WHAT went wrong? Or was it just a tale of the expected? Watford, the players, staff and supporters appear to have taken relegation on the chin and will now accept the mandatory three-month count, dust off the gloves and prepare to do battle again.

The first point to ponder is whether this state of affairs could have been avoided. Was demotion back to the First Division avoidable?

Well, they could have spent more money, even invested it more wisely, but the line between speculating to accumulate and throwing good money after bad is a thin one.

Watford are on a financially sound footing and there is no guarantee that going, say £3m, in debt would have enabled them to enjoy the Premiership gravy train for another season.

So, what were the key deciding factors behind Watford chalking up such a dismal succession of results, a rut of reversals so deep that even Graham Taylor was caught by surprise?

To start at the beginning...

The fact Watford qualified through the play-offs was a handicap. From May 31 to the start of the season constituted the shortest close season in the club's history. There was little time to prepare and, because the players needed to disband after the celebratory bus-ride round town, in order to recharge their batteries, contractual matters were left to the pre-season.

The previous season, Watford had wrapped up promotion, which had been on the cards for months, before the end of the campaign.

Watford had been able to formulate plans for the higher division, and then implement them.

Last summer, Premiership football looked unlikely until the play-offs, and there was no degree of certainty until Allan Smart's shot struck the back of the Wembley net.

The first setback was the defection of Darren Bazeley, whose ability to break and provide crosses was a key ingredient for the Hornets. Having lost him, he was not adequately replaced by a player with similar attributes. It is hard to deny that it would have been cheaper to have settled with Bazeley.

Taylor adopted a policy of giving the existing staff first shy at the Premiership, which is very laudable in itself. However, those who gained promotion from the Seccond Division were given first shy at the First Division, but that did not prevent the recruitment of such as Allan Smart, Nick Wright and Dean Yates.

Watford scored 65 goals in the First Division and conceded 56. They scored fewer than any of their rivals at the top of the First Division and conceded more than all, apart from Bolton.

It would not take much of a swing to wipe out a plus nine goal-difference. The signs were there that the defence needed strengthening and the attack required boosting, before a Premiership ball was kicked.

Watford's success in reaching the play-offs and attaining promotion was based on a team ethos. They worked hard for each other and many opponents attested to their mental strength in grinding out results against the odds, as opposed to dominating the division.

That team ethos and mental strength stood them in good stead initially in the Premiership, but the disruption to the team cause, firstly by injuries and then by opponents, saw Watford's survival cause unravel before our eyes.

The injuries did play a crucial part. Key players the previous season were: Noel-Williams, Tommy Mooney, Nick Wright, Peter Kennedy and Allan Smart. All sustained long-term injuries. All were key member of the First Division squad, yet they cobbled together an aggregate of just 60 Premiership appearances - 31 per cent availability - with Kennedy alone responsible for more than ten per cent of that.

Yes, all teams suffer injuries and the loss of such as Dean Yates (all season), Richard Johnson (44 per cent availability), Ben Iroha (all season) and Nordin Wooter (58 per cent availability) would be regarded as the average experienced in a season, apart from the normal two and three-week absences in the wear and tear of a game of hard knocks.

At one stage, Watford had 12 players unavailable who would have contested a first-team place.

There can be no doubt that this season was most certainly blighted by injuries, sufficient to make a difference on their points yield.

It is a matter of conjecture or opinion as to whether Watford would have escaped the drop had Noel-Williams, Mooney, Wright, Kennedy and Smart enjoyed 80 per cent availability, playing in more than twice as many games as they did.

It is not so much their individuality that was missed as the part they had to play in the team ethos.

If pushed to name the greatest losses, they were Noel-Williams and Mooney. The strength and size of Noel-Williams would have helped the cause in a division where, it has already been observed, the players are bigger and stronger. One only has to reflect on his last fully-fit performance, against Sunderland, who went on to do well in the Premiership, to realise GNW would have shaken a few loose.

The inclusion of Mooney as a crucial loss may surprise the theorists. A player unable to get a place in the front line in Division Two and spurned for much of the First Division season, Mooney came into his own during that run-in.

He does produce the unexpected, can ruffle a few feathers, but it is his talismanic qualities, his ability to raise the crowd, which would have been so useful to the cause.

He, more than any other player, has epitomised Watford's progress up the divisions in that he may not be the most gifted, but no one is more determined or so admirably reflects the never-say-die spirit that has been needed.

The injuries also had another effect. Having started the season with several unavailable and commuted between ninth and 15th place, there was the belief that fortunes would improve still further when all were fit. Having asked for a few games in which to feel, taste and smell the Premiership, Taylor was in no position to accurately judge his team's full potential because his first choice team was never remotely available.

The manager's view that perhaps a couple of spankings early on may have awakened everyone to the realities, probably applies to his own appreciation more than most. He may have moved more resolutely into the market had things looked bad from the outset.

The leaks were not as apparent early on, the defence looked solid, with Mark Williams playing as if inspired. Robert Page, who always excels when his partner is fully on his game, was also playing well. Williams' loss of form and confidence was a significant factor.

In effect, the successive victories over Liverpool and Bradford obscured the lesson provided by the opening game of the season. Watford scored twice, but silly lapses cost them dear in that one. It was to be a blueprint for the season, which after a brief honeymoon with success, was followed to the letter.

I well recall travelling back from Arsenal and West Ham with cartoonist Terry Challis, saying that the 1-0 defeats gave the appearance of Watford having done well, yet they could have had a thrashing.

Months later, Taylor was to contend it would have been better if they had received such a drubbing to bring home the reality of the mountain they had to climb.

The erosion of confidence, the corrosive effect of successive defeats. Watford could play well, deserve more than they obtained, but, eventually, as we have seen in relegation seasons in the past, no matter how unfairly short-changed on their points yield, teams eventually adopt the mantle of their position. They start to look relegation strugglers.

Fielding forwards who are not among the most clinical of finishers in the Premiership, Watford needed to provide them with quality service, but that becomes haphazard when the ball is a hot potato, dispatched by anxious midfield and defensive players.

The shot totals dropped: how many did Johnson and Hyde produce, particularly the former, who usually grabs a respectable number every campaign?

They were to finish in the top six in the Player of the Season voting and I only give them as an example of how confidence can be knocked. Hyde, for my money, proved his ability to survive in the Premiership.

But lost confidence affects different players in a variety of ways: they are not all uniform, so when a squad is based on the homogenous approach, in such circumstances, the team ethos is sorely tried.

Transfer setbacks. The manager, wary of the big fees and wages to match, opted to have a punt or two. Remember, he did this successfully with Ronnie Rosenthal in Division Two, securing a free transfer on significantly higher wages.

Xavier Gravelaine was one. The Frenchman cost a few pounds per week and had obvious quality. Unfortunately, his sending off accounted for 30 per cent of the games for which he was available.

Lothar Matthaus, Adebola and others slipped through the net, but Taylor appeared to put his ultimate eggs in the Stern John basket. When he chose Nottingham Forest, the disappointment was severe.

Another spanner in the transfer works was put there by Coventry City who, upon spotting Taylor at a match in Norway, assumed he was watching the same midfield player and promptly made a mafia money offer for the player. As a result, Lillestrom had no need to part with Heidar Helguson in order to balance their books. So he did not arrive until January, having already taken part in a long season in Norway.

Another player who could be regarded as a 'punt' was the signing of Charlie Miller, who had fallen by the wayside at Rangers and was looking for a fresh page to the book of his life.

A player of undoubted skill, vision and perception, his ability to lose weight would appear in doubt. Having lost his way when Gascoigne came to Rangers, he has remained unimpressive when it comes to avoirdupois.

The new signings. Did Watford effectively strengthen the side or were Taylor's buys a trifle hit and miss?

The determining factor is did they effect change or improvement?

The nearest to achieve that, albeit sporadically, was Nordin Wooter. A flair player, capable of beating his man, it has taken some time to settle him into a role, largely because he firstly had to augment the strike-force and, secondly, was subject to a succession of injuries.

There remains a question mark over end-product, but he does hold out the hope of producing something, which in some of the less entertaining times, has been a very welcome antidote to the mundane.

Heidar Helguson is a forward who tends to let them know they are around. He has scored goals but the jury is out as to whether he is an instinctive goalscorer.

Certainly, he has what it takes to make an impact in the First Division, but, by the time he arrived, the slippery slope was well greased.

As the season unwound, he has looked a little jaded for he has had an extension to his own full Norwegian campaign.

I think he will prove to be an ace in the hole at 22.

Des Lyttle was drafted in somewhat hurriedly, following Bazeley's switch in allegiance. He plainly did not fit the bill, bringing nothing extra to the party, but another player who has yet to prove his value is Neil Cox. His performances in the last few games provided an inkling of why he was so valued, but, as with the others, he did not effect any change in fortunes, only mitigated the setbacks.

Coming into a struggling side is not easy to undertake.

The final point is the fact they simply were not good enough. One could attempt to ape Arsene Wenger and try to talk up a load of excuses for an 18-point gap, but the fact is, Watford were not good enough.

There may well have been contributions to their failing to measure up, but if justice had been done throughout the season, the most I can make, based on the weekly 'deserved result' section, is five more points.

Yes. They could have made a case at Sunderland, Newcastle and Southampton for a point, but they failed to make the most of their chances or the periods when they had the upper hand.

As it is, having watched all the games, they gained the results they deserved in all but five matches when perhaps they deserved draws instead of defeats. The nearest they came to a rank injustice was the defeat at Chelsea. But the fact is they lacked the wherewithal to turn that to victory, despite creating the greater number of chances and having the best of the game.

Looking back, they probably warranted a draw at home to Wimbledon, Villa, Everton, Arsenal, Manchester United and away to Chelsea. That is six more points, but I counted them as lucky to overcome Southampton at home, so perhaps four more points were all they deserved from this campaign.

And they failed to pick up even those extra points because they were not good enough to do so.

The final table shows Watford well adrift. Cumulatively, that was certainly the case, but, in reality, they were much closer to the Premiership than the league table shows. The margin was narrower, but you get nothing for coming close: as Bolton and Birmingham knew to their cost in the play-offs last summer.

All you are left with are might-have-beens and the hope that the lesson is learned.