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Old Trafford attended a strange show last weekend. Manchester United, who ran after fourth place on the day of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's unveiling, sat behind the ball, playing almost entirely on the home counterattack. Against Watford.
Times have clearly changed at Old Trafford and the Premier League is no longer United's personal realm, but it was still a 90-minute surprise. Watford played all the football, created just about every opportunity, and forced his hosts to play their best home game under Solskjaer.
They played well. It was not just a good effort, in the true sense of the word, but a really composed display, full of vitality and intelligent ideas. If they had brought a little more efficiency with them until the M1, they would have won all three points.
Sometimes the potential of a team hits you right in the eye. Far from the top six, where summer spending and numerical progress are inevitable each year, the most valuable product is guidance – the feeling that a team has a plan, a method and intends to go elsewhere than directly seventeenth place and then to the bank with another broadcast payment. Watford has that.
More importantly and unlike their previous seasons in the highest flight, they also have continuity.
Previously, the end of the season usually resulted in a change of manager, and with this uncertainty. As good as the club's monitoring networks, this could only be an obstacle. The best players are usually attracted to permanence and are generally not inclined to engage their future in loose theory.
Of course, Watford benefits from the richness of the Premier League and has already attracted a fine, but this additional definition can only be helpful.
Perhaps it has not been sufficiently explained how far these transition summers have been mined. If each pre-season starts with a hard reset, during which the formations and the existing strategy are rejected, a lot of the benefits that can be obtained from June and July are lost at the point of time needed to re-educate the players and build it. new relationships.
There may be a lot of evidence to suggest that the short and vivid shock model works, and that the mechanisms previously used by Watford to stay in this league have their place, but the argument of stability is felt.
Tuesday night was tricky, it was not as impressive as Saturday. Fulham is a flawed team, but Watford has spent most of the first half stumbling on his feet; 1-1 did not flatter the visitors at the break and the hosts deserved their plots.
Javi Gracia made a quick adjustment: Roberto Pereyra and Gerard Deulofeu, Watford's indulgent dictators, followed Daryl Janmaat and Andre Gray. The effect was devastating.
Fulham was torn by the same purring that was observed at Old Trafford and by the refined goals of Deeney and Femenia, and a very brilliant Hughes, who sent Fulham to the ground.
Gracia admitted he was angry in the locker room and pissed off at what he had seen in the first half.
The difference between the two halves really talked about his grip on this group. One can imagine, for example, that all his predecessors found themselves in a similar situation in the past and that they too launched vulgar language in the locker room. With little effect, however.
The long, barren descents of Watford in the second half of the season were notorious. It was a question of responsibility or lack of responsibility, and that is what Gracia's permanence has conquered.
But it is also about him, not just the convenience of the situation. Gracia is a discreet coach, he does not really feel his emotions in front of the media, but he has an almost childish enthusiasm for the game that is sometimes lost in his monologues. He is very knowledgeable. He does not hide behind arbitration decisions nor does he dwell on the areas behind which so many of his peers seek refuge; It's easy to understand why footballers like to play for him and why so many of them have improved since his arrival.
Tuesday's game was more marked for its effect on Fulham, of course, but the three points also brought Watford past their previous points record. On Sunday, they head for Wembley and, as the locals left it last night, That Will Will be floating around Vicarage Road. What a contrasting moment it was! the stadium was practically empty, but end-of-season optimism is still a novelty here.
Watford has never really been a club of chaos since returning to the Premier League, but they have suffered a lot of flux and uncertainty and yet are characterized by this relative calm.
I may have misread it, but this semi-final does not feel like I'm doing anything or just missing out on something before the house is completely burned. Instead, it's just another landmark on an upward curve. Lose and Gracia will always be there in August, ready to leave with a team that is developing all the time.
Summer will not be without trials. Abdoulaye Doucoure will be the subject of great interest from very large clubs and this shows how excellent he was. Losing it would leave a big hole in the middle of the field and Watford will need the entire Pozzos surveillance network to fill it. But the modified nature of this new age makes it even less intimidating.
Doucoure would be a tough defeat, but the process of replacing it – buying in the literal sense, then integrating a new player – now seems less difficult.
When he left, Doucoure would have a very high fee and, with the flexibility that would allow it, Watford will know what they are looking for in their successor. This is the other great advantage of continuity: once a team has worked for a long time under the head coach, it is no longer a vague concept. Instead, they become more role models and the key to their functionality is less of an enigma.
It must still be realistic and recognize that Vicarage Road is not one of the great theaters of modern football, as atmospheric as it is, and that even in London, Watford is not able to offer the highest wages. competitive. Nevertheless, they are becoming discretely recognized as one of the best clubs in the country to rehabilitate their reputation and incubate developing talents.
Doucoure has become one of the most sought after circles in Europe. Etienne Capoue, his half-partner, finally holds the promise he made in Toulouse. and Pereyra was not really going anywhere to Juventus before his arrival.
Deulofeu may be an exasperating player at times, no one has yet been able to train these fumbles, but he is probably now playing the best football of his career. In addition, Will Hughes is on an upward push that threatens to take her to the England team. Without the intervention of the injury, it could have been the same for Nathaniel Chalobah.
It seems like a very good place to play. He also seems to have acquired a new sense of order. Previously, the approach seemed to depend on the selection of talented players with a respected coach and the hope of one season on the other that the result would be positive.
And, to pay their royalties to Gino Pozzo and Scott Duxbury, that was most of the time. But without the putty of an orthodox environment, progress has always felt fragile and temporary. During a season, fractures would begin to appear and as relationships deteriorate and insecurities metastasize, all that would be built would begin to fall on itself.
But no more, there is concrete in this structure now. Watford seems to have cured their imperfections and thus become one of the few Premier League clubs to make sense.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
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