Tom Cleverley
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Whenever Watford is mentioned in conversation, four questions are usually raised.
- Is Watford in London? (no is the correct answer)
- Isn’t Harry Potter world near there?
- Doesn’t Elton John run their football team?
- They are the football club that sack loads of managers, aren’t they?
Watford are on their 20th different head coach since the Pozzo family took over the club in the summer of 2012. One of those 20 has been given the job twice in that time (Quique Sánchez Flores), meaning there have been 21 permanent managerial spells in charge of Watford across 13 seasons. It’s chaotic, that’s for sure.
And it still is, but in 2024-25 it seems to be producing positive chaos on the pitch.
Watford are sixth and in the play-off places as we hit the November international break, finding ourselves nearly a third of the way through the campaign. They are six points off leaders Sunderland and have the best home record in the Championship.
Not many pundits gave Watford a chance this season. Highly respected EFL publication Not The Top 20 even put them as favourites to finish bottom of the Championship in 2024-25.
In defence of the NTT20 crew, the Hornets have been regressing fast since dropping from the Premier League in 2021-22 and have consistently sold off talent to higher ranked clubs to try to balance the books.
Exciting young talent like João Pedro, Ismaïla Sarr, Cucho Hernández, Ismaël Koné and Yáser Asprilla have all been sold for strong profit over the last two years, while not much money has been made available to replace them. The general feeling among fans is that the club has lost ambition and are cost-cutting ahead of an attempted sale, with important lessons not learned by the board following hasty sackings of coaches and some poor recruitment of players.
The link-up with sister club Udinese is no longer as profitable with regards to incoming talent as it once was, while there have been important questions raised about dealings with agents in providing inadequate players for the club.
There was a feeling of ‘here we go again’ when the board dismissed head coach Valérien Ismaël in March, but his replacement has gone some way to repairing the relationship between fans and the club.
Tom Cleverley didn’t have a lot of experience as a coach. After retiring as a player in July 2023, Watford handed him the reins to their under-18s side. He performed well and when Ismaël became the latest Watford boss to be sacked, Cleverley was given the first-team role on an interim basis.
It was far from an easy task. Watford were in freefall on the pitch, threatened with the possibility of relegation and no option to bring in any further players with the transfer window long closed. The Hornets had won 11 points in Ismaël’s final 14 games in charge and sat just seven points above the relegation zone with nine games left to play upon his dismissal.
Cleverley won his first game in charge away at fellow relegation-threatened Birmingham City before going on to lose just two of the final eight matches – one of those was an added-time defeat at Southampton (who were eventually promoted) and the other was a final-day dead rubber at Middlesbrough.
Cleverley’s performance as interim boss led to his appointment as first-team manager ahead of 2024-25, and so far, the decision looks to have been a wise one.
Since his first match in charge on 16 March, Watford have won the eighth-most points in the Championship (36), just four fewer than the league-high tallies accumulated by Leeds, Middlesbrough and Sunderland (40). Those three clubs and Millwall are the only teams to have won more games (11) than the Hornets (10) in that time. In the 24 games before Cleverley came in, Watford won 29 points and seven games.
Isolate the home form and it becomes clear Cleverley has turned Vicarage Road into a fortress. Of clubs to have been ever-present in the Championship since last season, no side have averaged more points per game at home than Watford (2.71), with the Hertfordshire club remaining unbeaten there in 11 league games. It’s 13 games unbeaten including League Cup wins at Vicarage Road over MK Dons and Plymouth Argyle earlier this season; no Watford manager has ever started their tenure with an unbeaten home run as long as this.
Across all competitions, Watford are one of only two sides in England’s top four tiers to have remained unbeaten at home since Cleverley took over in March; Manchester City (15) are the other. Watford have won nine of these 13 games, which is as many wins as they managed in their previous 28 matches at Vicarage Road before Cleverley’s arrival, stretching across the tenures of Ismaël and Chris Wilder before him.
Sensationally, Watford have already won as often at home in the Championship this season (6/7) than in the whole of 2023-24 (6/23). But how has Cleverley turned their fortunes around?
Looking specifically at this season, Watford predominantly play a 3-4-2-1 shape, with two No.10s keeping quite central off a lone striker and two central midfielders behind them. The two wide options in the midfield four double up as full-backs and advanced wide midfielders, so it can quite often resemble more of a 3-5-2, depending on the game state and the opposition’s shape.
Their setup can frequently lead to the striker being isolated from the rest of the side, with one of the 10s regularly dropping deeper to help plug gaps deeper in the midfield. With this being the case, Watford can struggle to get a foothold in matches until they become more open and a bit more chaotic.
This has led to Watford being one of the worst first-half teams in the division, but one of the best after half-time.
If Championship matches ended with 45 minutes played, Watford would be in the relegation zone this season with 13 points (W2 D7 L6). But looking at second-half performances alone, Watford (a hypothetical 28 points) are only bettered by Leeds (30).
The Hornets have spent a greater proportion of match time in a losing position than all but three other Championship sides in 2024-25 (39%), but Cleverley’s ability to adjust tactics at the right time coupled with his use of substitutes – in particular Kwadwo Baah – has helped them recover seven points from behind, a tally only bettered by Bristol City (9) and Hull City (8) this season.
With plenty of attacking options on Cleverley’s bench, only QPR (25) and Sheffield Wednesday (23) have seen their subs create more open-play chances this season than Watford’s (21).
Baah has been one of the most effective off the bench with his direct, powerful running causing problems for tired opposition legs. He won a penalty late on at home to leaders Sunderland in September, one that was converted to win the game, and then scored the winning goal in a comeback victory at Vicarage Road over Middlesbrough a week later.
He’s been one of Watford’s brightest sparks this season after finally breaking into the side, three years on from leaving Rochdale. Still only 21 years old, Baah impressed on loan at League One side Burton Albion last season before injury ended his campaign early, and his performances this term have earned him a new five-year deal with the Hornets.
Excellent young central defender Mattie Pollock is another player Watford have recently tied down with a longer-term deal, alongside arguably one of the Championship’s most-talented players: Giorgi Chakvetadze.
It’s only Pollock (1,326) who’s played more minutes in the Championship for Watford this season than Chakvetadze (1,304), with these the only two players to have started all 15 of their league matches in 2024-25.
After originally signing on loan from Gent last summer, he made the move permanent in January for a reported fee of €2.5 million. Clearly struggling for fitness after arriving at the club just three days before that season opener, he struggled to find a consistent spot in Ismaël’s system and was frequently used as a late impact sub. Cleverley has unlocked his potential, however.
After a brilliant showing at Euro 2024 with Georgia, Chakvetadze is the new jewel in the Watford crown. He leads the Championship rankings for open-play chances created (33) and xG assisted (3.45), while he is the outstanding ball carrier in the competition.
He leads every player in the Championship for ball carry distance (4,208m), progressive ball carry distance (2,405m) and carries that end in a shot or chance created for a teammate (30). His progressive ball carry distance is nearly three times that of any other Watford player this season (Baah – 880.5m).
When watching Watford, there are times when it looks like the gameplan is to just give Chakvetadze the ball and something good will happen. His impressive ball carrying stats are made possible with the Hornets sitting so deep on the pitch, but it could also be said that a lot of that is down to deploying a playing system that helps their best player cause maximum damage.
They don’t stretch the pitch with the ball as much as other Championship teams. In fact,
on average, Watford have been the third-narrowest team in terms of width per sequence this season, with their average distance from the middle of the pitch being 24.5m. Only Portsmouth (23.8m) and Millwall (24.4m) have been narrower in possession.
The Hornets have the second-lowest open-play possession start distance of any Championship club in 2024-25, behind only Plymouth. They begin their open-play sequences 39.9m away from their own goal on average and very rarely press high up the pitch. Vakoun Bayo – who has hit a rich vein of form with five goals in his last three games – will work hard and try to put pressure on the opposition’s backline, but he’s often the lone figure doing this, which ultimately leads to minimal success.
Only five Championship clubs have made more high turnovers of possession (the number of possessions that start in open play and begin 40m or less from the opponent’s goal) than Watford (83) this season, though they have attempted only 13 shots following a high turnover – the fourth-lowest in the division. None of those high turnovers have led to a goal.
Instead,
Watford look to win the ball back from opponents in deeper positions and counter-attack where possible. They have progressed upfield 1.92 metres per second with their open-play sequences on average this season, which is the fourth-quickest of any team, but still average 3.3 passes per sequence, which is very near the league average.
One of Watford’s issues is that despite playing this way, they don’t attempt many shots in these fast transitions – only nine in 15 games, in fact. That tally is less than 11 teams in the Championship this season, but they got it right against Oxford United in their last game, with Bayo’s goal after a fast break from Baah. There were less than 13 seconds between Ryan Andrews regaining possession on the edge of Watford’s own penalty area and the Ivorian striker converting at the second attempt after his original shot was saved.
Watford are a fun side to watch for the neutral because they create good chances themselves while being incredibly open at the back. Going forward, they have the sixth-highest non-penalty xG this season (19.53), and they average good quality shots too (0.11 – the joint-third best in the league). But at the back there are problems.
Watford have conceded the highest non-penalty xG in the league across 2024-25 (25.71) and the average quality of those shots is also the highest (0.12). Consistently giving opponents great chances to score isn’t ideal and they’re fortunate that some have been wasteful with their finishing. When their opponents aren’t wasteful – like in the chastening M1 derby loss to Luton and further thrashings at Preston and Norwich – Watford have looked worryingly brittle, especially through the centre of midfield.
It goes without saying that there is
some element of fortune to Watford’s good start to the season. The Championship is a very competitive league and is exciting thanks to the strong potential of any team being able to beat another. Therefore, if you are able to get narrow victories in games against a side of comparable ability that perhaps you didn’t deserve to win, it makes a huge difference.
Six of Watford’s eight league wins this season have been by a single goal, and in some of those it could be argued that they weren’t the better team. Their opening-day victory at Millwall, their 2-1 comeback win over Middlesbrough and their recent 1-0 successes over Blackburn and Oxford are examples of games that could have easily gone the other way. Even in their recent 6-2 drubbing of Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, most Watford fans would admit they were second best in the first half.
Some of Watford’s good fortune can be shown via Opta’s Championship expected points table, where they sit in 15th rather than sixth (the reality) and their tally of points is more than seven points lower (17.8 vs 25).
Our expected points model simulates the number of goals scored by each side in each match based on the expected goals (xG) value of every shot taken. It then uses the simulated number of goals to determine the match outcome (win/draw/loss). Each match is then simulated 10,000 times. The expected points for each team in each match can then be calculated based on the proportion of simulations they win/draw/lose.
It’s not an exact science, as expected goals data doesn’t include a lot of factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. Nevertheless, it can still give us a good guide as to how much we can read into the table at this stage of the season.
Despite some red flags in the data about Watford’s longer-term security in the top six, it’s undoubtedly a period that supporters of the club will be enjoying.
With
the second-youngest manager in the Championship at the helm, and one who Watford fans have a strong relationship with after previously being club captain and making over 150 appearances as a player, Cleverley could be instigating the start of a return to the good times at Vicarage Road.
Chaos is fun, right?
