The surprise was not that Valerien Ismael was sacked, more that it had taken so long.
This is Watford, after all — a club that has hired and fired 19 permanent head coaches in 12 years, including 10 in the last three and a half. But this time was different because they had tried desperately to stick with Ismael.
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Form, a genuine fear of relegation and a week that included inadvertent public ridicule from their last opponents proved too much.
What Coventry City manager Mark Robins and his club’s head of recruitment Dean Austin said to each other in private messages made public on social media came to the attention of Watford’s hierarchy. The exchange — which The Athletic has chosen not to publish — happened during the 1-1 draw with Swansea City on Wednesday, March 6, and three days later Coventry walked away from Vicarage Road with three points.
Both Ismael’s credibility and Gino Pozzo’s decision-making had been called into question, not just by fans, but rivals too.
Pozzo addressed the players before the Coventry game. According to a source — who, like others in this article, wanted to remain anonymous to protect relationships — the Italian appeared to have been affected by the WhatsApp messages and seemed to have taken it very personally. When contacted for comment on this matter, the club contested that this was the case.
The first-half performance against Coventry — Watford led 1-0 until the 40th minute — was encouraging and showed some of the fire that had been missing of late. However, the loss of the influential Giorgi Chakvetadze at half-time clipped their wings, and the second half followed a familiar script with little attacking cohesion and another defeat.
Bar the Championship’s bottom club Rotherham, Watford’s form over the last 10 games — including six defeats and only one win — is the worst in the second tier. They have not won at home in the league since November 28, with six defeats in nine. They face six of the current top nine (Leeds United, Ipswich Town, Southampton, West Bromwich Albion, Hull City and Preston North End) in their last nine games. Being seven points above the relegation zone is not a big enough buffer.
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Watford’s decision-makers, who are actively seeking investment in the club to mitigate the end of their Premier League parachute payments this season, cannot afford to slip into a relegation scrap or, even worse, contemplate being flushed into League One.
The appointment of their former-midfielder-turned-under-18 coach Tom Cleverley, 34, as interim head coach is a risk that Pozzo was willing to take, especially as there was little sign that showing faith in Ismael was going to turn things around.
The sack did not come immediately after the Coventry defeat, with Watford’s hierarchy choosing to deliver the news later in the evening.
Ismael started to inform those close to him that he had been dismissed just before the club’s official announcement at 10.10pm on Saturday. The club statement thanked Ismael and his staff “for their dedication and commitment” but said they considered it “an appropriate time to make a change to improve results”.
Ismael’s three-year deal had unexpectedly been extended in October — just five months into his tenure, although it is a three-month compensation period in the event of termination remained the same.
At the time, Watford were struggling, having only won two of their opening nine games, but sporting director Cristiano Giaretta said that the club had “enjoyed getting to know and understanding Valerien and his methods”, adding: “It’s true we haven’t achieved the points we would like yet, but it’s the work and the progress we can see that gives us great confidence.”
The day after that announcement, they lost their third match in a row against Sunderland and dropped to 21st, just outside the relegation zone. But the vote of confidence, rather than sacking the head coach early as Watford did in three of the last four seasons (Javi Gracia 2019-20, Xisco 2021-22 and Rob Edwards 2022-23), paid off.
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They only lost two of their next 13 matches, moved up to seventh and looked like making a charge for the play-offs. Ismael fostered a togetherness that many of his predecessors had struggled to achieve in the time afforded them.
Things were looking up and the atmosphere at the training ground, which had suffered due to regular managerial churn, appeared to be the best it had been for a long time. Downtrodden fans saw a glimmer of hope and a team they enjoyed watching again after the toxicity of recent seasons.
Changes behind the scenes then appear to have shaken the dynamic — although the club contests that it had a destabilising effect or led to a lack of cohesiveness in the January window.
Ismael was content with October’s departure of technical director Ben Manga and his staff as it had always been clear they had proposed alternative options to him. Giaretta had championed Ismael before his appointment, ratified by Pozzo, and they had built a strong bond. So when Giaretta departed to take up a new job at Pafos in December, a key ally was gone.
Now Ismael had to deal with new sporting director Gianluca Nani, who was getting back up to speed after nearly a decade away from the club. The head coach had been given more of a check and balance role on recruitment but there was only limited business carried out in January.
Proposals to strengthen with a centre-back, a No 6 and an orthodox striker — the latter to challenge struggling pair Vakoun Bayo and Mileta Rajovic — never came to fruition. Plan C striker Rhys Healey was sold to Huddersfield and the only incomings were the return of winger Emmanuel Dennis and Chakvetadze’s loan deal from Gent being made permanent.
Internally, Bournemouth’s Kieffer Moore and Chelsea’s Andrey Santos were discussed as potential signings but those talks did not advance. Moore chose a promotion push with Ipswich instead, while Santos went to Chelsea’s sister club Strasbourg in Ligue 1.
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Mattie Pollock was on the verge of leaving as he wanted more action but rejected a move proposed by Pozzo and agent Mogi Bayat to Charleroi, favouring a domestic transfer. He remained after a period of push and pull, but arguably a more pivotal player left and wasn’t replaced: Imran Louza.
The Morocco international became disillusioned due to a lack of opportunities. Both Francisco Sierralta and Jake Livermore were preferred to him at No 6. Louza, who had originally been signed for that role after the departure of Will Hughes in 2021, was played as a No 8 instead. He would soon fall foul of Ismael’s more hardline disciplinary rules for timekeeping and was dropped.
By January, the relationship had broken down and he left for Lorient on loan.
There was also some frustration among the players as they wanted to attack more forcefully in the coming games.
Whether Ismael had been given the tools to play differently with a squad that had seen little investment in two transfer windows is another question.
The 48-year-old has not stayed long in jobs over the last few years — Watford was his fifth role since 2019 — and some staff members’ words of warning before his appointment at Vicarage Road also started to ring true.
Ismael favoured a 4-3-3 system, with Livermore shielding the back four and Yaser Asprilla — arguably the club’s most promising talent — not playing a central role where he could influence the game more. On the other hand, Ismael had made bold choices, such as replacing captain and goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann with Ben Hamer because the latter was better suited to playing out from the back.
Another issue surfaced surrounding right-back Ryan Andrews, 19, who was dropped in February after the 1-0 loss to Cardiff at home. Ismael felt Andrews needed time out of the spotlight, but that extended into five league matches at a time when the alternative, Jeremy Ngakia, was recovering from injury. Using midfielder Tom Dele-Bashiru as a right-back because he could look after the ball and progress it better gradually concerned the decision-makers at the club. Andrews was also seen as a greater attacking threat and a potential asset who needed game time.
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The hierarchy was keen to allow Ismael to do things his way and not interfere too much, but results had to be delivered as part of the bargain.
While Ismael — who was dignified in his dealings with the media and public at all times — hoped to turn things around, even those close to him acknowledged that after the 2-1 loss at home to Huddersfield on February 24, results were turning the screw on his chances of surviving.
Watford resolved to give the head coach one more full week to get a reaction before three games in seven days (Millwall away and home games against Swansea and Coventry) but just one point meant he ran out of road. His two assistants, Dean Whitehead and Omer Riza, were informed that they would be leaving too. Riza, who had been at the club for six years, said: “I’m disappointed to be relieved from my position when I had so much more to give.”
By Sunday morning, planning meetings were taking place with the new man: a familiar face in Cleverley. Coming to a quick decision over the formation of his backroom team was one of the early priorities. Armand Kavaja, with whom he had worked closely since switching to a coaching role, would continue as assistant alongside the club’s women’s head coach Damon Lathrope. Academy head of technical development and former player Jimmy Gilligan will also fulfil a technical consultant role, while Chris Douglas will be first-team analyst.
Cleverley was an option who had been on the radar of the club during Ismael’s final poor run. His impressive early foray into coaching with the club’s under-18s, who have reached the Professional Development League Cup semi-finals, meant his name was raised by senior officials as a potential internal appointment.
One source close to the dressing room says that players consider him a popular choice. Many of them know and support their former captain. One former staff member highlighted that he was “smart and a team player” while an agent familiar with his work in the academy said his ability to be “open and approachable” has the potential to change the dynamic in the squad.
Cleverley, a former Manchester United midfielder, retired at the end of last season due to a thigh injury after seven years at Watford. He had discussed a move into coaching with the club’s lead academy staff Richard Johnson and Gilligan when he feared his career was coming to an end.
Soon after accepting the under-18s role, he received a call from his biggest managerial influence. “I had a nice call off Sir Alex Ferguson, he must have read that somewhere that I’d taken the job and we spoke on the phone for 10 to 15 minutes,” he said in a club interview last summer. “We spoke about a couple of technical coaching things and a couple of psychological things.”
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Cleverley has maintained a good relationship with United and the England management group where he has been invited to take in various presentations. He lists the following traits he wants in his teams: “Good body language, show good reaction to mistakes, high pressure, aggressive pressure. In possession, be positive, take risks, break lines and penetrative runs behind. Without giving you the full blueprint of it, that’s the basics,” he said. “On the grass, I’ve felt really at home. I love that part of the job.”
As is industry practice in journalism, The Athletic offered Watford the right of reply on a list of information we had been told about the end of Ismael’s time as head coach. Watford had the opportunity to see these questions on Ismael and Watford during his time in charge before publication for guidance or comment.
In response, Watford said that some of the points were “factually incorrect” and requested that The Athletic supply specific questions.
The question was asked of the club to highlight which points were “factually inaccurate” so amendments, comment or guidance could be included in reporting. The club then offered The Athletic guidance on some matters and highlighted that some of those points were “not true”.
Watford also supplied this statement from a club spokesperson: “In the absence of any direct questions, or a proposed completed article upon which to comment, the club were presented with a brief list of suppositions.
“However, it is not the job of the club to act as proofreaders. We always appreciate a right of reply, but that cannot happen when merely presented with a collection of claims.
“Hopefully, rather than offering a curt ‘no comment’, we are at least explaining why it was also impossible for us to offer any meaningful response.”
The Athletic responded to that statement with a series of questions around the points that Watford had told us were “not true”, and offered them the opportunity to respond to these.
Watford’s response was that The Athletic should consider that all of the questions had been denied by the club and that they wouldn’t issue any additional comment to the statement already provided.
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Watford also highlighted that if The Athletic didn’t run the spokesperson’s comment, then they reserved the right to run it themselves to explain how the article has been constructed.
If Cleverley makes it to the end of the season as interim boss, he is set to meet former United and England team-mate Michael Carrick in the dugout when Watford visit Middlesbrough on the Championship’s final day on May 4.
The Watford hierarchy will hope that, by then, there will be little riding on the game.
(Top photo: Athena Pictures/Getty Images)