Watford face relegation battle after Ismael exit - but Warnock could save them
Another one bites the dust on the Vicarage Road coconut shy, and Valerien Ismael’s departure makes it 21 Watford managers in a row who have failed to reach 100 games in charge.
Now the Hornets are back where they started when owner Gino Pozzo moved in 12 years ago - mired in mid-table, with their next change of division more likely to be down than up.
Like most of Pozzo’s previous liaisons with a firing pin, supporters had few complaints about the latest casualty. Ismael had gone from serving up largely enjoyable football before Christmas to just three points from the last nine home League games. And the performances regressed from assertive to risk-averse, backwards-and-sideways, timid and feckless.
Tom Cleverley, who had been in charge of the club’s Under-18 age group since retiring as a player last summer, has stepped in as interim boss.
In reality Watford are now looking for their 12th permanent head coach since 2019, and following Saturday’s 2-1 home defeat by Coventry the first port of call is to avoid relegation.
Watford leading the way off the pitch on Green Football Weekend by adding bees
That may seem a remote danger, especially after QPR were trounced 4-0 on the opening day of the season and beaten manager Gareth Ainsworth claimed: ‘We may have lost to the champions.” Too good to go down? Don’t you believe it.
Final whistle: Valerien Ismael has been axed by Watford (Getty Images)If Cleverley can’t stop the rot in a huge game at Birmingham next Saturday, Watford’s Easter double-header is against promotion-chasing Leeds and West Brom.
At face value, there is enough quality to survive, but in five years the Hornets have gone from FA Cup finalists with the likes of Roberto Pereyra and Gerard Deulofeu in their ranks to brittle fodder with the properties of Easter eggs : Nice packaging, but hollow and liable to melt under pressure.
Ismael, 47, leaves Vicarage Road with Watford 13th in the Championship - more or less in line with the fans’ expectations - and to survive they will need more composure in the final third. But top scorer Mileta Rajovic’s confidence looks shot, fellow striker Vakoun Bayo is a real ‘daisy’ (some days he looks the part, some days he doesn’t) and defensively they are a soft touch.
Tom Cleverley has been placed in interim charge at Vicarage Road (Getty Images)Pozzo’s finite investment in the squad since relegation two years ago isn’t going to increase with the parachute money about to run out, so the next manager will need to be a motivator with clear plan.
Hornets legend Troy Deeney, who claims a deal was “95 per cent done” last April to bring him back to the club on the coaching staff, is available after his 28-day reign at Forest Green Rovers, while Scott Parker, who won promotion from the Championship twice with Fulham and Bournemouth, is also on the radar.
But as a stop-gap until the end of the season, they could do a lot worse than asking 75-year-old Neil Warnock, whose sudden departure from Aberdeen was announced at the weekend within minutes of him reaching the Scottish Cup semi-finals, to make another encore.
Neil Warnock would be ideal stop-gap appointment (Robbie Jay Barratt)Warnock has saved Rotherham, Middlesbrough and Huddersfield from choppy waters in the last eight years alone. The old growler admitted he struggled with living alone in an apartment in the Granite City, 680 miles from his farm in Cornwall, but the cultural melting pot of Watford High Street on a Saturday night would be right up his street.
And nobody would expect him to do 100 games. Three wins in the last nine would be enough.
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