That One's Gonna Sting a Bit

Apologies for being a little slow here catching up on the LOSE news. I was busy last week as deadline nears at the magazine where I work. But we've had some shocking acts of losing here recently which cannot possibly go unmentioned.

As I have said here repeatedly of late, promotion to, and preventing relegation from, the English Premier League is a HUGE deal. Desperate times call for desperate measures and produce some utterly astonishing results.

This game from last weekend is a fine example. This is from the second division Football League Championship playoff between Leicester City, a club that knows frustration well – The Foxes have lost the FA Cup final four times without a win, which is a record – and the Hornets of Watford F.C., who are far more famous for being once owned by Elton John than they are for anything on the pitch. It's a two-game playoff, with goal difference, or "aggregate," being the tiebreaker.

To set the scene here further: Leicester won the first game 1-0, and Watford are leading 2-1 at Vicarage Road, their home grounds, in the return match's dying moments when a questionable penalty is awarded to the Foxes. The conversion rate on penalty kicks is generally in the 80-85% range, mind you, and a goal here will give the Foxes a 2-2 draw in the match and they will win the playoff, thus advancing to the playoff finale at Wembley, where a shot at the coveted place in the EPL awaits. And in the unlikely event that the Foxes miss the penalty, the game would then end 2-1 in favour of Watford, then overtime will be necessary since the overall aggregate is 2-2. So the Foxes would seem to hold all the cards here, right?

Well ...

I have never seen anything like that. I also have NO EARTHLY IDEA what the Leicester goalkeeper was doing on that play.

To give you another perspective, here is some video shot from the grandstands at Vicarage Road:

I'm not sure how you overcome that sort of a collapse if you're the Foxes. The hangover from that game (and from the heavy drinking which would follow) may last about six months, if not longer.

And thus, with the 3-1 win and 3-2 aggregate score, the Hornets advanced to Wembley where they'll play Crystal Palace on May 27 for the right to join automatic qualifiers Cardiff City and Hull City in getting regularly thrashed competing next season in the EPL. This is a one-game, winner-take-all playoff, and pretty much all bets are off.