Watford: Everything changes — yet nothing truly changes
This is familiar territory for Watford supporters: an international break and a departure.
Except, instead of head coach Valérien Ismaël, it’s technical director Ben Manga who will be leaving Vicarage Road. That is according to The Watford Observer and The Athletic, following reports from Italy that Manga had been removed from his post just 10 months into a five-year contract.
It’s hard not to leap to the conclusion that fresh from handing Ismaël an unprecedented contract extension, owner Gino Pozzo had an itchy trigger finger.
Watford sit two points and two places above the Championship relegation zone. Reset, rebuild or simply regret, few had the Hornets pegged for a relegation battle. So someone had to pay. After all, surely the blame couldn’t lie at the owner’s door?
As is so often the case when a senior member of staff leaves WD18, the ensuing frustration isn’t even about the individual involved. Like the many head coaches, technical and sporting directors before him, ‘failure’ at Watford won’t be a blemish on Manga’s CV. In football circles, Watford is the job you eventually omit from your career history as you gain more worthwhile and relevant experience.
It’s what his departure represents that is troubling.
I’m quite happy to be mocked for being late to the party or naïve enough to be hoodwinked in the first place. Plenty on social media will claim it was glaringly obvious this appointment wouldn’t work. Others will say that it was futile; Manga would never be allowed to have a meaningful input at Pozzo’s Watford. But I wanted to believe his appointment provided a glimmer of hope that a leopard could change its spots. That the leopard realised he couldn’t be across every major decision and that the methods employed by his father Giampaolo at Udinese in the late 80s and 90s had become commonplace at elite-level clubs across the globe. The advantage the Zebrette once enjoyed thanks to their pioneering video room was long gone. It was time to get with the times.
Equally, I was quite prepared to give Manga time. It didn’t seem fair to judge him on January’s business when his appointment as technical director was only confirmed on December 22 — nine days before the winter window opened. Yet thanks to Slaven Bilić’s interview with The Watford Observer, we know Manga was a voice at the table as the Hornets went hard in their January recruitment. Something the then-head coach felt confused matters. Despite that, Adam Leventhal’s Athletic report says Manga could only be considered responsible for the signings of Ismaël Koné, Henrique Araújo and João Ferreira.
“You had Cristiano, working with me and my staff, and then you had the new people who had come in during December — and, of course, they all wanted the best for the club. No doubt about that,” Billić told the Watford Observer.
“But it was too many people involved in the January window, and the changes that happened also affected the feeling around the place.
“The arriving of new people brought confusion and insecurity to the players and staff.”
Interviews with former Watford coaches aren’t uncommon. One thing they have in common is almost all point to something they found difficult to work with. Quiqué Sánchez Flores, for example, did not enjoy the close attention of sporting director Filippo Giraldi while on the training pitch.
Speaking to The Athletic, Sánchez Flores said: “They have some attitude right now that is about control of medical staff, about control of training, how the coach trains and they have a person taking notes.
“I don’t believe in that. I’m so sorry, but I don’t believe in that. You sign a coach, you believe in the coach. It’s not normal to have someone taking notes while the coach is in training. I have more than 500 matches as a coach, so how can he analyse me?”
The one benefit of going through coaches like clean underwear is they provide plenty of feedback. Sadly, precisely none appears to have been heeded by Pozzo.
We now await with interest the rationale behind the decision that has led to Manga following Bilić out of London Colney’s hardest-working revolving door. It’s not hard to imagine why if Manga felt there were too many cooks in the kitchen — and that’s before scrutinising Pozzo’s part in this. While Bilić confirms in the same interview the owner was around less due to an operation, it is a long-held suspicion of many — myself included — that Pozzo is far more involved than he ought to be and does not relinquish control to the experts hired beneath him.
It was just four short months ago that Manga was present at the fan forums and Pozzo waxed lyrical about those heading up the recruitment process. So what on earth has changed in that time? Andrew French’s Watford Observer piece says Manga was promised control of recruitment but from everything we’ve heard and seen over the years, it’s hard to believe that came to pass.
Perhaps we ought to have seen this coming.
I noted recently that it was Giarretta rather than Manga who was quoted alongside the news of Ismaël’s extension. When Wilder was given the club’s backing, Manga was the senior source cited. It was his name carried in the release of Bilić’s sacking, too.
Writing for The Athletic, Leventhal reports uncertainty in the division of responsibilities when Manga arrived, before he was sidelined over the summer due to a reduced budget after failure to win promotion. I pondered this point on the latest episode of the Watford Buzz podcast.
Manga arrived at a time when promotion back to the Premier League was the be-all and end-all. It was why he was quoted in the decision to part company with Bilić, saying: “We are all ambitious to succeed this season, so something new is needed quickly while the opportunity of promotion is still real.” Suddenly, the remit went from building a team to play in the Premier League to demolishing the existing squad and rebuilding on a vastly reduced budget for another year in the second tier.
Whether he jumps or is pushed, it’s not hard to construct a narrative whereby Manga was doomed to fail after all. If he has been given the boot for his part in overseeing the rebuild of a squad with a net spend of about minus £48.5million, necessitated by the team’s shortcomings in a season he was only here for half of, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him.
What now for Watford?
A restructure is on the agenda according to Leventhal, but it smacks of re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Given the last man got just shy of 10 months, what will whoever fills the void be expected to achieve in their short window?
Football clubs talk a good game when it comes to strategy, structure and other buzzwords — Watford included. So it’s a neat metaphor for that ongoing chaos that one of the few tangible things promised at the ‘Parlaci Gino’ fans’ forum in the summer was an organisational chart to illustrate how the Hornets’ top brass worked. Four months on, and despite chasing, we’re still waiting for that document and it’s already out of date. Rumours that it’s just a flat line with Pozzo at the top are unfounded if not credible!
So here we are once more. Familiar territory.
Pozzo has appointed 19 permanent head coaches and gone through six sporting/technical directors (Gianluca Nani, Luke Dowling, Filippo Giraldi, Eric Roy, Cristiano Giarretta and soon Manga). After 25 members of senior staff in 11 years, you have to wonder if the penny will ever drop. Has there ever been a moment of introspection or self-evaluation? Another head has rolled but it is clear: until there is change at the top, absolutely nothing will change.