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Big earners sold, off-field leadership, goals spread in one blueprint for Leeds United bounceback
Leeds United want to bounce back from relegation and return to the Premier League at the first time of asking. Not many teams have managed it. Since the 1992/93 campaign, just 26 of the 94 relegated sides have returned the following season.
In recent history, there are three sides who have managed it. Watford and Norwich City recovered from 2020 relegations to finish in the Championship’s top two at the end of 2020/21. Then, last season, Burnley stormed the table after going down in 2022.
LeedsLive has spoken to Andrew French of Watford Observer for some insight into how the Hornets achieved their bounce back in 2021. It was a campaign which began with Serbian Vladimir Ivic and ended with Spaniard Xisco Munoz.
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Neither boss had experience of English football and neither lasted more than a year at Vicarage Road, like so many bosses in recent years, but they got the job done. Watford would go up with the best defence in the division, conceding 30 goals in 46 games, but also the league’s best home record with 19 victories and 44 goals.
How did Watford bounce back at the first time of asking?
We had a pretty decent squad, even though we’d been relegated. We did lose some big names in the summer window ([Gerard] Deulofeu, [Abdoulaye] Doucoure, [Roberto] Pereyra), but that allowed the likes of Joao Pedro to come to the fore.
We made a couple of good defensive signings too (William Troost-Ekong and Francisco Sierralta), who are both full internationals that helped us have a very solid defence. One thing that certainly went in our favour was the fact it was lockdown: we were travelling away from home to empty stadiums usually full of home fans.
We had wins at places like Birmingham [City], Blackburn [Rovers], Cardiff [City] and Norwich [City].
What did Watford do in the summer of 2020 to prepare for that coming promotion push?
Signed the two defenders I mentioned. We only conceded 30 goals all season and that was down to a solid rearguard.
How did Vladimir Ivic and Xisco Munoz deal with the Championship? Neither had experience of English football before arriving.
They were very different. Ivic was all about not conceding goals. We won three of our first five games, all 1-0, and only conceded one goal in that time. It was a bit of a dour watch at times, but he had the team organised and set up to restrict.
As the first half of the season went on we became more inconsistent and there were rumours of players not liking Ivic and his style of play. It came to a head in a 2-0 defeat at Huddersfield [Town] with a performance that was totally inept and spineless.
In came Xisco, and he was very different, both in style of play and character. He was a very jolly and amiable man, and he was more keen to entertain while winning games.
He won four of his first five, then went three without a win, but a 6-0 romp against Bristol City started a run of 10 wins in 12 games and that bandwagon took us up.
That year’s top scorer, Ismaila Sarr, was only 11th in the scoring charts. It seems like a promotion built on the defence. What do you recall of what made that defence so impressive?
As I said, it was organised and people knew their roles. It wasn’t overly spectacular, but we made it hard for teams to create much against us.
Sarr scored 13, but we had other players like Pedro (nine) and [Troy] Deeney (seven) who chipped in at the other end. We were actually the top scorers in the division at home. It was away games where we tended to eke wins out.
What did Watford do in the summer and winter transfer windows of that season? How did transfer business help with the promotion push?
Getting those two defenders in during the summer was very important. We didn’t do a lot in the January, but one key signing was Dan Gosling from Bournemouth.
He came in and added a lot of experience at the top level as well as being a leader by example, on and off the pitch. He only started half a dozen games and came on another seven times, but he added more than just what we saw on the pitch.
He also popped up with the winner at Norwich in April which was a big win and left us on the brink of automatic promotion.
