It’s 8:21pm on Friday evening and approaching half-time in the Watford versus Derby game, but I don’t have any idea what is going on at Vicarage Road. Instead I’m sat in my car outside Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, waiting to pick up my wife and son, who is this evening being discharged from the children’s Oncology ward. This is not in any way an unusual situation – my boy has been on the ward here, either as an inpatient or outpatient, every day except for two this month. I’m feeling excited to see them, and bring him home for hopefully a decent run of nights in his own bed.

I’m recording the Watford game for consumption later on this evening, if events allow. In the meantime, as I prefer to approach pre-recorded games as if in real time, I must try to avoid finding out the score. I don’t want to switch the radio on or look at my phone in case some bulletin or notification steels into my line of sight. It means I am sat here in silence, bathed in a gloomy orange from the hospital car-park lights, a surgical blue facemask stretched over my ears in readiness to deploy but resting over my bearded chin for now.

There’s something comforting about self-enforced detachment. We should all be encouraged to go off-grid and unleash our minds to wander in directions of their own choosing. This kind of mental detangling is like an ice bath for the brain. My mind wanders wistfully around hospital corridors and across the hallowed turf at the Vic.

It’s approaching midnight now, and I’m home, with a household safe and sleeping. I’m feeling happy and ready for some delayed gratification. Time to put on the game. To fool my mind into thinking this is happening now I watch it from the start, adverts, punditry, interview clips and footage from past games all. It’s late but as far as my brain’s concerned, it’s approaching 7:45pm. Tonight, Matthew, I am a time-travelling lone hornet.

A few things to note from the build-up. Derby have changed system to match up with our 4-3-3, and brought in five new players to their starting eleven, including both full-backs, Lee Buchanan and Nathan Byrne. It looks like they want to match us man-for-man across the park and nullify as much as possible the threat of Sarr and Sema out wide.

It can be read in one of two ways. Either Rooney is showing us a lot of respect by changing a side that has won its last two games, perhaps signposting their anxiety about our weaponry, or else we’ve been sniffed out by a legend of the game whose team is now going to prove our new structure but a house of cards ready to be toppled. Derby should be up for this encounter, despite a poor performance against Wycombe (albeit garnering 3 points) – we have never completed a league double over tonight’s opponents.

Our side is as one would hope and expect after two highly perspective-altering performances – unchanged except for Sierralta giving way to Cathcart in a game of musical centre-half chairs, with Troost-Ekong returning after a rest. Sensible enough from Xisco, who would be mad to tamper with this system unless forced to do so. Achieving 9 points in 7 days would be sensational, particularly at this stage in the season, and almost too much to dare hope for. Anyway, on with the game.

So it’s half-time and Watford are 2-0 ahead. In a parallel universe it could be 1-1, had Pedro’s deflected opener not ricocheted off his trailing leg to beat Marshall by instalments, nor Kazim-Richards’ headed effort in the closing minutes been harshly ruled out for an alleged infringement by Wisdom on Bachmann. Let’s just say we have quite a few brownie points stacked up from VAR-related incidents in last year’s relegation season, so I won’t lose any sleep when we “get away with one” as we seem to have done here.

We started the game well, Cleverley once again setting the tone with his scurrying and chasing down every cause going. Together with Hughes and Chalobah, our midfield three commanded the centre of the pitch for the opening exchanges, ably assisted by some committed pressing back from the front three, Pedro in particular. Sema brought us a delicious You’ve Been Framed moment as he beat himself with a step-over and knocked the ball into touch – it wasn’t really Ken’s half.

Just as we were beginning to get a bit tentative and sideways – a bit Iviccy – allowing Derby to grow into the game a bit, we pulled the trigger, twice. The first goal came from Hughes winning the ball in his own half and playing forwards. A neat exchange between Kiko and Sarr saw the latter turn on the after-burners and beat his man to the byline, playing the ball fast into a pocket of danger which resulted in Pedro’s determination to be in and around the action rewarded with a kind deflection off his right heel.

The way Sarr accelerated past Buchanan was like nothing I’ve seen on a football pitch before. It put me in mind of Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, at around the 60-metre mark, where his trademark was to suddenly explode and leave all others in his wake. It was as if he leapt forwards in time, a bit like Quantum Leap. You cannot defend that.

Hughes doesn’t switch off and grapples himself into the referee’s notebook inside a minute. By the same margin of time later, from the same player’s cleared corner, Cleverley is bravely into Roberts on the edge of the Derby box, feeding Chalobah who coolly backheels to the sauntering Hughes who measures a left-footed shot into the far corner just beyond Pedro’s poaching toes. This is Hughes’ first game against his old club, and he’s showing them exactly what they’ve been missing since his departure.

We seem to have put the game beyond Derby in the 21^st minute, through a combination of aggression, skill, composure in the box and a sprinkling of good fortune. With the best home record in the league, and 6 out of 8 clean sheets since Bachmann’s instalment between the sticks, it looks like being a long evening ahead for the Rams.

The rest of the half has much to commend it, even if we don’t test the keeper again. Femenia fizzes in a few low crosses, bodies sliding only inches away from a connection. Sarr keeps breaking all kinds of land-speed records, dislodging his own GPS tracker from the back of his shirt at one point. We take throw-ins quickly, always on the front foot, show industry and endeavour in bucket loads. Derby have had 8 clean sheets in their last 16, but we are pulling them apart and look dangerous from every forward foray.

And yet. Derby should have had a goal back with Kazim-Richard’s header in the 37^th minute from a wicked in-swinging Nathan Byrne corner, and created a half-chance with Waghorn stealing through at the death, (which in reality only the likes of Bergkamp or Ibrahimovic could have despatched). On the way down the tunnel Kazim-Richards is “left hanging” by the ref after imploring him to look at the goal again.

Cleverley grabs himself an innocuous yellow card on 41 minutes, to join Hughes on the tackling tightrope, whilst some lackadaisical passing around our own 18-yard box leaves me wincing on a few occasions. “Only a matter of time before we come unstuck at the back” I’ve scrawled. And for all the flashes of genius, and our two knock-out punches, the half-time possession stats show complete parity, and 2 goals from 2 shots on target – so there is clearly still work to be done. However, I’m feeling optimistic for the second half.

So it’s full time and Watford have snatched three points from a game that could easily have seen the score line reversed. My heart is pumping with adrenalin from watching a frankly agonising last 15 minutes. Cleary even this new look Watford finds the habit of nearly chucking away points hard to drop.

By contrast the first 15 of the second half was entirely comfortable. Watford were still probing, Kiko and Sarr combining incisively throughout, Cleverley seemingly undeterred by his earlier booking and as rapacious as ever. We are sitting a little deeper but turning defence into attack quite nicely and at 2-0 it’s a relatively easy watch. Derby are coming into it a little more, but Waghorn’s crossing is poor, and he looks just like the frustrated number 9 stuck out on the left wing that he is.

On the hour mark both teams make substitutions, and this is where the wheel nuts start to loosen, even if the cart rumbles on. Chalobah who has been almost scintillating at times, and strong to boot, is withdrawn, presumably to stave off a potential 10^th yellow card. Gosling comes on, a safe pair of feet, but never a scintillating one, I suspect. Derby whisk off the embattled Shinnie and ineffective Roberts, for Gregory and Jozwiak. It’s pretty clear we have not done a Bristol City job on Derby this evening, and the game is far from out of sight yet. This shift in personnel seems to promise a shift in momentum, and my palms, although not sweating, begin to pre-tingle.

Watford continue to carve out promising situations, but so too now do Derby. Kazim-Richards has a shot on 62 minutes during a flurry of Derby pressure. Joao Pedro flicks a header over the bar from a Sema cross – the first time Ken has had a one-on-one all evening – before heading clear a Derby corner whipped into the front post. This is the first of several such identical blocks, including a most crucial one deep into injury time when Derby were threatening to bulldoze their way into our goal.

Sarr cuts inside on 68 minutes and with plenty of time and room blasts the ball rather carelessly over the bar. Derby win another corner after Gregory races clear, and soon after a free-kick just outside the box after Sarr dives in on the lively Knight. The Sky commentary team declare the game to be “somewhat on a knife-edge”, which at 2-0 it really shouldn’t be. One more goal should do it for us, and Cleverley’s cross which just evades the onrushing Sema would have done it. These are fine margins.

In the 75^th minute, I scrawl a very worried looking emoji face on my notepad. That’s because Hughes has been withdrawn for Wilmot, in a double swap which also introduces Zinckernagel for Sema. In one instant, our capacity to see this game out is diminished. We are now far less in control, our blonde metronome de-commissioned. With barely enough time to bring my nails up for a bit of a pre-emptive bite, a wicked cross from Nathan Byrne dips viciously at the feet of Troost-Ekong who, facing his own goal two feet out helplessly scoops the ball up and over the despairing Bachmann. The clean sheet has gone, but not yet the three points. If those go too, where to start with the recriminations? Xisco is playing with fire here.

Squeaky bum time. Sky are up for this now, and Watford are “looking nervous”. In the 80^th minute Derby throw on a home-grown talent, Sibley, as if to out-Hughes us now that we’ve had the audacity / stupidity to remove him. We may have lured away their previous best local lad, but there’s another cab coming off the rank. It all seems to be written, and frankly I’m just waiting for us to capitulate.

It’s all Derby now. An 83^rd minute corner is going directly into our net before Bachmann throws himself across the line just in front of it to flap it out. The sound of the woodwork is, I assume, Bachmann’s body hitting the post. He mouths a “wow” because that was an improbable save. And equally improbably, we are conspiring to mess this all up at the death.

It’s an agonising watch, with five minutes of extra time to negotiate. With half our outfield players now out-and-out defenders and the attacking outlets of Sarr and Pedro still alive with running, we should really be seeing this one out with less turmoil. We manage to kill a few vital minutes down near the corner flag, Sarr tempting Sibley into a crude tackle. The ball eventually pops out to Zinckernagel who hits a weak effort on 93 minutes, gifting possession back to Derby.

The orange-clad Derby keeper Marshall has been playing every ball long into our box since the 85^th minute, and when Cathcart shanks a clearance behind for a Derby corner with only seconds to go, their goalie sniffs an upset too and heads into our packed penalty area. Earlier in the season Bournemouth had snatched an equaliser in the 6^th minute of extra time, and the feeling of Deja-vu here was palpable. A second Derby corner ensues, for which Marshall remains, but Pedro nuts clear again at the front post and Tim Robinson eventually blows the final whistle. If the Vic had been full tonight, the release of tension would have come in a deafening roar of victorious relief.

It’s 2am in the morning. The scenes I’m watching happened over five hours ago but feel exhilaratingly immediate. My heart is thumping with a mix of relief, joy and trauma survival. Xisco didn’t quite burn his fingers with those subs, so you have to hand it to him for his brave attempt to safeguard his best players and give his full squad a run-out. Heaven knows we’ll need them all if we are to mount an automatic promotion push. We’re level on points with Brentford now, in joint second place. We have points on the board even if others have games in hand. It’s a great evening’s work done, and all the theatre and drama you could hope for from a 90-minute game of football.

Well that’s quite enough time-travelling for one night. I’m off to join the rest of my family in the land of nod, with a smile resting on my exhausted face.

View match highlights here.