Silva showing why he would be worth his weight in gold to Everton

The talk in the build-up to Watford’s game at Newcastle on Saturday largely centred on the significant off-field issues facing both clubs with the match itself reduced to something of a sideshow.

In the end Watford’s resounding 3-0 win showed why the club’s unwavering stance in the face of Evertonian pressure for the services of their manager Marco Silva was the right decision; while Newcastle, with four losses on the spin, could do with a resolution to Amanda Staveley’s takeover bid in the hope sufficient cash will be made available in January for Rafael Benitez to improve his willing but ultimately limited squad.

The win at St. James’ Park took Watford up to eighth on 21 points, three behind fourth-placed Tottenham. The Hornets also have the same number of points as they did after 13 games under Walter Mazzarri’s tutelage last season so praise should be given in moderation considering how that turned out.

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Yet to equate last season’s turgid and lifeless displays with this year’s performances of verve and breathless derring-do is to allow false equivalency to reign supreme. In 2016/17 Watford won 12 points away from home and scored 15 goals; this year’s tallies stand at 13 and 15 respectively, but with 12 fewer matches played. Only Manchester City and Chelsea have a better record away from home: Whisper it, but this is a side transformed.

The obvious place to start with Watford is their manager Silva, who at 40 is the most highly-rated young manager in Europe, a man with a brain constantly whirring with ideas of shapes and systems.

Watford’s players talk of his extreme eye for detail bordering on obsessiveness, of how he tailors instructions specifically for each player as opposed to a one-size fits all approach to a squad with 20 different nationalities, more than any other in the Premier League. Upon his arrival in the summer Silva instructed all his players to speak English on the training ground regardless of where they come from.

“Will the players be speaking only in English? Yes,” Silva told reporters.

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“The main language is English. I’ve come here to speak English. Normally I talk in front of everyone in English. Sometimes I need to speak to Spanish players a bit in Spanish but that is not perfect.”

This stands in stark contrast to Mazzarri’s policy last term of speaking solely through a translator despite taking English lessons in the months leading up to taking up the Watford job. It was this refusal to even give the language a go that made it difficult for the locals to warm to him and one can only imagine how well received Silva is with the Watford faithful. The sense of togetherness he fosters has certainly helped in the club taking bigger strides this season.

With Silva’s arrival has come a stylistic change in the team’s set-up. In their two seasons since promotion in 2015/16, the aim was to play long balls up to Troy Deeney and Odion Ighalo/Andre Gray. This season has seen a change in formation to a 3-4-3 with overlapping full backs and midfielders dictating play from the centre of the park.

The major beneficiary of this switch has been the Frenchman Abdoulaye Doucoure, a player criminally underused under Mazzarri – he only made his first League start on New Year’s Day against Spurs. Doucoure has become the beating heart of the team, leading the team in passes (829); touches (1,042) and with four goals to his name, he is the embodiment of the team’s progress from lacklustre to brilliance this term.

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To further underline his importance to his team, Doucoure is the only Watford player to have played every single minute of their 13 Premier League games. In this day and age where Premier League clubs are increasingly spendthrift and the solution to every problem is perceived to be in the transfer window, it’s often forgotten that a manager’s primary remit is to improve the players already under his watch.

As Doucoure’s continued brilliance shows, Silva still focuses his energies on making players better individually and collectively. And this is no one-off either; every Watford player has gone up a notch from last season’s performances, with Tom Cleverley, another example of a player similarly drifting to irrelevance that has now found direction under his manager’s watchful eyes.

With Silva’s fantastic input well documented, it would be shortsighted to attribute this season’s success solely to his managerial acumen. Yes, he has taken the team to another level but a word too for the Watford hierarchy who put an environment for him to succeed in place.

In contrast to last season where chaos was the order of the day at Hull, Silva now finds himself at a club where board, coaching staff and squad are all pulling in the same direction towards success. There’s no better illustration of this than the scouting network that has unearthed rare gems even in this age where information is one click away.

The cash floating around the Premier League these days has coincided with laziness in scouting, where most players are cherry-picked mostly from only well-known leagues and imaginative recruitment is a rarity. Richarlison, the 20-year-old Brazilian who has taken the Premier League by surprise, is the poster boy for Watford’s creative thinking in the transfer market.

Signed for around £11.5m from Fluminense in the summer, it’s not outlandish to think he could well move on for at least three times that price at the end of the season.

The same goes for Dutch left-back Marvin Zeegelaar, signed for £3m and reunited with his old Sporting Lisbon boss Silva, who has been quietly impressive and was instrumental in the win at Newcastle with his constant targeting of Deandre Yedlin on the opposition right.

Throw in cut-price deals for homegrown talents Nathaniel Chalobah and Will Hughes and you quickly realise this is a side built on the foundations of youth, sensible planning and the right manager in charge to make it all happen.

The elephant in the room is Everton’s continued interest in Silva and his non-committal responses to questions posed weekly in the press. Watford’s best-ever Premier League points tally is the 45 points garnered under Quique Sanches Flores in 2015/16, and with Silva’s side on course to beat that, there’s an argument for the Portuguese to remain in situ and wait for better opportunities than a side that has completely lost its way.

The time for Silva to put down roots at a club is now, for all his success he only has 14 Premier League wins under his belt and a third unveiling in a calendar year should be discouraged. There’s a chance to build something special at Watford while enhancing his burgeoning reputation in one fell swoop, it’s an opportunity he should grab at one of the Premier League’s best-run clubs.