About that last post...

There’s nothing like actual events to expose the blithe theorising of so-called experts. Nine games into the Premier League season and the complacency I expressed in my last post looks downright naive. In my defence, I’m not the only one; it’s obvious that the club hierarchy didn’t see the Hornets’ disastrous start to the season coming either, or they would have made different choices in the transfer market over the summer.

In retrospect, the Pozzo regime’s habit of changing Head Coach every summer starts to make more sense. If nothing else, it gave everyone at the club a chance to reset the clock – forget about the disappointing end to the previous season and start again with a clean slate. Whereas it seems that Javi’s team just carried the woeful end to last season on into the Brighton game and beyond.

Wiser heads than me have debated at great length what’s gone wrong. I’d just like to highlight one aspect of Watford’s current stint in the Premier League that continues to bother me, and that may be part of the problem; the inability to integrate young players into the team.

When Quique took the Hornets into that first PL season in 2015, he’d quite deliberately been provided with a squad packed with experienced, battle-hardened players; new signings included Capoue, Britos, Holebas, Nyom, Behrami and Prödl. It worked, too; we didn’t ship too many goals, Iggy and Troy banged in the goals and we stayed up fairly comfortably.

Since then, it’s been much the same story. Four years on, Capoue, Holebas and Prödl are still here, four years older and starting to slow down (visibly, in Jose’s case). More importantly, very few younger players have been integrated into the first team. This only really hit home to me when I was reading the programme before the FA Cup Final and looking at the ages of the Watford team; only Will Hughes (24) and Gerard Deulofeu (25) were under the age of 28.

We have tried to use younger players from time to time, but it hasn’t really worked. Take 23-year-old Isaac Success; three years after his debut, he still looks like a work in progress. But he’s a rare exception, in that he has at least been selected for Premier League games. More often, talented young players are restricted to cup games and/or sent out on loan, rather than being trusted to play a role in the first team. I’m sure I’m not the only Watford fan who was sorry to see Ben Wilmot sent to Swansea, and as for Domingos Quina, there can’t be many Premier League clubs where such an obviously talented player would struggle even to get on the bench. And don’t get me started on Pontus Dahlberg, a goalkeeper who is highly rated by everyone who comes into contact with him, yet doesn’t even get to take part in the pre-match warm-ups. I’d love to know the plan for his development.

The impression the club gives right now is of one that is simply too scared to give youth its chance. The rapid turnover of Head Coaches doesn’t help; why should they take a risk on untested players when they know they won’t be here long enough to enjoy the fruits of the experiment?

I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should flood the first team with callow youngsters; merely that there’s no point signing talented young players if there’s no intention of giving them a chance to show what they can do – and that  an injection of youthful energy and ambition can be just what’s needed to buck up a struggling team. If any club’s history is proof of that, lord know it’s ours.

Next steps

Given that, going into the last month of the 2018/19 season, Watford had two possible routes to European football, it’s tempting to view the denouement as a disappointment. In the cold light of day, though, reaching a cup final for only the second time in the club’s history, and finishing in the highest league position since 1987, has to be viewed as success. It’s also progress, and it was encouraging that the statement from Gino Pozzo and Scott Duxbury after the Cup final emphasised that this is just the beginning. Of course, there’s plenty that can go wrong, but I’m confident that I won’t have to wait another 35 years (by which time I’ll be 91, if I’m still here) to see the Hornets appear in another cup final.

So, what do Watford need to do to keep up the momentum and ensure that next season is even better? I have a few thoughts…

On the pitch
The most obvious thing that needs fixing is our defence. After three consecutive shutouts (against Brighton and Everton in the league and QPR in the cup), we didn’t register a single clean sheet after February 15th – that’s 15 games. Some of the defending was positively inept, and towards the end of the season we were routinely conceding the first goal, even when we were apparently on top.

It feels like we need an injection of youthful energy. At 28, Christian Kabasele and Kiko Femenía are the youngest members of the regular defence, and Kabasele has had a wobbly season, having previously looked like a nailed-on starter for years to come. We know Miguel Britos is leaving this summer, and it wouldn’t be a surprise in Sebastian Prödl joins him. That would create a couple of vacancies for fresh blood.

Maybe one of those vacancies will be filled by the promising Ben Wilmot, though it seems that the club views him more as a defensive midfielder. Either way, that leads on to my second point: it would be good to see the club’s talented youngsters being integrated into the Premier League squad next season. The team is starting to feel a bit old (only three of the 11 who started the Cup final were under 28: Hughes, Delofeu and Doucouré) and needs rejuvenating. Wilmot and Domingos Quina have made the strongest case, and then there’s Nathaniel Chalobah (if he still counts as young) and the enigma that is Adalberto Peñaranda. What with them and the many young players we have out on loan, the future looks bright – as long as they’re given a chance.

The other area where we’ve fallen down this season is in finishing. Obviously, no team converts all their chances (though Man City get close), but, as noted above, there were a significant number of games this season where we failed to turn dominance into goals and paid the price for sloppiness in front of goal. Given the competition in the transfer market for proven goalscorers, our best hope is probably that one of our overseas contingent will prove to be the answer in the medium to long term; for example, Cucho Hernandez has had rave reviews playing for Huesca in La Liga, and the Brazilian 17-year-old wunderkind João Pedro can apparently join us in January.

Off the pitch
The first one is easy: reinstate the Z-Cars theme as the music the team walk out to at Vicarage Road. Whatever the reasoning behind replacing it with ‘I’m still standing’, the resentment and outright anger caused by the move should be reason enough to reverse it. It’s part of our tradition and, let’s be honest, we don’t have a lot to boast about in that regard.

The second one is more of a challenge. We have the second smallest stadium in the Premier League, yet we struggle to fill it for all but the biggest games. Look around during a typical match and you’ll see swathes of empty seats in the Family and Sir Elton John stands in particular.  Given that the announced attendance figure is usually close to the ground capacity, this can only mean that season ticket holders are staying away. The suspicion is that they’re actually fans of another team and only attend when that team is playing.

I can vouch for this, having had two empty seats next to me in the Rookery (in prime position behind the goal, not too far back) all season after the previous occupants moved over to the Graham Taylor Stand. They were only occupied twice, and one of those was a cup game. Given that there is apparently a waiting list for season tickets, I can only assume that someone bought them and didn’t use them.

I know the club is trying to address this – and it needs to, because it’s not a good look. More generally, there is a job to be done in marketing the attractions of Premier League football at Vicarage Road across a wider catchment area – much as the club did in the 1980s, with some success. After all, if you ignore Greater London and look north, east and west, the nearest PL clubs are Leicester and Norwich. A club as successful as Watford ought be able to draw in neutrals from across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, and from further afield too. Hopefully, reaching the FA Cup final will have helped spread the message that this is a club that’s going places.