Wolves brought to their knees by Watford super-sub Gerard Deulofeu

WEMBLEY, LONDON — At the final whistle, just about every player on the pitch sank to his knees. For Wolves it was in despair, having let slip a two-goal lead, and having been only 12 minutes from the FA Cup final. For Watford, some joy, some relief: hammer at the wall for long enough and eventually it will break.

Watford had controlled large chunks of this semi-final with bouts of sustained pressure, yet after 78 minutes they found themselves 2-0 down to Wolves’ counter-attacking, and heading out. On the scoreboard Watford had yet to make an impression, but the physical onslaught of Troy Deeney and Andre Gray on the Wolves’ defence had taken an invisible toll which the more subtle talents of Gerard Deulofeu were about to expose ruthlessly.

It was Deulofeu’s deft finish on 79 minutes which gave them late hope, and his streaming run in extra time which closed out a famous Wembley comeback, either side of a stoppage-time equaliser by Deeney.

Relentless pressure

For so long Wolves seemed to be winning this battle of the Premier League’s “best of the rest”, but Watford’s relentless pressure told eventually, just in time.

How Wolves will rue a missed opportunity to cap an extraordinary season back in the top flight. Their game plan had played out to perfection. This has been Wolves’ MO all season: defenders absorbing pressure, midfielders ushering the ball into safe spaces, while forwards feign an interest in the defensive stuff, looking to break.

Diogo Jota would loiter in his own half like a thief, then scramble on to a clearance and dribble 60 yards downfield; in the space of five second-half minutes he drew two yellow cards from Watford’s attempts to stop him. Alongside him, Raul Jimenez caused havoc as a kind of deft wrecking-ball, a polite Diego Costa.

Even more crucial in those early moments was the contribution of Matt Doherty, the wing-back who headed Wolves’ first goal and created the second, finished brilliantly by Jimenez. Doherty would not have been many people’s prediction for the most threatening wide players of 2018-19, yet the Wolves No 2 has been quietly, relentlessly productive: these were his seventh goal and ninth assist of the campaign.

Evenly matched

Only a point separates the two teams in the league and for a while they seemed almost too evenly matched, the game gridlocked in a packed midfield. But as Watford accepted the invitation to press for an opening, Wolves pounced: Jonny Castro Otto streamed across the expanse of Wembley on the break and earned a corner; it was taken short for Jonny to curl a cross to the back post, where an unmarked Doherty tapped in with his forehead, having left behind a statuesque Abdoulaye Doucouré to flap his arms and scowl at thin air.

Watford continued to probe but the more they pushed forward, the more space Jota had to break. And when all else failed, Wolves had Conor Coady, the kind of captain whose personal safety is set aside on matchdays, who threw himself in the way of Gray’s goal-bound volley seconds before the half-time whistle, deflecting it off target with his nipples.

Wolves started the second half sharply and Jimenez missed two half- chances to extend their lead, the first fired straight at Heurelho Gomes’s palms and the second a stretch too far at the back post even for his extendable limbs. But he didn’t miss a third time, controlling Doherty’s cross on his chest before spinning to volley past Gomes. That was that, you thought.

Last-gasp killer

However, Watford’s patches of pressure began to meld into something more sustained as they attacked towards their raucous support. Wolves’ counter-attacks ran out of steam and the physical focal points of Deeney and Gray started to puncture holes in their defence.

Watford’s way back into the game came first through substitute Deulofeu. Standing on the left of the box, the little Spaniard seemed set to fire over a cross before teasing something much more subtle over John Ruddy’s head and into the far corner. It was the first really sublime moment from Watford and it stirred their half of Wembley as their supporters tried to suck an equaliser into the goal beneath them. And in the fourth minute of injury time it finally came. Leander Dendoncker clumsily clattered into Deeney in the box and, after the penalty was confirmed by VAR, Deeney blasted it past Ruddy and celebrated manically.

At the full-time whistle, Wolves’ heads slumped. Nuno Espirito Santo could be seen giving a passionate team talk but it had little effect. Shortly before half-time in extra time, Gray and Deulofeu combined in a counter to make it 3-2, reminiscent of Wolves an hour before, but by now Nuno’s side were sapped. Finally, in the nick of time, Watford had worn them down, and it will be Javi Gracia’s team who return here in May to face Manchester City.