End of Term Report 2023 – Part 8 08/06/2023

Chris Wilder

There have been any number of weird managerial spells at Watford over the last decade (yes, yes, law of averages and so on well done, carry on…).  Billy McKinlay’s work experience. Slaviša Jokanović earning a flamboyant promotion and then not having his contract renewed.  Xisco’s “all about the vibes” spell.

Few have been as odd as this.   On the back of Slaven Bilić’s departure – and as an aside, it’s a characteristic particular of supporting Watford in recent years that as soon as you hear the words “Watford are believed to be considering the future of…”, you know it’s already a done deal – the arrival of Wilder was a little bit surprising.  An experienced manager with a strong – if not quite flawless – record, inheriting a strong but underperforming squad presents an opportunity of course but still…  for all that it was pitched as “to the end of the season to start with” it was a water-testing exercise for all concerned.

And it soon became clear that Wilder saw himself very much as the uncle from round the corner lumbered with the task of looking after little Gino’s pet f***ing gerbil while he was on holiday, shitting everywhere and generally causing trouble.  This wasn’t a marriage for the long term, and even if Watford had been minded to consider an extended arrangement initially this idea would have been smashed by Wilder’s blunt public assessment of what he was seeing.

It’s tempting to conclude that Wilder’s candour in reflecting what we saw on the pitch and suspected on the training ground is what bought him a free pass for a run that was no better than those that preceded him (indeed he was the least successful of the season’s three managers on a points per game basis).  It was surely a factor.

But so too was the blooding of younger players, for all that he talked about it more than he actually did it.  Ryan Andrews’ fine run at right back in the face of any number of alternatives in the squad is case in point.  So too the final two results of the season which, whilst ragged, imperfect, and concluding a miserable season did not reflect a team who had been permitted to throw in the towel completely.

Next Season:  In common with most Watford managers of late, the brevity of his stay is unlikely to have done his profile any harm at all.  It would be a surprise if he were still out of a job come the beginning of July.

The Rest

This has been a comprehensive review, but such is the number of players employed this season we still have plenty to cover – who I’ve loosely grouped as oddities, get-on-with-its, youngsters and rejects.

Amongst the first, Maduka Okoye is the oddest of an odd bunch.  The prospect of a 6’6″ Nigerian goalkeeper was an exciting one, but he’s never looked like providing competition to Daniel Bachmann.  His two cup outings were uninspiring, and he was often missing from the bench even when Ben Hamer’s Britishness wasn’t needed to make up the necessary numbers.  Reports from Nigeria of a shoulder injury hampering his progress would explain why he never made Chris Wilder’s bench, with Myles Roberts selected above him when Bachmann was suspended at Coventry; since he had a similar injury prior to signing this may suggest an ongoing problem.  Either way, if Okoye is to have a future at Watford his second season will need to be more successful than his first.  It could hardly be otherwise.

Hamer himself is less of an oddity, but his recruitment as an experienced nominally third-choice sent early warnings about the faith or lack of in Okoye.  His rustiness in his one outing was evident and expensive. Definitely in the oddities box is Samuel Kalu, whose fitful appearances suggested he might have been better suited to the Championship than the Premier League;  he was never fit for long enough for us to firm up on that suspicion.

Amongst the get-on-with-its, probably past the stage of strictly qualifying as raw kids, Tom Dele-Bashiru is another whose injury record has never quite allowed us to assess the clear suggestion of a proper player.  He’s 24 in September and after four years at the club has only started five games in yellow.  With two years on his contract his time’s not up yet, but he needs to catch a break.  Similarly Joseph Hungbo is a similar age, has been here a similar length of time, and has never quite established himself despite a clear talent from set pieces, a great attitude and a bit of something but perhaps not quite enough.  Mattie Pollock meanwhile has enjoyed another successful loan spell in helping Aberdeen to third place in Scotland, but has looked poor in his five Watford outings, all of which ended in poor defeats.  What’s chicken and what’s egg isn’t clear – does he look bad because he got games at difficult times or was he a root cause?  Pollock is only 21 so has years on the other two, but recent interviews suggest that he knows he’s ready for senior football somewhere next season.

Of the kids, we’ve seen the most of Ryan Andrews who’s looked thoroughly likeable at right back.  Tobi Adeyemo, too, has had a great breakthrough if fewer games – his goal against Blackpool surely one of the season’s highlights. Jack Grieves looked entertainingly combative on his brief outings and Michael Adu-Poku has something about him… most of all it’s great to suddenly have kids on the edge of the team again, even if our relative successes in developing them are likely to see Adrian Blake and Harry Amass, who would have broken records had he come off the bench at Reading aged 15, go the same way as Jadon Sancho and Tomas Galvez.

Finally Kortney Hause briefly looked like a godsend on the left of a back three – impossibly strong, fabulously composed – before getting injured (again), another damning indictment on our season the lack of get-out clause in the loan given his appalling injury record as acrimonious disagreements about his course of treatment reached the media.  No such quandary about Rey Manaj who simply never looked up to it – a striker who, rather than demonstrating why both Inter and Barcelona took interest in him showed why they got shot instead.

That’s your lot.  Going for a lie down.  More stuff soon…

End of Term Report 2023 – Part 7 05/06/2023

37- Matheus Martins

A few questions here.  The first is moot, I guess, as the last decade should have told us but I’m still curious.  “Whose player is he?”…  Udinese, most of the internet agrees, but no mention of a loan on the official site (although “signed terms with Watford” is a little nonspecific).

More significant really is “what the hell happened?”.  Martins’ half-a-dozen appearances, all on top of each other after his January arrival from wherever-on-paper-but-Brazil-in-practice betrayed a player who was raw as hell, yes, and made quite a lot of iffy decisions but was also fast and aggressive.  He could cross a ball and most of all he had some oomph, one of several qualities sorely lacking elsewhere in the side.  If he wasn’t ready he wasn’t ready… but not to even make the bench?

Maybe there was an injury or injuries that I forgot about, but Martins last featured on Valentine’s Day and was last named in a matchday squad six days later.  At the end of March he was scoring a hat-trick for the U21s, but didn’t reappear in the side despite our lack of options and obvious desire, for instance, to reduce the reliance on the even younger Yáser Asprilla.

Next Season:  Your guess is as good as mine.

39- Edo Kayembe

I was never really into American Football. Chess with violence. I was into staying up with my Dad and watching Channel 4 coverage whilst drinking Murphy’s.  I don’t know why Murphy’s was involved.  I was also into a console game…  I’d struggle to tell you which game, though John Madden may have been involved, or even which console.  But I distinctly remember the animated player icons moving almost entirely unlike any humans I’d ever seen… slowly, diagonally across the pitch but mostly sideways, but absolutely impossible to knock over like very slow juggernauts.

You’ll have spotted where this is going, which is probably a little unfair.  If Hamza Choudhury got some leeway for having to make the best of a midfield partner to whom he was completely ill-suited then it’s only fair to offer his partner in crime similar leeway.

But Kayembe too disappeared from the side, a calf strain keeping him out after mid-November.  On Slaven Bilić’s arrival we briefly saw a suggestion of a bolder, more progressive midfielder but to be honest the previous version wasn’t a terrible player – just not someone to field alongside a midfield destroyer if you’re serious about putting sides under the sort of pressure that might have fuelled a proper promotion bid.

Next Season:  Getting Edo fit would appear to be the first task.

42- James Morris

It’s been a tough couple of seasons.  You don’t need me to tell you that. A tough couple of seasons and a particularly tough last couple of months for a number of reasons.  It’s not a happy time to be a Watford fan, not if you step back and take in the landscape, certainly not if you focus on the things that are wrong (and sometimes you need to).

So thank heavens for James Morris, a green shoot pushing his way quietly but firmly through that barren landscape.  It’s not that any other way of doing things is wrong but…  there’s something earthy and virtuous about picking up a kid that someone else discarded and seeing him grow into a proper player.  Feels right.

And there’s nothing to dislike about Morris.  Positive, makes good decisions, puts a good ball in, defensively sound.  Called upon several times this season to stand in for (and occasionally hold off) Hassane Kamara, it’s already a startling realisation that he didn’t make his League debut until October.

Next Season:  Morris is steadily improving.  At some point he’ll plateau….  “this is as far as I go, lads, sorry”.  He hasn’t got there yet.

44- Wesley Hoedt

Still not quite sure what to make of Wesley Hoedt.  His career path suggests that I’m not alone.  He played two seasons as a more-or-less regular in Lazio’s first team in his early twenties as they secured consecutive kinda peripheral top half placings in Serie A.  Southampton paid £15million for him as, newly monied by the sales of the likes of Virgil van Dijk they started splashing out on big transfers for the first time, but weren’t terribly good at it.

Hoedt’s time at Saints was ultimately peppered by loans as his form never settled, the last of three back at Lazio – who he helped to the Europa League again but who declined to take up their option to sign him permanently.  We picked him up from Anderlecht and…  it’s still hard to tell whether he’s any good or not.  He arrived with Ryan Porteous as a new centre-back pairing and there was some relief at the “sorting” of this overlooked position in our squad until it became clear that we were still conceding goals.  Hoedt has a good passing range for a centre-back, he’s good in the air and he’s a bully.  His turning circle is alarmingly wide and slow however, and his decision making inconsistent.  He’s also at the centre of handbags at set pieces too often not to be the instigator of such things which… can work for you, but you’d rather it was allied with reliable defending which really would leave an opponent frustrated and liable to overreact to provocation.  Being left sided he’s probably Porteous’ natural partner and is almost certain to feature regularly if Valérien Ismaël persists with his hitherto preferred three at the back.  I just… wish there was a bit more determination there to maintain his highest level of performance.

Next Season:  27 starts and two red cards.

End of Term Report 2023 – Part 6 01/06/2023

25- Leandro Bacuna

1979/80 was my “first” season.  I didn’t visit Vicarage Road until the very last day but by this time I was a devotee…  sucking up every page of every match programme and every piece of news that Dad would pass on. (His match report from the home draw with Sunderland in December:  “Dennis Booth got our goal.  Terrible game”).

Alan Garner, Andy Rankin and John Ward all started ten games that season.  Rankin and Garner were part of the old guard, veterans of two promotions but eased out by Christmas.  Ward had been an old charge of Taylor’s from Lincoln, top scorer as he’d got them promoted with a gazillion points.  He’d play for the Imps again before returning to Vicarage Road in a coaching capacity that was more impactful than his on-pitch contribution in the long run.

All three of these names are scorched onto my brain, for all that I never saw Garner or Rankin play, and Ward only the once in a 4-2 win over Cardiff the next season.  Perhaps some impressionable seven year old introduced to the Vic as crowds dwindled this season will reach fifty with Leandro Bacuna’s face still vivid in their memory.  Seems unlikely though, since his contribution… whilst never any less than competent, was never remotely memorable.  Retrieved from the scrapheap in December he was space filler, a holding pattern in midfield until players got fit and in that context he was as decent an option as we could have expected to find accessible and out of contract.

Next Season;  But it would be a surprise to see him rewarded with a longer contract…

27- Christian Kabasele & 31 – Francisco Sierralta

I don’t think that any position epitomises our current situation better than centre back.

For all that we were severely scraping around for options at one stage early in the season we have a reasonably large number of centre backs on our books, these having been gradually accumulated like snow globes across the last decade.  Some of them are tall, some of them are quick, some of them are physical, some of them are gobby, some of them stand in the right place most of the time.

It doesn’t matter as much as you’d think which of them are in the team, it appears.  Over time everything sort of averages out to the same sort of meh.  Over time.  It’s a bit like the pigs in animal farm who by the end of the book are indistinguishable from the humans they’re cavorting with.  William Troost-Ekong and Francisco Sierralta, once we settled on that partnership, was a defining constant of the promotion season of 2021.  They were very different players…  Sierralta a monster who would win every header, dominate every battle and relish the conflict.  Troost-Ekong the wise head alongside him.  “Kick that Francisco. Head that Francisco”.

Two years on… maybe it really is little to do with WHO is in the team and more the chaos that they’re navigating off the pitch?  Are WTE and Sierralta that distinct any more?  Yes, there were always concerns about WTE, yes Sierralta has been injured a lot.  But each now looks more similar to the other than to their original incarnations on arriving, and neither has formed part of a robust defence for a while.

As for Christian Kabasele, he’s no more or less dependable than he ever was, but was for several years a regular part of a passable Premier League defence.  His arrival in the side is generally a good thing simply because any failings will be energetically realised but in the right game – such as when captaining the side up at Sunderland where thought was redundant and reacting was everything – he’s tremendous.  As previously, being a good bloke is very far from everything but it is something.

Next Season:  It would be tremendous to see Francisco properly fit… out since January, he’s never played alongside Ryan Porteous.  That could be the most no-bullshit central defence we’ve had for a while.  Kabs meanwhile has a year left, it would be surprising if he didn’t see it out in much the ongoing fashion… disappearing from the team for a bit, reappearing just when you’d forgotten about him, having a run, doing kind of mostly ok except when he wasn’t then disappearing again.  Hurrah.

34- Britt Assombalonga

Britt Assombalonga left Watford as the Pozzos arrived in 2013 having scored a load of goals on loan at Southend.  He’d scratched together barely two hours of football over four games for the Hornets but earned us a seven figure fee nonetheless.  Peterborough made a vast profit on him within a year when Forest signed him for over £5million before themselves almost trebling their money three years later.

Throughout this period he scored a lot of goals, largely at second tier level.  Physical and direct, he looked every inch a decent Championship forward and if his eighteen months in Turkey was less prolific, his January signing looked like a decent one at minimal risk providing some much needed competition/cover for Keinan Davis and, no less, some Championship experience.

However almost one third of his league appearances – 111 out of 362 – have come off the bench and despite Watford’s form being flat, Davis’ own form being patchy and Britt scrambling a couple of goals (and setting a record in the process, his first Watford goal against Birmingham coming eleven years after his debut) he struggled to make a compelling case for a start with some willing and boisterous but ragged cameos.

When he finally got that start at Coventry it was curtailed after twelve minutes by the three hundred and twenty fifth hamstring injury of our season extending another unwanted statistic – eleven years and fifteen games in, Britt has still to complete a 90 minutes for the Hornets.

Next Season:  Given the scale of the rebuild and the lack of viable options up front in the current squad, a contract extension doesn’t seem completely out of the question… but another departure wouldn’t be a shock either.