Good article by Oliver Kay in The Times today, comparing Watford (stability from constant change) with Palace (clumsy attempt to change the ethos via the dogmatic de Boer without changing the players) and Stoke (Hughes changing the ethos more gradually). He doesn't delve into history, but where Watford got it right and Palace and Brum wrong was our wholesale replacement of players when Zola came in (and which I deplored at the time, hence my nom de keyboard)
We're old-school and have the paper version. You could buy it and put a few bob into Rupert's pocket!
Paradise Lost was the best incarnation in my time. I was 14 and drinking Diamond White all night after pre-drinking a litre or 2 of cheap cider from garston parade shops down the park first. What a time!
They do things differently at Watford. They were preparing for an FA Cup semi-final in April last year, already sure of avoiding relegation in their first season back in the Premier League, when they started planning to replace their respected Spanish manager Quique Sánchez Flores. It was the same a year earlier when Slavisa Jokanovic was ushered towards the exit after leading them to promotion. Indeed it was the same again at the end of last season when, even before six defeats from their final six matches caused them to drop from tenth to 17th in the Premier League, there was an eagerness to move on from Walter Mazzarri. It did not take the expertise of the analytics department, in which the club’s owner, Gino Pozzo, takes a very active interest, to reveal the kind of drop-off that had also triggered the departure of Sánchez Flores. Chalobah has introduced more of a British flavour to Watford’s team this seasonMARK ENFIELD/MERCURY PRESS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK Under the circumstances, Watford might have appeared a strange club for the in-demand Marco Silva to choose as he looked to build on the strong impression that he had made at Hull City. They look like the least stable club in the Premier League (eight managerial departures in five years under the Pozzo family’s ownership, at least 12 additions and at least 13 departures from the playing squad in each of the past three summers) yet those close to Silva speak of his enthusiasm for the structure he has found in place. Four games into the Premier League season and they have eight points and are earning praise, not least for finally integrating some more English talent (Nathaniel Chalobah, Andre Gray) into a team who have previously been heavily reliant on overseas imports. Somehow, contrary to all the accepted wisdom in English football, amid all that hiring and firing, Watford appear to have evolved into the type of club where a manager or head coach can get along — even if only in the short-term. Indeed, short-term might suit Silva, a coach who has big ambitions to match his growing reputation. These are early days in the new season, with their unbeaten start likely to be severely tested when Pep Guardiola brings Manchester City to Vicarage Road this afternoon, but it feels reasonable to suggest that Silva and Watford chose well this summer. Crystal Palace had also shown interest in Silva before appointing Frank De Boer, who lasted four Premier League matches before being sacked on Monday and replaced by Roy Hodgson. Silva might feel that, having performed well in unenviable circumstances at Hull last season (slowing but not quite stopping their inevitable slide towards relegation), he could have succeeded where De Boer failed, but he is probably relieved not to have had to put that theory to the test at Selhurst Park. For his part, de Boer may reflect that Palace, like Inter Milan, were simply the wrong club for a graduate of the Ajax school to take his dogmatic, evangelical approach to football coaching. With the exception of a couple of brief surges to mid-table, one under Tony Pulis and one under Alan Pardew, Palace have spent the past four seasons scrapping for their lives in the Premier League, embracing the type of “back-to-basics approach” that brought survival against the odds under Sam Allardyce last season and will be welcomed once more under Hodgson. They have a few very gifted players, particularly Wilfried Zaha, but if there is a Premier League club who are less suited than Palace to the type of cultural revolution that De Boer had in mind, then it is hard to think of one. This, of course, is precisely why the chairman, Steve Parish, felt that they had to change. Upon appointing De Boer, Parish observed that, out of tactical necessity rather than long-term design, Palace had become a team who were better out of possession than in it. “If you give us the ball, typically we lose,” Parish said. “If we give them the ball, we beat them — and that’s top teams in this division as well. We need to figure out a way of breaking down teams who give us the ball. The technical details of that is Frank’s world, but that’s the macro problem, isn’t it?” The diagnosis was reasonable, but the expectation of an instant cure, administered by a thorough Dutchman, was naive in the extreme. Because it was indeed a macro problem, Palace could not expect to be changed overnight — and, having been far quieter than expected in the transfer market this summer — into a team who could play the Ajax way. Parish should have seen that. De Boer certainly should have done. If there is a contrast to be made, it is with the situation in which Stoke City found themselves under Pulis by the end of the 2012-13 campaign, their fifth in the Premier League. Pulis, by common consent, had worked wonders in the Potteries, but there was a feeling, not least among the supporters, that Stoke had hit a glass ceiling and were now going backwards. Their final points total dropped slightly in four consecutive seasons. Only once in five top-flight campaigns had Stoke averaged more than one goal per game. There was a feeling among the Stoke board at the time that they needed a more sophisticated, more technical approach if they were to survive and thrive long-term in the Premier League. The immediate feeling was that they should go for an overseas manager, but on reflection they concluded that, even after five years in the Premier League, the nature of their squad meant that the accent had to be on evolution, not revolution. Their eventual choice was Mark Hughes, who, they felt, could modify the style while building on the best parts of Pulis’s legacy. Broadly speaking, Hughes has done everything asked of him at Stoke. He has rejuvenated an ageing team, introduced some more exotic talents and got them playing a more flexible, more progressive style of football. His first three seasons brought three ninth-placed finishes, yielding more points and usually more goals than were scored under Pulis. Last term there was quite a drop-off, and you could well imagine that the number-crunchers behind the scenes at Stoke were as alert to it as those at Watford would have been, but the opening weeks of the new campaign have brought signs of promise. The point is that there are some clubs who are equipped — personnel-wise, culturally, psychologically — to develop and improve and there are others whose existence has been so frantic, so hand-to-mouth, or transfer-window-to-transfer-window, that they are best-suited to shock treatment. Stoke have gradually moved from the latter category towards the former. Palace have shown themselves to be nothing like ready, either in the boardroom or in the dressing room, to take that long-term approach. As for Watford, seeking stability from constant change, they are the Premier League’s great contradiction. Palace, by contrast, seem too uncomplicated by half.
So, in summary: It's high time Palace get relegated this year for being such a shambles; having no vision; making a string of reactive and predictable rather than proactive appointments; having a holiday-loving narcissist as a chairman ... and for having Zaha
