“Discipline is most important," said Vladimir Ivic in his first interview as Watford head coach, letting his players know exactly what to expect from him.

It was why the Serbian had been brought to the club in the first place, with the board at Vicarage Road clearly searching for someone to run a tight ship in their search for automatic promotion.

However, it would end up being his downfall, with four months of inconsistent and uninspiring football on the pitch not helped by personal battles and squabbles off it, suggesting that the line between disciplined and inflexible was never all that clear.

It took less than a month for stories to emerge of unrest within the dressing room, with Ivic's authoritative methods apparently running the players ragged in every training session. While the playing staff stood by the coach initially, that support gradually waned over the coming months as he continued to push his players to the limit despite the unrelenting Championship schedule.

His stringent rules off the field did him few favours either. While phone bans and strict fines systems might have been tolerated had things been going well on the pitch, his tactical naivety and overtly defensive style flew in the face of what he had initially claimed was his footballing philosophy and also what supporters wanted to see from their team.

His flaws were on show for all to see during his final game in charge of the Hornets at Huddersfield Town on Saturday.

A dispute with captain Troy Deeney, that seems to have amounted from little more than a misunderstanding over a meeting, led to the number nine not being involved at all, while a catastrophic team performance was perhaps the final nail in the coffin.

 

Regardless, there is no question that Ivic will be feeling hard done to. A robust home record and the club sitting fifth in the table provide evidence that suggests he was in fact capable of steering Watford back to the top flight. He would not be the only coach to have left Vicarage Road in recent years feeling that they had not been given sufficient time to carry out the task required of them.

However, he was well aware that three coaches were relieved of their duties last season and that those in charge at Watford are hardly the most lenient when it comes to meeting their expectations of success.

That's not to say he should have seen this coming, but there must have been some idea that things were not exactly rosy.

It is understood that a wedge had grown between Ivic and the board in recent weeks over the issue of transfers, with the head coach adamant he needed a new left-back and the club happy to wait to see how well Adam Masina would perform on his return.

In bullish displays at press conferences, the Ivic would say he needed a left-sided player and that Masina would not be fully ready for another ten games, an overly cautious approach that is understood to have frustrated the club and in some instances the players as well.

Similarly frustrating for players, and indeed supporters, was both the constant changing of tactics and often inexplicable squad rotation. A solution to a growing lack of creativity seemed to have arisen in a 4-4-2 formation with Deeney accompanied by Croatian striker Stipe Perica. Yet Ivic was reluctant to pair the two together, much to the annoyance of those who could see that it was arguably the most effective attacking system at his disposal. 

His decision to play Andre Gray as a lone striker at Huddersfield, a man whose own disciplinary issues and barren form would have seen him overlooked by most others, was nothing short of baffling given that time and again Gray has proved to be ineffective without a partner.

What seems to have really forced Ivic out of the club appears to have been a staggering lack of awareness and an inability to read the room. His "my way or the highway" mentality created an unhappy atmosphere among his players, while tactically, his defensive dead-horse-flogging approach, particularly away from home, produced an underwhelming set of results that have the Hornets at risk of lagging behind their nearest promotion rivals.

While some will argue that replacing Ivic now is a harsh decision, the club evidently wanted to make their move before the rot really began to set in and further problems arose. That's not to say that they haven't taken a massive gamble either. New head coach Xisco Munoz's experience, or lack there of, will be used as a stick to beat them with if the Spaniard doesn't hit the ground running. 

It's now up to them to make sure he has everything he needs to make this enormous project a success. If they have got it wrong, you need only look at clubs like Sunderland, Portsmouth, Nottingham Forest and a whole host of others to realise that a sojourn to the lower tiers can become a more permanent move if the right decisions aren't made at the right time.