Watford's development on the field under Ray Lewington lacked consistency at the outset of the 2002/03 season and that was only to be expected.

The players had experienced a distinct lack of match practice in pre-season, the need to sell players outstripped the desire for new signings and the headlines were inevitably downbeat as the club struggled to battle the debts. Yet there were signs of progress.

Watford travelled to Harry Redknapp’s Portsmouth and performed admirably for the first 35 minutes before Lewington described the transformation as ‘tearing up the script’.

A Paul Merson master-class capitalised on Watford’s sudden tendency to indulge in ‘a little game of five-a-side football’.

The manager added that he did not want to see such a display in training let alone on a match-day after the Hornets slumped 3-0. “Having said that, we have just played a very, very good side and Merson was undoubtedly the difference.”

The Watford staff had caught the eye of both players and fans for they were on the diminutive side. Lewington was 5ft seven-and-a-half inches tall, general manager Terry Byrne was not much taller, while coach Terry Burton and reserve-team coach Nigel Gibbs were shorter.

“I was changing behind a door,” admitted the manager, “when I heard one of the players asking: ‘Are the Smurfs about?’”

No matter their size, the coaching staff were making progress.

On the Monday after the Portsmouth defeat, the Hornets put on what I described as the best display since the 1999 Play-Off Final victory, as they hammered Coventry City 5-2. Watching managers and coaches were to describe the display as the best example of how players can support their striker with movement and space. It was such a success, Watford immediately released a video of the game.

Ed Coan, the marketing director who had helped launch the new fans’ bar, known as Harry’s Bar and the Learning Centre deep in the bowels of Vicarage Road, described the victory as the best marketing tool he had seen for a few years.

Ed was steeped in the original Watford culture that had been developed in the 1970s and 1980s under Graham Taylor. He had left the club and worked as a freelance, developing his own business while Jack Petchey was in charge and Watford’s community involvement dropped alarmingly.

He was to return when Taylor came back to the club but once Mark Ashton arrived as the new chief executive, Coan was to be sidelined and faded out; yet another chronic mistake made by the short-sighted duo of Graham Simpson and Ashton.

The success against Coventry with goals by Stephen Glass, Tommy Smith, Danny Webber, Allan Nielsen and Paul Robinson, comprised a textbook use of the 3-5-2 formation which Lewington was adopting.

“If we replicate that commitment and movement, we will give teams problems,” the manager pointed out.

Lewington revealed the club could have gone to the wall that summer had the players released or re-signed been given longer contracts by the previous regime.

“In these days of unrealistic wages, had the wage bills continued, a lot of clubs would have gone bust – perhaps 80 per cent in the next 18 months,” said the manager. “If all the players we have released, had been contracted for this year as well, I cannot see that we would have survived.”

More than 500 players in the Nationwide League (the second third and fourth tier of the old Football League) were to be released at the end of the 2002/03 campaign as clubs continued to feel the pinch. As a result there were some good bargains to be had but Watford were unable to consider recruiting any further.

“We will not pay agents fees but we hear of agents with clients who used to earn £10,000 a week, now being prepared to listen to anyone,” the manager was to say the following summer.

Watford’s decision not to pay agents’ fees was totally understandable in the crisis and while Lewington’s budget was to be cut year on year, the club quietly started to pay agents behind the manager’s back after Ashton arrived.

“For years now, everyone has tried to keep up with each other on a world-wide basis. With the Premiership having this lucrative TV deal, they started paying more and so, in scale, did the Division One, Two and even the Division Three clubs. But the money was not there.

“Then someone says: ‘hold on, we cannot do this anymore’ and in the space of 18 months, there has been this almighty crash,” Lewington revealed. “There will always be the White Knight Scenario with Jack Hayward at Wolves and Sam Hamman at Cardiff investing money and this is a good time to do it, because there are some bargains to be had but everyone else is talking about running their club on business lines.”

So Watford were by no means alone as they battled their financial problems in the autumn of 2002 and the financial ramifications were to be felt over the next couple of seasons.

Watford’s former vice-chairman, Haig Oundjian, who was working with the Football League, picking up the pieces from the ITV Digital catastrophe, was to be outraged when the league went back to ITV and negotiated a contract for coverage of their games.

As Lewington was to point out: “The TV companies see the clubs struggling to make ends meet and know they are desperate for money, so they do not have to spend out too lavishly to secure television rights.”

The parent company pulled out of the unsigned deal with the league, causing the ITV Digital collapse, and then profited by being able to pick up a cheap deal as the clubs struggled to deal with the shock waves ITV had caused.

No wonder Oundjian was enraged but the league clearly felt that beggars could not be choosers.