Jack Anderson: Forty five years later, and despite it all, this weekend this clown will still check the Watford score
ITALIAN JOB: Watford manager - the latest one - Alessio Dionisi: shouldn't going to Ikea to kit out his rented apartment just yet. Pic: David Rogers/Getty Images
I am a Watford fan of 45 years. Over that time, the club has made 42 separate managerial appointments. The first of them, Graham Taylor, is still the longest serving. In 2012, the club was bought by the Pozzo family, who have made 26 appointments.
A Dickensian cast of characters have taken to the coaching pulpit at Vicarage Road. Bright young English managers, Tom Cleverly and Rob Edwards have been dimmed by it. Old school English coaches (Nigel Pearson, Roy Hodgson, and Chris Wilder) have snarled and left. Old school European coaches (Walter Mazzarri, Claudio Ranieri and Slaven Bilić) have had a go. Young European coaches – Quique Sánchez Flores (twice); Javi Gracia (twice) and most recently the aptly named Edward Still – were hired and fired.
Still, who was in charge for the second half of the 2025/2026 Championship season, was devoutly and profoundly useless. His win percentage was 20%. A 4-0 thrashing at home to a newly promoted and hungover Coventry was a feature of his “reign”. 'Still manager of Watford' went the inevitable headline, until he wasn’t.
The current appointee, Alessio Dionisi, who even by Watford standards seems to have risen through the coaching ranks without a trace, is on a similar win percentage, having won only two of his 10 games. In Watford’s game away to Brian Barry-Murphy’s Cardiff, Dionisi promised a reaction from “his team” following the previous 4-0 defeat at home to Burnley. Watford lost 5-1.
If I was Dionisi, I wouldn’t be going to Ikea to kit out my rented apartment just yet. They beat Charlton last Saturday to move up to a dizzying 2th but if Dionisi is thrown out the Watford Gap, the club will be looking to make their fifth managerial appointment this year. I will apply. I am aiming to make it to Christmas.
Hilariously, Dionisi has just received the full backing of the Watford board. A bit like the fable of the frog giving the scorpion a lift across the river, hesitating at first because of the scorpion’s sting; Dionisi should realise that the Pozzos will soon bite again. They can’t help it. It’s in their nature.
Watford’s problems can’t all be laid at Dionisi’s door. He’s just another act in the Pozzo Vaudeville show. Blaming the current manager for the club’s ills is like blaming whoever the current Presidential press secretary is for the woes of the Trump administration.
In the first half against Cardiff last week, the Watford players played like they had just met. And in many ways, they just had. Sixteen players left over the summer, nine came in. Watford’s “model” is data driven scouting of young players globally (Watford’s current first team squad features 25 different nationalities), pushing them into the first team and selling them quickly - and if all else fails, sell or loan them to the sister club, Udinese.
A classic example is with Australia international Nestory Irankunda. Irankunda made his name in the A-League in Adelaide and was sold as a teenager to Bayern Munich in 2024. Understandably, he struggled to break through at Bayern and was quickly loaned out to a Swiss club. Watford swooped and picked him up for €5million in July 2025, on a five-year contract.
Contract lengths at Watford (for players and managers alike) have no real legal value and are notional only. They should be signed on biodegradable paper.
Irankunda had a tentative 2025/2026 season, but he scored a very good goal for Australia in their opening World Cup group game against Turkey and was promptly sold to Sporting Lisbon for €18-20million. In a complicated deal, 40% of that profit had to go to Bayern Munich via a sell-on clause. Watford have also likely ensured that if Sporting sell Irankunda they will get a cut. Sporting has a good resale record. They bought Viktor Gyökeres from Coventry in 2023 for €20 million and two years later he signed for Arsenal for €63.5 million. That’s the modern game.
For Watford, the model is a bit like high-frequency trading. When it works, profits accumulate nicely. In 2017, Watford bought Richarlison from Fluminense for €13m, and within a year had sold him to Everton for triple that amount. In 2020, they bought João Pedro from the same club for €11.5m and within three years had again trebled that amount in selling him to Brighton.
The problem for Watford is that high frequency trading means high player turnover and no chance of building any continuity or culture. Players and managers at Watford are like that annoying person at a party who keeps looking over your shoulder to see if there is someone more interesting to talk to.
Watford fans really don’t expect much: mid table mediocrity in the Championship; the odd playoff; Luton (ideally), QPR (do nicely) to be relegated; and maybe a jaunty season in the Premier League once every decade or so to pocket the parachute payments. But this season, relegation to League One is a probability as the sum of the squares in the Pozzo theorem of football stops matching up.
Even the club’s honorary president and former owner, Elton John (who first went to Vicarage Road with his Dad in the 1950s) said in a since-deleted Instagram post this week: “As a lifetime supporter of Watford FC, I am very upset and disappointed at the decline over the past few weeks."
The parental “I am not angry, just disappointed” vibe of that post has galvanised Hornet fans. Ever so polite, a leading supporters group penned an open letter – can you imaging Millwall fans doing the same – to the club owners, respectfully requesting a meeting.
It started ever so well for the Pozzo family and Watford in 2012. They hired Gianfranco Zola who presided over one of the greatest Watford victories of all time (it’s all relative) in the Championship playoff semi-final of 2013 against Leicester.
In the second leg at Vicarage Road, the game was poised 2–2 on aggregate when Leicester got a soft, pre-VAR, injury time penalty. It was saved. Watford immediately counter attacked, culminating in Troy Deeney lashing in the winner. Cue a crowd invasion and Zola doing his best Marco Tardelli 1982 celebration on the sideline. Watch it on YouTube and smile.
Watford lost that play off to Crystal Palace. When Palace won the FA Cup in 2025, Watford (along with Fulham and Brighton) dubiously became one of the “biggest” clubs never to have won a major domestic trophy in England.
Watford have only ever reached the FA Cup twice, losing to Everton in 1984 and in 2019 when we, of course, equalled the record defeat in a final, 6-0. Watford lost in 2019 to Manchester City. It being Watford’s luck, the time period for the recent investigation into City ended in 2018. Even the biggest cheating scandal in English football history could not get Watford’s hands on a trophy, though we may be playing City in League One next season.
To paraphrase a lyric from one of Elton John’s best songs, “And if our love was just a circus, you'd be a clown by now."
Forty five years later, and despite it all, this weekend this clown will still check the Watford score.
