New Watford manager Rob Edwards is determined to end the club's hire-and-fire policy and put down proper roots.
Recent years have seen the Vicarage Road dugout more akin to a conveyor belt, with bosses barely getting their feet under the table before being shipped out and replaced. Edwards becomes the eighth different man at the helm since the beginning of 2018.
The exhaustive list of recent managers reads Javi Gracia, Quique Sanchez Flores, Nigel Pearson, Vladimir Ivic, Xisco Munoz, Claudio Ranieri and Roy Hodgson. But the appointment of Edwards, just after he guided Forest Green Rovers to the League Two title, hints at a possible change of approach from Watford's owners, the Pozzo family.
Unlike many of his predecessors, Edwards is a young coach with fresh ideas and without much, if any, baggage. The 39-year-old worked his way up the England youth ranks before his only season as a senior coach saw him lead Forest Green to an unlikely title.
Edwards arrives in Hertfordshire after the Hornets were relegated from the Premier League. Speaking to the Athletic, he says he is looking forward to the challenge and that the club's penchant for sacking managers does not faze him.
"Maybe this is wrong of me to say, I don’t know, but I feel that’s why I’m here," he said. "I think the club has seen it a different way. The club are thinking, ‘Hang on, we’ve got an opportunity here. We want to go down this route. We’ve identified Rob as a person that can help us build something’.
"It’s been a funny couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to working with the players and I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to have an influence at this football club on the pitch, as well as off it. Conversations that I’ve had with Scott Duxbury (CEO/chairman) and Gino (Pozzo, owner); I couldn’t have been more clear on what’s important to me in terms of building a culture and environment to try and build success.
"You can’t get away from the fact there’s been the turnover of head coach or managers over the last few years, but at no stage over the last couple of weeks have I felt that sort of pressure is there for me. I’ll put that pressure on myself because I want to do well and I want the football club to do well."
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Edwards' sudden exit from Forest Green perhaps understandably left a bitter taste in the mouth of Rovers' chair, Dale Vince.
Speaking to the BBC, Vince said: "It's poor from Rob and he knows it. But we are where we are. It turns out there were secret negotiations that were completed. I thought I knew him better as a person. I was convinced it wasn't happening. It's just disappointing really. Rob is a talented coach and we knew one day he would get a big opportunity that would take him away. We expected that but it's the manner of it."
