Why did it go so wrong?

3:14pm Monday 19th May 2008

Comments (27)   Have your say »

The curtain finally came down on Watford's chaotic season last Wednesday, with Hull ensuring there will be no encore at Wembley for Aidy Boothroyd and his cast list.

Hornets fans will be checking their A-Z's, as much-anticipated trips to Old Trafford, The Emirates, Anfield and Stamford Bridge could be replaced by a trip to the Keepmoat Stadium next season.

So quite how did Watford manage to blow a nine-point lead, spend over three months on top of the table yet end up scraping into the play-offs by a goal and left facing a potentially unappetising trip to Doncaster. Where did it go wrong? Well, where do you start?

Opinion will no doubt be divided but one thing for sure is that the reasons are multi-faceted and certainly a lot more deep-seated than defeat to Hull over two legs.

The inquest has probably already begun in the corridors of power at Vicarage Road yet how thorough the post-mortem is will decide whether Watford mount another challenge, as West Bromwich Albion did after missing out in the play-off final last season, or languish in the wrong half of the table like Coventry, Leicester and Southampton, who all descended into free-fall once the parachute payments ran out.

Boothroyd will no doubt point to the events of a tumultuous season that has encompassed the sale of the captain, the leading scorer, the fight to keep Al Bangura in the country, plenty of disenchantment among the home supporters and talk of a takeover as mitigating factors. The manager, though, must shoulder most of the blame for the aborted promotion challenge.

He must have thought he had become the master of orchestrating promotion from the Championship when Watford blazed a trail at the top of the table with ten wins from their first 13 matches at the start of the season.

Watford seemed to have perfected the art of winning without playing well, supposedly a pre-requisite of a good team, and Boothroyd whetted the appetite of the fans - or perhaps bought himself some time - when he declared the best of his team would not be seen until the turn of the year.

It never materialised - if anything they got worse - but at the time he appeared to have built a foundation for automatic promotion, although it was unrealistic to expect them to continue to set such a relentless pace.

The first real test of the season came at home to West Brom, and Watford failed it miserably. They were out-thought, out-passed and out-played by a Baggies side who not only prevented Watford from pulling 12 points clear of them, but punctured the air of invincibilty that had enveloped the Hornets' hugely impressive start to the season.

The fear factor of playing Watford disappeared in the space of 90 minutes and Tony Mowbray showed the rest of the division the blueprint for plotting victory over Boothroyd's previously untouchable side. The Championship sat up and took notice and the Hornets, in truth, never really recovered from that fateful day in October.

That game also marked the beginning of the end for Gavin Mahon, who was told by Boothroyd in the aftermath that he would be surplus to requirements next season as Premiership football, according to the manager, beckoned for the Hornets. Talk about counting your chickens.

Mahon is not the most aesthetically pleasing player but his leadership skills and ability to do the unseen dirty work often went unnoticed by his detractors. Despite appearing among the less mobile and least graceful members of the squad, the former skipper covered more ground during a game than almost all of his team-mates and was a popular figure in a dressing room lacking in strong-minded players. Following his sale - which meant Watford lost another member of the spine of the side from 2006 - many of Mahon's team-mates agreed with the adage that if it isn't broke then don't fix it.

One player the manager could not find fault with was Adam Johnson.

He, along with Marlon King, was the artist among the artisans, the man who provided the inspiration to complement the perspiration. He had the ability to turn a game on its head, rise above some of the mediocity around him and garnish an average team performance with an assist or a goal.

Watford's performance in the first half of the season was little better than during the second half, it's just they lacked someone of Johnson or King's ability to provide one moment of magic to settle a finely-balanced match.

But with Middlesbrough struggling, Gareth Southgate could no longer allow Johnson to pull up trees for Watford and recalled him early from his loan spell. Watford have never been the same since.

Keith Burkinshaw, the assistant manager, followed soon after to care for his wife who was diagnosed with cancer, leaving Boothroyd without a senior, experienced figure to bounce ideas off and no-one to challenge his methods and thought process. With a reputation for being something of a control freak, Boothroyd may have quite liked it that way.

Burkinshaw and Boothroyd are known to have disgreed regularly over the team's style of play and the former Spurs boss had become increasingly disillusioned and frustrated at the refusal to stray from Plan A. Even the players have pleaded with the manager to play a more sophisticated style but he is understood to have told them they are not ready.

King, in particular, became disillusioned with things and dropped a bombshell on Boxing Day when he informed Boothroyd of his wish to leave.

The manager thought he had appeased the striker with an improved £22,000 a week contract in the summer - which would double if Watford won promotion - but King, conscious of the deteriorating condition of his knee, could no longer resist his itch to play in the Premiership. He felt it was time to go. Boothroyd relunctantly agreed and King was dropped to the bench for the home game against Queens Park Rangers.

Allowing King to leave was a big mistake in a season littered with them. The £3m, rising to £4m, they received from Wigan looks foolhardy when weighed against the £60m the club would have received from promotion to the Premiership.

Yes, King was increasingly restless but the star striker wanted out the previous summer yet still managed to score 11 goals - not a bad return for a player who was unhappy. King is a complex, prickly and sometimes disruptive character but it would be difficult to imagine him jeopardising a future move and seeing his stock fall by sulking around for the second half of the season if Boothroyd had not granted his wish.

The manager blocked Henderson joining Fulham in the summer, telling the hulking striker he would light his fire with his transfer request and he should have done the same with King.

But Boothroyd needed to strengthen the squad and, despite the sales of Hameur Bouazza, Ashley Young and the windfall from the Premiership, required the money from the sale of King to fund the permanent deals for Eustace, Leigh Bromby and Mat Sadler and the loan signings of Calum Davenport and Collins John. He also felt he had a readymade replacement for King in Nathan Ellington.

Boothroyd is a born optimist - which is one of the reasons why he performed wonders in his first full season in charge - and has never been short on self-confidence, but he was deluding himself if he thought King was dispensable.

What sort of message did it send out to players, fans and their promotion rivals that Watford were willing to sell their top scorer? Stoke or West Brom would not have entertained the prospect of selling Ricardo Fuller or Kevin Phillips and they would not have asked for a move as they could sense Premiership football was on the horizon.

King, on the other, had sensed things were starting to unravel at Vicarage Road and clearly did not believe the Hornets - who were then still handily placed for promotion - could fulfil his ambition of playing Premiership football. He could wait no longer. King's departure represented a damning indictment of Watford's propects for the second half of the season.

Ellington is a more rounded, naturally gifted footballer than King but he lacks King's arrogance and edge that sets him apart from other strikers. Ellington clearly had that passion and desire in his loins when he teamed up with Jason Roberts to such devastating effect at Wigan but whether it still exists remains to be seen. Boothroyd has yet to coax it out of his record signing.

The Hornets boss will argue that Ellington spurred Henderson and King to greater heights but the pair scored goals for fun during the 2005/06 season with only the likes of Theo Robinson, Francino Francis and Trevor Benjamin as back-up. Ellington, like Tamas Priskin, may yet flourish in a Watford shirt but not if he continues to have the ball launched at his throat.

In Boothroyd's defence, he is still learning on the hoof and has probably picked up more tricks of the trade this season than he had in his previous two put together. He has certainly aged and there are a few more grey hairs than there were at the start of the campaign, while his emotions have fluctuated between chipper and prickly this season.

But despite unprecendented financial backing from the board, both on and off the field, there do not appear to be too many obvious signs of progression.

So, despite the vast amounts of money generated by players sales, the sale of the corners of the ground and the TV money from the Premiership, Boothroyd somehow has an inferior team with no depth to the one of two seasons ago and possesses fewer players Premiership teams will be queing up to buy this summer. He has, however, belatedly shown signs of evolving the ugly style of play, which has bordered on the grotesque at times, and certainly has the entourage of coaches and analysts to help him overhaul the playing style. The way the team performed without the shackles on during the two legs with Hull gave supporters a glimpse of what this team could be capable of and may just buy Boothroyd some time with his detractors.

Boothroyd would point to promotion in his first full season, an FA Cup semi-final in his second and a play-off place in his third and argue fans, with the exception of the halcyon days of Graham Taylor, have never had it so good. He certainly has given supporters some wonderful memories but they are being slowly erased by the succession of tedious afternoons at Vicarage Road this season.

Boothroyd has a sizeable rebuilding job on his hands this summer if he is to to create the legacy he craves and restore his managerial reputation.

Following the publication of this article in last week's printed issue of the Watford Observer we asked for your views on what you thought went wrong. To read those opinions, click here