Four games to go, an unexpected bid for the play-offs about to be ended mathematically, and so yesterday’s 2-1 defeat at West Brom may well have given us glimpse into the future.
While nothing has been even mooted and this is not an allusion to inside information, the chances of both Giorgi Chakvetadze and Kwadwo Baah being at the club next season are low.
The club’s model of using player trading to supplement all other forms of income – of which this is not intended to be a criticism, as it has helped Watford achieve what it has, both before and since Pozzo ownership – means that when a diamond is discovered it is generally sold rather than turned into a piece of jewellery.
Go back to Luther Blissett and John Barnes, or come right up to the departures of Joao Pedro and Yaser Asprilla – Watford have always sold their finest assets, as have many clubs of a similar size and stature.
It makes good business sense to sell at peak value: it allows great players to further their careers and it means the gap between income and expenditure is bridged.
As the recent accounts and commentary around them showed, the Hornets are going to need to find money to cover their losses once again, even with some very prudent trimming of costs.
And so as the current season draws to a close, it’s hard not to think that it won’t just be other clubs who are looking at the likes of Chakvetadze and Baah, and thinking ‘transfer’.
A bit like football’s version of Vinted, as the season changes from winter into spring and summer, we look through the wardrobe and see what we can sell in order to avoid buying our holiday clothes on the credit card.
So, with injury ending the seasons of both Watford’s two most threatening forward players, the team yesterday gave all of us a glimpse of what life could be like against strong opponents should they not be here in August.
It may be that neither goes (unlikely), only one is sold (probable) or both depart (possible), but the game at The Hawthorns allowed us to see Watford field a team shorn of the two players who have scared opposition defences this season, and created the most babble among other teams’ fans and media.
And, to be fair, it wasn’t that bad.
In fact, Watford played away to a team that still has a half-decent chance of being involved in the play-offs and enjoyed 61% of the ball, had 50% more goal attempts and more touches in the opposition’s box.
But what it also showed is that without someone who can readily go past people, be that with pace, power, trickery or a sprinkling of all three, then having lots of the ball in dangerous areas won’t count for much.
Of course, there was also the lack of a potent No.9 because, while Mamadou Doumbia continues to be a willing worker who runs the channels, jostles with more experienced defenders and learns game on game, he is still a teenager from Mali with little more than 12 hours of English football to his name.
Meanwhile, on the bench was a striker who has scored 10 goals but has netted in only 16% of the games he’s featured in (and not since January 14).
Yes, there was Rocco Vata on the sidelines and when he came on it did add more unpredictability and edge to the Watford forward movement.
But in the same way that it’s harsh to expect Doumbia to be the answer to the goalscoring problem, it would be unfair to load Vata with the expectation of filling the void left (albeit temporarily for now) by Baah and Chakvetadze.
Yesterday’s defeat was simply a case of one team having the better individuals in key areas when it mattered – and that includes the depth of their squad.
Albion sent on Adam Armstrong (PL striker who cost Southampton £15m and scores at better than one in three), Grady Diangana (£18m purchase from West Ham) and Daryl Dike (American international).
Watford were a match - often more than a match - for Albion but in the big moments that win or lose you games, they came up short.
The opening goal was all too simple, all too avoidable, and all too familiar.
At Coventry earlier in the season, Victor Torp scored the Sky Blues opener having run from midfield to net – watched from a distance by Edo Kayembe, who simply hadn’t tracked back.
Yesterday, when the very impressive Tom Fellows received the ball out on the right flank in the 10th minute, in the centre of the pitch Moussa Sissoko and Karlan Grant were almost within touching distance of each other.
Fellows spun Tom Dele-Bashiru, who probably should have sensed the danger and performed the now commonplace ‘tactical foul’, and at that point Grant began to accelerate towards the box. Sissoko didn’t.
By the times Fellows got to the edge of the box and looked up for options, Grant was about six yards ahead of the Watford skipper who then had a perfect view of the ball being swept past Egil Selvik and into the net.
Great run and inch-perfect pass from Fellows, meaning Grant didn’t have to check his stride, but if nobody is going to track midfield runners then goals like that will be conceded.
If the gap created by the exit of Chakvetadze and/or Baah, plus the No.9 issue both need attention, then a midfielder with defensive instinct also ought to be on the list for the recruitment team in the summer.
The goal was one of Albion’s only two goal attempts in the first half, yet for all their possession Watford didn’t have enough end product.
They retained the ball well, moved it about confidently and enjoyed territorial advantage. Sadly, though, there isn’t a column in the league table for such frippery.
The closest the Hornets came – and it was close – saw the ball cannon back off the upright when Edo Kayembe clubbed a left-footed shot from the edge of the box which beat keeper Josh Griffiths.
Early in the second half Albion should have extended their lead when Mikey Johnston was presented with a clear sight of goal from six yards, only for Jeremy Ngakia to throw himself in the way and deflect the ball over the bar.
Goal number two saw Watford picked apart again as Fellows got in behind the otherwise impressive Caleb Wiley on the right.
He cut the ball back and Johnston had simply wandered into space in the box, allowing him to open his body up and steer a side-footed effort beyond Selvik.
The Norwegian international denied the hosts a third when he was quickly off his line to turn Isaac Price’s shot wide, and at 2-0 the game looked set to ebb away to an inevitable conclusion.
However, there have been a few games this season (Coventry away springs to mind again) where the Hornets have come alive at 2-0 down and threatened to salvage an apparent lost cause.
And so it was at The Hawthorns as almost out of nowhere Watford reduced the arrears.
It was another exquisite pass from Imran Louza that created the goal, and the Moroccan must surely be entering calculations for Player of the Season by now.
Two goals and three assists from 29 league appearances are the bare stats, but Louza has regularly carried Watford, particularly during a far stickier second half of the season.
While losing Baah or Chakvetadze would leave a hole to fill, it would be easier to replace either of those than to find someone who can do what Louza does.
In terms of Player of the Season, some will say he hasn’t played enough games but think back to the 21/22 campaign when Hassane Kamara won the award for effectively having a big smile and connecting with the fans from January to May.
Louza has gone from one foot out of the exit door a year ago to being a pivotal, instrumental leader on the pitch, and his vision for the goal yesterday is largely unrivalled in the Championship.
Sissoko made a good, well-timed run between the central defenders and Louza not only saw it but then had the skill to steer a curling pass with the outside of his boot into the skipper’s path.
He then buried a shot past Griffiths for his third goal in the last six games, taking his tally to the season to five.
It equals the Frenchman’s highest seasonal total in England, matching the five he netted for Newcastle in 2014/15, and you have to go back as far as 2010/11 for the last time he scored more in one campaign when he got six for Toulouse.
Suddenly there was a little sense of nervousness, both in the stands and among the home players, but realistically it never truly felt like Watford would wrest a point from The Hawthorns.
Indeed, it needed another fine one-handed stop from Selvik to prevent Grant scoring his second and putting the game to bed.
The closest the Hornets came was right at the very end of stoppage time when Ngakia swung over a cross from the right and Mattie Pollock headed downwards with Griffiths springing to his right to palm the ball away.
Had Watford sneaked a draw it would have been possible to claim it was justified, but Albion would have pointed to the quality of their chances, some of which Selvik saved but others that they fluffed, and wondered how they let victory slip away.
Albion ended the day a win outside the play-off places, though if Coventry beat Hull tomorrow night as the formbook would suggest, then they will be four points drift with only 12 left to play for.
Meanwhile, a Sky Blues win would mean Watford would go into the final quartet of matches – starting with one against second-placed Burnley – eight points behind.
Even a 12-point haul won’t be enough now and, while the form since the turn of the year has stymied the chances of being involved in the play-offs, this season was surely more about not falling any lower than at the end of the last campaign than it was about flirting with a rise back to the Premier League.
As an aside, is promotion really all that it’s cracked up to be?! Sure, the financial benefits mean security beyond the likely one season Watford would stay in the top-flight.
But after nine months of getting whipped home and away (see Southampton for details) and becoming the team that the pundits try not to snigger at on Match of the Day, there’s then the inevitable sale of any players too good to drop back down and the loss of all the commercial partners who were really only interested in you because it meant they could see [insert name of big club/s of your choice] from an expensive seat.
The last six teams that have gone up have, or are about to, come straight back down again. One of them (ho, ho, ho) could even suffer the ignominy of successive relegations and be faced with having the biggest white elephant of a stadium in League One.
So while the fall-off of performances and results is going to leave Watford in or hopefully a little above mid-table, it probably means they will end the season where their overall campaign merits.
What yesterday showed is what happens during the coming summer will be vital in deciding if the Hornets are able to try and edge a little nearer to the top six instead of toppling painfully closer to the bottom half a dozen next season.
In the three summers since dropping out of the Premier League, Watford have sold roughly £150m-worth of players and reinvested about £25m of that.
It has produced finishes of 11th, 15th and perhaps somewhere just above halfway this time around.
There will be sales again this close season, for the reasons mentioned earlier, and doubtless that will reduce the number of potential matchwinners within the squad.
As we saw at The Hawthorns, a team minus explosive pace, exceptional ball-carrying and a proven goalscorer can and will compete – but creating chances, taking them and winning becomes a lot harder.
