The Table Doesn’t Lie: How far will Watford let Marco Silva take them?
Watford are flying high in the Premier League despite losing to Chelsea at the weekend, while Slaven Bilic’s days appear to be numbered at West Ham.
20. Crystal Palace (preseason prediction: 11th, difference: -9)
19. Bournemouth (8th, -11)
18. Everton (7th, -11)
17. Stoke (16th, -1)
16. West Ham (10th, -6)
15. Swansea (17th, +2)
14. Leicester (15th, +1)
13. West Brom (12th, -1)
12. Brighton (20th, +8)
11. Huddersfield (18th, +7)
There’s a hole in Slaven Bilic’s life, and it’s shaped like Andy Carroll. This isn’t particularly novel analysis at this point in the Croatian’s tenure as West Ham manager. But it’s a sign of his struggles that even after buying Marko Arnautovic and Javier Hernandez in the summer, and putting a healthy Manuel Lanzini back in the starting XI against Brighton on Friday, his team look almost completely aimless without their target man.
The Hammers’ Carroll dependence is testament to Bilic’s failures as a manager as well as Carroll’s remarkable skill set. The forward, for all his lack of refinement, provides a manager with a built-in playing style, an identity, so often the difference between a lower- and upper-mid-table finish. There may be better headers of the ball, but if there are any better winners of areal duels, I haven’t seen them.
In the absence of Carroll, how do West Ham play? Bilic doesn’t seem to know. Nor do his players. Against Brighton, they enjoyed plenty of possession, most of it in the opposition half, and managed only two shots on target, both from well outside the box. Arnautovic and Michail Antonio are dangerous wide players, Lanzini is a very talented number 10, Chicharito knows where the goal is, and yet West Ham’s attack looks completely directionless when it doesn’t have Carroll as a focal point up top.
Bilic remains one of the most likable managers in the Premier League, the players played with some energy and enthusiasm against Brighton and as a result London Stadium didn’t feel quite like the atmosphere-vacuum it was last season. But the squad, which is easily good enough for a top-half finish, is massively underperforming. This is Bilic’s responsibility, and it seems increasingly like it will be his downfall.
He’s in his third season at the club, and has yet to prove he has any clear idea of what he wants to do with it. Dimitri Payet and the emotion of the club’s last season at Upton Park made Bilic’s first year a roaring success. Dimitri Payet and the (lack of) emotion of the club’s first season at the London Stadium made the disappointments of his second somewhat more palatable. But he’s running out of mitigating circumstances.
West Ham have a relatively easy schedule over the next month, with matches against Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Watford, Leicester and Everton, before a grueling run at the beginning of December, when they face Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal in consecutive weeks.
Carroll’s return will be a boon, but it will also be a reminder of how poorly this team is being managed. The Englishman is stunning to watch in his own, wild way, but his teammates are capable of much more than flinging crosses in his general direction, and he’s capable of much more than flinging himself in the general direction of their crosses.
If Bilic doesn’t adjust his approach accordingly, his time should be up. There’s little evidence to suggest he will.
10. Southampton (9th, -1)
9. Liverpool (3rd, -6)
8. Burnley (19th, +11)
7. Newcastle (14th, +7)
6. Watford (13th, +7)
5. Arsenal (6th, +1)
4. Chelsea (5th, +1)
3. Tottenham (4th, +1)
2. Manchester United (2nd, –)
1. Manchester City (1st, –)
Watford’s approach to life in the Premier League is, if nothing else, unique. They’re on their third manager in three seasons since getting promoted to the top flight, and their ninth manager in six seasons under the ownership of the Pozzo family. What they’re doing doesn’t make sense, or at least defies our normal standards of logic (and decency) when it comes to coaching appointments. It’s also, undeniably, working.
The latest, and most intriguing, man to take the Pozzo plunge is Marco Silva, who arrived with a greater pedigree than his predecessors, Walter Mazzarri (a stalwart of the Serie A mid-table) and Quique Sanchez Flores (a stalwart of the Spanish Liga mid-table, with a brief sojourn in the Middle East). Silva’s road to Watford has taken him through less high-profile territory, but he won trophies in Portugal and Greece, and earned plaudits for an admirable but failed attempt to save Hull from the drop last season. The consensus is that the 40-year-old is One To Watch.
Watford’s performances early on this season certainly lend weight to that opinion. They’ve taken points off Liverpool and Arsenal, and gave Chelsea an almighty scare on Saturday, taking a 2-1 lead they could easily have made a 4-1 lead, before eventually losing 4-2. They’ve also been effective against mid-table and bottom half sides, with wins against Bournemouth, Southampton and Swansea, and draws against Brighton and West Brom.
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Heading into 2017-18, few expected anyone to seriously challenge the big six. Even with Liverpool imploding and Arsenal Arsenaling at new, higher levels of intensity than ever before, that still feels like a safe(ish) bet. But with Everton in the relegation zone and the likes of Southampton, West Ham and Leicester apparently determined to remain as mediocre as possible, the race for seventh is suddenly very interesting. Watford, in sixth place after nine matches, are now the frontrunners.
They have, however, been here (or somewhere like it) before. The Hornets were seventh at Christmas in their first season back in the top flight in 2015-16 under Flores, before a run of only four wins in 20 matches saw them slip to 13th. Last season followed a similar pattern. Mazzarri’s side were seventh after 15 matches, but had slipped to 10th by the midway point, and finished 17th after a run of six consecutive losses to close the campaign.
Whatever specific on-pitch problems led to these declines, it seems reasonable to suggest they were exacerbated by the knowledge (of players mostly, but also of fans, and everyone in between) a new manager would be arriving in the summer. This is the challenge facing Silva — to establish an identity at a club that has become defined by its miraculous ability to reinvent itself every summer.
There are some very talented players in this Watford side, as they showed once more at the weekend, but substantial player turnover — excluding loans and free transfers, of which there have been many, the Hornets have bought 26 players over the past three seasons — has led to a truly bizarre collection of talent, the sort of cosmopolitan mishmash of European almost-journeyman (and Richarlison) that has only recently been made possible by the money now flooding the Premier League’s mid-table and bottom half.
That Silva has established something resembling a coherent identity — solid and hardworking off the ball, quick to get numbers forward in attack — in such a short space of time is testament to his quality as a manger. Granted, there was a similar conversation to be had when the Troy Deeney-Odion Ighalo strike partnership vaulted Flores’ side to the upper reaches of the table in their first season back in the top flight, but there’s something more sustainable about the current approach, less dependent as it is on the goalscoring prowess of two individuals.
We must never underestimate the joy the Pozzo’s seem to derive from hiring new managers (and firing old ones), but if what they’ve been looking for this past half decade is a man who truly deserves the opportunity to build something at the club, Silva — young, charismatic, ambitious — seems like an ideal candidate.
This is Watford we’re talking about, which means we simply can’t discount their willingness to fire a manager for no good reason — and indeed it’s likely Silva sees the club as much as a stepping stone as they see him — but even at this early stage, something feels a little bit different this time around, a little bit better.