How will Watford do this season? Hint: Nobody actually knows
The madness and the brilliance of the Championship kicks off in a week and, in many ways, this is the best part of the season.
This is the part where the predictions, previews and premonitions roll in. Hope springs eternal and, finally, there is actual real-life football to talk about, filling a void otherwise occupied by sniping, infighting and ITK-ing. At least that’s been the summer on Watford Twitter. Perhaps your club is more normal?
Increasingly in the age of social media, it’s a time where fans, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, journalists and influencers make themselves look foolish by sticking their necks on the line with big predictions. The bigger, the better. No one remembers who you pegged to finish 13th in the Premier League or the striker you backed to score 10 times.
We all do it and I’m certainly not claiming to be above it. One of my best friends and I predict the Premier League 1–20 and Championship 1–24 and make a series of ancillary predictions (Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup winners and so on). Needless to say, neither of us ever fares well but it’s part of the fun of this time of year.
This season, though, it’s almost impossible to get an accurate read on where Watford are. We’ve had one public friendly — at the start of pre-season against local National League outfit Boreham Wood — and one that was streamed against a mix-and-match Crystal Palace XI. In between there was a training ground tussle against a youthful Arsenal side of which highlights were made available. There might have been more but, if so, they’ve been kept secret.
All this against the backdrop of a new head coach in Valérien Ismaël, a new system, style of play and the long overdue clear-out plenty have been calling for. I make it 13 ‘first-team’ players — that is senior players who would have been in the first-team squad — have left this summer. Either permanently, or on loan. What we’ve been left with is a rather hotch-potch mix of players plus the four key summer arrivals: Rhys Healey, Tom Ince, Matheus Martins and Jamal Lewis. There are plenty of players who have been on the books at Watford for some time. But it’s hard — if not impossible — to say with any conviction how good — or otherwise — this group is collectively.
At the time of writing, these are the players contracted to Watford for the upcoming season. The first number is their Championship starts for the club last season. The number in brackets is substitute appearances in the league. N.B. These figures relate only to Watford appearances.
Daniel Bachmann: 45(0)
Ben Hamer: 1(0)
Maduka Okoye: 0(0)
Jeremy Ngakia: 10(4)
Wesley Hoedt: 14(1)
João Ferreira: 3(2)
Ryan Porteous: 17(2)
Francisco Sierralta: 17(1)
Matthew Pollock: 1(2)
James Morris: 6(6)
Ryan Andrews: 6(0)
Jamal Lewis: 0(0)
Imran Louza: 16(5)
Ismaël Koné: 13(3)
Yáser Asprilla: 14(23)
Tom Dele-Bashiru: 4(2)
Edo Kayembe: 19(2)
Jake Livermore: 0(0)
Ken Sema: 36(4)
Rhys Healey: 0(0)
Vakoun Bayo: 9(15)
Samuel Kalu: 2(7)
Ignacio Pussetto: 0(0)
Kwadwo Baah: 0(0)
Matheus Martins: 4(2)
Tom Ince: 0(0)
Source: Soccerbase
In summary, the only players left who made more than 20 Championship starts for the Hornets last season were goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann and winger (King) Ken Sema. After those two, the player with the next-most starts was Edo Kayembe who packed up for the season on November 12 with a mysterious injury that ruined the rest of his season.
In other words, despite including some familiar faces, this is a ‘new’ group for the Hornets. The question, of course, is why so few of the remaining players featured so infrequently and whether they are good enough to be Championship mainstays.
Despite moving on from stalwarts Craig Cathcart, Tom Cleverley and Christian Kabasele, as well as the aging Dan Gosling, there are still players who have been here a while now. Remarkably, Jeremy Ngakia and Francisco Sierralta are going into their fifth seasons in WD18. Question marks hang over both but particularly Ngkia who looks the odd man out in the right-back battle thanks to Ryan Andrews’ surprise emergence from the academy.
Clearly, there is still work to be done.
The projected depth chart (above) as it stands, leaves a lot to be desired in key areas — not least central and holding midfield, and up front where Vakoun Bayo has somehow gone from persona non grata to Rhys Healey’s most-likely deputy.
In a squad shorn of João Pedro, Ismaïla Sarr and Keinan Davis’ goals (28 between them) it’s hard to see where the goals are coming from. There were will be a lot of expectation on Healey to replicate his Ligue 2 form for Toulouse. But he is coming off a serious knee injury that robbed him of much of his 2022/23 campaign after firing Le Téfécé to promotion to Ligue 1. For that reason, as well as a lack of Championship minutes, he is something of an unknown.
In an ideal world, all the club’s business would have been done in time for Ismaël to get his ideas across from the first day of pre-season. But with the sheer number of plates spinning, it’s hardly a surprise this hasn’t been possible. With the transfer window shutting on September 1, there is still a month to plug the gaps in this squad. A squad that, hopefully, won’t look too much like this come September 2. Let’s wait and see what we’re actually working with before making too many predictions…