Dave Watson calling for old Derby passion

Oct 17 2007 by Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

Helped along the way by a famous FA Cup fifth round second replay winner at Goodison Park in 1991, ensuring that perhaps only Watson remembers the tie more for that game than the one before it, the famous 4-4 that prompted the departure of Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish.

“At the time it’s magnificent to score in a derby,” said Watson, who made his league debut in the East Anglian derby for Norwich against Ipswich on Boxing Day 1980.

“If you do it and get beat 2-1 it wouldn’t really have the same effect on you but the goal I scored took us to the next round of the cup so it was important for the club.

“It wasn’t about proving a point to Liverpool though. I was only 17 when I left them but I had to be realistic that I wouldn’t get in with the quality of the players who were in front of me.

“There weren’t many players who went out on loan in those days so you could stay in the reserves for years and there was never much chance of me getting in the first team.

“I’d seen Brian Kettle and Geoff Ainsworth stay in the reserves for an awful long time into their 20s and they weren’t getting the breakthrough so I made the decision to move to Norwich when they came in for me and things turned out well.”

Watson would love to still be in the game if it meant he could lead Everton out against their city rivals at Goodison this Saturday lunchtime.

But it’s one of the few times he would swap his relatively peaceful weekends for the intense existence that is professional football, and one that he had bitter first-hand experience of last time he was involved.

When his Everton career finally ended after 423 league appearances in 2001, he stayed on Merseyside by taking over as manager of a Tranmere Rovers side already doomed to drop into what is now League One, where they have been ever since.

The experience was brief but bruising enough to convince Watson, now 45, that his current role scouting for former Norwich defensive partner and Birmingham manager Steve Bruce, as well as running the Liverpool Schoolboys under-15s side, is as stressful as he wants it to get.

“There’s still a part of you that loves the game but I think a lot of managers these days have big expectations put on them by a board of directors,” says Watson.

“They want everyone to win the league or get promoted and it’s totally unrealistic. I don’t think it’s a very enjoyable job.

“If you got a job in management now you wouldn’t sell your house and move three hours away because you might only be there six months.

“You couldn’t make any long-terms plans in any job. I don’t miss it at all.”