Huge task ahead for Watford following Gunners pummelling

ADRIAN BOOTHROYD is a Champions League contender when it comes to positive thinking, but there are occasions when even his unique brand of corporate pep-talks will not do, and a trip to Arsenal is one of them.

As Arsene Wenger’s buccaneers nonchalantly zipped around passes in the dying stages of this embarrassingly one-sided game, Watford’s bright, articulate young manager stopped patrolling his technical area, sighed deeply and retreated to the sanctuary of his dug-out. His side had not been beaten so much as tenderised.

Statistics are a notoriously unreliable gauge of a football match’s ebb and flow, but amid the flurry of figures which highlighted Arsenal’s utter superiority — 15 shots on target to Watford’s 8 — 62% of the possession and winning the corner count 8-4 — perhaps the most telling one of all was not to be found on an Opta spreadsheet.