What are Watford doing?

It's never a dull day eh?

"I Had Forgotten I Lived In A World Where Everything Was For Sale."

Another season of “chaos” has started at Watford, but I use that term loosely. So far this summer, the club have sold seven players worth roughly £50m, will get compensation for two players in Harry Amass and Adrian Blake, loaned out three players, released six players and managed to get £2.3m off Marseille for the Pape Gueye saga. On top of also losing last seasons loan players, which equates to 22k minutes lost last season, which is the most in the Championship and equivalent to five players (courtesy of FevsFootball). That’s led to some fans questioning what the strategy is here and we should be worried going into the season given we’ve only brought in six players. Don’t take what I’m about to say as fact or truth but I’m just going to give my interpretation of the whole thing and why we’re acting the way we are.

Squad situation:

Watford currently have 19 players who can be registered in the squad (10 homegrown and 9 non homegrown) meaning we have a further six spots that can occupied heading into the last month of the summer transfer window and January window. We will undoubtedly bring in more players this month, most notably a striker and another centre back as well as other squad fillers. 13 of the current squad will be out of contract either end of this season or next season and I doubt more than half of them will be renewed and then you factor the other players like Okoye who will also more than likely be sold by then.

Ben Manga:

There seems to be a narrative created on him and his team by certain people that categorically know nothing about football recruitment and how it works with a new team at the disposal. In order to get your own imprint on a squad and shape the way you want your football to be played and trained, you want to do a massive clear out as quickly as possible. Watford have to commit to this because A) You’ve appointed a whole recruitment team, It’s not just two people in Helena Costa and Ben Manga, It’s eight more of his team on big contracts too. I’d be worried if the club were keeping these players rather than not. To me this is a good thing because it shows there is a change of approach and there is an acknowledgement that this group of players need to start afresh and create a different environment and atmosphere around the place.

Example of a Pozzo clear out:

When Udinese fans were in the same train of thought as us about players overstaying their welcome, recruitment not being what it was and there was seemingly no plan — the family appointed Pierpaolo Marino as Technical Director in April but he would’’t officially start until June 1st. In that summer specifically, Udinese got rid of 32 players (including season before loans) for £58m and signed 11 players (five permanent deals, four free transfers and two loans) for a total fee of £11m — the highest being Wallace for £4m the rest being punts for £2m and players with big experience in Serie A. The clear difference is Italian football doesn’t have the money the Premier League possesses, so the risk is smaller and the debt is nowhere near as big. But the way they went about integrating a new recruitment team is more or less identical to what we’re doing now.

Udinese’ summer window

Udinese summer outs

Season expectation:

The players will obviously say the aim this year is to get back to the Premier League, It’s what they should be saying, nothing wrong with a bit of ambition. But the mood on that was very different at the fans forum — it was more of an acceptance that we’re very much a Championship club in the Championship and not a Premier League club in the Championship. To me this season is about competing, clearing the debt (their words not mine, we’ll see what happens there) — and developing an actual team and some of the academy players we’ve got coming through, particularly Ryan Andrews. There’s another fans forum on the 10th of August, so we can ask point blank what the actual expectation is and whether I’ve come to these conclusions for no reason.

Transfer market:

Excluding the Jake Livermore signing, I’m fine with what we’ve brought in, they actually fit what Ismael wants. Ince, Healey and Jamal Lewis have a history of playing this style of football out of possession and add some much needed quality — and I do really like Matheus Martins, he’s a regular for Brazil youth teams and was a regular for Fluminense for a reason. Notably they’re short term contracts and not long ones which is a good thing, means we don’t have to commit to these players should we want to refresh pretty quickly. Going back to Manga, he said in his first interview that he signed a five year contract to get Watford back into the Premier League — the season doesn’t end on the 5th August, we still have a month to get deals done with no expectation riding on outcomes. Obviously we want to win football matches, but the idea is to create a place of work where the player thrives and the coaching staff don’t change every six weeks.

Pre season:

Watford decided to have a seven week “boot camp” by staying in England which is beneficial as you want to work as much as you can to get to grips of this style of play which is different to what we’ve seen before. What should hopefully work in our favour early in the season is that we’ve played more or less the same XI from the first game in Boreham Wood to the last game in Peterborough United. There’s also been no transfer drama this season and uncertain players haggling around the training ground, that was either sorted before pre season or sorted with them not interfering with the current group of players.

Conclusion:

This is not me defending Gino past or present, this is me taking a step back and logically looking at it without any emotion attached to the situation. There seems to be a Twitter phenomon that you’re either Pozzo out or a Happy Clapper, It’s not binary, It’s perfectly fine to sit on the fence and see what plays out, there’s no productivity in saying I told you so in a scenario which doesn’t benefit the club or it’s supporters. If you’re Pozzo out that’s cool, but if you’re not that’s also cool too, there’s no rule book on it; and if there was Luton “Rolfy” Dave would be at the very top for what not to do.