Watford's Season Struggles: A Tough Start and Hope for Recovery
Watford’s season never really waited for them. It just tore out of the blocks while they stood there counting centre-backs.
For the whole of August, Alessio Dionisi had only two recognised central defenders to work with. Two. In a Championship season notorious for its grind and chaos, that number felt reckless. By the time deadline day finally brought reinforcements, the damage was already etched into the early weeks of the campaign.
The board will say this was all part of the plan. They wanted better, younger targets. They weren’t going to be bounced into short-term fixes just to appease the table or the terraces. On paper, with the window now shut and everyone fit, this Watford squad looks reasonable in most areas. Midfield still feels light, but elsewhere there is balance, potential and some genuine quality.
Some of the early business has been outstanding. Iker Bravo has exploded onto the scene, a rare bright spark in a stuttering start. Federico Ravaglia looks a clear upgrade in goal. Jordan Zemura and Omar Traore give Dionisi strong, modern options at full-back, while Soumaila Coulibaly and Branimir Mlacic have shown enough to suggest they will be important pieces as the season wears on.
The issue hasn’t been who Watford signed. It’s when – and how few were available to actually play.
Dionisi has been forced to lean on the same core of players game after game. The schedule has bitten hard: two matches most weeks, intensity high, recovery time low. Legs have gone heavy. Muscles have tightened. Injuries have crept in. Form dipped in August and the hangover has lingered into September.
The late arrivals have only complicated the picture. Several turned up short of match fitness, nowhere near match sharp, yet still found themselves pulled into a depleted squad because there simply weren’t enough bodies. Watford haven’t even been able to fill their bench in the last two fixtures, naming fewer than the maximum eight substitutes. In the past five games they’ve carried two goalkeepers among the replacements – a clear, public sign of how stretched they are.
No wonder Dionisi keeps repeating the same phrase before and after games: “It’s not easy.” It isn’t. He is trying to build a structure, an identity, while juggling a squad that has felt like a work in progress long after the season started.
All of which makes the timing of the international break feel like a lifeline. For a Watford head coach, that carries its own irony; breaks have often been the prelude to sackings at Vicarage Road. This time, it offers something different: a chance to breathe.
Once the Bristol City match is out of the way on Friday, Watford have three weeks to reset. Three weeks to get players fit, integrate the late signings properly and stitch together something resembling a settled side. Three weeks to make sure the second phase of the season doesn’t mirror the first.
By then, though, they will almost certainly be chasing. The cautious early-August stance in the market – waiting for value, waiting for the right profile – has come at a cost. The policy might yet be vindicated in terms of individual talent, but in the unforgiving maths of a promotion race, lost points in the opening months rarely come back.
The Hornets should eventually have a squad capable of competing with the division’s better sides. The worry is the calendar. If it takes until late October for Dionisi to finally have the depth and sharpness he needs, how far up the mountain will Watford have to climb just to see the leaders again?
