A month ago, the mood at Watford was positive. They’d just had the better of a 0-0 draw at home to Tottenham to stretch their unbeaten run to seven games, they were out of the relegation zone and it seemed that a newly relaxed Nigel Pearson was orchestrating another great escape. But despite playing Aston Villa and Brighton, and being 2-0 up against Everton they haven’t won since, and they’ve slipped back to second bottom. The talk suddenly is all of realism and of how budgets may be balanced for Watford if they are relegated.
Yet despite the recent downturn, Watford’s position is far better at this stage than seemed likely when they lost to Burnley, Southampton and Leicester in successive games three months ago. They are level with West Ham and only a point behind Villa and Bournemouth – and none of those three sides, not Norwich below them, look likely to put together a run of form that would lift them out of the relegation battle.
Watford have defied received wisdom since promotion in 2015. All the old wisdom about stability and laying long-term foundations has been ignored. Slavisa Jokanovic, who took them up, was replaced that summer, and Nigel Pearson is the fifth different manager since then, with Quique Sanchez Flores doing the job twice. Not only that, but there has been a huge turnover in playing staff, with the Pozzo family accepting that a club of Watford’s stature is essentially doomed to be a stepping stone.
The unorthodoxy has led many to assume that this season is a case of chickens coming home to roost, but that seems slightly to miss the point. Rather the Pozzos seem just to have acknowledged more openly than others the fundamental truth of the modern game that for clubs of Watford’s income long-term planning means allowing for multiple changes of personnel.
Nigel Pearson claims that keeping Watford in the Premier League this season would be his biggest achievement. #watfordfc pic.twitter.com/NdPxBaGivo
— The 1881 Club (@the_1881_club) February 17, 2020
The fact is that any club of their stature is vulnerable to relegation if something goes wrong and that mistakes can be made whatever approach is taken. It’s not to say Watford are run flawlessly to suggest one relegation wouldn’t necessarily invalidate how the Pozzos run the club.
In terms of the likelihood of relegation, the question really is whether that unbeaten run just after Pearson arrived was in any sense reflective of the capabilities of the squad. Was that a blip, the fabled and disputed new manager bounce, followed abruptly by a return to haplessness, or are the recent poor results a regression to the mean? Or to put it another way, is this a squad whose default is 0.53 points per game that happened to go on a six-game run of 2.33 points per game, or is the 1.36 points per game they’ve collected in 11 matches under Pearson the true reflection? 1.36 points per game from here would be 15 points, taking Watford to a total of 39 – almost certainly enough to stay up.
And it is possible. Spurts of decent or poor results aren’t only caused by the nebulous factors of form and fortune; clearly, it matters who the opponents are. And Watford’s run in is reasonable – or at least it is once they’ve got Liverpool out of the way this weekend (that said, Liverpool are probably in their worst run of form of the season, so now might not be the worst time to play them). After that, Watford have Leicester and Manchester City at home, and Chelsea and Arsenal away but otherwise are playing sides outside the top eight. A run of games against Norwich, Newcastle and West Ham at the end of April/beginning of Amy may be crucial.
It’s probably not coincidence either that the recent downturn has coincided with the absence through injury of Ismaila Sarr. He managed 22 minutes from the bench against Manchester United last weekend. Kiko Femenia and Daryl Janmaat are both likely to be back within a week or two, resolving the major issue at right-back, which in turn should liberate Sarr ahead of them.
The present situation clearly isn’t ideal, but Watford have players coming back, a relatively kind fixture list and a manager who has experience of surviving far worse than this. They also have that most invaluable of assets to a side battling relegation: opponents who are showing few signs of improvement. The Liverpool game is a free hit: the real work begins at Crystal Palace the following weekend.
