He led the club for 41 league and cup games but last night Valerien Ismael’s time as Watford head coach came to an end with the news the club had sacked him and put Tom Cleverley in charge on an interim basis.

The 2-1 home defeat to Coventry was the final act in his 10-month tenure but he had been heading towards a cliff-edge for some time as Watford endured a run of just one win in 12 league and cup games – and that was away at basement boys Rotherham who are adrift at the foot of the Championship table.

Perhaps what damaged Ismael more than anything else was the form – or lack of it – at Vicarage Road.

Nine league games without a win at home since November 28 during which time they lost six can only really take you in one direction.

When you’re losing, the fans are booing and performances are so bad you’re making a double substitution after 27 minutes – in front of your owner – then the threshold of acceptable was probably crossed some time ago.

Seeing Gino Pozzo at the recent Millwall game, along with an agent friend of his, was not a good sign for the long-term security of Ismael’s job.

Previous Watford head coaches have been shown the door for far, far less – most likely Ismael would have been heading for the exit earlier in seasons gone by, but the club had talked of ‘changing’ when they extended Ismael’s contract only a couple of months into the current campaign.

The former West Brom, Barnsley and Besiktas manager was appointed as the Hornets head coach in May and, although his first 11 games in charge only brought two wins, the club announced he had signed an extended contract in October.

After the 2-0 defeat at Sunderland that month, Watford found themselves just one point and one place above the relegation zone.

That night Ismael kept his players and staff locked in the dressing room for more than an hour as they openly discussed what had gone wrong, and what was needed to put it right.

Whatever was said, it appeared to be the catalyst for a complete change in fortunes as Watford went on a run of just two defeats in 13 league games, propelling themselves up the table to within touching distance of the play-off places.

However, anyone watching the team regularly would have said that a top-six finish was far more of a pipedream than a realistic proposition.

And just as that debate was being had, Watford slumped to a grim defeat the aftermath of which, in hindsight, seemed to be the total antithesis of that miserable night at the Stadium of Light.

Still full to the brim with turkey and Christmas cheer, Watford fans were served up a cold plate of gruel on Boxing Day as Bristol City thumped them 4-1 at Vicarage Road.

A somewhat undeserved last-gasp FA Cup win over non-league Chesterfield was followed by a 2-1 away win at QPR in front of the Sky cameras, but neither were convincing performances.

The January transfer window saw Watford end the month with less players than they started.

Emmanuel Dennis, on loan from Nottingham Forest, was the only arrival and the Nigerian striker clearly wasn’t fit meaning he didn’t play more than an hour until the start of March.

Although he was given the chance to bring in players – including from the Premier League - in areas like defence and midfield, Ismael wouldn’t be moved from his position that if he couldn’t get his first choice, he’d rather not sign just anyone.

In the meantime, a particularly gruelling fixture schedule painfully exposed the thin squad and coincided with a further slump in form.

Home defeats to Cardiff and Leicester sandwiched a tame FA Cup replay exit at Southampton, before the Hornets went to Norwich, rallied back from 2-0 down to 2-2 and then promptly imploded to lose 4-2.

A 1-0 win at virtually relegated Rotherham was relief in only is as much as it was a victory, because the game and performance were both poor.

The home defeat to Huddersfield at the end of February – a performance so bad that Ismael made a double substitution in the 27th minute – was a new nadir, but there was no respite as they followed up by losing to a second-minute goal at relegation-threatened Millwall a week later.

On Wednesday night another pitiful first half left Watford to scramble a point against Swansea, though when they led yesterday against Coventry after a brighter opening half hour there was hope.

However, the Sky Blues needed only three on-target goal attempts – one of them a penalty – to turn the game around, and five hours after the final whistle came the announcement that Ismael’s time had come to an end.

Despite not surviving a full season, he has been in charge for more games than anyone since Javi Gracia left Watford in September 2019.

Bearing in mind that is little more than four years ago, it sounds a pretty mediocre achievement – until you consider that since Gracia, Ismael is the 10th permanent head coach the club have had, plus a couple of caretaker spells for Hayden Mullins in the midst of all that.

Even though a growing body of fans wanted the club to act, results suggested it was likely and Watford are never slow when it comes to ‘relieving the duties’ of a head coach, a change always takes time to sink in and evaluate.

It is, also, another chapter in a story that has become ever more miserable over the last couple of years, and has generally been heading in the wrong direction since the FA Cup Final defeat in 2019.

Even the way the news broke had an element of the unreal about it.

Out of nowhere, while watching the ITV Championship highlights earlier, the voiceover discussing the league table suddenly described Watford as ‘having parted company with head coach Valerien Ismael’.

Social media was set alight, and shortly afterwards the club confirmed what appeared to have been the most understated and blasé scoop ever.

As it turns out, ITV had erroneously broadcast some dummy audio instead of the actual content, and executives were frantically contacting Watford club officials to crave forgiveness for their very public mistake.

Instead, they were told they had, totally by chance, ‘announced’ what the club itself had just posted on its official channels.

There is always the temptation to think it’s only your own club that does and says daft/controversial/inconceivable things, and so often drama at many of the other 92 clubs is overlooked because we all focus on Watford.

However, when fans use the phrase ‘just one normal week at Watford please’, or similar, it is easy to empathise.

An ex-England manager and a Premier League winner came and went in the same season.

The man charged with taking the Hornets up at the start of last season ended the campaign by getting the club’s arch-rivals to the top flight for the first time instead.

Seven different head coaches in less than three seasons.

In comparison to the last two campaigns alone, this has been quite a low-key season at Vicarage Road in terms of drama.

Ismael was given more rope than many of his predecessors because the club was, whether you choose to believe it or not, trying to move away from the stereotypes and Gary Lineker gags.

There is a big difference between many of the managerial changes in the last decade or so, and the one we are discussing now.

That tonight’s news has surprised few, delighted some and brought relief to many others suggests the Hornets hierarchy have probably got this one right.

Hopefully the financial hit of ending that new contract only signed five months ago will have at least been considered in any budgets – after all, the bottom line in the recent accounts was that player sales have been doing the heavy lifting and will need to continue to do so given the amount the club is losing each week.

As someone rightly pointed out to me earlier though, the cost of the decision to sack Ismael is significantly less than the potential cost of relegation to League One.

Even if you are of the belief that relegation is not a realistic concern, none of us really want to test that theory any more than we have to.

And so the club turns to Tom Cleverley, who was still a first-team player last season and has spent this campaign cutting his coaching teeth with the club’s Under-18s – and successfully so given results, players progressing to the Under-21s and the Under-17s reaching a cup final.

During the week we will doubtless discover who he chooses to work alongside him.

Tom is a very likeable, extremely professional and impressively smart bloke. He’s played for the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, represented his country and spent the vast majority of his career in the top-flight.

He is also only 34 years old, and while he doesn’t need my advice, I hope he chooses to have a more experienced head with him in the dug-out. You can’t put a price on experience.

And at a time when many fans feel as disenfranchised as ever, an assistant or coach with strong Watford links might also be useful to him.

Nonetheless, having got to know Tom as I have, he’ll have been studiously considering all such matters in the hours since the club gave him the keys to the manager’s office.

My own thought was the club might allow Ismael to carry on until the international break, and then decide on what to do given they had some time, the result at Birmingham would be known and the size of the task over the remainder of the season would be clear.

Now, though, I can see the sense in not waiting.

There were no real green shoots of recovery to be seen, Birmingham away is not an easy game at any time but given the remainder of the fixtures this season it stands out as the most winnable, and a new voice in the dressing room now might just make a telling difference.

I’m sad to see Val go – to his credit, he answered every question I ever asked. He never said no, he never lost his temper, he never veered into the ‘sarcastic answer’ zone.

Even if you didn’t like/believe/agree with the answers he gave, to have a manager so ready to talk is something not to be taken for granted.

However, there isn't a column in the league table that gives points for the manager's character.

So gone he has, and while it was not a successful spell, suggestions he is the worst manager of the Pozzo era – let alone ever – are really quite absurd and derisory. I’ll say Flores round two or the Hodgsonasaurus, and leave it at that.

By the time Cleverly takes the reins of his first game at Vicarage Road against Leeds on Good Friday, it will be four months since Watford won a home game.

Whatever has gone before, whatever your views are of the club, the owner or anything else Watford related, Clevs and the players need all of us to rally round.

There will be a need for further change in the summer most likely, and of course in the bigger picture is the question of just how much will actually alter until there is a change of ownership.

However, for a few weeks we need to park those discussions.

There are just nine games left of the season, and if ever the fans could play a part in helping a new manager lift a team out of the mire, then it’s now.