Coaching Watford is like being on Pop Idol..but it is the club which will end up being voted out
Is Javi Gracia any better than a British boss in the second or third tier?
PIERS MORGAN’S Twitter bio sprang to mind when I heard Watford had sacked Marco Silva.
‘One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.’
The Portuguese was certainly the first part a couple of months ago when Everton tried to sign him as Ronald Koeman’s replacement.
His stock was at a premium after a meteoric rise in six months at Hull and a similar term at Watford, there were many – although not me included – who thought he was destined for very big things.
Yet here we are, having barely seen in the New Year, and Silva is out on his ear. He’s looking for work again – proof, as it were needed, of just how quickly the worm can turn in football.
Managers and players know that for all its reward it can still be a cruel world and I feel a bit for Silva.
Largely because it looks like Watford have been waiting for an excuse to get rid of him ever since his flirtation with Everton.
But he will find himself back in a job soon.
Not necessarily in the Premier League, because there aren’t really any berths open, but perhaps at a Championship club looking for a manager with experience to stamp his philosophy, or an Olympiacos, a Panathinaikos, a Real Zaragoza.
The fact Watford have chosen Javi Gracia to replace Silva disappointments me a little.
I mean, is he any better than any of the young British managers in the second or third tier? I don’t think so.
But Watford are almost Chelsea Lite in their approach to appointing managers now. It’s the notion that a manager almost isn’t a coach anymore, he’s just someone who comes in, makes the players happy, puts an arm around them and gives them a loose coaching philosophy to work around. Then, once the players don’t trust him or don’t like him anymore, he gets the sack.
It’s popularity management and is just the equivalent of Pop Idol. It’s an approach that will work for a while.
But you only have to look at Swansea and the type of managers they have had since their American owners came in to see how it works out at that level.
Chelsea can get away with it because they are paying premium dollar for premium-grade managers.
They hire the super coaches who get £10million a year and big golden handshakes, which makes taking the job worthwhile.
But, with the greatest of respect to Watford, they aren’t Chelsea.
And soon managers will be saying, ‘Why would I go there, why would I uproot my family from Spain or Portugal, if I’m only going to get six months?’
The better ones will be thinking, ‘I’d be better chancing my arm with a Wolves, an Aston Villa, or a Nottingham Forest – clubs with twice as many fans in their stadiums and with a pedigree about them, clubs who are desperate for a hero who is going to be there for two years or three years’.
That isn’t going to be the case anytime soon at Watford – and I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t soon going in the opposite direction to the one they’d like to be.