and signed permanently last summer. Offered a three-year contract by United, the club he had played for since he was ten, he felt he was stagnating. “I enjoyed my time there, but I don’t regret (leaving),” he said.
His first full year for Watford was an injury-tainted disappointment. “After last season a lot of people doubted me. Last year I was sharp in my mind but never sharp in my feet. That led to frustration and a lack of confidence,” he said. So he trained with his old school friends near his home in Didsbury in the summer and arrived for pre-season activities in good condition. The benefits of his preparation are obvious: his five goals so far this term is as many as he managed in the whole of the previous campaign.
“Danny took his goals well and he looks a different lad from the one who was here last season. A lot of things went wrong for him but now’s he’s back as the player we know he can be,” Ray Lewington, the Watford manager, said.
“I’m not getting carried away. It can be taken away from you by injury or any other reason,” Webber said. That awareness of life’s caprices may be a legacy of the sudden death in a car crash last August of his close friend, Jimmy Davis — another United trainee who went to Vicarage Road.
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The visiting team might have ended the contest by half-time: one goal up through Micky Evans, they also hit the post and bar. A win, against a side that proved in 1999 that it is possible to win promotion to the Premiership at the first attempt, would have seen them go top. But Neal Ardley equalised shortly before the break. Then, Webber unfurled his talent.