Watford should ready contract after Leeds, West Brom and Ipswich audition: View | OneFootball

Watford are one of the clubs who can prepare for a relatively quiet end to the Championship season.

As things stand, the Hornets currently sit 14th in the Championship table. They are 16 points adrift of the play-off places, and nine clear of the bottom three.

With four games of the season still to be played, that means they do not have to worry about either winning promotion or suffering relegation before the campaign ends.

However, there are other issues that those in charge at Vicarage Road ought to be considering at this moment in time, with the club's managerial situation once again up in the air.

Last month, the Hornets made the decision to sack another manager, with Valerien Ismael being dismissed after less than a year in the role.

That came after a run of just one win and six defeats in eight league games. As a result of that string of underwhelming scorelines, Watford had seen their play-offs hopes for this season all but ended.

However, after taking that move to dismiss Ismael, they did not immediately appoint a new permanent manager to take charge at Vicarage Road.

Instead, the club's former midfielder Tom Cleverley stepped into the role in an interim basis, until the end of the campaign.

But in the process of doing so, it could be argued that Watford ought to now have identified just who their next permanent manager ought to be.

Tom Cleverley deserves longer-term opportunity

Since stepping in to oversee things for the final few months of the season, Cleverley has done a more than impressive job with this Watford squad.

Under the 34-year-old, the Hornets have now gone unbeaten in five league games, which is even more impressive given the calibre of opposition they have been up against.

After starting his time in charge with a 1-0 win over relegation-battling Birmingham City, Cleverley has now seen his side record four consecutive draws.

Those have come against Leeds United, West Brom, Preston North End and now Ipswich Town, all respectable results.

Leeds and Ipswich are, of course, two of the three teams still firmly in the race for automatic promotion, having been a class apart from the rest of the league for most of the campaign.

West Brom, meanwhile, are firmly on track to confirm their own spot in the top six come the end of this season, while Preston are not completely out of the play-off race yet either.

Those four draws have therefore come against teams who have both been stronger on the whole than Watford this season, and who went into the game with loftier ambitions.

Indeed, there aren't many, if any, sides in the league who would be disappointed with a draw against Leeds or Ipswich in particular this season, given how well they have been playing.

The fact, therefore, that Cleverley has been able to pick up solid results not just in some, but in all of these matches, feels like a very solid effort, and one that suggests he deserves a chance to take on this role beyond the end of the campaign.

Indeed, there may be a sense that if he can do this after just a few weeks in this, his first senior managerial role, there is a good chance he can go even further, as he gains more experience in a position such as this.

It is, of course, also worth noting that prior to his retirement last year, Cleverley had spent the last six-and-a-half years of his playing career with Watford.

As a result, he ought to know the club and players very well, which should aid him in settling in and getting the best out of this particular squad, if he is handed the role on a permanent basis.

With that in mind, given how strong an audition this has been from Cleverley over the past few matches, there does seem to be a case for Watford having a longer-term managerial contract ready for him to sign in the near future, before another club beats them to making that offer.