Last Christmas was a particularly sweet one for Watford’s supporters, who went into the festive period on the back of a four-game winning run that culminated in their finest result of the season, a 3-0 victory against Liverpool. As they pulled their crackers and donned their paper party hats the team was seventh in the Premier League and boasted perhaps the division’s most fearsome strike pairing: between them Odion Ighalo and Troy Deeney had scored 17 goals in as many games under the guidance of their dapper Spanish manager, Quique Sánchez Flores.
Meanwhile the players and coaches gathered as instructed at their hotel before the Boxing Day fixture against Chelsea. As they sat down to dinner only one man was missing: Flores had not turned up, having decided to spend the time with his children instead. It was not much of an example, and did not go unnoticed. Over the next few months this attitude was transmitted to some of the other senior players, who occasionally skipped training sessions without sanction. Others saw this, and the manager’s preference for picking the same team irrespective of performance either on the pitch or in training, and questioned their own need for punctuality and strenuous application. Though the team reached an FA Cup semi-final, losing 2-1 to Crystal Palace at Wembley, the 21 remaining league games would bring only four wins, as team morale and discipline gradually deteriorated. Flores departed at the season’s conclusion.
Individually and collectively they go into this Christmas in very different form, having lost four of their past five matches, while Ighalo and Deeney have had only four goals to celebrate this season. The Nigerian’s decline has been particularly stark: in 2015 he was the most prolific goalscorer in any of England’s professional leagues, ending the calendar year with 30 goals to his name. “As a professional, and someone who works hard, I always hope that my next year is going to be better than my last year,” Ighalo said in late December of last year. “I’m praying that 2016 is going to be even better than 2015.” With one game to play he has scored four league goals this calendar year, and only two since the end of January. A year ago he was wanted by Manchester United; now he only gets in the Watford team when others are injured.
But in many ways the team’s outlook is brighter than it was a year ago. The side, currently 12th, have again spent most of the first half of the season in the top half of the table, while the burden of goalscoring has been better shared – for all their strikers’ travails they managed precisely as many goals at this stage and already 11 players have scored for the Hornets in the league, compared with eight across the entirety of last season. And as others have faded new stars have shone, none brighter than Nordin Amrabat, the Moroccan winger signed by Flores last January but hardly used by the Spaniard. On the downside, a team that conceded 16 goals in the first 17 games of last season have let in 29, proving particularly susceptible from crosses and set pieces.
“I always try to assess the team’s performances in a balanced way, like an outsider, not with bias,” says Walter Mazzarri of the season thus far. “I am someone who always wants to get more from his team. Overall, I think we are achieving our targets for this year – but we could have done even more.”
Mazzarri has been particularly irked by some of the games in his side’s recent run, feeling they have underachieved. “Some of the matches have made me very angry, I was really unhappy with them,” he says. “For example we should have taken at least a point from West Brom, a point from Stoke, and above all something from Sunderland. If you watched that game we played as if we were the home team, always on the front foot, creating many chances, especially in the first half, but we didn’t score. Then the first chance they got, they did. Based on our performances I think we have deserved four or five points more than we’ve got, and that annoys me.
“Even against Manchester City, who have a wonderful team and often thrash opponents at home, we played well and could have equalised near the end when we created one great chance [for Ighalo], but we missed it. The game turned on that moment. What’s important is that this team, this group of players, has performed well. We deserved to win those points. Perhaps we need to improve the squad a bit in some areas, and we need to score more of the chances we create.”
Mazzarri has also had to cope with a succession of injuries, particularly in attack, where the summer signings Stefano Okaka and Isaac Success have so far managed three starts between them. Another August recruit, Roberto Pereyra, sustained a knee injury during the recent defeat by City that seems likely to end his season. The club seems certain to enter the transfer market once again in January in an attempt to replace him, which is not something they have been averse to of late.
The Boxing Day fixture against Crystal Palace gives Mazzarri an opportunity to reverse his side’s recent run of apparent misfortune against opponents whose form is worse than Watford’s, even if they no longer employ the manager who is responsible for it. Whatever happens, though, Watford will be conscious of the fact that a merry Christmas does not necessarily preface a happy new year.
