Gianfranco Zola pauses before taking a bite of the quickly melting gelato in his hand. The Italian takes his time to answer the question many Hornets fans have wondered the answer to. Why did it all go wrong for Zola at Watford?

It was on December 13, 2013, that the Hornets announced Zola had resigned from his position as the Golden Boys head coach.

The man who the previous season created one of, if not the, most exciting Watford sides was gone.

The reason? A run of nine Championship games without a victory and five consecutive defeats at Vicarage Road. Form that would have any manager questioning his future.

Quite how it got to that point is the crux of my question. And after considering his answer Zola goes into plenty of detail.

“Let me start by saying that the team of my first season is the most exciting team I have coached,” he says.

“We went on a great journey together in the first year. We enjoyed winning in style and we got to the (play-off) final.

“Unfortunately we played our worst game of the season at the most important time.”

Every Hornets fan knows the story. Watford lost 1-0 at Wembley to Crystal Palace and missed out on promotion to the Premier League. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

The summer of 2013 saw the Hornets squad, for the second consecutive year, change dramatically.

“We made some decisions at the beginning of the season which, now I can look back, were wrong,” Zola says.

“We expected certain things to work out in a certain way and unfortunately that didn’t happen. A few players that joined us weren’t at the level we expected them to be.

“We asked a lot of the players straight from the beginning of the season and they were not ready. Maybe they needed more time but we didn’t have that time.”

While several players joined that summer club captain John Eustace left Vicarage Road. The Golden Boys also sold defensive midfielder Jonathan Hogg to Huddersfield Town.

They are two players Zola mentions in conversation when discussing the mistakes he believes the club made ahead of the 2013/14 campaign.

“John was a very important person,” he says. “We offered him the chance to stay. He preferred to go somewhere where he could play regularly. I can’t blame him for that but we missed him.

“He was very important in the changing room. In my first season he didn’t play much but he was always a big influence. I couldn’t stop him from leaving and wanting to play.

“With Jonathan it was a little different. I didn’t want to sell him but at the same time I couldn’t guarantee he would play every week.

“I was honest with him about that and I respected his choice. He wanted to go and be closer to his family in the north. I understood that.

“I appreciated them both as players and as people. They were very important to our team.”

On the opening day of the 2013/14 campaign Watford defeated Birmingham City 1-0. The following weekend they thumped Bournemouth 6-1.

The Hornets had seemingly picked up where they left off. They lost just one of their first nine league matches, scoring 20 goals in the process.

But after a narrow defeat at Blackburn Rovers things quickly unravelled. Watford would win just once in the next 11 matches.

“We had lost too many games at home,” Zola says. “And they weren’t even games against the hardest opponents.

“Something had to change. I felt that if I didn’t make my decision to resign the club would make the decision for me.

“I was at Watford because I wanted to contribute and help the club get to the Premier League. When I didn’t have the feeling I could do that then it was pointless for me to stay.

“And it was pointless for the club to keep paying me if I had that feeling. So it was the right thing to do.”

Quite why the Hornets’ form dropped so dramatically is a question Zola doesn’t know the full answer to.

But he says the fact that Watford were unable to bring Matej Vydra and Nathaniel Chalobah back to the club on loan, while losing Almen Abdi to injury, were key factors.

He explains: “Vydra was outstanding for us. If you have two strikers in the Championship who can score 20 goals each, like we had, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for the rest of the team.

“Also in the first season, in the middle of the park, we played with Nathaniel Chalobah, Jonathan Hogg and Almen Abdi.

“In the second year we played with, for different reasons, Cristian Battocchio, Sean Murray and Iriney. Battocchio and Sean Murray in that second year improved a lot. They are good players

“But the season before they weren’t playing. They were behind Chalobah, Hogg and Abdi. That tells you a lot about the team in the second year. It was unfortunate.”

Zola adds: “I have regrets and maybe I could’ve done things in a different way. But they were honest mistakes.

“Looking back we could’ve done things differently but it is very difficult. At the time we tried our best but made mistakes.

“No matter what happened in the second season though, it doesn’t change the feelings of the first season.

“When I left I was so sad. It was an emotional moment because I was having a great time at Watford. I didn’t want to go but it was necessary for the club.”

It was an honourable decision. Had Zola stayed and waited to be sacked he’d have received a pay-off from the club. Not that the former Chelsea player needs the money mind you.

You sense Zola only does what he enjoys. He is currently coaching Al-Arabi in Qatar. An experience he believes is similar to his first year at Watford.

But we met in Bromley at a coffee and gelato shop he travelled back from the Middle East to officially launch on Monday.

He was joined at Unico, the shop he partly owns, by Chelsea legends Dennis Wise and Roberto Di Matteo. Another former Blue Andriy Shevchenko was also present.

It seems an odd investment but Zola, with a cheeky grin, explains how he became involved. “We were getting fed up of travelling to Italy to have an ice cream,” he says.

“It is cheaper to set a venture up here. I’m excited about it. I approach it the same way I did with my job at Watford. I hope to create something people enjoy.”

We will have more from Zola in next week’s Watford Observer.