Watford head coach Gianfranco Zola reflects on an incredible season

It has been an incredible season for not only for those in yellow either; throughout the divisions the 2012/13 campaign seems to have been remarkable. Or is it that I just have a short memory?

For Watford, the fans have enjoyed some emphatic away victories which were eclipsed by the play-off semi-final second leg drama which secured their place at Wembley. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, the Hornets missed out on promotion to the Premier League by the narrowest of margins, not once but twice.

It has been a campaign which no Watford supporter will forget, not in a hurry at least.

But what about Gianfranco Zola? A man who spent most of his career at the very top; playing for his country, winning European titles and is regarded as one of the best players of his generation Zola was denied a starting place in Chelsea’s Cup Winners Cup side due to injury only to come on and score the winner, so he knows about emotional roller coasters.

But on this season, Zola stated: “There is no comparison emotionally. There is no competition.

“I think it is due to the fact that as a manager everything is amplified. I cannot recall an experience like this.”

Even as a manager, or head coach as he is technically now, Zola went through one of the most turbulent periods in West Ham United’s recent history, with the Icelandic economic crisis and subsequent takeover of David Gold and David Sullivan – plus the fallout following the Carlos Tevez affair.

So when Zola says he has never experienced anything like it, it makes me more confident that my memory is not the issue and it has indeed been an extraordinary campaign.

Zola, like the owners, senior management and many of his players, were new to the Championship last summer and the Italian says the difficulty of all 46 matches has been his biggest surprise this season.

He said: “In the Championship the team at the top of the league with the strongest team will play the club at the bottom of the league and it doesn’t make any difference. The only difference is the side at the top is going to pose you a threat in one way but the team at the bottom will pose you a threat in another way. But both of them are very dangerous.”

The Premier League, Serie A, La Liga all have 38 games in a season – it is 34 in the Bundesliga – so the Saturday-Tuesday nature of the 46-game season of the Championship can take its toll on foreign imports and Zola admits “it becomes quite exhausting. It is a tough league”.

The new regime were quickly made aware of the harsh realities of Championship football as the Hornets won just two of their first seven league games.

The turning point in my opinion – and Zola agreed – was the Golden Boys’ 3-2 away win over Huddersfield Town on September 29, when the visitors changed to a 3-5-2 formation and Troy Deeney, Fitz Hall and Tommie Hoban all made their first starts this season. It was also a day when Fernando Forestieri produced one of the best individual performances I have seen.

“I think the Huddersfield game gave the players a new impetus,” Zola said. “That is when we changed gear and it was a tough moment so that was a turning point.

“But the moment where I started to believe we had a very good chance to achieve something important [automatic promotion] was against Brighton in December. I have always said that. In that game, I realised I had a very good team.”

The Huddersfield victory was the catalyst for three wins in four and after injury-time defeats to Cardiff City, when down to nine men, and Blackburn Rovers, the Hornets lost just once of their next 11 matches, winning seven of those.

Watford’s players showed the wider public just how good they are in the 3-1 away win at fellow promotion-rivals Brighton & Hove Albion live on Sky Sports on December 29.

Impressive away victories at Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest were to follow in the coming weeks and Zola said: “One of the highlights of my season was having a team that played in such a good way. Other highlights were Middlesbrough away, Brighton away and also Nottingham Forest away was a good moment, where we played some good stuff and scored a lot of goals which was very good.”

Watford’s mid-season form was remarkable as they lost just three times in 23 matches between November and mid-March and two of those – Charlton Athletic and Bristol City – were following five and six changes to the starting XI respectively.

Rotation was used heavily for much of the season and Zola explained: “It is not only about keeping them happy, it is about keeping them competitive and motivated. At the right moment, if you make certain changes then it keeps everyone involved and fresh which is important.

“I know we came to the end of the season physically quite good but even if we lost some points, don’t forget that we won games as well by changing the personnel.

“I believe that in a Championship like this you need rotation. Without doubt.

“There are so many teams who play the same players and then they get to a point where they start losing games and they can’t stop, so rotation has to be used.”

Watford have prided themselves on their injury record in recent years but they have struggled with fitness issues and injuries throughout the last ten months, which was also a factor in the rotation.

A number of the new signings had injury problems in previous seasons and the late arrival of many meant the fitness of the squad was an issue for parts of the campaign.

However, Zola dismissed the suggestion that Watford’s injury record was a problem; claiming the average number of injuries in a season is 23 and Watford had 17, with Hall accounting for five of those.

He said: “I think it is impossible to think you can play a Championship like this which is so exhausting and with all the fixtures and expect to get away with no injuries, so I am quite happy with that.”

However, injuries were to rear their ugly head on the most important day of the season as all of Watford’s hard work and endeavour came down to one afternoon at Wembley.

Zola indicated there was a problem with Matej Vydra and Forestieri when he spoke to me in the week building up to the play-off final but he downplayed the issue to the media, claiming they had minor knocks.

In fact, Vydra had not trained all week and Forestieri was only fit enough to make the bench. Vydra subsequently went off with an injury at half-time and was replaced by Alex Geijo, because “it was too risky” to bring on Forestieri, who Zola claimed might have only lasted ten minutes.

Forestieri has arguably been one of the biggest victims of Watford’s success. The Argentine only started seven times after January due to the form of Vydra and the 3-5-2 formation despite excelling on almost every opportunity.

Yet Zola stressed: “Don’t forget that while it is true Fernando hasn’t started much despite doing well, in front of him was Matej Vydra, who was the best player in the Championship and scored 20 goals. That was the thing.

“I think in that moment, to change the shape of the team again to accommodate Fernando on the pitch would have been too risky.

“The point is Fernando had his own games and what I pointed out to him was that sometimes when you play in a Championship at a high level, it doesn’t matter if you play ten games or five as long as those five are high-quality performances and Fernando made the most of it. That was why Fernando played a bit less.”

If Vydra does remain next season, there must surely be a temptation to find a system which accommodates the Czech Republic striker, Forestieri and Troy Deeney.

“I will consider it,” Zola responded. “I wouldn’t like to stick with one system. I would like to know how I will start the season and what I want to do but like last year, I started with 4-3-3 and I felt there was a need to make some tactical changes to give balance to the team. I will consider doing that again.

“We will maybe start with the system we played this season but we will have the possibility to change to other systems and we will work during the summer to make sure we can do that.”

The season remains a successful one which exceeded expectation despite the hugely disappointing result and performance against Crystal Palace on May 27.

Zola admitted the intimidation of playing at Wembley could have been a factor in the poor display but stressed it is difficult to state, as fact, that his team struggled to handle the pressure of the big occasion, with the Italian highlighting the crucial away wins at promotion-rivals Hull City and Leicester City as examples to the contrary.

Zola said: “One of the reflections I had on the final was that it was a pity we couldn’t perform the same we did the whole season. That is more or less the main thing. I think too many players underperformed and that did not allow the team to perform.

“In another system you can get away with that but the way we play, where we try to get as many players involved as possible, if some of them are not at their best then you start suffering and that was the case. That is the regret I have; we didn’t really put everything we had into the performance.

“I will now have a lot of time to think about it and I will find the reasons. But it didn’t happen.

“Having said that, I was thinking that it will not take anything away from the fact the players have been fantastic all season and they have achieved something that nobody was expecting and they achieved it in a very good style. It is very important that is said. It has been a great season and the fact we didn’t play as well as we could in the final doesn’t take away from that.

“We have a very young team who are inexperienced and next season will be much better for us.”