Watford have become a mini-Chelsea — without the trophies. It’s time for a complete ‘cultural reset’
The end of the season is in sight which means it must be time for my annual reflection on another year of frustration being a Watford fan.
Frustration is the correct adjective here. In 11 years of Pozzo ownership, this is the club’s lowest ebb; new depths have been reached, on and off the field. Yet the extent of those depths is consecutive seasons in the Championship after a feeble promotion bid finally died a rather limp death. In other words, we should maintain sight of the wider picture. Despite concerning financial accounts for the 2021/22 season, Watford will exist next season.
At the same time, Watford fans have had a rubbish few years and are rightly fed up. Fed up at the way the club is being run, with the same bone-headed errors being made in the corridors of power while the same feckless players produce the minimum viable product each week, all overseen by a rotating cast of head coaches, powerless to affect real change.
Chris Wilder is the latest and while his reign is unlikely to be remembered fondly, it has proven significant. The Good Friday surrender to relegation battlers Huddersfield Town proved the final straw for some. Chants of ‘You’re not fit to wear the shirt’ broke out along with ‘Gino Pozzo, get out of our club’. There were also two banners. It might not sound like much but for Watford fans, it was significant.
Personally, I’m still not quite there. I’m 100% of the mind that Pozzo has to take ultimate accountability for the situation we are in. His steadfast backing of the players over any of the 18 permanent coaching appointments since 2012 has contributed more than anything to a rotten culture that empowers the players and banjaxes the coach.
But I am also of the belief — and quite prepared to be proven wrong — that he can be a good custodian of Watford again. The first seven years of his tenure — while littered with sackings — proved as much. Most Hornets supporters would draw the line in the sand after the 2019 FA Cup Final defeat to Manchester City as the moment where things started to go wrong. There’s also the very recent reminder of what truly bad, reckless ownership can look like in that iconic image outside the Red Lion. Plenty of people want to own football clubs, not all of them for wholesome or laudable reasons. Even fewer have the capital to make it happen.
Today, Watford resemble the great Chelsea side of a few years ago — without the silverware, of course. It was widely reported that John Terry, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Didier Drogba and Petr Čech ran the dressing room during the golden era of Roman Abramovich, making clear their dissatisfaction at any coaching hires that didn’t meet their exacting standards, in doing so wielding greater power than the incumbent coach.
At Vicarage Road, it’s also the coach who pays the price for any shortcomings with the club always backing the players. We’ve seen it time and time again when managerial changes are made and the accompanying statement claims the squad is good and the head coach needs to get more out of the available resources. At what point do those players begin to believe their own hype and start to down tools, one wonders?
Even the most recent change, which saw Wilder succeed Slaven Bilić after just 26 matches, carried the whiff of a familiar theme even though it was recently-appointed technical director Ben Manga who was quoted.
“We are all ambitious to succeed this season, so something new is needed quickly while the opportunity of promotion is still real,” said technical director Ben Manga of the club’s decision.
He added: “With the January transfer window over, to change coach is the only option available to re-energise for the final games ahead.”
It was a similar story when Claudio Ranieri was cast aside last January. Though nobody was quoted, the statement read as follows:
Watford Football Club confirms the departure of Head Coach Claudio Ranieri.
The Hornets’ Board recognises Claudio as a man of great integrity and honour, who will always be respected here at Vicarage Road for his efforts in leading the team with dignity.
However the Board feels that, with nearly half of the Premier League campaign remaining, a change in the Head Coach position now will give a new appointment sufficient time to work with a talented squad to achieve the immediate goal of retaining Premier League status.
No further club comment will be made until this new appointment is confirmed in due course.
It’s easy to be wise after the event, of course, but it had become increasingly apparent for some time before Bilić’s removal that this squad did not have a real opportunity of promotion. It was equally apparent last season’s rag-tag mob of journeymen and mercenaries did not have the required ability — mental or technical — to drag themselves out of trouble.
Furthermore, the January additions referenced by Manga — and we’ll reserve judgement on his part in that having joined just prior to the window opening — have largely proven duds with the exception of one, possibly two.
January 2023 additions
Ismaël Koné (CF Montreal, £8million)
Ryan Porteous (Hibernian, undisc.)
Wesley Hoedt (Anderlecht, undisc.)
Matheus Martins (Udinese, loan)
João Ferreira (Benfica, undisc.)
Henrique Araújo (Benfica, loan)
Britt Assombalonga (free agent)
With the exception of Porteous and, potentially Hoedt, the rest have either been injured, AWOL or flattered to deceive. Even the central defensive pair have dropped off a cliff in performance terms after a bright start. In the 29 games prior to their arrival, Watford kept 12 clean sheets. Together they’ve played 12 times and contributed to just two shut-outs.
Mercifully, this summer should see a long-overdue turnover of the squad. Elder statesmen Craig Cathcart, Tom Cleverley, Christian Kabasele, Leandro Bacuna and Assombalonga are out of contract. There are five loanees (Hassane Kamara, Hamza Choudhury, Martins, Keinan Davis and Araújo) who will surely all return to their parent clubs. It’s hard to imagine both Ismaïla Sarr and João Pedro being here next season either.
Not with £124million in outstanding loans from parent company Hornets Investment Limited and external lenders. Another season in the second tier was not what either player signed up to and clearly not what Pozzo expected the outcome of this campaign to be.
All that said, nothing changes unless there is the long-overdue cultural reset promised by chairman Scott Duxbury after relegation from the Premier League 12 months ago. In the event, it lasted just 10 Championship games before the rug was pulled from beneath Rob Edwards’ feet and a ‘win now’ coach was installed in Bilić.
At that point, Pozzo not only made clear promotion was imperative but reset expectations among supporters. Supporters who were, for the most part, signed up to the idea of a clean slate and the associated growing pains — even if that meant a second season in the Championship. In the event, we’re getting that, a fourth new coach in 12 months and a shed-load of baggage and emotional toil thrown into the bargain.
For those reasons among numerous others, Pozzo brought the recent display of supporter dissent upon himself. With three games to go and little sign of improvement from a team that mustered just 45 good minutes at Coventry City on Bank Holiday Monday, further demonstration should be expected.
There is, however, some cause for optimism.
The appointments of technical director Manga and head of scouting Helena Costa suggest Pozzo is at least committed to the idea of changing the way the club operates. It was Manga who was quoted following the sacking of Bilić and although it’s hard to believe Chris Wilder was his appointment, the summer will provide the acid test of Pozzo’s appetite for real and meaningful change.