Watford’s Ray of the Rovers tale shows how far Hornets have slipped
I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when Ray Lewington was sacked by Watford in March 2005.
Perhaps because I was a teenager and every crumb of coverage about my beloved Hornets was seized upon with ravenous hunger. Perhaps because he was my first ‘real’ Watford manager. Perhaps because after three largely positive seasons, two cup semi-final appearances and admirable leadership through the choppy waters of the post-ITV Digital crash, he was incredibly hard done by.
Most likely? All three. What I can say with certainty is the news of his return to Vicarage Road after 17 years away, as assistant to Roy Hodgson, provided more than a pang of nostalgia this week. In fact, there is something symbolic about the return of a man who served the club with such skill and dignity in troubling times being called upon again in the darkest hour of the Pozzo regime, when we have strayed furthest from our identity as a club.
When I say Lewington was my first ‘real’ Watford manager, I need to provide context. I’m almost 30, so I was alive and kicking for Graham Taylor’s second spell and, regrettably, Luca Vialli’s term too. But I wasn’t really a Watford fan, much less a football fan, and I only went to a handful of games.
By 2002/03 I’d well and truly caught the bug and went to a good 10 or so home games via the club’s ‘Kickback’ scheme. Lewington was in charge and, having shed some of the excesses of the previous season, a squad comprised of the final excesses of that dark time — the likes of Allan Nielsen, Marcus Gayle and Stephen Glass — coupled with some shrewd but less glamorous signings — Neal Ardley and Sean Dyche — defied all expectations to finish comfortably in mid-table and reach the FA Cup semi-finals. That those achievements came against a backdrop of financial turmoil and a well-publicised 12 per cent pay deferral, admirably instigated by skipper Neil Cox, only elevated the job Lewington did.
Compared to those lean times, the idea of dropping out of the Premier League for the second time in three seasons seems trivial. It is, even if the reality of another year in England’s second-tier will surely mean a firesale of the few remaining assets — João Pedro, Ismaïla Sarr and Emmanuel Dennis leap to mind — and with it a far tougher challenge to achieve instant promotion back to the Promised Land.
Seventeen years ago, Watford did not have the proverbial pot to piss in. There was little more to cling to than the identity of the world’s first family club and the players and staff who represented it. Parting with Lewington after almost three years felt seismic. Hodgson, the man he’ll be assisting for the rest of the season (hopefully) is the third head coach or manager to take the reins this season and the 15th permanent appointment the Pozzos have made in almost a decade of ownership.
Taken as a whole, it’s hard to argue with the method. Watford have been promoted twice, enjoyed their best-ever Premier League finish, been to the FA Cup final, another semi-final and a Play-off final. For a club that’s spent the majority of its history — and certainly my lifetime — in the Football League, that is a marked improvement.
But as we wave goodbye to another embattled head coach we hardly knew — Premier League winner Claudio Ranieri this time — it’s hard to argue with (some of the more reasoned) howls of derision from the wider football world. What does Watford stand for anymore? What is our identity? Are we simply a meat market for managers and players? We’ve long given up on the idea of being a producer of our own local talent — even if club icons Richard Johnson and Jimmy Gilligan returned to head up the academy last summer — and the turnover of players and staff continues apace.
It was easy to overlook, even defend, the revolving door policy when it brought success. The 2014/15 campaign ended in automatic promotion despite four men leading the team. But 2019/20 ended in relegation with Javi Gracia, Quique Sánchez Flores and Nigel Pearson all cast aside before Hayden Mullins and Graham Stack went down with the ship in the final fortnight.
If the current campaign ends in relegation too — and after attending the 3–0 debacle against Norwich City I’ve little cause to believe it won’t — history won’t reflect kindly on another campaign of chopping and changing with little rhyme nor reason.
Yet, on paper, it’s hard to argue with either sacking. Xisco Muñoz, lovely, smiley, amiable man though he was, was out of his depth tactically. Unable to set up the defence, get much out of the attack or change a game, he was every inch a manager with fewer than 40 games in the dugout to his name.
Ranieri was the opposite, a Premier League stalwart with big European and international jobs adorning an impressive resumé. He even kept Sampdoria up when they were mired in relegation trouble, we told ourselves. Despite the high-profile roles he’s held, the so-called ‘Tinkerman’ was not and is not a firefighter. Statement wins against wretched Manchester United and Everton teams aside, he lost all but one of the remaining 12 games he took charge of in all competitions. Unable to stem the flow, it was only a matter of time until Watford bled out.
Yet again, the lack of clear strategy or joined-up thinking stood out. Watford had only backed the veteran Italian at the start of January with three new signings — the clearest indication yet that the club knew they’d made a dog’s dinner of last summer. But after two games and a single point with his reinforcements, Ranieri was gone. The time to make the change would have been after the West Ham debacle or defeat to Spurs. At the start of the window and with a fortnight’s break until six-pointers with the Magpies and Canaries. And so another manager picks up the pieces of a squad which has been constructed for three men in the last two seasons alone.
As the Premier League’s oldest manager ever, Hodgson clearly isn’t a long-term appointment. But at a club that seems incapable of looking beyond the short term, that probably doesn’t matter. What matters is he is a proven Premier League firefighter. Albeit, by his own admission, those rescue acts with Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and Crystal Palace all started sooner.
The saving grace of Ranieri’s regime was his success in unlocking a previously floundering attack. Hodgson must now drill a team that has failed to keep a Premier League clean sheet in 31 games, since February 29, 2020. Defence is the foundation of success and there are few better coaches when it comes to tightening up a team. It won’t be pretty and you can bet Sarr, Dennis, Joshua King and co. see less of the ball than before, but Hodgson’s back-to-basics approach is exactly what Watford need.
After that, a total reboot is required. What should Watford stand for in 2022? If the answer is smart recruitment and polishing up rough diamonds to sell on for profit then so be it. But at least align your strategy with recruitment and staff and be good at it. Not every signing is going to be a success. No one expects that. But for every Richarlison, Abdoulaye Doucouré or Emmanuel Dennis there have been a helluva lot of Dimitri Foulquiers. Even Sarr hardly counts. At a reported initial outlay of £35million, he was a known quantity. It was a high-value gamble which looks perilously close to backfiring if he is a Championship player by May. It’s very hard to turn a handsome profit on a guy who’s been relegated twice.
Only last summer, CEO and non-executive chairman Scott Duxbury promised Watford’s hierarchy had learnt their lessons. He admitted they’d slipped away from the club’s DNA and would not repeat those mistakes. In came 34-year-old Juraj Kucka and 31-year-old Danny Rose. That’s not to say those two are the problem explicitly, more endemic of the lack of consistency between words and deeds at Vicarage Road.
Something has to change.