Balague: Watford's Silva sacking matched Pozzo recipe for success, and proves no manager is bigger than the club

If survival is the name of the game for many clubs in the Premier League, then Watford – love them or hate them – have certainly met expectations since their arrival into the top flight at the start of the 2015-16 season.

A club with its own plan, its own dynamic and a club that will not be swayed from what it believes is the right path and if that means that along the way some people are going to have their noses put out of joint, then so be it.

The news that Marco Silva has been dismissed by the club so soon after Watford did all they could to keep him from the clutches of Everton has come as a surprise to many people. Not me.

The Pozzo family have not exactly been slow in taking whatever action they have felt necessary in order to maintain their place in the elite level of English football with no fewer than ten different coaches at Vicarage Road since they took over in July 2012.

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To put it into some kind of perspective, Bournemouth who were promoted at the same time have since October 2012 had just the one, Eddie Howe.

But we are perhaps over-emphasising the importance of the managerial role not so much in the context of how a team is playing, certainly on matters of how a club is run.

The screams of protestations coming from sections of the media have been predictable. Joey Barton, I understand, has even called for clubs to be docked six points for sacking their managers mid-season; good luck with that one!

This will not be a major concern to a club who despite a constant revolving door of managers since taking over in June 2012 are, in the words of their former owner and most famous fan Sir Elton John, very much ‘still standing’.

And the reason for this is that more than ever, even at places like Manchester City and Tottenham – teams that, in Guardiola and Pochettino, have the most revered and respected of managers – the reality is that the place of the manager is only ever seen as just another piece of a huge machine with a plan that runs from the top downwards.

Premier League clubs, even some of the less heralded ones, have grown into enormous entities and the perceived notion that everything works and functions purely on the words and strengths of the man appointed to manage the first team is as illogical as it is unworkable. In truth, ’twas ever thus, but never as much as it is in todays’s Premier League climate.

If the manager does not fit the dynamic, for whatever reason, then changes have to be made.

Personally I have always felt that managers should normally get just one year deals and then at the end of that year both parties can decide where they want to from then on. Such an arrangement keeps all parties on their toes.

Guardiola at Barcelona would only extend his contracts one season at a time for the simple reason that he knew that there would be no one in a better position to tell him when he thought he had taken the club as far as he could than himself.

Daniel Levy has said that he would like to make sure that Pochettino would remain at Spurs for the next 15 years but is he right? I understand completely what he is saying and that is, for the first time probably in his time at Spurs, he feels genuinely happy with the synergy in place, the way things are progressing and this is his way of expressing his appreciation and regard for what the Argentinian coach is doing at the club.

But if the Watford and Silva sacking shows us anything it’s that in football management terms, the road from hero to zero is indeed a rapid one and the creation of a long term comfort zone, an all-embracing security blanket, doesn’t necessarily suit anybody in the long term.

On a purely pragmatic basis an over-reliance on the powers and controls of a manager at a football club is dangerous whichever way you look at it and sometimes even more when he has been successful than on the occasions where he may be deemed to have failed.

Will he take his coaches with him when he goes? What about the players that he leaves behind and will very probably go after in the future? For these reasons the appointment of technical secretaries and directors of football make infinitely more sense.

The notion that managers rule the roost, snap their fingers and demand the purchase of players with the same facility that they may enjoy when ordering a curry is fanciful, although there is no question their input is as valuable as it is demanded.

Silva’s dismissal was single-handedly blamed by the club on an ‘unwarranted approach by a Premier League rival’ that caused ‘significant deterioration in both focus and results to the point where the long-term future of Watford FC has been jeopardised.’

The finger wagging and tut-tutting that has ensued is what we have come to expect from sections of the media when they perceive that an injustice has been done.

But why? The Pozzo family have done no more or less than they have always done which is follow their model, their overall plan, part of which – although by no means all – revolves around the coaching situation at the club.

Far be it from me to bang the drum for foreign owners but maybe we need to get a little bit of perspective here.

Since taking the club over have shown far more respect for its values than many owners up and down the country. They certainly didn’t try to change the club’s name (Hull) or the colour of its kit (Cardiff) or the name of the stadium for advertising the owner’s company (Newcastle United).

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The two main stands that face each other are the Graham Taylor and Sir Elton John stands when it might have been financially viable to christen them something like the Betfred or Burger King stand. (Other licensed bookmakers and fast food outlets are available).

Vicarage Road resembled a building site when they took over but has been transformed under their stewardship into a stadium which bears comparison with most of its compeitors in the Premier League.

And in addition to revitalising the club’s infrastructure, during their tenure the club has reached a play-off final, won promotion to the Premier League, reached an FA Cup semi final and above all survived on limited resources in one of the toughest leagues in the world.

The lack of English players used by the club to achieve this has been used as a stick to beat the club’s owners but they were always going to use the family ownership of Udinese and, at the time, Granada to maximise resources in the cutthroat world that is the transfer maket.

And do they really have more non-British players on their books that any other Premier League clubs?

Back in August, The Times published a list and while Watford did have a large number of foreign players (22) they were by no means the highest. That particular honour, unsurprisingly, went to Arsenal (28), Chelsea (27) and then Manchester City, also with 22.

Silva knew what he was getting into when he joined the Hornets and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he will be back at the highest level, sooner rather than later.

He will also understand that the decision to dispense with his services was purely and simply a business one. No more, no less.