Underappreciated Watford

Discussion in 'The Hornets' Nest - Watford Chat' started by hornetboy1, Sep 24, 2018.

  1. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    If you’re not a top six club, you’re not worth speaking about, at least that’s the mentality of the English media and pundits. And when they do start giving credit to the lesser clubs who are doing well, they act as like it’s some big discovery, when in reality fans of clubs who aren’t in the big six fan club, are already in touch with what they’re reporting. There’s also a backhanded compliment by most of the media, particularly when it comes to Watford. It’s the line “They’ve been through so many managers and players, but it works for them.” Like almost every club outside of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal etc don’t have a high turnover of players and managers. I’ve said time and time again, what Watford do isn’t out of the ordinary, it’s very common on the continent.

    The reasoning of this piece is because I feel like Watford are one of the most underappreciated clubs in not just English football, but world football. Whenever you hear Watford being spoken about on TV and Radio, it’s largely guess work and wrong, which Is frustrating as a fan because your club is being portrayed badly by influential people who put these opinions in the mind of the public who aren’t clued up on the ongoings at Watford. You just have to look at Jake Humphrey and Gary Linekar’s tweet when Watford decided to sack Marco Silva. Labelling it absurd and wrong whilst chucking in the “Watford wont get a manager as talented.” Fast forward eight months and Watford are in the top four with one of the best home records in the Premier League under Javi Gracia, a far more talented manager.

    If you look at where the club was in 2012, and look at where it is now, you have to say that Gino Pozzo is nothing short of a genius. For my money, the smartest owner in the Premier League. Yes he’s made mistakes, but so Lord Kevlin when he miscalculated the age of Earth and Sun because he didn’t realise that different parts of the planets cooled at different rates, or Charles Darwin’s theory on natural selection. Am I putting Gino Pozzo on the same wavelength as Lord Kevlin and Charles Darwin? God no, Gino Pozzo is above them. From being in administration, to selling a player for £25m in Ighalo and £50m in Richarlison in the space of six years Is astonishing. Not just this, Pozzo, with a big help from Scott Duxbury, have expanded and improved Vicarage Road, employed the right people to have the best pitch in top flight football and heavily invested in players on the pitch.

    One thing you cant criticise Watford for is having an imagination barrier. From Quique Sanchez Flores, to Walter Mazzarri, Marco Silva and now Javi Gracia. Watford have appointed managers out of the ordinary, with the only bad appointment being Walter Mazzarri. You can’t hold the club accountable for Marco Silva’s incompetence and lack of intelligence from October 2017-January 2018. I think it’s rather commendable that Watford haven’t fallen into the eye rolling appointments of Sam Allardyce, Alan Pardew and Mark Hughes. I mean seriously? if you have to sign one of these three up to manage your club then the incompetence at board level at these clubs is staggeringly bad. Watford have completely obliterated the theory that you need to know English football in order to be successful. They even made Gianfranco Zola look like a good coach when he finished third in the Championship under the first season ownership of the Pozzo family. Guess who got Watford promoted to the Premier League? Slavisa Jokanovic, who was sacked by Levski Sofia and Hercules after he was relegated to the third division in Spain. Yet Watford saw enough in his methods to think he was capable of getting the Hertfordshire club to the Premier League, which he was. Being able to spot a coach’s talents after being sacked by two very average clubs in Europe is a serious good talent. This isn’t by chance, Watford have three scouts that actively look around the World to see who can be their next Head Coach after the two year period that the club have set in place. The cycle is the coach will either move on to a better team or he’ll leave at the end of his contract, which has worked well so far. The thinking is that after two years, the players will be set in their ways and that a new face, a new idea will push the players to be even better.

    Speaking of scouting, Watford possess the largest scouting network in world football. Obviously it’s shared with the older sister in Udinese, but both clubs have been very successful using this approach. For Watford, it’s unearthed some gems in Matej Vydra who couldn’t get a game at Club Brugge in the season prior to joining the club, was the Championship player of the season at the age of 20 for Watford. He went onto score 38 goals in 92 appearances for the club, before being sold to Derby for £12m. Almen Abdi, Watford player of the season in the 12/13 season and one of the best players to play for the club and the Championship has seen. Odion Ighalo, who couldn’t hit a barn door in Spain, scored 20 in his first season in English football, followed by scoring 15 in his first season in the Premier League, before being sold to Changchun Yatai for £25m and being one of the highest paid players in the world. Watford won’t spend big on a player, the highest transfer fee they’ve paid for a player is Andre Gray from Burnley for £14m, not the £18.5m that was reported. Which is good business considering he was only 26, English and just hit double figures in the Premier League.

    Watford are building a team for the future, which was always going to be the case. The difference between Watford and Chelsea when it comes to young players is that Watford want these kids to play for the first team, and then eventually sell to a bigger club for a large fee. Chelsea want to develop their players all around the world with no intention of them being in the first team. Watford have Isaac Success, Will Hughes and Nathaniel Chalobah who are first team players that have the potential to be £50m players, add that to the likes of Adalberto Penaranda, who’s close to getting his work permit, and was arguably player of the U20 World Cup in which Venezuela lost to England in the final. A couple of bad loans have stagnated his development, but he’s still only 21 and working under the best possible coach for him in Javi Gracia. Domingos Quina, who signed on deadline day from West Ham for £1m, a key player for Portugal youth in which he won the European Championship in 2016 at U17 level and the U19’s this summer. He also scored an absolute rocket and was superb on his debut against Reading in the Carabao Cup. Can play as a 6,8 or 10. Best way I can describe him is he’s like a young Jack Wilshere with pace. Pontus Dahlberg, heralded as the best young keeper to come out of Sweden since Andreas Isaksson, arrived for £3m from Goteborg, already having best young player in Sweden and a full international cap to his name. Finally, Ben Wilmot, arrived from Stevenage for £1m and was one of the standout players in Pre season and who was also superb in his debut against Reading. Very much in the mould of John Stones, I have no doubt that this player will be a Watford regular by the end of next season and will have big clubs after him in the next three years.

    So to conclude, Watford are building something special. They have many players on their books that have potential world class ability and already have first team players that could start for a top six Premier League team. Don’t be surprised to see Watford comfortably being the best of the rest for years to come, and with a bit of luck, closing the gap of the sixth best team. Best thing about what Watford are doing is that it’s all down to scouting, rather than chucking large sums of money at average at best players. *Cough* Everton, *Cough* West Ham. Shall we stop sleeping on the work Watford are doing and change the narrative that they’re a poorly ran club to a club that have serious ambition and potential to be the best it can be. Actually do some research into the smaller teams, and you’ll find that in Watford’s case, every staff member is pulling in the right direction, every detail is worked on to the point where it’s perfection. You may look from the outside and think its a method In madness, but that’s not the case, its a long puzzle that Watford are slowly but surely putting together. It’s only madness if you don’t understand it.

    https://zonalmista.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/constantly-underappreciated-and-overlooked-watford-fc/
     
  2. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    This was not written by me, but is exactly my thoughts and rings so true. A really well written piece.
     
  3. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Yeah I can agree with this paragraph all day long.

    The problem with most other clubs is a long range vision, it just doesn't exist. With our club there is a plan, and it works, and they don't deviate. Why others haven't looked closely at what we do and attempt to imitate it is a huge mystery to me.
     
    PowerJugs and dynamo380 like this.
  4. An excellent read in my humble opinion.
     
    Ray Knight likes this.
  5. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Yeah, it's a nice piece. But it's very much written through yellow-tinted glasses and has a fair few exaggerations in it.
     
  6. Hornet4ever

    Hornet4ever WFC Forums Last Man Standing Winner 2018/2019

    Nice article.

    My only concern is when Pozzo does eventually sell up, whether that's in 2, 5 or 10 years, one day we are most likely going to have to regress back to that old school footballing model.

    Keep enjoying while it lasts. This last 5 years will be looked back upon very fondly by future generations & is not too far off the 80's vibe & excitement around the club. You don't always realise it when you're in it.
     
  7. Hornet4ever

    Hornet4ever WFC Forums Last Man Standing Winner 2018/2019

    @hornetboy1 thanks for posting that article.

    Do you mind me asking where/how you get access to all these types of articles?
     
  8. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Isaac Success as a potential £50 million player is my favourite. You'd have to be watching your yellow tinted TV, through your yellow tinted specs in your yellow tinted living room to see that degree of potential off the back of a couple of decent sub appearances.
     
  9. Cthulhu

    Cthulhu Keyboard Warrior Staff Member

    I agree with the sentiment of the piece. But it isn't well written.
     
  10. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I assumed he was just missing a "." between the 5 and the 0.
     
  11. Levon

    Levon Squad Player

    Decent article. Okay, it's written quite informally, but non-Watford fans could learn from it. Unfortunately, they won't be interested.
     
  12. fan

    fan slow toaster

    stopped reading at "most under appreciated club in world foorball". although I so truly do love articles complaining that people don't write about their club enough.
     
  13. domthehornet

    domthehornet Moderator Staff Member

    As long as there is an Everton in the world, there is a chance he can go for £50million.
     
  14. Hornpete

    Hornpete Squad Player

    Where do Ndong, Dje Dje and Sinclair fit it to the Pozzos are more genius than Darwin theory. (Or have we uncovered a flat earther?).
     
  15. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    £5m fee plus £45m compensation ?
     
  16. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Is Kevlin the alt universe version of Kelvin?
     
    Cthulhu likes this.
  17. Agree. It's like one of those 'fan's view' pieces in the Wobby.
     
    Steve Leo Beleck likes this.
  18. Guy

    Guy Squad Player

    A good article. Like the writers contribitions on twitter.
    Are we underappreciated, maybe by some but we're not hugely newsworthy.
    The quality newspapers give us on the whole good press, issue comes with the so called pundits who don't do proper research so can't provide in depth comments resorting to the fall back troy Deeney's a handful, we change our managers at the drop of a hat and we should be happy just to be in the league
    The manager position was skewed by Garcia resigning through ill health and change of mind over Andrews bit this is forgotten.
    At the end of the day the media would much rather have a wolves, forest or Leeds rather than tinpot tiny Watford.
     
    PowerJugs likes this.
  19. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    Would they though? When you look at the biggest clubs in the rest of the 14, Newcastle, Everton & West Ham (probably) you don't see that much more press coverage of those teams apart from the odd report of "where it all went wrong". When OLeicester won the league throughout the season they didn't attract too much addition attention until about the February save for the "they will surely drop away as the season wears on" comments.
     
    WillisWasTheWorst likes this.
  20. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    I agree with this. It's all about the top 6, however this is organic. Quite a few years ago it was just the top two, then it became 3, 4, 5 and now 6. The list has steadily grown over the years. Not sure if there are many clubs left that could realistically join the party. Everton are trying, but they are not interesting enough to hold the media interest. I think only Newcastle or Leeds could become a "super club" if they managed to get an owner of the level of Man City.

    I remember the days when Chelsea were similar to West Ham in stature and City were like Newcastle are now. Arsenal, United and Liverpool have always been the big 3, with Chelsea, City and Spurs joining the list in that order.

    Now that is understandable that the media would have an interest in these clubs, but when one of the other sides are having a good season, such as Leicester or Burnley, there is a lot of warmth shown towards these sides. Bournemouth had it for the first couple of seasons after their promotion and Wolves are being shown the love this season.

    Watford have never had this. They've always been dismissed and underrated. Even on Saturday Dino Lawro talked about Watford on Football Focus and predictably his first sentence was about the managers. He said "didn't they have three managers last season". It's always a stick first approach when reporting about Watford.

    Not sure why that is. Why Watford are seen as extremely irritating as opposed to plucky underdogs. Even with the resources of the Pozzo's, who by the way are not rich owners in comparison to their piers, we punch well above our weight.

    It will probably become harder when a few of the big city sides eventually gain promotion and survive the first couple of years. Leeds, Villa, Sunderland, Forest will all eventually get back to the top tier. They are too big not to. Then you've got the likes of Derby and Sheff Wed who will consider themselves as bigger than Watford. We probably now sit in the next bracket of club such as Ipswich, Norwich, Burnley, Bristol City, QPR, Stoke, Reading, Palace, Fulham and Hull. This is where I believe we naturally fit, so to see us thrive in 4th place in the Premier league, in our 4th consecutive season we should deserve a lot of attention and credit.
     
  21. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    The most obvious solution to this is to improve the quality of the buffet provided in the media room ahead of each game. Clearly Gino is still skimping on it and we're paying the price in print and on the airwaves.
     
    Ray Knight likes this.
  22. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    Nah.....it will still be "Watford have had 16 new managers in the last 2 months and should only be cleaning the boots of these Tottenham superstars, not beating them", but they will caveat that with "at least they do a decent Balti pie".
     
    Ray Knight likes this.
  23. Meh!

    Meh! Pre-Dictator

    Didn't read it. Wasn't about a top 6 club.
     
    Ray Knight, RookeryDad and Jossy like this.
  24. Cassetti's Beard

    Cassetti's Beard First Team

    I always thought the lack of detailed coverage on us was down to a Watford article/news pieces not generating enough clicks and views - a piece on a traditional top 4/6 club is always going to generate a lot more clicks/views due to the larger fan base both domestically and internationally.

    Leicester won the title and even the media coverage didn't really increase until a lot nearer the end of the season.

    I don't really blame the pundits either, I imagine their bosses in Sky/BT HQ give them a minimum quota of knowledge required which mainly revolves around the top 6 and some soundbites about the rest- anything else is up to them whether they bother to learn it or not.
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2018
  25. jw-

    jw- Reservist

    It was written by the owner of this twitter account: https://twitter.com/zonalmista One of the better football twitter accounts around.

    This is a bit of a pet peeve, but I think we should be careful about just copying text people have written and pasting directly into posts -- especially when there is no paywall for the article. We don't know if the author is being denied ad-venue, or whether they would like to use blog views as a metric when applying for writing positions. I know that you've included a link, but it's right at the end after the article.
     
  26. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Non stick and bullet proof
     
  27. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Agree with this. People should read it on the original site so the author isn't denied any traffic.
     
  28. CaveManHornet

    CaveManHornet Reservist

    As UEA stated earlier, it was definitely written through yellow-tinted glasses.

    "Kiko Femenia, who a lot consider the best right-back outside the top six, on a free from Alaves".

    As much as I do like Kiko, I imagine only a few people outside of the Watford fanbase even know who Femenia is let alone considering him as one of the best right-backs outside of the top 6. In fact, I doubt even the typical pundits consider him Watford's own best right-back.
     
    PowerJugs and Chumlax like this.
  29. Steve Leo Beleck

    Steve Leo Beleck Squad Player

    Are we underappreciated by the media? They follow where the story is - there was lots of positive coverage when Deeney and Ighalo were on fire when we first came up and there's been loads of articles about our good start this season. There have been insightful articles in the national media that say pretty much the sames thing as this blog does about our model and the impressive succession planning for coaches.

    I'd say the criticism might hold true for TV pundits and radio (particularly the Soccer Saturday type of punditry), but not so much the written media. Either way, I can't help feeling it's a bit tinpot to demand more attention from the media - personally I'd rather we went about our business in a quietly effective manner. Having said that, writing a gushing article about how great Watford are is obviously a good way of getting lots of positive feedback from Watford fans!
     
  30. Hornet4ever

    Hornet4ever WFC Forums Last Man Standing Winner 2018/2019

    I think what it is, most fans remember & hang on to the negative comments made about their club, more so than the positive. Every other club fan base in the country are carbon copies in the way they think about this particular subject.

    We have had plenty of good coverage in recent times. Unless you were Man City last season or Liverpool this (i.e put on a pedestal), every club gets slated by the media on purpose by virtue of perceived expectation &/or money they spent during the last window.

    It shouldn't be but negative press always gets more views, Ad revenue & click through's.
     
  31. Meh!

    Meh! Pre-Dictator

    It's what happens when you mess with time!
     
  32. another_mrlizard

    another_mrlizard Squad Player

    I honestly haven't the faintest idea what any of that means.
     
    WillisWasTheWorst likes this.
  33. RookeryDad

    RookeryDad Squad Player

    I doubt his mother would rate him that highly.
     
  34. wfc4ever

    wfc4ever Administrator Staff Member

    Well the manager clearly doesn't think he is even the best right back at the club!

    Think we had all this complaining about lack of appreciation last season when we started well...

    Lets hope we are still worrying about the lack of praise come April/May as we keep in the top 10 or more!

    I did notice the Fulham fans complaining that the Sky/MOTD coverage was all about us...nothing on them.

    Generally it does seem easy to pick on us in terms of the managers and players we've had but many clubs are chopping and changing at will - Leicester/Southampton/West Ham etc

    Least we've got Deeney - I mean without him we'd probably get no coverage at all!
     
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2018
    RookeryDad likes this.
  35. RookeryDad

    RookeryDad Squad Player

    Preaching to the choir.

    It doesn’t really attempt to engage a non Hornet. It simply gushes.
     

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