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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
Club history:
Managerial league table
By Chris Salter
 
In years gone by, I often found myself trying to evaluate the performance of recent managers against the mighty helmsmen that steered Watford through the troubled waters of the Football and Southern Leagues in decades past. Well, it ain't easy, as doubtless you will all agree. However, as a slightly more objective test than just saying, "He wasn't worth a ****", I decided on the simplest possible scheme, namely to work out the percentage of points a manager actually obtained from the results of all matches the first team played under him compared with the target of having won each and every match. I know that this doesn't consider the league we were playing in, the amount of money made available to the manager, the players available to him when he arrived, the position of Mars, or one hundred and one other things. However, given the context that a manager served within, it does say how successful he was.

To achieve the above, I got the total match results for each manager pre-Kenny Jackett from Trefor Jones's wonderful "The Watford FC Illustrated Who's Who", including both cup and league games. For Kenny, and GT's present incarnation, I have done the job myself from BSaD, complete to the end of the 1997-98 season. To see what difference it would make, I did the sums twice, once with 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and again with 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw. You'll see that it made little difference, so I order the managers below on the former scheme, while including the latter in the table too.

In the main table, I have listed managers with more than one period in charge by their combined rating. At the foot of the table, I also give the "score" for GT's present incarnation.

Manager Rank (3-pt/win) Rank (2-pt/win) Years No. of games % of Perfect
(3-pt/win)		 % of Perfect
(2-pt/win)
Bill McGarry 1 1 1963-64 57 55.6 60.5
Graham Taylor* 2 2 1977-87
+1996
+1997-??		 502 53.3 57.8
Bill Findlay 3 4 1937-47 114 51.2 54.8
Kenny Jackett 4 3 1996-97 57 51.2 54.8
Ken Furphy 5 5 1964-71 295 47.9 52.4
Ron Burgess 6 7 1959-63 200 47.5 51.3
Len Goulden 7 6 1952-55
+1956		 152 47.4 52.0
Harry Kent 8 8 1910-26 484 47.0 51.1
Neil McBain 9 11 1929-37
1956-59		 458 46.7 50.4
Mike Keen 10 8 1973-77 178 46.6 51.1
Steve Harrison 11 10 1988-90 100 45.7 50.5
John Goodall 12 12 1903-10 246 45.1 49.4
Steve Perryman 13 13 1990-93 121 44.4 49.2
Eddie Hapgood 14 14 1948-50 88 43.2 48.3
Fred Pagnam 15 15 1926-29 126 43.1 46.8
Glenn Roeder 16 16 1993-96 120 41.4 45.8
Jack Bray 17 17 1947-48 35 38.1 41.4
Haydn Green 18 18 1951-52 54 36.4 39.8
Ron Gray 19 19 1950-51 56 32.1 36.6
George Kirby 20 20 1971-73 88 29.2 34.1
Colin Lee 21 21 1990 28 28.6 33.9
Johnny Paton 22 22 1955-56 15 26.7 33.3
Dave Bassett 23 23 1987-88 23 26.1 30.4
*Graham Taylor 1997-?? 56 60.7 67.0

So, there it is. GT had a season which, alone, would put him top of the Managerial League. After all, Bill McGarry never got us promoted, though as many of us Ol' Farts will remember, he gave us a great season to finish third in the old Division III, one point off promotion. Of course, he did have the services of our greatest ever goalkeeper, Pat Jennings, in his side. (What me be controversial? Never!) Anyway, in the season in which GT became our manager in the greatest number of games, he also saw off McGarry's single season performance handsomely.