Watford's problems don't get fixed by hiring a new coach

For Watford, the tool of choice is sacking head coaches, and they have spent many years using that to the extent they do seem to believe every problem is a nail.

The Hornets have had young coaches, old coaches, British coaches, foreign coaches, former international managers and a Premier League winner. That’s just in the last 12 months.

Fact is, with the odd exception, the results and performances on the field in that same period have been abject failure. Eleven consecutive home defeats; conceding four or more goals nine times; eight clean sheets in 51 league games; six league and cup wins at Vicarage Road.

However, if results and performances were the sole issue, then you might be able fix that nail by using managerial change as your hammer.

Except results and performances aren’t the only problem.

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'I don't see players determined to win every game' - Bilic

Watford booed off the field at Blackpool

There’s injuries. Of course, all teams have them, but even our new head coach (who having played and coached at the highest levels is well placed to judge) has already raised both eyebrows at the queue that forms each day outside the treatment room.

On Saturday, Watford were forced to field a midfielder at right back (who, to be fair, did well actually); their on-loan central defender was back at the training ground nursing a knee injury after only 190 minutes of football; the player of the season so far was with him, still not recovered from a calf injury that was ‘only a day or two’ from being fixed 12 days ago.

And then we had the ‘you have to laugh or you’d cry’ sight of a player coming onto the pitch as a substitute in the 78th minute but going off again in the 87th minute.

You can add player recruitment to the list. That is the sole reason the club had to field a midfielder at full back: you can handle injuries if you have other options and depth, especially when it was clearly apparent throughout August that there was a right wing-back shaped gap in the squad.

On the other hand, even in the midst of a severe injury crisis, Watford had the luxury of apparently not even needing to put their 25-year-old Nigerian international winger on the bus to Blackpool. At roughly £13,500 per minute of first-team football since joining from Bordeaux for £3m, that’s expensive and unsuccessful recruitment at its very finest.

If that was the only example, you could proffer the recruitment department some defence. Except it’s not.

For every Joao Pedro, Yaser Asprilla and Imran Louza currently in the squad, there are names from the past like Ashley Fletcher, Ignacio Pussetto, Stipe Perica, Danny Rose, Dimitri Foulquier, Dodi Lukebakio, Brice Dja Djedje, Jerome Sinclair, Obbi Oulare… You get the point.

Of course, there have been many very good signings who have been excellent for Watford – many of them currently being excellent for Udinese – who the club have sold for profit. But that counts for virtually nothing to those who made the miserable trek home from Lancashire at the weekend.

Which brings us onto the next problem: finances. Or is it a problem? The chairman told me back in the summer: “I don’t have to worry about our finances.”

I have no reason, and certainly not the financial acumen, to doubt the validity of that statement. However, fans who are considerably more attuned to such matters are worried.

Those worries were only heightened when, out of nowhere, Watford sold Player of the Season Hasane Kamara to Udinese for £16m in August and then took him back on loan.

At the time, Scott Duxbury said: “This further protects the club at a time when balancing financial wellbeing and retaining a squad to compete at the top end of the Championship are our top priorities.”

Obviously relegation blows all sorts of holes in a club’s revenue streams, but going from ‘don’t have to worry’ in May to ‘further protects the club’ in August isn’t what anyone honestly expected.

Then last week the club borrowed another $4.6m from Australian lender Macquarie. They’ve done this before, usually drawing down funds from transfer fees that are to be paid in the future or as an advance against parachute payments/TV revenue etc. But why this time? What for?

The vast majority of fans (and I include myself in this) do not understand the complexities of juggling the financial balance sheet of a professional football club. So understandably, they worry.

And fans are next on the list of problems. They are unhappy, angry, dejected, demoralised, disappointed, confused and rapidly losing faith, as well as their ongoing worry mentioned above.

The atmosphere in the away stand at Bloomfield Road on Saturday was toxic. When fans start fighting amongst themselves, then things have reached a critical stage. When parents have to shield crying youngsters because they are terrified, then the dial has reached shameful.

The press box is right next to where the away fans sit at Blackpool, so me and the rest of the media could clearly here and see the reaction way before the whistle went.

I don’t think either the owner or the chairman were at the game, and I’m told the noise from the Blackpool fans on live streams was so loud it largely drowned out what the Watford fans were singing.

One of the few printable chants was “You’re not fit to wear the shirt”.

I was given several suggestions for adjectives to use when describing both the performance and the current state of the club by Watford fans as they trapsed down the steps towards the exit. Most of them were of four letters and those that were longer would require me inserting a lot of asterisks.

Talking to fans in the 24 hours after the game, reading comments online and listening to podcasts, the overwhelming problem is the club has ‘lost’ a lot of supporters. That’s not to say they don’t actually support the club anymore: you don’t really ever stop supporting, even if you want to.

But it means that the heart and spirit has been sucked out of them to the point they are considering what else to do on Saturday afternoons. These are people who, in some cases, were regulars both home and away before I was born and have lived through some of the worst times in Watford history and still come back for more.

And therein lies one of the reasons why this problem – losing the faith of the fans – is perhaps the most disturbing. Owners, chairmen, managers, players, coaches and staff come and go. They have an influence in the short to medium term, but inevitably they leave.

Fans can’t leave. They won’t leave. They were watching Watford through the likes of Bonser, Bassett and Bassini, and they were there to pick up the pieces. They’ll still be there, home and away, when the current incumbents of senior positions at Vicarage Road have departed.

To put it somewhat crudely, football fans are the shovel that goes behind the horse.

The football club and its supporters are the baton in the relay race that is football life. If you drop the baton you probably won’t win the race. If you break the baton, then your race may well be over.

You only have to think back to Saturday to quickly come up with another problem: a squad that looks good on a piece of paper but has desire, commitment, confidence and spirit of the same thickness.

After the game at Blackpool, Slaven Bilic had the look of a man who, when he arrived at Watford, was given a box of 24 expensive Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but in the two weeks since has opened the box to discover he’s actually got two dozen of those cheap, bland ones you get from a stall at the market.

There is little doubt that, man for man, the Watford teams that lined up against Blackpool and Blackburn were more technically capable, had played at a higher level and would command greater fees in the transfer market. If it were a computer game, Watford would have higher ratings.

But those two games in particular showed that none of those things can counter a group of players who chase, run, tackle, concentrate and work like their lives depend upon it.

As Bilic said himself: “If we think we are going to win games because we have a good squad on paper, then we’re wrong.”

And this particular issue isn’t a new one. It’s been lingering for a good while and a question many head coaches have had to face. Of course, what doesn’t help is the head coach pays the price each time he fails to find the answer, while those posing the problem live on to (occasionally) fight another day.

If anything should quickly bring into focus the need to get things right in terms of actual match performances, it’s the spectre of a visit from those a few junctions up the M1 in a couple of weeks.

It really should. The fact none of us can be sure if the players do understand the significance of it, and whether there’s any guarantee there will be any tangible difference on October 23 from the rest of the performances so far this season, is a sad indictment on just how far detached the fans feel from the club and the players.

So yes, there are several problems in the world of Watford FC that need attention, and they are not all nails that can be simply hammered back down.

Of course, the essential element in being able to fix problems is identifying and accepting you have those problems in the first place.

There’s one name I’ve not mentioned in this diatribe until now: Gino Pozzo.

He is the man who came here when Watford was on its uppers, gave the club six seasons of Premier League football, an FA Cup Final, a superb stadium and top-class training facilities.

There is credit in the bank with some fans; for others, he is now using his overdraft.

Pozzo is the man who has the power to begin to fix things. The fans, through their reaction to Saturday, and me - via this piece that has been both cathartic and painful to write – have helped crystalize the problems for him.

If he chooses to accept they are, indeed, problems, then next he must also accept that he needs to extend the range of tools he uses with which to fix them.

Talking, explaining and answering questions would be a very good addition to his toolbox.