Picture this scenario, and indulge me for a moment if you will.

You’ve been a devout coffee drinker for the last 10 years, but you decide to begin drinking tea after so many people around you suggest it’s much better.

So you buy a new kettle, one with all the modern technology. However, you’ve only got the old mug you’ve been using for the last few years which is stained with the coffee from that time. Your friend has bought you some very expensive tea bags but you’ve no idea what they are or even if he took time to decide if you’d like them.

When you get the mug out, you notice there’s already a bit of milk in it. You want to throw the milk out, but at the last minute you have a change of mind and decide to use it anyway, even though it’s probably sour.

You turn your new kettle on but rather than let it boil, you turn it off after only a few seconds, pour the tepid water into the coffee-stained mug with the old milk and the expensive tea bag. It’s at that point you notice there’s a crack on the right side of the mug.

Then you realise you have no sugar or a spoon. Thankfully you can borrow both but that takes time and now you’re in a rush so you can only add the sugar and give it a tiny stir before you take a mouthful.

It’s rancid. What was everyone thinking when they urged you to try a new beverage, rather than the one you know and have enjoyed for a decade?

So you decide the new kettle was to blame, throw it away and revert back to drinking coffee.

Welcome, dear readers, to the Watford FC guide to tea making.

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Yesterday was a tumultuous day to be a Hornet. There’s no fun in listening to BBC Radio Five Live and hearing not just their pundits but also their presenters laughing at the way your club operates. Then there are the online jokes and memes, the text messages from your friends and the comments from fans of other clubs on social media.

And worst of all, you’ve got no defence. Nothing to come back at them with. No counter punch.

In a 24-hour period when ifs, buts and maybes have been thick in the air, just ponder this. Had Watford held on and beaten Sunderland at Vicarage Road, they would now be sitting fifth in the league and comfortably inside the top six. Would yesterday’s decision still have been made? Or in the moment that Sunderland equalised, did the club decide Rob Edwards had gone from the golden child to a very naughty boy?

If the decision to replace Edwards with Slaven Bilic (who, by the way, is innocent in all this and certainly needs our support right now) was intended to deliver unity, it certainly has. I spent several hours yesterday afternoon tracking social media, websites and forums and I’d estimate that 98% of comments from Watford supporters were critical of the move. It might even have been 99%.

To read of people who have supported the club for 30/40/50 years saying this was the last straw and they were totally disenfranchised to the point of now feeling they’ll not go to games is, frankly, heartbreaking.

The start made under Edwards wasn’t spectacularly good, but it wasn’t shockingly bad either. It was, after all, ten league games. The average life of a Watford head coach in the last ten years has been roughly 27 games, so he wasn’t even given 50% of that.

In terms of results, he actually made a better start over his first 10 games than either Zola or Jokanovic, who went on to do rather well.

Yet this isn’t about results. It’s not about performances, league tables, play-off places, tactics, formations or anything else related to the pitch.

The problem here is culture and credibility.

It is impossible to so publicly admit – as happened in the summer - the need for change, talk so strongly about wanting to create a better culture and admit the way of working of the past had run its course if you then perform a huge hand-brake turn after 10 league games and expect people to just roll with it.

That phrase about supporting Edwards “come hell or high water” must surely have been echoing around the offices, and inside a few heads, at London Colney yesterday.

The thing is, was there alignment behind the scenes on how “hell or high water” was actually defined? Did the board decide before a ball was kicked what success and failure looked like? Did Edwards know what he needed to achieve? Was he given targets to hit? If he was, what were the timeframes?

As with anything in life, if you set off without a clearly-defined, fully-agreed plan that has measurable and achievable goals, then chances are you’re going to fail.

Yesterday’s events suggest strongly that somewhere above Edwards’ head, the board were singing from different songsheets.

And that is what has tainted, and possibly irrevocably damaged, the idea of a new culture which better represented the Watford FC that fans were hoping for.

So much of what was said in the summer now feels so hollow, and that is mainly because the club has reverted back to type so quickly. I just can’t agree that 10 league games is sufficient time for a head coach to develop a team that shows his identity. That’s particularly the case when he inherited a group of players we know were utterly dysfunctional, arguing with each other and who had just delivered one of the club’s worst seasons in living memory (and I accept the players themselves have to shoulder their portion of the blame for that).

Edwards walked into a club that had been relegated in spectacularly bad fashion, and found a squad that was lop-sided and starting to look threadbare in areas. He spent most of the most first month of the season unsure which of his key players were leaving and staying.

What was expected from him in those circumstances? That goes back to my earlier point: was there alignment on that critical question, and was the head coach given clear markers and expectations?

The trouble is, while we may never know what the head coach was expecting, for fans there was a far clearer indication.

On June 13 I wrote this quote from chairman Scott Duxbury in the Watford Observer:

“We realised that to have sustained and successful Premier League football, then we had to change things. It’s not all about having talented players, it’s about creating a culture and environment built upon continuity. And that continuity starts with the coach.”

That’s pretty unambiguous. What the club were doing had stopped working, there needed to be change and continuity of coach, and that in turn would deliver a better culture.

Then there’s this from that same June 13 article:

“Gino Pozzo wants the club to be successful and playing sustained Premier League football. That’s always been his only ambition for Watford. I am on exactly the same page.

“However, he accepts that the way we try and work to deliver that had to change. We know that we could not carry on as we were. Watford Football Club needed its culture back.”

Change…culture…on exactly the same page. Supporters who read this in June had every reason to feel that the club had indeed turned a corner – just three months later, those same fans have every reason to feel they can’t believe anything else they’re told.

Trust is far easier to lose than it is to earn.

Then there is the dressing room reaction. Think about how things have unfolded for them in the last fortnight.

They were fully responsible for a dreadful performance at Blackburn, two days later they were told (and two different players have confirmed this to me) that sporting director Cristiano Giaretta had left the club. Edwards delivered the news and also explained how the structure of football operations would change as a consequence, with him having a wider remit and more control over areas such as training schedules, sports science, nutrition and so on.

Little more than a week later, Edwards is gone, they have a new head coach and Giaretta is back at his desk at the training ground.

One of the players described the club as “a shambles”. They are, after all, human beings.

It has been an emotional, unsettling, infuriating and uncomfortable 24 hours for all connected with Watford. Nobody wants their club to be trending on Twitter for the wrong reasons, to be the butt of the workplace jokes or the subject of media ridicule - again. Even Gary Lineker (as I write) has yet to deliver his usual acerbic tweet, perhaps because he’s as tired of writing it as we are of reading it.

I’ve slept on what I might write about it all, and there is more I might want to say in the future. The reason I’m holding back is not fear or cowardice. I’m not afraid to express my opinion (if you read my post-Blackburn autopsy you’ll hopefully agree).

No, my reason for waiting is because I yesterday made a renewed request to interview the owner, given what has happened – not to mention the fact he hasn’t given an external interview since he spoke to my former Watford Observer colleague Frank Smith shortly after buying the club in 2012.

I think it’s more than fair to ask the man who made the decision to remove Edwards and turn back the dial on change and cultural reset to make time to, via myself and the Watford Observer, answer the questions and address the concern of fans, share his thoughts and reasoning for this and other decisions made, and most of all share with us all the blueprint for the club that he is attempting to deliver.

It would be very easy to sit here and pick apart what has happened, and give the owner a right royal slagging. It would probably win me a few slaps on the back from the element of supporters who have been very vociferous in their desire to have a different owner for some time.

But I’d prefer to give him a chance to show he’s not afraid to answer questions. That is he willing to explain his actions. That he does have a coherent plan.

If he is willing to do that and I am able to share his every word with supporters, then at least we have something to assess and judge.

Weirdly, we’ve seen his actions but, on this occasion, it’s his words that will speak more loudly.