Why does the next manager need to be British? Find the best man for the job. We've just had one of the most highly regarded English managers and he's been a disaster.
The problem with that was that Deeney was playing. This was when he was horrendously out of form and on a stagnant decline in ability; and when the majority of his goals scored were penalties. It was the consistent use of crap players like Troy and Grey + a woeful defence that saw us relegated in 2020, not the lack of leadership. At least we saw an upturn of form when Pearson came in. If Troy could have accepted that he wasn’t good enough anymore and could find a way to transition from being the Captain on the pitch, to a leader off of it, then I feel we could have performed better that season. The team now however lacks any sort of leadership. Every single one of the players this season have been soft. Not a backbone between them. They completely wrote off the season before Christmas came about and even though they still (somehow) weren’t relegated until Crystal Palace last week, there was not one fecking ounce of desire to make up for the shambolic start (and now end) of the season. All a bunch of limp di*k heads.
It's crazy - it seems that no psychological assessment is ever done on the losers we seem to sign. Every club has the odd quiet or "confidence" players, but that's mixed in with a load of other players. Unbelievably we seem to have assembled a squad based only on this type of player.
Stems from the board. They don’t want to risk bringing in people that will question their methods. Ivic, Marco Silva and Pearson are characters that seemed to have an expressive attitude, and I like to think that all three made it clear to Pozzo/Duxbury that they were **** at running the club. To which they were quickly and immediately removed, or chose to leave by their own merits. Since then, all we’ve seen is total ‘yes men’, brought in as Head Coaches. Xisco, Ranieri and Hodgson were all happy to go with the flow. In Xisco’s case, he lacked the experience or cajones to stamp his foot down, whilst the latter two had absolutely no reason or care in the world to make any demand for change. This lack of care has seeped into the club as a whole, big time. No-one seems to care anymore.. not even a good portion of the fans these days.
The issue is not just the head coach. It is the other coaches that the club hires. Often they don't move in or out with a new head coach. I hear rumours of disharmony that this then causes as they don't link well with the various head coaches
It’s a funny listen this week. Top 10 reasons for our current problems and the owner and CEO’s names barely pass their lips. I see plenty of people have called them out for it on social media - and their defence is that Pozzo and Duxbury are the recurring/underlying theme to many of the issues included, and it’s not their job to connect the dots for the listeners. Hardly does much to dispel the belief that they are terrified to directly address the owner/CEO’s shortcomings though. Leventhal normally does his bit on a Thursday which covers his articles - be interesting to see if he takes the same tone as his scathing article this weekend or (as I suspect) he rows back on it.
We were relegated on Saturday, it's now Tuesday and we've heard nothing from the club. Not exactly surprising I guess, maybe the real fans at the committee will get the statement and pass it onto the plebs.
I can’t access the article… But as I understand it, the gist is that Leventhal has been sh*tying himself since impulsively writing that article at the weekend, so has written one today telling us that we all need to respect Hodgson, so he can remind everyone just how much he doesn’t get it. Am I close?
Ah Pandora has opened the jar and look what has happened! At least mankind had hope. I'm struggling to find ours. Perhaps it's hiding in the wardrobe with Sisyphus?
You know my usual thoughts but in fairness, it actually doesn't read too much like that - it's more 'we need to rally around the club as fans'. He does even say: 'Every aggrieved Watford fan isn’t going to forgive and forget simply down to one apology, but this situation is less about him now and more about what links the fans together. The club they love.' It's that kind of thing.