The English Premier League is the most-watched soccer competition in the world. With fans from every country and every continent, the immense viewership of the league means that the players have become celebrities, and the clubs in the division have become multi-million dollar businesses. As wonderful as all the benefits of being a member of the Premier League club are, there are also pitfalls. The biggest of all of those pitfalls is relegation. Lose your position in the league, and next season you’ll be earning far less money, and you’ll be watched by far fewer people. The financial consequences of relegation from the Premier League can be devastating (you only need to look at the sad fate of Bolton Wanderers to understand that), and the threat of relegation can sometimes make club owners make strange decisions. That leads us to the strange goings-on at Watford.
At the time of writing, there are only two games remaining in the Premier League season. By the time you read this, Watford may only have one left. They’re at serious risk of going down, but there are clubs in worse positions. As things stand, they’re in better shape than either Bournemouth or Aston Villa. Norwich City is already relegated. Bournemouth is all-but relegated after a disastrous loss at home to Southampton in a crucial fixture. Aston Villa can still theoretically stay up but would need to summon far better performances than the ones they’ve been putting in recently if they’re to do so. Watford has a three-point advantage over Villa and Bournemouth, and a game in hand on the latter. Their fate is in their own hands. That hasn’t stopped the board from taking the seemingly inexplicable step of sacking Nigel Pearson.
There may be more to Pearson’s sacking than meets the eye, and we may only find out the full story in the fullness of time. On the surface, though, it looks like a bizarre step to take. When Pearson was appointed last December, his brief was to somehow keep Watford in the division. He took over a club that was in last place, and had already fired two managers due to poor performance. The situation looked hopeless, but Pearson had been there before. Prior to Leicester’s improbable Premier League championship win, Pearson was the man who kept the club in the top flight by the narrowest of margins after all hope seemed lost. It appears that he was on the brink of doing the same for Watford. The club has won seven games under his stewardship, and risen out of the relegation zone. In the minds of most Watford fans, and also in the minds of most respected football pundits, he’d done a good job.
With Pearson gone, the club will complete its remaining two fixtures against Manchester City and Arsenal with caretaker manager Hayden Mullins at the helm. Mullins does not have extensive coaching experience, and it’s hard to see how anyone could believe that the Hornets have a better chance of getting a result against either of those big teams with him in the dugout than Pearson. Pearson knew the players and appeared to be getting better performances out of them than his predecessors Quique Sanchez Flores or Javi Gracia. Things had tailed off recently, though, and it appears that a poor 3-1 loss away to fellow strugglers West Ham United was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Watford’s notoriously trigger-happy owners. Pearson himself admitted after that game that the performance wasn’t good enough, but surely one bad result from a struggling team is acceptable (and perhaps even expected) at this stage of the season? Pearson and his players needed to do better, but based on the fact that they’re in such a better position now than they were before Christmas, it felt like he’d earned the right to stay and try to turn things around. You don’t always get what you deserve in football, though, and Pearson now finds himself back on the employment market again.
This development isn’t a new one for Watford. When Flores was fired in December, it was the second time the same coach had been dismissed in the past five years. During that time, we’ve also seen Walter Mazzari and Marco Silva try and fail to build a lasting legacy at Watford. In each case, the pattern is the same. A new coach comes in, struggles to keep the club out of relegation danger, and is fired at the first sign of trouble. To the impartial observer, it feels almost as if the owners look at Watford as if the club were an online slots game. There’s only one thing to do if you don’t win when you spin the reels at an online slots website. You spin again, and you hope that next time around you see something that’s more to your liking. Given all the money that’s involved in Premier League football, keeping a club in the division would probably qualify as the highest-stakes online slots in history. Ask anyone who spends their time playing such games, though, and they’ll tell you that some days you can’t buy a win no matter what you do. Watford’s board has been spinning and winning for several years now. With this latest surprise move, their luck might just run out.
Anything can happen in football, but based on form, both Manchester City and Arsenal should defeat Watford comfortably. If they do, Watford will finish the season on the 34 points they have right now. Bournemouth can make it to 34 points if they win their one remaining game, but their goal difference is inferior to Watford’s. Aston Villa can overhaul Watford’s position with either two wins or a win and a draw. A heavy defeat for Watford in either of their remaining games could also be extremely costly for them because their goal difference advantage isn’t so significant that it couldn’t be reversed if Bournemouth win well and Watford lose badly. The club’s Premier League status is on a knife-edge, and this baffling managerial decision might prove to be the nudge that sends them in the wrong direction.
Perhaps we’re wrong. Perhaps Watford will rip up the form book, win both their remaining games and complete yet another ‘great escape.’ Even if they do, their owners will eventually have to learn that like any gambler, there are times to fold, and there are times to keep hold of what you’ve got. Watford fans will be hoping that they’re not about to learn that lesson in the most painful way possible.
