{"id":646874,"date":"2026-05-03T12:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T12:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/646874\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T12:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T12:10:08","slug":"watford-sack-head-coach-ed-still-after-dismal-end-to-championship-season-watford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/646874\/","title":{"rendered":"Watford sack head coach Ed Still after dismal end to Championship season | Watford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Watford have sacked Ed Still, just three months into a two-and-a-half-year contract, after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/championship\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Championship<\/a> club\u2019s dismal end to the season. Still was Watford\u2019s 11th permanent head coach since the end of the 2020-21 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Still, 35, was appointed in February after the resignation of Javi Gracia and his sacking comes at the end of a season in which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/watford\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watford<\/a> lost six of their final seven games. The Hornets finished 16th, 10 points above the relegation zone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWatford FC have this morning parted company with Head coach Ed Still,\u201d read a curt statement issued by the club on Sunday morning. \u201cFirst-team coach Karim Belhocine has also left the club. We wish them all the best in their future endeavours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Still is the older brother of Will Still, the former Southampton manager who was dismissed in November with the Saints just outside the bottom three. Southampton recovered to reach the playoffs under Tonda Eckert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">After Watford\u2019s 4-0 defeat to Coventry on Saturday, Still admitted in his final press conference: \u201cA reset is needed. We need to reset the squad, the staff and make sure that the energy around the team and in the team is much stronger and ready to deal with a whole Championship season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cYou need the resources to be able to manage the challenges that a Championship season will give you. There\u2019s the fact that so many players are on loan, out of contract, or others who you just feel have come to the end of their time at the club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThat\u2019s one of the factors that has impacted us in the past few weeks, because so many players know they\u2019re not going to be here next season. In that moment, when you\u2019re under a bit of pressure, and the team needs to come together again, there isn\u2019t that little extra bit of commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watford have sacked Ed Still, just three months into a two-and-a-half-year contract, after the Championship club\u2019s dismal end&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-646874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}