It’s difficult to predict Watford’s future direction because they weren’t meant to be this disorganised and weren’t supposed to be that good.
Adam Drury of the excellent Watford podcast From The Rookery End says, “There’s almost a little bit of hope because you think you might have hit rock bottom.” The podcast rarely runs out of content. Watford just suffered a 1-0 loss at Millwall. “There’s no way it could be worse than last Saturday.”
It can’t possibly be worse than last Saturday is a phrase that sums up English football matchday culture in eight words or less. Too often, hope is portrayed as the inevitable precursor to failure, and while that’s often true, it’s not the reason we do it. Rather, hope is the reaction to not succeeding. It’s not the hopeless conviction that our football teams will consistently perform well, but rather, the hope that they won’t always be this awful.
A week following that loss at the New Den, Valerien Ismael, the manager of Watford, was fired. Here comes the classic Watford cliche, their unique selling point in English football, the widely shared tweets about how many managers have temporarily moved to Vicarage Road.
To put you in perspective, let me say this: during the 11 years that the Pozzo family has owned the team, there have been 19 full-time managers; in the last five years, that number has risen to 13, and only one of the previous 18 has overseen 50 games. With 41, Ismael painfully fell short of that.
Prior to the inevitable derision, let us emphasise that for a considerable amount of time, despite widespread criticism for its absurdity, the hiring and firing culture, the widespread short-termism, and the use of the club network for transfer activity did work.
Although firing a manager every nine months was obviously costly and went against conventional wisdom as well as common sense, Watford managed.
Then, firing a manager was the plan, not an indication that it had failed.
Watford was promoted in 2014–15 as a result of a mid-season manager change. They repeated the trick in 2020–21 to demonstrate that it wasn’t an isolated incident. After being promoted, they changed managers right away and placed 13th.
They had seven managers in five years and experienced the longest run of top-flight seasons since the 1980s. Life was good for a while, but not everyone who supported it liked it and not everyone believed it could last in the long run.
That tone has changed, first subtly and then quickly, moving in the direction of open hostility. It all began with their miserable 2021–22 Premier League season, during which the club’s executives appeared to have only demonstrated a failure to learn from their mistakes.
Watford had fired its manager in September of the previous relegation, replaced him with an experienced Englishman for just three months, and finished 19th. This time, they fired their manager in October, put in a new one for just three months, and ended up finishing 19th under the third, an even more seasoned Englishman.
Watford appointed something, and someone, different after Roy Hodgson left. The first British manager of the Pozzo era who was under 40 was Rob Edwards. I watched his first league game as manager, a victory over Sheffield United at home. Edwards ran a lap of the pitch after full time to rally his supporters to accompany him on the adventure. Actually, it was more of a stroll; after nine more league games, Edwards was fired.
Edwards could have done well anywhere, but Watford supporters were most harmed by Luton Town. Edwards took over as manager of Luton during the same season that they finished ahead of Watford for the first time since 1997 and, most frustratingly, were promoted to the Premier League.
The truth was never hidden from Watford supporters, but there was a surge in irate worry following Edwards’ promotion. This demonstrated that a manager’s workplace environment is just as crucial as, if not more so than, the manager’s personal identity. Sometimes a coach can take pleasure in situations that delay reality: the right players, the right coaching style, the right ability to inspire others, and the right turns of events at the right moment. However, in the end, the environment will nearly always prevail.
Neither in their own league nor in the one immediately above or below, Watford is alone in that club. These are just an extreme example. However, the same idea holds true, and it is making things more difficult.
You can enjoy periodic short-term lifts, the dopamine rush of the honeymoon phase, and switch managers frequently. Can you construct anything lasting, though? Clubs outside the financial elite are finding it more and more difficult to advance without building.
Fascinatingly, supporters experience the same thing. Supporters of Watford do not detest every minute or even every game. With just their second victory in 13 games, they bravely defeated Birmingham City 1-0 last weekend to allay fears of being demoted to League One, even though they were led by another interim head coach.
Those are the times when you can get lost in the details and revel in the glow of intense celebration. Nothing about last Saturday was worse.
Longer term, though, those same supporters are genuinely unsure about what to believe. Over the past two years, Watford has sold a lot of important players. This year, they receive no parachute payments as they were demoted after just one Premier League season. The team is not very big. This season, Watford has used fewer players than any other Championship team. The valuable, marketable assets are becoming scarce.
What happens next? Building a club with a vision—a broad, guiding principle that endures in the face of adversity—becomes your rock when other things falter.
When a club is constructed with an anti-vision and the unwavering intention to continuously swap out actors until the ideal play is discovered, it ceases to exist. With this family in charge, the grand football team is left wondering what it truly stands for and how it might ever change. That is the Pozzo purgatory.
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