Analysis: Elliot Watt swaps Bradford City for Salford

Elliot Watt’s expected departure from Valley Parade was confirmed in a tea-time announcement.

City will pocket the “undisclosed sum” for the compensation figure they were due because of the midfielder’s age.

There will be disappointment that they could not persuade Watt to extend his stay at Valley Parade into a third season.

But equally, with the coup capture of Richie Smallwood, they have an older, more established and worldly-wise presence to take up that central midfield mantle.

And if you believed the hype, Watt was always going to be off once his contract was up.

The only surprise for supporters is that the 22-year-old has made a “sideways” move to remain in the fourth tier.

All the talk, come every transfer window, has been about an upwards trajectory for one of the mainstays of the side. Yet more reason not to believe all that you read or hear.

An impressive appearance tally of 96 in the two years after being snapped up from Wolves by Stuart McCall was only four shy of Gary Jones in a same period of time.

Watt’s City legacy, though, hardly compares – despite the faith shown in him by every boss.

Derek Adams and Mark Hughes were both in agreement that City were stronger with Watt in that role just in front of the back four.

Adams labelled the former Scottish under-21 international “without doubt in the top five passers of the ball in this division”.

But there was certainly more control about Watt’s play after Hughes came in. His range of passing, which was never in doubt, suddenly looked a lot more purposeful and effective with the team’s style evolving into a more possession-based outlook.

On the evidence of his final couple of months in City colours, Watt was a much better player for it. The team were more on the front foot and so was he.

Watt had previously featured in every game in his first campaign behind closed doors – a worthy statistic at any level in the modern era.

The chopping and changing at the top, McCall, Mark Trueman and Conor Sellars then on to Adams and Hughes, did not alter the fact that his name remained one of the first on the team sheet.

“If I’m not playing every single minute then I’m not doing something right,” said Watt in an interview last summer. “I don’t see myself as a League Two player. I want to play higher, so I’ve got to be playing every game possible at this level to believe that.”

The transfer gossip columns certainly hinted that City were a stepping-stone towards bigger things.

Supposed Championship suitors were thrown in willy-nilly every August and January. Adams, whether tongue in cheek or not and sometimes it was hard to tell, spoke of Watt’s agent receiving several enquiries about him.

Charles Vernam and Paudie O’Connor both rejected City’s contract offers to step up a division with Lincoln. But the interest in Watt, it appears, was nowhere near as concrete.

Portsmouth were briefly linked but anything plausible on that front disappeared once Danny Cowley secured Marlon Pack from Cardiff.

And you could imagine that Adams, given his glowing public testimony previously, might have picked up the phone about trying to take Watt to Morecambe.

But the teams in the Championship that made cheap click-bait headlines during earlier windows proved nothing more than that.

The fact that it has taken until the start of pre-season for an announcement on Watt’s future suggests his camp were hanging on for a call that never came.

So why Salford instead of sticking around for a third term at City?

How can working with a former Manchester United academy boss in Neil Wood be preferable to learning under an Old Trafford legend at Valley Parade?

The obvious answer, and it’s difficult to look past, will be finances.

Given Salford’s seemingly bottomless pit, you can safely assume that the Ammies will have pushed a more lucrative contract across the table.

Throw in the fact of Smallwood’s arrival as the biggest signing in City’s frantic summer rebuild and Watt’s starting shirt could no longer be taken for granted.

Perhaps that gave the Salford option an added appeal even if it meant at least another year of facing the same opponents in front of home crowds a fraction the size of what he’s been used to.

Watt had a mixed relationship with the stands – prompting him to step away from social media during one particularly sticky spell – and his comments for Salford's website about playing under a coach who will improve him went down like a lead balloon on this side of the Pennines.

But the potential in his game was always there and that came to the fore when he, like the team, finished an underachieving season with a flourish.

And, to his credit, when the going did get tough, he was not one to hide away.

Watt will play at a higher grade, he’s too good not to. But, as expected, it won’t be in claret and amber - and it won’t be this season.