Against Leicester City on Saturday, that was just what unfolded.
Watford had just six shots against the Foxes, as few as they’ve had in any home game since August 2022 when they beat Burnley 1-0 with five. Only away at Ipswich Town in November have they threatened less this season, with four efforts on that occasion.
And the cause was evidently a total lack of freshness and spark in a team that looked nothing like how Ed Still would really want them to play.
While the frustration at Stoke City a week earlier was based on what appeared to be a mental fragility when it came to ensuring games are won inside both boxes, this one hardly got to that stage.
Indeed, it became clear afterwards that several Hornets deserve credit for even making themselves available.
Giorgi Chakvetadze, Still claimed, shouldn’t have played at all, nursing the ill-effects of having played the majority of minutes across three games in the 11 previous days.
Watford actually found the Georgian in some promising positions in the first half, but the same spark he has shown around the box in recent weeks did not exist on this occasion.
Giorgi Chakvetadze probes (Image: Alan Cozzi/Watford FC)
Nestory Irankunda was also close to missing out, though his performance was one that defied fatigue.
He was the busiest of Watford’s forwards and came closest with their only attempt of real value – a second-half strike at the near post pushed away by Jakub Stolarczyk.
Luca Kjerrumgaard, meanwhile, was clearly struggling and failed to make the same kind of mark he has done across the piece under Still.
The head coach explained that he had set his team up for a close, fine-margin game, and that having lost at Stoke with a few changes in his side he favoured consistency and reliability in the XI.
If you squint you can see the logic, but using Mamadou Doumbia – erratic, yes, but also energetic and with no minutes in his legs – would surely have made more sense from the start.
Still’s messaging that he will always select a 100% fresh team and go “all in” to win has been questioned by some, though it is probably worth taking any pre-match sentiment like that with a pinch of salt to an extent.
No coach is going to reveal that half his team isn’t fit and that they’re going to play less enjoyable, attractive football because of it, particularly not ahead of a crucial home game in which he needed the fans on side.
Had Still selected Tom Ince and Amin Nabizada in the wide areas, say, he would also have faced criticism for changing a winning team when he could have sent his best players out there for one more push.
It was a no-win scenario for Still, who deserves sympathy in the main for his plans being somewhat taken apart by the issues suffered in the squad over the last few weeks.
Watford’s best chance always lay in the depth of their squad, with Maamma, Baah, Irankunda and Chakvetadze, say, all able to rotate in the wide areas, proving different kinds of threats and ensuring there is quality on the pitch throughout 90 minutes.
Ed Still with Karim Belhocine (Image: Alan Cozzi/Watford FC)
The absence of Jeremy Ngakia and Jeremy Petris at right-back clearly affects the attack down that side, too.
When Still arrived, his declaration that the size of his squad meant he had all sorts of combinations to unleash in the final third was one he said with most gusto.
That within six weeks he has been left with nothing of the sort has robbed him of his vision for powering through the final stages of the season.
The head coach isn’t totally blameless, mind. He said himself after Maamma’s injury that new training methods he has implemented might throw up problems like these.
Again, though, that comes back to the bigger picture at the club. Hiring one coach, Javi Gracia, who trains one way and then a different coach who trains another, in the middle of the season, was asking for problems.
There is a case to be made for Still coming in over-eager and unaware of the hurdles that realistically will always trip up clubs facing this kind of intense fixture list.
There is also the case that he has been somewhat unlucky, a victim of circumstance, and had to do the job how he saw fit – not a modified version of it.
Besides which, much of the bad luck he has suffered is coincidental. Petris dislocated his shoulder, Stephen Mfuni went over on an ankle, Saba Goglichidze has been managing issues since day one, and Baah and Ngakia hardly have strong previous injury records.
No doubt a dollop of each root cause has created this scenario, where Watford were hanging on against a team battling relegation and in the kind of post-Premier League malaise that the Hornets were in themselves in 2022/23.
Egil Selvik starred for Watford (Image: Alan Cozzi/Watford FC)
There were a range of other talking points.
Egil Selvik, who hasn’t always been as convincing this season as he was last, was excellent – not just making key saves, including Patson Daka’s penalty, but showing authority and corralling his troops.
Formose Mendy, meanwhile, had the kind of nightmare that should only really prompt sympathy rather than major criticism. Having sat out for so long, Mendy looked like a bag of nerves and, on replay, was perhaps unlucky to concede the penalty that summed up his afternoon.
Whether the centre-back – Watford’s ‘number one’ target last summer – ever starts for the club again is probably now in question.
Even that selection summed up the biggest takeaway of the afternoon, though.
That with resources severely hit, and a group of players who had been cramping up on Tuesday night forcing their way through again, this was a very average team.
Still will know it was nothing like what he promised, and all of us know realistically it leaves the Hornets with little to play for other than pride for the remainder of the season.