A new look Watford and a new look Valérien Ismaël
“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
Watford have just beaten QPR 4-0 and whilst it was expected to some degree, it still came as a nice surprise to us fans as we haven’t seen a team performance like that for some time. You can point to Luton and Stoke last season but the players were kind of winging it in both games — there wasn’t a set style of play, it was more go out there and do your best. What I’m not going to do is analyse the entire game from a tactical point of view, but rather highlight what constant patterns I’ve seen from pre season leading up to now as there are some interesting things to look at for a whole host of reasons. The main one being the style of football we’re playing in possession because every man and his dog assumed it would be the usual high intensity out of possession and long direct football in possession, you’d be half right. For example at West Brom and Barnsley, Ismaël’s teams had a league high 22% of passes being direct, whereas at Watford so far, It’s been a league low (including documented pre season games) of just 9%, which tally’s with what we all saw on the first game of pre season in a 0-0 with Boreham Wood. And then I realised, none of the first team coaching staff worked with Val at either West Brom or Barnsley — Dean Whitehead the first team assistant coach was with him at Beşiktaş for 10 games and Omar Riza the other first team assistant coach; who’s been part of the Watford academy set-up since 2018 and involved with the England youth set-up since 2019. In an interview as the game against Arsenal behind closed doors was going on, Omar Riza said “The gaffer’s been great in respect of giving me and Deano the autonomy with the in possession stuff, but what the gaffer’s brought out of possession has been very intense, both physically and mentally but with it there’s real simplicity, you know your job and you know what’s required.” So it seems like Omar Riza and Dean Whitehead work on when we have the ball and Val Ismaël works on off the ball work, which would explain the shift in style.
I don’t want to get into breaking down the entire game against QPR because it was well, QPR and I don’t want to confuse tactical instruction with player instinct. But I do want to write about what I’ve noticed in the early stages across pre season and to matchday 1. What has helped with the recent result is in our first pre season game against Boreham Wood, nine of the eleven players that started then also started against QPR — the only changes were Sema in for Kalu and Ngakia in for Andrews; so in terms of continuity and planning, Watford get an A* for that.
Build-up patterns:
Sweeper keeper as an option
CBs split wide
Box midfield created with the defensive midfielder and full backs inverted — mainly left back
Constant rotations between RCM, RB and RW
Left over full back pushing inside alongside the 8 to create a numerical advantage
Progression patterns:
Defensive midfielder used as a funnel to keep it ticking over
Either centre back tasked with playing into the final third with one pass or a carry to bait a player out
Imran Louza the main target in the middle third of the pitch
Left sided 8 has freedom to make runs into the box when the ball is deeper
Ryan Porteous with one pass into Jeremy Ngakia who moved centrally and the left sided 8 in TDB immediately makes a run to the box Creation patterns:
Winger and full back create 2v1 situations against opposition full back
3v2 (Centre back, full back and winger) in wide areas to create space for central midfielders to receive the ball
Width in the final third at all times from either winger or full back
Striker on the shoulder of the opposition centre back of which side the ball is on
2v1 vs QPR full back 
Creating the space for Louza 
Same situation this time Sierralta instinctivly filling in Like I said, I don’t want to go too overkill on this as it’s only one proper game and the rest (that we’ve seen) have been pre season games, but those are the clear things I’ve noticed when discussing how we play in possession — a lot of rotations, a lot of risk taking in terms of positions taken up. But it would be redundant of me not to mention the elephant in the room and that’s the role by trade central defender Francisco Sierralta has playing as a defensive midfielder. We need to come up with the name of the role, because usually in these set-ups, the DM is the one who has the responsibility to be the main man in build-up phase but in this case it’s more or less the opposite; he’s almost in there to kind of trick the opposition? he takes up all the right positions you’d expect, but doesn’t actually do the actions you’d expect. It’s short passing, keeping it simple and making the right decision in the role he’s in — made easier as he has more or less at all times, five players to choose from when receiving the ball.
Sierralta passing numbers from the weekend Out of possession:
Mid-block
Intense press
541 pressing shape into sometimes into a 442 when the ball is played across by their defenders
Defensive midfielder drops in to make a back five when pressing in wide areas or when the opposition team go long on goal kicks
Conclusions:
Very early days to get to any definitive conclusions, but there is a distinct style of play which is evident, an early buy in from the players and effort and application we’ve not seen for a long time — even captain Daniel Bachmann referenced that in his post match interview by saying “And you know the most important part is you could see we’re a team for the first time in a long time.” Long may it continue. On to the actual style of play, on the ball if we don’t make the right pass or the pass isn’t good enough, there’s a lot of space to exploit as we build quite high up with everyone in the defensive third moving centrally and our defenders aren’t the quickest, so we’ll be vulnerable in that regard but that’s the risk and reward style we’ve got in place now — we should be a really fun team to watch that will create a lot but also concede chances, reminiscent to Zola’s Watford. Off the ball is obvious, if teams play through the press and going at Sierralta then there’s an issue, or if teams go long down the channels there’s also an issue with what I’ve said earlier, the speed of the defenders who’ve been exploited by that space, It’s up to us to come up with a solid structure for when we lose the ball. But as the first seven weeks or so go, a good start by all accounts. Wage bill down, squad suiting the manager and seemingly buying for the head coach too — a few more additions to the squad and hopefully we can keep on improving. The flip side of this is it goes against my club DNA theory which I’m very much wedded to — is Ismael in the mould of Watford and what we’re about with this change of approach? Not at all, it has to go right otherwise it can turn quickly; but until we and if we get to that moment, let’s hope we build on this opening 4-0 win.