Say it ain’t so! Have Watford actually listened to their supporters and not sacked their manager?
The Hornets’ 2-1 defeat by Coventry City at the CBS Arena on Saturday – their sixth in eight games – will increase the speculation surrounding Tom Cleverley’s position as head coach.
But before the game, the club appeared to give the former Watford, Manchester United and England midfielder more of a concrete backing than they had done earlier in the week.
Watford’s X account on Saturday morning said that owner Gino Pozzo’s support for Cleverley “remains firmly in place heading into today’s game at Coventry City and well beyond.”
This was in contrast to Thursday’s tweet, which stated that the 35-year-old “will be in charge for the match at Coventry City and that the speculation over his position is just that – pure speculation.”
It’s easy to see where the scepticism comes from.
It was only in June 2022 when Pozzo’s henchman Scott Duxbury, the club’s chairman and chief executive, infamously told the Watford Observer that they would stick with new appointment Rob Edwards “come hell or high water” before sacking him after 11 games in the job.
That Edwards would go on to not only be appointed by rivals Luton Town but also take them up into the Premier League that very same season still rankles.
The mystery over Cleverley’s future hasn’t even been the only figurative own goal the club have scored in the past week.
Sporting director Gianluca Nani admitted that Watford simply hadn’t announced that loan signing Antonio Tikvic’s move was made permanent.
In a scene befitting the Championship’s club of chaos, they had to come clean when Tikvic was sent on loan himself to Austrian club Grazer, with Nani offering a rather flippant explanation for the lack of communication.
“Originally Tikvic joined us on loan as there were things still to sort out between Bayern Munich B and Udinese when we wanted him here,” Nani said on Watford’s website of the Croatia Under-21 defender, who initially signed on loan from the Hornets’ sister club Udinese in July after joining the Italians from Bayern 12 months earlier.
“So we did a loan first of all with the intention to make the move permanent, which we did in August. This was never announced at the time, and it should have been!”
So far, so Watford. By this time the online rumour mill had already sprung into action, with speculation increasing that Watford were going to replace Cleverley with former Villarreal and Real Valladolid coach Jose Rojo Martin.
Former Hornets captain and bona fide club legend Troy Deeney was even given to giving TalkSport an insight into how things work at Vicarage Road.
“You just have to look at the patterns,” he said.
“It always happens towards the end of the transfer window. Why? Because they’ll take a week to get the new manager in, the new manager will say he wants players, ‘oh sorry by the way, we don’t have the money and there’s no time to do anything’.
“It’s just the same pattern, rinse and repeat.”
And Deeney articulated a lot of supporters’ dismay at what is happening behind the scenes yet again.
“It’s a great club, and this is the frustration,” he said.
“It’s a great place to work, the training ground is excellent, the people that work there are wonderful.”
What is even more frustrating, though, is that this season, for the first time arguably since the Hornets reached the 2019 FA Cup final, Watford fans actually have hope.
Even now, they sit only three points off the Championship play-off places.
“Clevs steadied the ship,” Deeney said. “Without him they’d be in a relegation battle, I genuinely believe that.”
And working with Nani, despite his comments on the Tikvic situation, strengthens that cautious optimism.
Nani, who is also listed as “group technical director” on Udinese’s website, was involved with Watford from 2012-14, a period that laid the foundation for promotion to the Premier League.
Under Cleverley, right-winger Kwadwo Baah and centre-back Mattie Pollock have gone from loaned out fringe players to mainstays of a Championship team hovering around the play-off places.
Midfielder Imran Louza has successfully reintegrated himself into the first team and Georgia playmaker Giorgi Chakvetadze has been the subject of increased speculation of a Premier League move this January.
Baah’s fellow winger Rocco Vata looks a bargain of a summer buy from Celtic, while loan signings Festy Ebosele and Yasser Larouci have also shown flashes of excellence.
But fear will always lurk around the corner. Pozzo and Duxbury are notorious for hiring and firing head coaches who continuously fail to meet their own expectations.
Accounts released last week confirmed that the club have spent an eye-watering £20m on settlement payments over the past five seasons.
In Cleverley, Watford’s board have stumbled across a manager who clearly cares about the club and is classy enough to request “more of a unified support or choice of song” in response to a chant that is complimentary to him, but less so to Pozzo.
There might be a tricky period ahead, Baah being out for a few months certainly doesn’t help, so let’s hope the board finally stop acting like an ageing Lothario and commit to the right person. Come hell or high water.
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