Why Watford’s Failure To Win Promotion Must Be The Catalyst For Off-field Change

Hello

I’m an Ipswich Town fan and EFL blogger. I have written an article about how failure to win promotion this season needs to be the catalyst for change at Watford. I’m aware that you’ll probably be sick of chat about managerial changes but I’ve tried to touch on a few things beyond the usual talking points too.

The blog is still quite a new project so I’d massively appreciate any subscriptions to it. It’s free and the articles will arrive in your inbox every week. I’m happy to take any constructive criticism too because as fans of the club, your views will be different to mine as an outsider.

How do you feel about the club moving forward? Do you have faith that the hire and fire approach will become a thing of the past and that things can change? From reading through things on here, the mood doesn’t look too positive.

Anyway, hopefully you enjoy the article and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it. Hopefully see you next year in the Championship.

Jacob/EFL Hornet

Why Watford’s failure to win promotion must be a catalyst for off-field change (substack.com)

 

From the outside, it seems like it'll be hoping for leopards to change their spots but there's always a chance. Coventry and Blackburn were in much worse states a few years ago and turned things around without a change in ownership. Much of that is despite the owners rather than because of them but maybe that provides a bit of hope.

Is a big squad overhaul likely?

 

I saw Leif Davis from Town suggested as a target on another thread. Obviously that's a non-starter if we get promoted but he'll get a Championship move in the summer if we don't get over the line.

 

That would be me. I agree, which is why I hope you don’t get promoted. Sadly even if you didn’t get promoted, our owner and board are absolutely brain dead, they wouldn’t even look at him. They would much rather sign some rubbish tat from an inferior league and tell us they have been scouting him for a few years, wanted to sign him when we were in the Premier League, but all the top 6 clubs were interested at the time so we couldn’t compete. Now we have an opportunity to bring him here, it’s an incredible piece of business. Meanwhile another championship club will sign Davis from you and he will have an amazing season.

Same thing happened with Toney. He wanted to join Watford, literally wanted to join us. Our board, chose not to as he was “too expensive.” We are run by idiots.

 

He’s a quality player. Maybe it’s my bias showing but he’s unlucky not to be nominated for the League One player of the year award. Getting 15 goal contributions from full back while also being part of the league’s best defence is a remarkable achievement.

Yeah criminal to miss out on Toney like that. Innovative scouting can go a long way but equally the board missing out on obvious targets right in front of them is going too far in the other direction. If Brentford were to sell Toney now, they’d make their money back ten times over, FA charges notwithstanding of course.

 

"On the pitch, the nucleus of a competent Championship squad is there"

Competent? Maybe. But not promotion winning.

"When fit, Imran Louza is among the best midfielders in the division."

Not really.

"Ryan Porteous has settled in well since joining from Hibernian in January"

He's been hugely error prone in recent weeks.

 

Our owner has always had some mantra where he feels that fancy foreign players always have a better potential sell-on potential whereas £5mil British players are deemed sorely overpriced (Toney).
A crazy outlook but a key reason why we continually buy very ordinary players that come in with zero idea how to get to grips with "tough, fast paced british football".

 

Yeah agreed on the squad, not good enough to win promotion. At a guess it’ll need at least a couple of years of good recruitment to challenge at the top again.

Fair play on Porteous, will edit that bit to reflect recent form. You’ll have watched more than me but from what I’ve seen, I think he’s capable of playing in a Championship side.

Do you reckon Louza’s good enough to be a part of the squad moving forward? Obviously that’s a different to being one of the best in the division, but I think he’s shown some quality.

 

Yeah there’s definitely a balance between being innovative and going for tried and tested Championship players. Ideally you want a mix of the two. Brentford were probably the most creative recruiters but even they made exceptions to the rule with the likes of Pontus Jansson and David Raya in their promotion winning team. I know he wasn’t Championship proven at the time but Toney was in the same mould as he’d played in the EFL and it was pretty obvious he’d step up from League One.

 

Certainly wholesale changes, not sure how long that will take.

There's a thread on this forum called 'Core For Next Season' and most posters on here would happily get rid of most the squad.

He is, but generally the club and fans will want us to be more than just a Championship side. His initial enthusiasm and commitment was something we'd been lacking when he joined, but that's turned in to him becoming very rash and he's shown he still has a lot to learn. Would be good if he could pick up an extra yard of pace somehow over the summer as well. Otherwise he could find himself out the team after not too long.

I think many on here would agree that although he sometimes shows good quality on the ball, he generally lacks the pace and intensity for English football. While I thought that could be the case for the PL when he first joined, even I've been surprised at how often he's still looked off the pace in the Championship. He's also seems quite injury prone, which hasn't helped.

I wouldn't say it's impossible for him to turn things around, but it seems unlikely based on what he's shown so far.

If we somehow managed to attract a decent offer for him from Ligue 1 or Serie A, I think many on here would take it if the money could be spent on a midfielder better suited to the division.

 

If we want him, we'll get him.

 

Thanks, although I don’t think it’s over yet. Logically, we should do it with the run we’re on but the last time we got promoted I was eight months old so I’ll only believe it when I see it!

Yeah it really does look like a season of underachievement. Aside from Burnley and Sheffield United, the Championship is really weak this year. The low points totals at the bottom of the playoffs and the fact that Middlesbrough have already secured their top six spot despite giving everyone else a ten game head start are further evidence of that.

Financially the division is in a real state. There aren’t many teams chucking money at it anymore in the way that Derby, Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday did in the mid to late 2010s. Any team with parachute payments this year should be at least making the playoffs with even semi-competent management on and off the field.

The mental aspect of relegation and a couple of seasons of failure is really interesting and one I maybe could have fitted into an article. There was an element of that at Town until recently and Sunderland too. Both had squads good enough to go up but it took Sunderland four years and this is our fourth season too.

Definitely a big summer ahead for Watford, needs some good recruitment on and off the pitch.

 

Yeah that Louza point is a good one, especially as it looks like you’ll need to sell to buy with money seemingly more tight than it was previously.

On Porteous and the hopes of being more than just a Championship team, I suppose it might be difficult to reconcile fan expectation with where the squad is. That’s not to suggest the Watford support is delusional (I haven’t seen evidence that it is) just that it’s naturally going to be hard to adjust from being a team which has spent 6 of the last 8 seasons in the Premier League to one which is now probably a couple of years away from competing at the top end of the Championship again.

If the owners can accept another couple of years in this league, it’s difficult to tell whether making wholesale changes or adding 3 or 4 players in each of the next few transfer windows is the best way to go. Recruiting 10+ in one go will require time to bed everyone in and probably guarantees a low finish next year, but it will speed the process up in the long-term.

 

We’ll see!

 

Burnley managed to change practically the whole squad over the summer and went on to walk the division.

One way or another the squad definitely does need a major overhaul - however long that takes will largely depend on how much money we have available and how clear the plan for the team's progression is.

 

Agree with all of that. What Burnley, the achievement is less the success itself and more how it’s been achieved. There aren’t many managers who can overhaul a squad, change the style and win the league at a canter within one season.

It depends on the money though as you say and whether that’s available. With so few teams spending big sums, investing relatively small sums can go a long day if it’s done wisely.

 

It’s been a crazy season at the top end of League 1 BTW - even if both you and Argyle drop points Sheff Wed could still win their last two games and fail to go up with 96 points. There was a similar case with Wrexham about ten years back when they failed to go up with 98 points from the same number of games and were condemned to a further 11 years of non-league football, but they were in 2nd place with only one automatic promotion spot available.

Been reading the Wednesday forum and I’ve never seen a fanbase so down after winning 3 of their last 4 games and being on 90 points with two games to go. That kind of mood could permeate into the stands and down to the pitch and if Wednesday don’t go up the fans may end up being partly to blame.

 

Look on the bright side
- with Manaj Bayo Fletcher and possibly Troost coming back and dead wood Pedro and Sarr on the way out - we look stronger already

 

Yeah it’s been ridiculous. I feel especially sorry for Plymouth after they missed out on the top six with 80 points last year but I think they’ll be title winners.

OwlsTalk is an interesting read, reminds me of some of the Sunderland fans last year. We all have our meltdowns but I’d say around half of their fans want Darren Moore replaced. By contrast, even in our terrible run in January and February, the very few people on our forum who advocated sacking McKenna got absolute pelters and rightly so!

Although in fairness to Sheff Wednesday, they’ve got more riding in promotion than we do. We’ll sell a few in the summer if we don’t go up but I’d be pretty confident of us making a fist of it next year, whereas much of their squad is 30+ with very little pace or resale value to finance a rebuild.

 

I think we’re at risk of over-analysis here. For me the biggest thing is that the football is so insipid and our games have been devoid of any entertainment for two seasons plus now. There’s no coherent game plans or tactical setup and a lot of our key men clearly can’t be arsed. Sort out that and a lot of the other issues drift into the background.

 

It wouldn't be surprised if the apathy and manager situation are linked. Even though there seems to be some truth to what Wilder has been saying about player attitudes, how many of them will take notice of it and have the hunger to prove him wrong when he's probably leaving in a few weeks anyway?

Regardless, I don't think it's the right approach to bash players in public anyway because it rarely improves their performances, but that's an entirely different debate.

 

The Davis/Dennis swap with Forest (albeit indirectly vis a loan with Villa) hasn’t worked out for either club. Wonder if things might be different had they both stayed where they were last season.

 

Probably not much differently, Dennis played quite well on the opening day of the season, but had checked out by game 2 when the transfer rumours were heating up, and Davis is nowhere near good enough for the Prem

 

Grossly inflated fee aside, I like Bayo, he's not the most polished by any means, but he's a proper striker, and boy have we missed someone like that this season. Yes, someone to hold the ball up is good, but how are you going to score goals if nobody is getting into the right areas?

 

Ben? Ben, is that you ??

 

Fair point. Although probably couldn't have gone much worse for them either.

 

Can't be Ben, he's too busy making Wrexham's promotion all about himself:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-65364704