Watford Test

Now that we have the international break out of the way, we can look forward to resuming our league business and the Championship test of Watford at the Valley. Like ourselves, the Hornets have started well and are sitting pretty in second place in the table. They are the division's top scorers and aside from a blank at Norwich in the their first away game, they have hit 13 goals in their other four games including four in each of the last two, against Leeds at Huddersfield, both at Vicarage Road.

They have also parted company with disciplinarian Beppe Sannino and replaced him with Oscar Garcia in rude haste. The Italian revolution at Watford under the ownership of the Pozzo family continues and their side remains littered with Italians, although it is a Scot we may need to fear in on-form Ikechi Anya who scored a fine goal against the World Champions in Germany on Sunday.

This is the third successive home match I will miss due to cruel fixture allocation and the need to attend a wedding in Cyprus this weekend. I will be back for the Wolves clash on Tuesday and am praying we remain unbeaten ahead of that one. Watford are down to selling the last 200 restricted view seats behind the central post in the Jimmy Seed, so will come in full voice and will vocally challenge the newly formed A-Block. 

It's a good early test for BP's unbeaten Addicks and we should give it a real go. Hopefully, the long-haul exertions of Igor Vetokele and Federic Bulot won't have adversely affected their performance and we get to see both playing together for the first time. We are also overdue a goal-scoring contribution from midfield, not that I will complain wherever it comes from.

Don't know about you, but I am heartily fed-up of the Scottish Vote story and can't wait until it's over next week. I will write more about this once it's done and dusted but it's a sorry tale thus far of a failure of British politicians to sell a simple message of the success of the United Kingdom. If it's that hard to do, you wonder if the selfish Scottish Nationalist are actually correct in their view that Scotland can be more successful as an independent nation. I remain convinced that the silent majority will get out to vote for continued Union but the No campaign has been a disaster. Ed Miliband has cooked his goose and David Cameron risks being remembered for losing the Union. Miliband has left it far too late to get involved and Cameron has watched the No campaign score a series of own-goals that continues with a desperately embarrassing late offer of more power under the Devo-max option which makes it look like the remainder of the UK have more to lose than gain if Scotland goes independent, precisely the argument of the SNP. 

Let's face it, I could understand the clamour for independence if it meant you might get country status, a national side and a league recognised in Europe but Scotland has always had that as well as a strong national identity and a full historic part in the United Kingdom for 300 years. It really is about the careers of politicians and a selfish view of whether or not Scots can be better off financially with full self-governance. They pretty much have the rest through the Devolved Assembly at Holyrood, a building whose construction provides delicious irony for just how badly wrong this could go for Scotland's people.