Last season Mattie Pollock played in 47 of Watford’s 50 league and cup games, spending 3,920 minutes on the pitch.
He joined the club from Grimsby in summer 2021, and before the commencement of the 24/25 campaign had made only 24 appearances.
What’s more, the big defender finished third in the club’s Player of the Season Awards.
"I’m not embarrassed to say I was pretty happy with my own season,” he reflected during this exclusive Watford Observer interview (click here for part one).
“I thought I started well and I thought I had a solid season overall.
“But towards the end of January I felt like personally I could have done better.
“I was still solid, but I’d gone from quite a high standard of performance to just being solid, and no more than that.
“For me, pride comes from being very consistent and I felt I started really well but then I dipped to average. Sometimes I was a bit above average, and sometimes a bit below.
“That’s not where I want to be, average.”
Pollock wears his heart on his sleeve, and his no-nonsense, committed approach to playing the game has made him a popular figure at Vicarage Road.
“This season coming will be my fifth at Watford and I know what the club and the fans are all about,” he said.
“I have a personal connection with Watford – my son was born here, so it means a lot to me.
“So I felt like, after the end of January, I was letting myself and Watford down at times.
“There were a couple of games where I was out of the team, and for me personally that is not what I want at all.
“I want to be playing well enough to be in the team for every game.
“It’s important to me to be giving back to the fans and the club, and in that sense I had a little bit of a drop off.
“I suppose I am still young and learning, and it was my first proper season in the Championship, but I think I could have done more in some games.
“Towards the back end of the season my level of performance wasn’t where it was at the start.
“I don’t know what caused it but it’s something I have to correct, and I’m going into next season with a lot of games under my belt which I think will help me do that.”
Having been as high as second in the Championship table in the early weeks of the season, and still inside the top six after 22 games, Watford finally finished 14th.
As the poem goes, when they were good, they could be very, very good but when they were bad, they were horrid.
Which of the many faces of the Hornets during the 24/25 season was the real one?
“It is a really tough question,” Pollock pondered.
“My Dad actually asked me it the other day – where do you think the team are? And I had to say I didn’t actually know.
“We’ve got the players. You look at some of the young lads especially and you have got so much quality.
“I think a couple of injuries at important times killed us. Losing KB and Rocco and players like that for crucial games didn’t help.
“On our day we could go toe-to-toe with anyone: the problem was we weren’t hitting the highs often enough.
“We seemed to drop points against teams we really had to win against.
“That is where more experience can help. Anyone can get up for a game away at Leeds or Burnley, but you have to do it in the tricky games.
“I remember Plymouth at home: we drew that 0-0 and that was the sort of game we had to be winning.
“Sometimes, because of the inexperience in the team, we rushed at things. With more experience we’d probably have been calmer, waited and gone on to win games.
“We slipped towards the end, no doubt about it, but I think we were easily capable of finishing in the top 10.”
The evidence of the first four or so months support Pollock’s view – but pretty much everything after the turn of the year undermines it.
“Yeah I know it’s easy for me to sit here and say that now, because we certainly did dip,” he said.
“But we have the players and we definitely played the right way, and we were always set up right.
“We had the players, the quality and the potential, we just needed a bit more experience.”
A lack of experience was one of the reasons cited by owner Gino Pozzo when explaining his decision to sack Tom Cleverley shortly after the end of the season.
Pollock admits the exit of the former head coach led to much emotion among the players,
“First and foremost, I’m looking forward to working with the new manager, and people know I will always give 100% for Watford,” he said.
“But Clevs was incredible, as a friend and as a manager.
“The way he managed people was tremendous, and when I heard the news it was sad and tough.
“I know a lot of lads were upset, and a lot of them posted about Clevs on social media, and you could see the feeling towards him – I don’t think that’s happened with a Watford coach since I’ve been at the club.
“There’s been no connection in my time at the club like there was with him.
“It’s football, and it’s a cruel hard world to work in. We’re all gutted Clevs has gone, and speaking for myself and probably all the lads, I wish him really well.
“We are sure he’ll have a great career, and I think everyone in the building will thank Clevs for what he’s done for us, along with Damo and the other staff.
“They were incredible and although we let them down towards the end, it was a good season as a whole.
“We beat the previous season’s points tally with £40m less worth of players. It takes a lot to do that.
“So we’re gutted, but I think I speak for all the lads again when I say we’re all excited to work for the new manager and we’re looking forward to it.”
• The final part of this exclusive interview will be online tomorrow morning.
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