Watford’s fight against the current with waterway enthusiast Cap’n Roy

Watford are currently plummeting down the swanny at great velocity, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they’ve selected waterway enthusiast Roy Hodgson as their new manager. A master of long-term planning and leaving nothing to chance, Mr Roy famously went on a day cruise down the River Seine during Euro 2016 instead of scouting Iceland, and the in-depth stream-based observations gleaned on that crucial fact-finding mission will undoubtedly stand him in good stead for Watford’s upcoming battle against the current. Land ahoy!

Cap’n Roy has been away from football since bailing out of Crystal Palace at the end of last season. At 74, you could be forgiven for thinking we’d seen the back of the salty sea dog, and that he’d be taking the opportunity to plan another, longer cruise, perhaps with Ray Lewington again, a high-jinks episode of the Love Boat we’d pay top dollar to see. But that’s not Mr Roy’s true calling, and so he’s back, baby, eagerly clutching his compass, $extant, and the nautical and tactical charts that have navigated him from Halmstads to Malmö, to Örebro to Neuchâtel Xamax, to the Swiss national team. Oh he’s got methods up the yin-yang.

While fans of the Hornets frantically buckle in for a wild journey of wonder, they’ll spare a thought for the departing Claudio Ranieri, whose reign at Vicarage Road seemed doomed from the start, just like those of Gianfranco Zola, Giuseppe Sannino, Óscar García, Billy McKinlay, Slavisa Jokanovic, Quique Sánchez Flores, Walter Mazzarri, Marco Silva, Javi Gracia, Quique Sánchez Flores again, Nigel Pearson, Vladimir Ivic, Xisco Muñoz and Cap’n Roy. Factoring in an upcoming trip to fellow strugglers Burnley, the way Roy started at Palace with three straight defeats, and the