Bilic goes, Wilder arrives - and supporting Watford gets harder

It was even more stinging that a victory for West Brom – the team Bilic took to the Premier League during his last managerial spell in England – should be what put them there.

When Bilic arrived on September 26, 2022, the Hornets were 10th in the table. Just 162 days and 26 matches later, that’s where they are again.

But let’s put aside the departure of Bilic and arrival of Chris Wilder for a moment.

Whether you were Bilic out or not. Whether you felt he could change the direction of travel given a bit longer, or you thought his time was up. Whether yesterday’s news filled you with delight or despair.

Being a Watford supporter, right now, is hard work.

• Wilder is the new head coach
• Watford sack Bilic

Once again we’re the target of jokes, all the stats come out about how many managers the club has had and fans of every other club jump on social media to roll out the same old cheesy lines.

It comes with fandom, we’d do it if it was some other club but it still isn’t pleasant when everyone is laughing at you.

Trouble is, they’re right.

I remember writing something rather similar to this about six months ago, so forgive me if this is my groundhog day article. But there's not much that's happened in the last six months to change my mindset.

The current Watford Football Club that stands before us is a shell of the club that it was even just five years ago, never mind many decades before that in the days of Graham Taylor.

And it’s not just on the pitch. Off it, too, Watford bears no resemblance to what it once was.

Does anyone have any idea of what sort of plan the club are working to? What might happen next? How are Watford hoping to move forward?

Of course, we all know a man that should – but I can only say should because Gino Pozzo chooses not to talk to anyone about anything (although I did see him pop up on a Sky documentary a few weeks ago about football agents, glad handing and chatting at a function at the Italian Embassy. I just wanted to hear his voice really).

So with a lack of any idea as to the thinking of the club, this latest decision takes on the look of someone walking through a long dark cave and grabbing at something in the hope it’s a torch.

And the club has done a lot of that in the last few years – reaching out and grabbing in the dark.

In the last three and a half years, Watford have had 10 different people in charge of the team (counting Hayden Mullins just once).

They’ve been old and young, inexperienced and very experienced, British and from overseas. One thing remains the same regardless of who and what they’ve been: they have largely struggled to get a tune out of a group of players given to them by the club. Let’s be fair to these coaches – none of them have signed or sold a player and, while they knew what they were getting into when they joined the club, results have shown it’s perhaps a model that isn’t being executed with any great degree of success of late.

Xisco Munoz is the only one of those 10 coaches to have won more than 50% of his games, and while he did very well to get the club back to the Premier League, his charm, charisma and cheerleading wasn’t enough once he got there.

Roy Hodgson and Slaven Bilic, before they arrived at Watford (Image: Action Images)

Since then there was the questionable appointment of Claudio Ranieri, the unmitigated disaster that was the Roy Hodgson spell, the much-heralded decision to hire a young coach (Rob Edwards) that was judged a failure after 10 league games, the Bilic rollercoaster ride that ended up back where it started, and now Wilder is here for what could be as little as 11 games.

All that – in less than 18 months.

If this was any other club, we’d all be joining in with the mockery, the memes, the criticism. But it’s not any other club. I don’t care about other clubs, and nor do most Watford fans either. We care about Watford, and right now it’s not at all enjoyable.

One can only assume that Pozzo is blissfully unaware of just how low the reputation of Watford Football Club is currently. Or that he doesn’t care.

He might have a plan to get the train back on the tracks but, as said earlier, nobody knows because he doesn’t deign to speak to anyone.

But what he needs to understand is that being a supporter of Watford shouldn’t be like this. We shouldn’t be seeing fans saying they’ve stopped going to games, they’re not renewing their season ticket, they’ve fallen out of love with the club.

And that’s not because of a lack of success. Watford fans are not used to success. All Watford fans want is a club they can identify with, one which appears to have a heart and a conscience, a club which reflects the love and support those fans give it.

Instead we have an entity that is distant, seemingly cold and stumbling along from one comedy of errors to another without feeling the need to talk about it.

When fans have a club they feel has lost its soul, then things like banning Thermos flasks and hot food, suddenly asking students to prove they are actually students and charging £15 for a mandatory coach to the game at Luton appear inflammatory and ill-judged decisions.

The performance and approach of the football side of all clubs has a heavy bearing on everything else they do. A winning team can paper over the cracks off the field, but no amount of excellent work in the community can compensate for poor results and performances on the field.

Currently, on the pitch, fans see a group of players who – individually – are as talented as anything in the Championship. Arguably the most talented.

However, as a collective they are way short of what is required. There’s a reason Watford are 10th, and at this stage of the season the table doesn’t lie. Perhaps the club underestimated the challenge of getting promoted, perhaps the players are under-performing, perhaps the coaching hasn’t been good enough. It’s probably a bit of all those, and more besides.

There’s so many things that, from the outside, look wrong now and have looked wrong for a while, probably since the FA Cup Final defeat in May 2019.

But one thing is very clear: repeatedly changing the coach has solved none of the wrongs. What it has done is send a message to the players that if things go belly up, the head coach will be out the door and another one will be wheeled in.

I’m not suggesting any of the Watford players deliberately don’t try or have played in a manner they know will get a manager the sack. But creating a culture where failure to get results and hit targets always ends in the same outcome means you end up on a hamster wheel.

Lets go back to that FA Cup Final. On the day Watford beat Wolves at Wembley to reach the final, they sat 10th in the Premier League, one point off seventh place and potentially qualifying for European football – and they had a game in hand.

The Hornets went on to lose four of their last seven league games and ended the season in 11th. Still, a good season, hard to blame the squad for having one eye on Wembley, and certainly something that feels like a lifetime ago.

The final itself went rapidly downhill for most from the moment Abide With Me ended – though there’s still that nagging thought about what could have been had Roberto Pereyra lifted the ball over Ederson…

Defeat at Wembley - the moment things began to go wrong? (Image: Action Images)

However, Javi Gracia had shown his mettle, Watford had proved they were able to do more than just survive in the Premier League and there were good portents for what lay ahead.

It was then that things may have started to unravel. That summer the club should, with hindsight, probably have freshened the squad up. Instead everyone remained and the only addition of note was Danny Welbeck.

The season started with three successive defeats and Gracia was shown the door after the 1-1 draw at Newcastle.

In came Quique Sanchez Flores for a second spell that was so bad only a wizard like Hodgson could lower the bar – and, well, you know the rest after that.

The ten men to take charge of the team since Gracia departed in September 2019 have averaged just over 16 games each. Munoz was in charge for 36 matches, and Bilic is second highest.

It all points to the fact that no amount of changes of coach are doing anything to fix the problem which first started when the club was safely in Premier League mid-table and had reached the FA Cup Final.

It should have been a brilliant foundation for the club. Instead, it’s turning out to be the worse thing that could have happened as complacency, carelessness and cultural deformity have left Watford now staring down the barrel of not even making the Championship play-offs.

In his first season at Sheffield United, Wilder won seven of his first 11 league games. A repeat performance at Vicarage Road would give Watford 72 points, a total good enough for a play-off berth in only three of the last 10 Championship seasons.

He’s got a job on his hands, very little time in which to effect change and a squad of players that doesn’t instantly look a good fit in terms of the shape he likes to play.

On the plus side, the 11 remaining fixtures should all be winnable (if this squad really is as good as it looks on paper at least) and he can draw on a pool of talent that just about every other manager in the division has talked enviously of.

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All Watford fans should get behind Wilder, regardless of opinions and thoughts about what has happened this season and before. He’s not tarred by any of it, and right now he’s the best hope Watford have of salvaging something from this season.

As for Bilic, the draw with Preston at the weekend did feel decisive, especially given he had said himself it was a ‘must-win’ match. Put the result aside, the performance overall was so poor, lacking in creativity, fire and passion that I didn’t feel I was talking out of turn when I asked him afterwards if he now thought the owner might decide to make a change.

Pozzo really only had two options – make the change he has this week or leave Bilic in charge for the remaining games. Anything between the two extremes seemed pointless.

I liked Slaven. I liked Rob Edwards too. When you get to know someone and they are a decent human being, seeing them depart is that bit more difficult. I know many at the club feel the same. While I didn’t get to know Hodgson, I don’t remember too many I spoke to lamenting his departure when I asked about him in the summer.

However, as Bilic said himself, football is about results and performances and, sadly, there wasn’t enough of either.

His opening win at Stoke, the two victories over Norwich and the delightful romp against Luton (which earns him a place in Hornet history) were highlights. But the truly grim defeats at Blackpool, Millwall and Swansea are also memorable, for the wrong reasons.

Watford 4 Luton 0 - the best of Bilic (Image: PA)

He had to contend with a ridiculous injury list, and the club’s failure to bring in the midfielder and winger he so publicly asked for during January did not help his cause.

However, as injured stars became available again and with a defence revitalised by two good signings, performances and results didn’t improve a great deal, and his intransigence towards tactics certainly counted against him.

There was, overall, a feeling of a lack of cohesion in many games which led some to wonder what was worked on and discussed at the training ground each week.

Three wins and 12 goals in 10 games in 2023 is not form that shouts promotion, and while Pozzo lives his entire life with his finger on the button, it’s not hard to see why on this occasion he’s opted to take another roll of the dice.

In isolation, it makes sense. As part of the wider picture, it just feels like more mess has been swept into the corner, adding to an already large pile of mess without anyone actually taking the time or having the inclination to step back and work out what’s causing the mess in the first place.

As I said earlier, Watford fans don’t expect success. We’re not Manchester United or Liverpool. And we know we’ve probably punched above our weight in the last decade with six seasons of Premier League football and the aforementioned FA Cup adventure.

Plus we have a very nice stadium, excellent training ground facilities and still have a Trust which continues its excellent work in the community.

Notwithstanding all that, though, Watford fans do expect their club to be a bit different. A bit special. To not be like all the others. That’s not just whimsical on my part, it’s how the club has been viewed by the outside world for many, many years and something fans and club staff have always been proud of.

But now that is dissipating fast, leaving us with something we only recognise as Watford because it’s still wearing yellow, black and red.

Not only is our reputation among our fans, the media and the wider football supporting world taking a proper battering, you have to think about the effect Watford’s behaviour is having on players and coaches we might want to bring in.

Whatever we all might think about their relative results and performances, Watford were still able to bring in names like Ranieri, Hodgson, Bilic and now Wilder. We had the ambition and ideas to attract a successful young coach like Edwards, who has gone on to do very well not very far away from Vicarage Road.

But how much longer can this continual and relentless churn of coaches go on before Watford starts to be viewed as a poisoned chalice? Too much of a risk to a coach’s reputation to come to the Hornets?

And the same for players. When, inevitably, the likes of Joao Pedro, Ismaila Sarr and Imran Louza depart, the club will make good money. Probably not as much as they thought they might, but a decent amount nonetheless.

That money, though, is increasingly likely to be needed to fill gaps in the budget, especially if the planned-for promotion doesn’t materialise.

Then what? Regardless of how good the likes of Yaser Asprilla, Matheus Martins and Ismael Kone turn out to be, they will be seen as ‘Championship players’. That affects their value. Plus not playing at the top level could also affect their happiness to be here.

And not being in the Premier League definitely makes it harder to keep bringing these young gems in.

The arrival of Ben Manga gave a lot of hope that Pozzo may have seen the light and was prepared to relinquish some grip in order to let someone else have a go.

I’m still to be convinced that Pozzo will ever take a step back or stop interfering. I’ve not had a chance to have a proper conversation with Manga or Helena Costa, save for some very quick chats at the training ground and at games.

However, the fact Manga’s name was put to the statement about Bilic’s departure, rather than Pozzo’s, is intriguing.

While Pozzo may not care one jot about how Watford is perceived by the footballing world, about how utterly dejected, despondent and demoralised many fans feel, about the apparent lack of any strategy to change things or even about his own PR and reputation, he surely must see that he is at very serious risk of taking the club and all attached to it on a magical mystery footballing tour that had many highlights, many low points but that ultimately ends up back where it was when he got in the driver’s seat.

There is one thing that any football club owner must remember above all else. The club and its fans were here before you came, and they’ll be here long after you’re gone. Your money buys you the right to carry the baton and hold it in any way you choose.

What you must not do is allow the baton to be irrevocably damaged or dropped.