Watford are in advanced talks for another former player from the Graham Taylor era to replace Jimmy Gilligan in one of the top jobs in the club’s Academy.
The Watford Observer reported last month that Gilligan was set to step down as the Head of Technical Development to take up a job offer in the middle east.
The Hornets have now confirmed the departure of the 61-year-old former striker to join Al Jazira Club in Abu Dhabi and not, as this newspaper was initially told, a club in Saudi Arabia.
Watford have acted swiftly to appoint Gilligan’s successor to work alongside Academy Director Richard Johnson at London Colney.
Although the move has yet to be confirmed, we understand it is a former player who, like the man he is set to replace and Johnson, played for the club under Watford’s greatest ever manager.
As such, he will have a strong appreciation of the significance of the youth system in the club's history and its community ethos.
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Goodbye, thanks very much . . . and come on you 'orns
Gilligan returned to work at London Colney in the summer of 2021 and his time at the club has coincided with a greater number of ‘homegrown’ players making it through to the first team.
Ryan Andrews is the most notable of those, with the defender closing in on 100 appearances since making his debut in the 2022/23 season.
More recently, the likes of Zavier Massiah-Edwards, Amin Nabizada and Leo Ramirez-Espain all emerged from the Under-18 squad last season to be regulars in the first-team group and getting minutes at senior level.
Spotted as a youngster by Tom Walley and brought into the first team by Taylor, Gilligan created his own piece of Watford history when he scored the club’s first-ever goal in European competition, netting in a 3-1 defeat at Kaiserslautern in the 1983/84 UEFA Cup.
The striker had already helped Watford win the 1982 FA Youth Cup, scoring in the second leg at Vicarage Road as the Hornets beat Manchester United 7-6 on aggregate.
He left Vicarage Road in 1985, going on to play for the likes of Grimsby, Cardiff, Portsmouth and Swansea.
After retiring, Gilligan helped create Watford’s Football in the Community Scheme and later became assistant academy director.
He worked with David Platt at Nottingham Forest before taking up a scouting role for the England senior and Under-21 teams.
He gained the highest coaching qualification the UEFA Pro License in 2019 from The FA, having completed the course alongside Steven Gerrard and Peter Schmeichel.
Meanwhile, Watford have confirmed assistant coach Zigor Aranalde has also left Vicarage Road along with Damon Lathrope and Paul Robinson.
The Watford Observer previously reported that assistant head coach Lathrope had lost his job following the sacking of Tom Cleverley, while club legend Robinson's contract had been terminated.
The former left-back returned to the club in October 2024 as part of Cleverley’s coaching staff, before being moved into a scouting role at the end of January.
Their departures have now been officially confirmed, along with Aranalde who returned to Vicarage Road as assistant coach in January, having previously held a similar role between January 2018 and September 2019.
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