Nigel Gibbs once told me that youth-team coach Tom Walley grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, held him up against a wall and shouted at him from extremely close range. Walley was hammering home the point that if Gibbs wanted to make it, he had better knuckle down.

Nigel thought it a chastening experience, but after he was released and walked away, he smiled inwardly because he knew Tom cared. And more importantly, Tom only cared because he knew you had a chance of making it.

“If you didn’t get that treatment, you had no chance of making it. So it was an endorsement,” Nigel explained.

Many had that treatment: Nigel Callaghan, Kenny Jackett, Steve Terry, Gary Porter, Tim Sherwood and a whole host of players who went through Watford’s youth scheme under the watchful eyes of Tom Walley and his lieutenants, who included Dennis Gibbs, Nigel’s father.

Of course that was back in the dark ages of the late 1970s and 1980s when dinosaurs ruled the earth, men made inappropriate observations about women but even then the concept of a teacher or a coach grabbing hold of a student or apprentice and shaking him, was on the way out.

One imagines that if a modern coach undertook such action with one of his youth team charges, the parents would be round quicker than you could say “politically correct”, with talk of solicitors and police.

An angry Graham Taylor, lashing out at tea cups as he vented his half-time fury, was a familiar occurrence during Watford’s halcyon era. Yet he was one of the first to laugh when a players’ skit at Baileys end-of-season night, included a couple of players reaching for their umbrellas as they trooped into the dressing room two goals down at half time.

Before Taylor and Walley, I well remember a parent of one of the young Watford Juniors standing on the touchline. When the youth-team coach, Wally Fielding, shouted to his striker to sharpen up and move out to the flanks now and then, the boy’s father shouted: “Take no notice son. You do as you want.” One can imagine Tom Walley would have held that parent up against the wall, had it been attempted on his watch. But that, as I say, was years ago, when they had string running across the top of the posts instead of crossbars.

Years ago a player went in to see Liverpool boss Bill Shankly and asked him why he was playing in the reserves. “Because we don’t have a third team,” was Shanks’ dismissive reply and you could imagine a manager attempting such a retort today, would cause said player to go rushing to his agent or seeking counselling for a fractured psyche.

I mention those old anecdotes because I feel some sympathy for Watford’s retiring “old school disciplinarian” head coach Beppe Sannino. The 57-year-old can probably recall the days when he received a cuff or a slipper at school and his parents would go into school and congratulate the teacher on trying to bring young Sannino or his contemporaries in line.

Now he has been eased out at Vicarage Road: his methods and communication upsetting some players and there was further concern over their fitness levels, as I understand. Now we are told it was not a matter of player-power that proved his undoing, although having witnessed the final match of last season (against Huddersfield Town) at Vicarage Road, we were told the players were disenchanted with certain things and so demonstrated that on the pitch: all of which smacks of a shop steward’s inquiry, if not an example of player-power.

Twenty-four hours later, I attended the end of season Awards Night, during which Beppe stood up and read in broken English from a script, reflecting on the season. It sounded like something on the lines a nine-year-old writes when thanking Auntie Hazel and Uncle Ron for the Christmas present.

I kept my head down as I listened, raising it just once, to see Tommy Mooney looking my way and just shaking his head in disbelief. So I left less than impressed by Beppe that night but I felt for him and his old school approach, as he took a long walk off a short plank and heads into the Turin sunset. His team is second in the table and I should imagine that directors in a number of boardrooms up and down the country, upon hearing Beppe has been pushed for upsetting players, have looked at the league table, seen the position of their struggling team and suggested their manager goes out and starts upsetting a few players.

The other thought, which of course is valid, is that Beppe has been coaching for some 24 years: his methods must have been familiar to the Pozzos when they undertook their research prior to his appointment. They knew what they were getting; so why the surprise?

The other side of the coin is that when you make a mistake you have the courage to admit it and rectify it. Clearly, despite the start, it has not clouded their view and they decided to act now, after, it appears, they hesitated all summer.

I admit I was less than enamoured when I saw the list of likely runners and riders for the vacant management, according to the bookmakers. There were not too many there who had any experience of the Championship: it is very different from the top flight. Oscar has had a season finding out that there are not too many clubs playing like Barcelona and achieving success in the nation’s second flight and he adapted well to the challenge at Brighton.

His CV is promising although he seems to have itchy feet, never staying too long at any one club since his playing days ended.

He knows how to attack having been a forward or offensive midfielder in his playing days, and the popular belief is that he has inherited a good squad, capable of launching a real bid for an automatic promotion place.

As for Beppe Sannino, he must feel low particularly as he believes he has turned his “boys into men” at Watford. I hope he enjoys a smidgen of the respect accorded Tom Walley. Former youth-team charges – some of them ex-internationals – still beat a path to Tom’s door, because they knew he cared, and he made them what they are and they are still grateful.

This article was first published in Friday's Watford Observer.