Afternoon tea with a kick

I think the skill of being a soccer hack is in accurately predicting the future, instead of just reacting to past events.

But it's so damn hard. Just think of Jamie Trecker confidently announcing Jurgen Klinsmann had bagged the Nats job the day it was announced he hadn't. Trecker had made an educated prediction, and it was the view shared by most of us, but he still got it wrong.

I recall journalists swearing Miami & Tampa Bay would not be cut from MLS, but then they were. Sometimes, a wild guess will drown you in ridicule: The Sun splashed an exclusive that Jose Mourinho was in London discussing the England job, when he was in fact in Portugal thrashing out a deal with Inter instead, or an informed announcement can turn out to have been mistaken:World Soccer chief writer Keir Radnedge proclaimed in June that Poland & Ukraine would definitely not be hosting Euro 2012, before UEFA went on to confirm them as joint hosts.

So it was today I failed to predict Watford, a team I have followed a lot since Jay DeMerit joined them, would lose their coach Aidy Boothroyd. I did wonder about his job security given the Hornets' precarious league position, before concluding they would only hurt themselves by firing him, hours before they went ahead and did just that!

This afternoon I met DeMerit and Carlos Bocanegra, visiting from France, over coffee. It was ad hoc and informal: Jay spoke of his frustration at his team's shipping of goals this season, Carlos of how he was enjoying playing for Rennes, but missing London.

It was a relaxed chat, so imagine my shock when barely two hours later, I saw the news that Jay's coach had been given the heave-ho. I called him at once for his reaction, but might have broken the news to him in the process.

"Wow...." was all Jay could text back to me, in shock: Boothroyd's departure had taken his captain as much by surprise as it had everyone else.

Perhaps inspired by Tottenham's sudden transformation under a new man, and convinced by suspicions that Aidy Boothroyd had run out of ideas, Watford dispensed with the man who had taken them against all odds into the Premier League in 2006, DeMerit memorably heading the winner in the Playoff Final in Cardiff.

Boothroyd was a maverick, overflowing with ideas, "a cowboy" as Jay once described him to me, diligently studying every sporting text available to him, including Michael Lewis' study of the Oakland Athletics, 'Moneyball', and a book on the great Vince Lombardi given to him by his American defender.

The former Leeds assistant, at 37 in charge of a team for the first time, concluded Watford's best hope of success was with direct soccer, and a return to England's prevailing ethos of the 1980s propelled a truly modest club into the top flight and the FA Cup Semi-Final. Yet shorn of their best players - Ben Foster, Marlon King and Ashley Young, Watford struggled and went back down to the Championship.

Blowing a ten-point lead last season stuck in the directors' throats, and this disappointing Fall precipitated their nuclear option. Supporters might point to the lack of transfer funds this summer in support of Boothroyd.

So another coach falls off the vicious carousel, one who stood out in his desire to embrace new ideas and learn from other disciplines. Gaining an unexpected promotion in his first season proved too hard a feat to replicate, but we have not seen the last of Aidy Boothroyd.

It is up to DeMerit now to form a relationship with a new leader. Boothroyd & he did not always see eye-to-eye, particularly when there was interest from Middlesbrough and Portsmouth and when the boss left him out of the starting eleven last season.

But the Yorkshireman did help DeMerit to the career milestone of team captain and also called Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley to persuade them to cap his center-back. Boothroyd predicted DeMerit would skipper both club and country one day, a prediction half fulfilled already.

After today's news, it is hard once more to think of a job more insecure than that of a pro soccer coach, and of a sport more wonderfully and confoundingly unpredictable.

-Sean O'Conor