Aimless performance in a season where we don't know what the aims really are
Exactly what are the aims, targets and ambitions at Watford Football Club?
What does good look like for the current season, and the ones to come?
Promotion, play-offs, mid-table, just staying up?
The accounts released last week, and which will be written about in another article, show a club that is making money by selling players which covers the losses elsewhere and has helped repay debts, notwithstanding a lump still owed to the owner.
But it also shows a club that has very little cash to spare, one that will be suffering from reduced income going forward and will need to continue to pull valuable, sellable assets out of a hat in order to keep the wolf from the door.
The league table shows a team sitting eighth in the table, still only a point outside the play-off places despite the painful Preston defeat.
The squad list shows a collection of players that only the blindly faithful could have predicted would ever get that high in the Championship, a group that is significantly weaker than that which finished 15th last season and still has the same gaps as it did when the summer transfer window closed.
So, bearing all that in mind, what is expected of Watford this season?
Communication hasn’t been a strong point of this ownership and it’s been 18 months since we heard anything of consequence from the man at the very top.
Therefore judgment has to be made based upon what we see or what we hear from others.
The head coach clearly believed, from the summer onwards, that his squad can be a play-offs contender. Whether that was a target set for him, or his own high standards, is not clear.
He has, despite any reservations or criticisms we might have for him, got them in the play-off frame.
Watford aren’t the only inconsistent team in the division: Blackburn lost at home to Coventry last night, Middlesbrough were beaten by Portsmouth at the weekend, West Brom dropped points at home to Stoke.
In fact, there are only four teams consistently performing to a level that will get them two, or possibly three, of them promoted – and they are nine points clear of the rest and disappearing over the horizon with every round of fixtures.
So effectively, the best Watford can aim for is to finish in the top six and take their chance in the play-offs.
Is that success? Do the board view that as a good return for the season?
If they do, they have a funny way of showing it as they’ve had 22 opportunities so far this month to provide the coach and the squad with reinforcements, and so far they’ve delivered one 21-year-old whose two performances have been at the extremes of good and bad.
Writing in last night’s programme, sporting director Gian Luca Nani said: “Whatever happens and however you achieve something, the target is to leave the January window knowing that the squad is stronger than when you entered.”
Now there’s a publicly-shared target which, right now, is nowhere near being hit.
“We are very ambitious,” added Nani, who it must be remembered has a shared role at Udinese too – so that could be the ‘Royal’ we he’s using there.
He also added that “January’s transfer window is not an easy one”.
Hmmmm. Udinese have managed to find a goalkeeper and a central defender, so perhaps the lure of northern Italy and Serie A football is more attractive – but last night’s visitors Preston have added two new players, ditto sixth-placed Blackburn.
It can be done, even though it isn’t easy and none of us would want the club to put the future at risk by living above its means. They’ve tried that approach already.
This month will tell us a lot, as without new faces in the right places, this season is going to peter out just like the last two.
Jonathan Bond made a number of fine saves. (Image: Action Images)
The football season is a bit like a relay race: the current Watford squad has just completed its lap around the track and is looking to hand the baton to some fresh legs. If they aren’t there, then it’ll mean the same runner doing another lap against competitors that are fresher, physically and mentally.
Of course, the players cannot be exempt from criticism. The performance against Preston was appalling.
No energy, no ideas, minimal enthusiasm, the inability to pass to each other – these are basic things, like bringing your boots and your shinpads.
Having won at Derby, Cleverley kept the 10 of 11 that started, and stayed with the back four. All fair and reasonable, given the win and the good performance.
Of course, bringing Moussa Sissoko back in was never going to be popular given he is well down the list of fan favourites.
The midfielder has not had a great season on the pitch at least, and it seems his influence on the team in and out of games is earning him a place, more than his performances.
However, there are two things to say about that.
Firstly, bringing Sissoko in cannot excuse any of the other players. They were all bad last night, and even a peak Tom Cleverley midfield performance wouldn’t have been able to transform that shambles.
Secondly, who else do you pick instead?
Tom Dele-Bashiru started on Saturday and played the pre-agreed 45 minutes. He’s been out for three months, is being nursed back and clearly could not handle three games in a week. Had he started, Sissoko would have replaced him, as happened on Saturday.
Having been sent for tests on a possible hamstring injury, Giorgi Chakvetadze was on the bench and again that was surely protecting him. It’s unlikely he could play a full 90 either. Had he started and pulled up lame, Cleverley would have been lambasted for risking the club’s talisman.
There were no loud calls for Tom Ince to start ahead of Sissoko, and the only other viable midfield option, Pierre Dwomoh, is out injured for a couple of months.
Yes, Sissoko has led a bit of a charmed life this season and the armband might look better on Mattie Pollock – but currently the alternatives are few and the Frenchman isn’t the reason so many other players chucked in an absolute shocker against Preston.
What is worth remembering is that there is an over-arching pattern at Watford, one which players will see and know, just like the rest of us.
If things go wrong, Watford will sack the head coach and get in another one.
It happened once in 23/24, twice in 22/23 and twice in 21/22.
The club has changed permanent head coach 19 times in the last 12 years, and while playing managerial Wheel of Fortune provided immense success, it has also delivered abject averageness more recently.
Players are aware of that, and so when it comes down to battling, scrapping and busting a gut to get control of a home game with Preston, if they don’t feel like it they know the repercussions won’t be coming their way.
Of course, as the owner and the man who has bank-rolled things in those dozen years, Gino Pozzo can do as he wants. That is totally fair. But it comes back to those targets, aims and ambitions. What does he want? What does he expect? What are his plans?
He will have watched the same game as the rest of us last night. He may have interpreted it differently, but the bare facts were the same for all.
Like many of us, he may question some of the head coach’s selections. He may look at the constant change of line-up, shape and approach, and have justified criticisms.
It is, after all, very possible to back Cleverley overall while also having negative opinions on some things he does and says. Nobody is perfect.
But the Preston debacle summed Watford up. Cleverley also captured it perfectly after the game. Watford are a very inconsistent team.
We win some, we lose some. We play well in games, we stink in others. There are good runs of results and performances, and bad runs as well.
That Watford can be as unpredictable as the weather and yet still we are able to sit here and discuss what could be done to maintain that highly unexpected push for the play-offs, shows that Cleverley and his staff have got the team to be good on more occasions than they’ve been bad.
He’s worked with a squad of players that is weaker than the one he inherited and managed to make them better. Given more time, he can very possibly coach them to improve further.
And if he has the luxury of some new players in key areas, he might even be able to move the dial nearer still to consistent.
Rocco Vata was one of few bright spots. (Image: PA)
However, what was served up at Vicarage Road last night is something that is currently always going to be in this squad’s locker, and was there under Ismael, Wilder, Bilic and Edwards too.
It was there under Hodgson, Ranieri, Munoz also. It’s been some time since Watford had a squad of player where you knew what you were going to get.
Last night was probably what the fans of every team from fifth to 24th in the Championship is going to witness during the season, on several occasions.
Preston’s opening goal had so many flaws in it.
Abankwah has the ball, tries to be clever and gets bundled over. Looked like a foul but referee Mr Nield wasn’t keen on punishing much (least of all timewasting) and so play went on.
Osmajic is being marked, but when he darts towards the near post Pollock just doesn’t do enough to stop him – even kids down the local park know you have to be goal-side in that position.
Preston are nothing if not disciplined and dogged, and so going a goal down to them is playing into their hands.
They pressed high and hard, and Watford just could not work out how to overcome it, other than square passes in and around the halfway line. Great for possession stats, useless for scoring goals.
That was underlined in the data: Watford didn’t have an on-target goal attempt in that first 45 minutes.
The injury to Kwadwo Baah, which looks like it’ll mean a spell out of action, didn’t help matters but even then Preston kept Watford at arm’s length far too easily.
But for some fine keeping from Jonathan Bond and last-ditch defending, the visitors would have had the game won by the break.
Early in the second half Bond made another full-length save to deny Osmajic – who seems to save his best moments for Watford – as the tide continued to head in one direction.
The striker beat Bond at the next opportunity, simply sprinting onto a ball over the top, holding off Yasser Larouci and then blasting a cracking effort into the net.
That was, effectively, game over.
The brightest star on a dark night was Rocco Vata, who capped a typically energetic and enthusiastic display with a goal that was once again out of the top drawer both in terms of how he created and then executed it.
Seven minutes of stoppage time at 2-1 down always offers the potential for a grandstand finish, but in truth it never looked like happening and it would have robbed Preston of a deserved victory.
So, so often this season it has been two steps forward and one step back. In the space of four days Watford went from a battling and bold away win to a lamentable, lifeless defeat at home.
The current Watford squad’s possibilities and limitations laid bare between Saturday and Tuesday.
What comes during the rest of this season largely depends on if any new players are brought in, who they are and whether they address the issues and shortcomings we can all see.
New players coming in is largely governed by how much the club want to invest – money, time and support – in the current first team set-up.
We don’t know what the owner thinks this season could or should bring, we don’t know his plans for the future.
All we can do is wait to see what happens between now and 11pm on February 3.
