Summer 2014 reunion was a masterstroke from Watford: View | OneFootball

Bringing Matej Vydra back to Vicarage Road certainly paid off for the Hornets

Highlights

The 2014 summer transfer window proved to be an eventful one for Watford in terms of incomings.

A 13th place finish in the Championship the season before had been a long way from the run to the play-offs they had mustered in the 2012/13 campaign.

As a result, no fewer than 11 new players were added to the first-team squad at Vicarage Road during the market, as the club looked to put together a squad capable of pushing for promotion.

Among those to make the move to Watford, was an already familiar face to those connected with the club, in the form of Matej Vydra.

Watford had already benefitted from Matej Vydra before

On the 26th June 2014, it was announced that Vydra had returned to Vicarage Road on a season-long loan deal from Italian side Udinese.

This was not though, the first time that the striker had enjoyed a stint with the Hornets in the Championship.

The Czech international had also spent the 2012/13 season on loan with Watford from Udinese, in what proved to be an excellent campaign.

During his first season with the club, Vydra had scored 22 goals in 47 appearances in all competitions for the Hornets.

Those contributions helped the club to reach the Championship play-off final, where they missed out on promotion to the Premier League after 1-0 defeat to Crystal Palace after extra time.

Returning to Watford in the summer of 2014, the Hornets were arguably taking something of a gamble on this signing.

The 2013/14 campaign had seen Vydra score just three goals in 25 appearances in total for West Brom, as they narrowly avoided relegation from the Premier League.

In the end though, that risk that Watford took in bringing the striker back to Vicarage Road for a second spell, was one that certainly paid off.

Having secured his return to Vicarage Road, Vydra wasted little time in getting up and running in his second spell with the club.

The opening day of the 2014/15 season saw him find the back of the net on his second debut for the club, in a 3-0 win over Bolton Wanderers.

It was a start that somewhat set the tone for the striker over the rest of the campaign, as he scored 16 goals and provided six assists in 42 league outings that season.

In the end, those goals alone proved vital for Watford, earning them 12 points over the course of a campaign.

Tellingly, the Hornets finished that season second in the final Championship table, confirming promotion back to the Premier League without having to go through the lottery of the play-offs.

Perhaps fittingly for the justification of this move, it was a 90th minute goal by Vydra that secured a 2-0 win over Brighton in the penultimate game of the campaign, that officially confirmed Watford's promotion.

They did however, finish just three points clear of third place Norwich City, highlighting exactly how important those goals from Vydra were to their cause.

Following promotion, Watford then made the striker's loan move permanent on a five-year deal in the summer of 2015.

However, he was loaned out to the Championship, where he joined Reading just a few weeks later, with the Royals said to have paid £2.5million to sign him on a temporary basis.

The following summer, Vydra then left Watford on a permanent basis, having hardly played for the club since firing them to promotion.

Even so, they still received a reported club record fee from Derby County for the sale of the striker in the summer of 2016.

As a result, while his permanent move may not have paid off, his impact in helping the club to promotion during his loan spell, and the money they received for his services, means that initial reunion with Vydra was still an excellent piece of business from Watford.