Watford head coach’s unbeaten start at home best since 1903
Tom Cleverley is the first Watford manager to be unbeaten in his opening nine home games for more than 120 years.
Saturday’s draw with Coventry means it’s now five wins and four draws for the head coach since he first took the role on an interim basis in March.
However, the man who holds the record for the best-ever home start by a Watford boss, John Goodall, is unlikely to see his achievements ever be bettered – he won his first 20 home games!
The sequence started on the opening day of the 1903/04 when Goodall’s first game in charge saw a 6-1 win over Portsmouth Reserves on Saturday September 12, 1903, in the Southern League Division Two.
Watford won all 19 home league and cup games they played that season, including a 10-0 romp against Southall and 9-0 wins over Wycombe Wanderers and Hitchin Town.
Having secured promotion to Southern League Division One, they won their first home game of the 1904/05 season, beating Luton 1-0, before the run finally ended in a 1-0 home defeat at the hands of Tottenham on Saturday September 10, 1904.
Graham Taylor lost one of his first nine home games – a 3-1 defeat to York City on August 27, 1977 – but he did win the other eight.
At the other end of the success scale, Roy Hodgson only managed Watford for eight games at Vicarage Road, losing seven of them and drawing the other with a combined aggregate score of 6-21.
