Watford won the single most lucrative match of football ever in May 2006, beating Leeds 3-0 at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium to be promoted from the Championship to the Coca-Cola Barclaycard Sky TV Sony PlayStation Premiership as play-off champions. It is estimated that this victory meant £40 million in extra revenue for 2006/7 but with the new TV deal coming into effect next season, the financial incentive for retaining that status has grown enormously. Today’s game against Wigan, then, is just the latest in a line of “must win” games, which, at some point, Watford must start winning.
Currently propping up the table with 11 points, Watford are the clear favourites to be relegated back to the Championship come May. With only one victory so far (against Middlesbrough, who each of the promoted teams have beaten) and the lowest goal tally in the league, the prospects of survival do not appear to be good. Historically, too, the Golden Boys’ chances seem slim. In the fifteen years of the Premiership, only one team has been bottom on Christmas Day and gone on to avoid relegation at the end of the season. That was two years ago, when West Bromwich Albion had ten points from eighteen games and finished the 2004/5 season in the safe 17th position following five wins and nine draws after the Boxing Day match.
In game after game, opposing teams’ managers have declared Watford “unlucky” or said that we “deserved more” than we took from the match. Back in August our manager, Aidy Boothroyd, refused to accept this, saying we didn’t deserve anything other than what we got because we hadn’t taken our chances and had made mistakes. After half a season of similar bad fortune, he has not always proven to be so philosophical, though in general his tone has been upbeat. While the other teams in the relegation zone have embarked on the managerial merry-go-round (last season’s Charlton Emanager is now managing West Ham and vice versa), so undemanding are the expectations at Watford that "Betty" (after the House of Commons Speaker) is probably safer in his position than Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough, Mark Hughes at Blackburn or Manchester City's Stuart Pearce.
After the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool on 23rd December, Betty said “We have to compete against Muhammad Alis while we are featherweights”. It was a sporting way of admitting we are out of our league, but we couldn’t have expected anything from that match or the next (a 2-1 defeat home to Arsenal on Boxing Day, appropriately for the simile) when we saw the fixture list back in July. However, if we can get something from the last game of this year and the first of next (Wigan (H) and Fulham (A)) and buy wisely in January, we could yet move up a division and become lightweights.
The team has won plaudits for their determination to fight until the finish. With a solid defensive base (Lee or Foster in goal, Shittu and Demerit in the centre), a powerful central midfield pairing (captain Gavin Mahon and the summer acquisition Damien Francis) and wingers that have turned the best defences in the Premiership (Ashley Young and Hameur Bouazza, with 3 league goals each) there is a core of quality that belies our reputation as a long-ball team. However, there is a clear vacancy for a goal poacher.
The opening of the transfer window is therefore crucial. Marlon King netted 21 times last season on our way to promotion and Darius Henderson scored 14 goals. However, King was ruled out of the whole season with a knee injury after 2 goals in 8 league games and Henderson has been unable to reproduce last season’s form and is yet to break his Premiership duck. With an injury sustained by Hameur Bouazza in the 2-1 defeat to Arsenal, it is essential that Watford buy two strikers if they are to prosper. We have been linked with Scunthorpe’s 20 year-old, Billy Sharp, who is League 1 top scorer with 16 goals, but would the Premiership be a step too far? Valued at £4 million, it is likely that the Championship's top scorer, Norwich's Rob Earnshaw, is beyond the Hornet's purchasing power.
Watford have a point more than the Baggies did at the corresponding point of the season when they defied the odds and stayed up. However, the teams just above the relegation zone this year have more points than the corresponding teams did in 2004/5, when West Brom ultimately survived with 34 points. The same number of points would also have ensured 17th place in 2003/4 and 35 would have sufficed last year. In 2002/3, though, 43 points were necessary to retain premiership status. In the eleven years that there have been 20 teams in England’s top league, an average of 37 points has been necessary. Ultimately, then, Watford’s hopes of survival depend not only on whether we buy well and pick up points but also whether it is closer to 23 or 32 more points we need to stay up and if we can get three of them at home to Wigan on Saturday.
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