Underappreciated Watford

He can’t get in the team.

 

He means that the rather handsome cheque which Meister sends each of us every month for keeping the forum ‘sticky’ will be denied to this fellow if we don’t read his website.

It’s eyeballs.

 

We got miles more coverage on Saturday.

It was like we were Liverpool.

 

Look at the table mate - we’re top 6!

 

I was about to congratulate you, HB. Now I won't!

 

No, Elton bought him for us AND paid his wages.

 

The long standing criticism we get from every media outlet - the amount of managers blah blah blah - that's addressed in this article, got me thinking: how do we really compare against other teams since the Pozzo's takeover?

So I channeled my inner anorak, and had a look at the stats since June 2012 until now.

The criteria for inclusion is based on at least two games in charge. Fans of other clubs will of course dispute the following table because they will say that so and so was a caretaker manager.

But being as every time the managerial changes criticism is used against us they include both Garcia and McKinlay within it (despite the latter never being anything more than a temporary coach and only seeing out two games; and the former having probably the most genuine reason ever to step down after just a single match in the dugout), then their 'caretaker' managers can also be included (and most of their caretaker stints are at least 5 or 6 games).

In fact - I've been fairer to other clubs by ignoring the caretaker stints that lasted for just one match, yet have included Garcia in our own stats despite his one game reign:



Basically:

- 4 clubs have made more managerial changes than us since the Pozzo takeover, and one is level.
- 2 clubs have only made 1 0r 2 fewer changes, which is hardly something to mock us for.
- I've yet to hear even once Palarse criticised for changing their managers/head coaches, despite them having done so more than us.
- It's scary when looking at the names on the list, how the same people keep popping up again and again.


I have no presence on social media, so if anybody else can share this on the various platforms, that would be great. Seeing Palarse above us for the very thing we get slaughtered for all the time needs to brought to people's attention.

I give zero fuchs about credit, claim it as your own if you wish.

 

Merson never bothers to watch any matches. He spouts twaddle about games 20 years ago. Must be on a serious wedge from Sky but his current football knowledge and insight is woeful.

 

Good work @Jossy - though I think we have to accept that until we start a season with a head coach and then end the following season with the same head coach, this nonsense is likely to continue to be spouted by pundits.

 

Our total is high, no denying that, but how come Palace have slipped under the radar? I had no idea they've had 12 managers. I had no idea because the media do not push this story. The reason they do not push this story is because, apart from de Boer, all the others were English/British.

There is an extreme snobbery within the media. They have their pet hates and loves, and it depends which side of the fence you are whether you get an easy ride or not.

 

When the initial conversations started about a "Super League" / breakaway in the early/ mid 1980s, the "Big Five" were Liverpool, Man Utd, Everton, Arsenal and Spurs (probably in that order). Man City and Chelsea could even have been considered to be yo-yo clubs around that time (and far beyond in the case of City).

 

I would say the top sides in England have been always United, Arsenal and Liverpool, but even then Liverpool were nothing special before Shankly. United's legend only grew after the Munich air disaster. Empires certainly rise and fall. City are now a "super club", but are only that because of their owners. If they sell up, they could well become a mid-table Premier league side again. Same applies to Chelsea.

If a billionaire bought West Ham or Newcastle, then they could become just as big as Chelsea and City are now.

As we all know, football is only measured by pre-1992 and post-1992. So, going on just the Premier League years, then it's United, Arsenal, then Chelsea then City. Only recently have Liverpool become resurgent. Spurs the same.

Where are Watford in all of this. Well, they are considered an unwelcome guest at the party, but attitudes can change. I feel though it will take many years before Watford have an identity as a Premier League club. We have to stay in it for 10 years straight without flirting with relegation before we will be taken seriously.

Stadium and support does play a part in people's perception. We only have a stadium that holds 21,000 fans, which is small for an EPL club. We need to get that up to 30,000, whether we fill it or not is another debate. But 10 years of sustained top flight status, building rivalries with top clubs, will create a bigger interest. Success breeds success. We need to find a way to break out of the current 14 clubs which finish outside the top 6 (not talking about being relegated of course).

I can see the league become more divided in years to come. Right now it's the top 6 and the rest. I can see there becoming little tiers within the league. Promoted clubs are far too strong these days, which never was the case in the past. This leads me to think the top of the Championship is not too different to the bottom half of the Premier League. What I expect will happen is that clubs like Everton, Wolves, Leicester will become a strong mid-table side, because of their pursuit of greatness will put them in that bracket. We need to belong to that group.

 

I thought we were also included in that very first discussion and then we were removed when we couldn't replicate that stunning season?

 

Unless too much Baileys has been consumed

 

I don't see this as anything new. Stoke, West Brom and Swansea, for example, established themselves as solid mid-table teams for a number of years before last year. Leicester (with that amazing exception) have already done so although their promotion was more recent. Same could probably be said of West Ham, although they haven't been in the Championship recently. As for promoted teams being stronger: well, Bournemouth and ourselves are starting our fourth season in the PL so that's no novelty either.

But there is always the chance that any one (or more - though three was unusual) of those clubs could be relegated in any one season, because they simply don't have the financial clout of the big boys. The same might even turn out to be true of Everton. I can't see that ever changing: unless, as you say, one of those clubs was bought by a City-type billionaire. But it's perhaps more probable, as you suggest, that one of those potential owners would invest in a more marketable "sleeping giant" like Newcastle or Leeds (possible to add Everton and maybe West Ham to that latter category?).

 

Stopped reading at hornetboy1.

I wonder if the whopper who wrote that article could write such a piece about a club he doesn't support? Or is it the case that he only has interest in his own club just like any other fan.

Would anyone read an article that long about Burnley, or Huddersfield, or Southampton? Of course not. No one outside their fan base gives a single shyte about those teams, just like us.

The media is a money making industry the same as any other business. What people don't seem to understand is that articles about Watford barely generate any income whatsoever, whereas articles about Liverpool et al are lapped up by the drooling hordes like a thirsty dog.

 

Taking an objective view, I’d say one of the reasons that the media aren’t that interested in us is because we don’t spend big money on big names. Other clubs that are the same level as us do - that piques the interest of lazy pundits and journalists and gives them something easy to talk about. Our players and club literally have to work on the pitch to get themselves noticed by the same people - as we are beginning to see this season. I’m happy for that to be the way it continues to work.

We’ve made a rod for our own back so far with the media - it’s a ‘model’ that works for us so we understand it. But whether we like it or not, changing manager regularly is the most interesting thing we have done in the past few years in the media’s eyes, so that will be the narrative until we do something bigger/more dramatic to change it.

 

If one or more of our Pozzo bargains gets into the Emgland team and stays there, we'd get a bit more attention. If...

 

I personally can’t believe Femenia isn’t in the England squad given the article above.

 

I think you are being extremely generous to the surrounding teams. For a start, whilst Dyche leaving is factually correct, it is far from unusual for new owners to want their man in charge. McKinley was, by the clubs admission, an error of judgement and should at best been caretaker manager. As you say Gracia was hardly our fault, nor could we do anything about it. Would also be interesting to confirm the timings of the changes/sackings. Whilst we have gone through a few, at least three of our changes took place over the close season as far as I can see, four if you include Dyche. How many of the others were mid-season panic sackings because, lets face it, the other clubs largely have clueless ****wits in charge!

 

Yes, I was purposely generous to the other clubs so that you could rule out the bias factor of the table being put together by a Watford fan (unlike the original article in this thread). The other reason for doing so was to show that even weighted favourably towards the others, we still weren't the club with the highest turnover of managers/head coaches.

Regarding the changes being made before or during the seasons start - I didn't make a note of the details, but I can assure you that a large majority of them were indeed once the season had started (ranging from autumn-xmas-spring).

With the table weighted in our favour, you could arguably reduce our total by 3 - Dyche, Garcia and McKinley. Dyche, because new owners almost always bring in their new man when taking over a club; Garcia, due to his unknown health condition - he'd never have been appointed had the club been aware; and McKinley, because he came out of the panic from losing Garcia so suddenly. A total of 7 coaches in 6 years doesn't make quite as good a headline to beat the club with - only 2 more than Man Utd over the same period - a club that once declared that it always gave coaches time and would never be a 'sacking club'.

 

When you word it like that, it does seem even more baffling that you get more criticism for changing the coach between seasons rather than in the middle of one (which causes far more disruption).

Maybe I'm putting the yellow tinted goggles on now - but I seem to recall our sacking of ssssilva (after 1 win in 11 & 8 defeats) getting criticised more than Palace's decision to sack de Boer (5 defeats). So even when we do change mid-season, we still appear to be fair game.

 

Although the criticism of Watford going through managers started in 2014-15, I think it was the replacement of Jokanovic and then Flores for which we have never been forgiven by those outside the club, because their tenures appeared to be successful.

In 2014 no-one would criticise the replacement of Sannino since he had lost the respect of the players. Similarly the loss of Garcia was unfortunate, but it is true to say that the appointment of McKinlay (NOT a caretaker) was odd, so replacing him after 2 games rightly attracted attention. However all this would be forgotten by now if Jokanovic was still at the club.

 

Bit of a generalisation, HB.

Preston were the big noise in the 1880/90s.

Udders in the 20s.

The 50s had Newcastle & Wolves as the big guns & Burnley won it in the early 60s.

Liverpool were primarily a cup team under Shankly & City soon exclipsed Utd’s Best/Charlton/Law team in the late 60s.

Utd were relegated soon after.

Until Abramovich, Chelsea were a mid table outfit with cup pretensions.

Pretty where we are now aspiring to.

Until top tier English teams became trophy assets sometime in the 2000s, there was a surprising level of sharing of spoils.

As to the future, it’s built on sand.

Until the billionaires go somewhere else, there’s no such thing as an established Prem club (outside the top 6).

Everton aside, Stoke would have been the closest to that. Top 10 finishes & the cachet to attract major names.

In a minor key, WBA had a fantastic formula for survival.

Half the Champo have 30k stadia. That’s no silver bullet.

We can do two things.

Pray the Gino hangs around & enjoy the moment.

 

This makes me realise that isn’t necessarily any correlation between number of managers & performance.

Of this list, the most upwardly mobile in this timeframe are probably WFC & Muff.

Most managers & fewest/least.

Palarse have done well, Stoke, Villa & Norwich poorly.

Tbf to the pundits, these days they say we have sacked the most managers but it works for us.

Substitute ‘&’ for ‘but’ and, barring a little hyperbole, that’s fine by me.

A clear strategy effectively executed.

 

After the ‘Ehem, Mr John, are you sure Mr Moore is the right man for us’ conversation, Gino’s u turn on McKinlay was arguably the second most influential decision in our history.

Co, as the big ugly man said, jones.

 

I seem to remember reading that we were in a group discussing the formation of an 18 team 'super league" prior to the 88/89 season after we got relegated. I was lying in a rain soaked tent near Newquay reading some red top ***** sheet, for some reason thinking it was likely Eddie Plumley's influence that kept us involved, as he was being touted as a likely replacement for Bert Millichip at the FA, or some big wig in League admin.

Don't know how serious our involvement was.