About that last post...

There’s nothing like actual events to expose the blithe theorising of so-called experts. Nine games into the Premier League season and the complacency I expressed in my last post looks downright naive. In my defence, I’m not the only one; it’s obvious that the club hierarchy didn’t see the Hornets’ disastrous start to the season coming either, or they would have made different choices in the transfer market over the summer.

In retrospect, the Pozzo regime’s habit of changing Head Coach every summer starts to make more sense. If nothing else, it gave everyone at the club a chance to reset the clock – forget about the disappointing end to the previous season and start again with a clean slate. Whereas it seems that Javi’s team just carried the woeful end to last season on into the Brighton game and beyond.

Wiser heads than me have debated at great length what’s gone wrong. I’d just like to highlight one aspect of Watford’s current stint in the Premier League that continues to bother me, and that may be part of the problem; the inability to integrate young players into the team.

When Quique took the Hornets into that first PL season in 2015, he’d quite deliberately been provided with a squad packed with experienced, battle-hardened players; new signings included Capoue, Britos, Holebas, Nyom, Behrami and Prödl. It worked, too; we didn’t ship too many goals, Iggy and Troy banged in the goals and we stayed up fairly comfortably.

Since then, it’s been much the same story. Four years on, Capoue, Holebas and Prödl are still here, four years older and starting to slow down (visibly, in Jose’s case). More importantly, very few younger players have been integrated into the first team. This only really hit home to me when I was reading the programme before the FA Cup Final and looking at the ages of the Watford team; only Will Hughes (24) and Gerard Deulofeu (25) were under the age of 28.

We have tried to use younger players from time to time, but it hasn’t really worked. Take 23-year-old Isaac Success; three years after his debut, he still looks like a work in progress. But he’s a rare exception, in that he has at least been selected for Premier League games. More often, talented young players are restricted to cup games and/or sent out on loan, rather than being trusted to play a role in the first team. I’m sure I’m not the only Watford fan who was sorry to see Ben Wilmot sent to Swansea, and as for Domingos Quina, there can’t be many Premier League clubs where such an obviously talented player would struggle even to get on the bench. And don’t get me started on Pontus Dahlberg, a goalkeeper who is highly rated by everyone who comes into contact with him, yet doesn’t even get to take part in the pre-match warm-ups. I’d love to know the plan for his development.

The impression the club gives right now is of one that is simply too scared to give youth its chance. The rapid turnover of Head Coaches doesn’t help; why should they take a risk on untested players when they know they won’t be here long enough to enjoy the fruits of the experiment?

I’m not suggesting for a moment that we should flood the first team with callow youngsters; merely that there’s no point signing talented young players if there’s no intention of giving them a chance to show what they can do – and that  an injection of youthful energy and ambition can be just what’s needed to buck up a struggling team. If any club’s history is proof of that, lord know it’s ours.

There’s always a but

A week after the end of the 2017-18 season and the sense of frustration I wrote about a few weeks ago still lingers. There were so many good things that were ultimately undermined by personalities and performances and circumstances and sheer bad luck. Here are five of my biggest buts (no sniggering at the back).

It’s great that we had 17 different scorers this season – it’s not a bad thing when there are multiple players who are capable of hitting the back of the net. But the fact that not one player managed double figures, and that our top scorer, with an underwhelming seven, was a midfielder (Doucouré) whose last goal came on January 13th, points to one of the key problems: neither Silva nor Gracia came up with a system or a formation that consistently created chances for our forwards. That’s the key issue that needs sorting out next season.

It’s great that Troy Deeney is still at our club and looks set to start his ninth season in August – a rare feat in modern football. His talismanic status is universally acknowledged, and I think he can still make an important contribution if Gracia can find a way to play to his strengths. But, let’s be honest, this wasn’t his greatest season, lack of goals aside. Missing seven games on bans for violent conduct didn’t help us, or him, given that he is, by his own admission, a player who needs a run of games to operate at his most effective.

It’s great that we signed a couple of hugely promising young English players, Nathaniel Chalobah and Will Hughes, who look set to have a big impact over the next couple of seasons if we can keep them fit. But the continuing lack of players coming through from our own Academy is disappointing. At least Mazzarri gave a few of them a runout, albeit mostly through necessity. This season, a handful of benchwarming stints by Michael Folivi, Carl Stewart and Joy Mokena – actually, they managed four between them, so not even a handful – is all we have to show for the club’s investment in youth. It’s rather depressing to think that Adrian Mariappa may turn out to be the last player we ever get to sing ‘He’s one of our own’ for.

It’s great that the 1881 have continued to improve the atmosphere at games this season with their banners and flags and confetti cannons (though a bit of warning might have been nice, lads – an old bloke near me nearly had a heart attack when they went off the first time). Sticking a drummer and a ‘conductor’ on the TV gantry outside the hospitality suite for a couple of games near the end of the season worked particularly well. But it’s disheartening to see so many empty seats at most games, suggesting that there a few thousand season ticket holders who aren’t actually that bothered about Watford, but can afford to spend hundreds of pounds a year to watch a handful of games that interest them. I know the club is looking into this, and it’s an emotive subject – you can’t force people to attend games. But all the talk of extending the ground seems a bit extraneous as long as we can’t fill it from week to week at the current capacity.

And finally, a personal bugbear. It’s great that the players still run out to ‘Z Cars’ – it’s part of the club’s heritage, something that is special and (almost) unique to us. But it’s bloody annoying that they cut it off once the teams have lined up and switch to some anonymous rubbish that is presumably the PL’s official anthem, or some such nonsense (I’m moderating my language here in case any minors are reading), thus depriving us of the chance to hear the tune in all its glory, complete with the bonkers clarinet (?) solo in the middle. I assume this is a PL rule – I noticed at the Bristol City FA Cup tie that ‘Z Cars’ got played in full – but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.

Not angry, just... irritated

Yesterday’s game against Hull was hugely irritating; for Watford to be so dominant and yet fail to get a shot on target is the kind of performance that drives fans mad. Most irritating of all is the thought of how good this Watford team could be, if the many obvious talents it contains could just knit together a bit better. And yet we’re seventh in the table, having kept three clean sheets in a row. I realise that it looks churlish to complain.

We’ve been here before, of course. Last December, Quique’s team were riding on the crest of a wave, scoring goals and winning matches they weren’t expected to, and it looked like the only way was up. We all know what happened next, so I’m reserving judgement for now.

In the meantime, to give vent to my frustration, here are five more things about Watford that I find irritating at the moment:

1) Lack of fixture congestion
One of the wonderful things about being in the Premier League, we’re told, is the chance to play all these exciting games against great teams. Except it isn’t, is it? Yesterday’s match was our first at Vicarage Road for 28 days, and it’s another 21 till the next one. So that’s a 49-day period with just 90 minutes of football for home fans to enjoy – 90 minutes against an opponent that packed the midfield and showed minimal attacking intent.

2) Woke up one morning, almost missed the game
It’s not exclusive to the Premier League, but the moving of kick-off times is a major irritant. Midday on a Sunday for a home game against Stoke next month? And then the away game in January against the same team moved from a bank holiday afternoon to the following evening? Others have complained far more eloquently than I can about this issue, so let’s just register it and move on.

3) The lost boys
I really miss the days when any Watford team that took the pitch included at least a couple of homegrown players, and it would be nice to think that we can roll out the “he’s one of our own” chant again one day.

I get it, of course. At the level we’re now playing at, we need greater skill and experience than any youngster produced by our Academy is likely to possess. In summer 2015, the transfer policy deliberately prioritised older players with the nous to keep us up for that first crucial season in the Premier League, and this year we’ve apparently got the oldest team in the division.

It doesn’t help that, judging by what I read about Harry Kewell’s under-23 ‘development’ squad, they would struggle to beat Wealdstone at the moment. If the aim of that set-up is for young players to learn lots of different ways of losing to clubs with inferior resources, they’re doing a great job. But it’s hard to see any of those youngsters bridging the gap to the first-team squad any time soon.

4) What’s the score?
Why don’t we get a full set of half-time scores from all four divisions (plus Scotland) any more? The other Premier League scores are read out, and maybe the Championship if we’re lucky, and that’s it. I used to hate that when it happened at away grounds (usually at clubs that considered themselves too grand to look downwards – Leeds springs to mind), and now we’re showing the same arrogance.

English football consists of four professional divisions, and Watford should celebrate that heritage, which we’ve been part of at every level in the not so distant past. The examples of clubs like Portsmouth, Bolton and Coventry show that it would be foolish to assume we’ll never find ourselves back in the lower leagues again.

Besides, I miss the chance to cheer when it’s announced that Luton are losing at half-time.

5) Z-Ca-
One tradition the club has, thankfully, maintained is the playing of the Z-Cars theme when the teams run out. Well, sort of. We get the first verse or so as the players make their way from the tunnel to the silly branded arch they have to line up in front of, and then the music abruptly switches to something modern and pompous, destroying the mood. I miss that bonkers solo in the middle (is it a clarinet?) more than I can express.

You can see the thinking. Playing Z-Cars is a sop to the fans (especially old gits like me), but it’s the sort of thing the club would prefer to keep to a minimum in the shiny modern world of the Premier League.

Get with the programme special: the young ones

With England playing Germany tomorrow night, it seemed like a good time to write about a programme that’s been sitting on my desk for a while now, waiting to be filed. It dates all the way back to May 20th, 1972, when England took on West Germany in a schools’ international at Wembley Stadium.

If I remember rightly, this trip and a couple of similar ones were organised by my junior school, Ashfield in Bushey, and we witnessed a packed programme of pre-match entertainment with a notably military theme. First up were the Band of the Corps of Royal Engineers, followed by a gymnastic display by the Junior Leaders’ Regiment of the RE and the Royal Air Force Police Dog Team, before the band returned for ‘Community Singing’ conducted by the inevitable Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart. (He used to lead the singalongs that preceded the FA Cup Final, too.) The programme helpfully includes the lyrics to a decidedly mixed bag of songs, including ‘Back home’ (the 1970 England World Cup theme), ‘Consider yourself’ from Oliver, Cliff’s classic ‘Congratulations’ and, um, ‘The happy wanderer’.

Of course, the main fun of such matches in retrospect is discovering which future giants of the game you saw in their formative years. In this case, it’s not a bad haul, with a strong Watford connection: future skipper John Wilfred Rostron of St Thomas Aquinas RC School, and future Assistant Manager Raymond Colin Wilkins of Townfield Secondary Modern. Other names I recognise include John Sparrow and Clive Walker (both Chelsea), John Trewick (West Brom, Newcastle, Oxford) and Trevor Ross (Arsenal and Everton).

The pen portraits of the players are a joy, as you’d expect. Almost every one includes a variation on the phrase “hopes to become a professional footballer”, apart from Terence Pashley, who “plans to train for the catering industry”. (I just Googled him, and it turns it he had a long career at Burnley, Blackpool and Bury; I hope he wasn’t too disappointed.)

Judging by my dad’s notes on the team sheet, England won 4-0, with Wilf Rostron (wearing no. 11, and thus presumably playing as a winger*) scoring one of them. The programme also includes photos from the schoolboys’ previous outing, when England had tonked Holland 5-1. In my 10-year-old innocence, I assumed that glorious days lay ahead for the senior England team once this gilded generation grew up. Sadly, as we know, they didn’t even qualify for the next two World Cups – one of which was won by West Germany, while Holland featured in both finals. If nothing else, it shows that England’s failure to turn youthful promise into adult achievement is by no means a new phenomenon.

*If this sentence makes no logical sense to you, ask someone over 40

End of an era

The news last week that Lloyd Doyley has signed for Rotherham came us a blow to all of us who’d secretly hoped he’d somehow manage to play out his career at Vicarage Road and then stay on in some kind of coaching role. It just seems wrong to see him wearing a different club’s kit.

It’s only a loan deal until the end of the season, but even the most deluded of Lloydinho fans (among whom I count myself) don’t really believe we’ll see him in a Watford shirt again, barring a freak accident involving the entire defensive portion of the first-team squad. At least Rotherham have given him a chance to prolong his career and display the defensive skills and discipline that made him, for several years, the best right back in the Championship bar none. At 33, and assuming his customary levels of fitness and dedication, he should have another three or four seasons in him yet.

I’ve wittered on about my admiration of Lloyd enough on this blog in the past, and about his status as one of a dying breed of full-backs who earned their place on defensive ability alone. Sure, he’s never been able to perform tricks like the sublime one Juan Carlos Paredes performed to skin his marker against Bournemouth yesterday – but if I wanted a winger shepherded away from the penalty area and closed down before he could get a cross in, it’s Lloyd I’d call on every day of the week.

Lloyd’s departure symbolises the end of another era, too: that of the homegrown player as fixture in the Watford first team. Looking at how the club has changed in the past few years, you do wonder when (if ever) we will see another player come through the Academy and establish himself in the team. There’s Tommie Hoban, who may have a chance when he gets over his long-term injury problems, but after that? You can’t really see George Byers or Josh Doherty displacing any of the existing squad members from the bench, let alone actually getting onto the pitch.

Of course, the gulf between the Academy and the first team is largely the result of the club’s success, but it also reflects a shift in policy. These days, we’re officially targeting older players with the nous and experience to ensure we can maintain our Premier League status – very few of our signings since the end of last season have been under 28 – and the younger players who do make the fringes of the first team tend to be high-profile foreigners like Obbi Oulare, who’d already played in the Champions League before coming here. It’s a policy that’s been spectacularly successful, so it’s hard to criticise.

In the meantime, until the Harefield Academy can start to turn out players of that calibre, the brightest and best Watford youngsters will continue to sign professional contracts, spend a couple of years playing Under-21 football and then drift off to other clubs (if they’re lucky). We’re not unique in that respect, of course, but at a time when other Premier League clubs have shown the ability to nurture talented young footballers and bring them through into the first team (Southampton and Spurs are two that spring to mind), it seems a shame that Watford is now possibly the club in the top division where you’re least likely to see an Academy graduate make an appearance.

Nineties nostalgia, pt. 3 – Ooh ahh

I’ll be honest, I struggled to find a programme worth saving from the 1991/92 season. In the end I plumped for the January 1992 fixture against Newcastle, purely because it was one of the few games from that season that sparked any kind of memory.

A couple of years earlier, I’d done a one-year postgraduate journalism course, and one of my friends there was a bloke called John Mulvey, whose sole ambition was to write for the NME. His admirable single-mindedness had paid off, and by 1992 he was firmly established at the country’s leading weekly music magazine. What’s more, for reasons now lost in the mists of time, he had decided to bring a band he was interviewing to Vicarage Road for the Newcastle game, to add a bit of colour to the piece I suppose. This would be a much better story if I could remember who the band was, but I can’t. Presumably they were Newcastle fans, or maybe they just happened to be in Watford for the weekend.

Either way, I remember meeting John and a couple of guys from the band (and I really wish I could say they turned out to be Blur or the Stone Roses or someone) on the Vicarage Road End terrace before the game and standing with them as the Hornets dashed into a 2-0 lead in the first 10 minutes. As you do, I was rubbing my hands in anticipation of a record scoreline, but the Watford team of the early ’90s wasn’t so obliging, and the game ended 2-2.

The programme is a thin thing of 32 pages, with a rather old-fashioned look and feel. For all the bright colours, it feels very parochial, and two items epitomise this. One is a paragraph on the supporters club page about unclaimed prizes from the Junior Hornets New Year Raffle, which include Scalextric, a bottle of sherry and a half-bottle of whisky. The other, on a page of miscellaneous news, is an apology for the directions to Cambridge United printed in the previous programme; apparently “they were in fact a good route to Cambridge City!” So near, and yet so far.

Dominating the programme, as indeed he did the era in some respects, is Andy Hessenthaler, who is pictured on the cover, on the centre spread (as part of an interview) and on the news pages. He’d only been at the club since the previous September, but had quickly made an impression. It’s no surprise to learn from the interview that he did a lot of cross-country running as a boy, though I wasn’t aware that he was a self-employed ceramic tiler before Watford gave him the opportunity to play football for a living.

What else is there to say of this underwhelming era, when we were expected to get excited about a team including Trevor Putney, Peter Nicholas, Keith Waugh and Jason Drysdale? Well, one thing that’s noticeable is the number of products of the youth system who featured that season. Apart from Drysdale, Nigel Gibbs, David Holdsworth, Gary Porter and Luther Blissett (in his third and final spell at the club) all started that day, while Darren Bazeley came on as a sub and David James was missing his first game of the season. Richard Johnson had just broken into the first-team squad, Jason Solomon and Barry Ashby had played a few games, and Robert Page was a fixture in the youth team. Whatever else happened during the dog days of the 1990s, we never stopped bringing young players through into the first team. I wonder if we’ll ever see that many Academy products in the starting line-up for a league game again?

Return post

Having examined how the Pozzos fared against the criteria I decided to judge them against at the start of last season, it seems only fair to do the same for the manager they appointed. In a post entitled ‘Dear Mr Zola’ I laid out five points I was hoping Gianfranco might ponder…

1) Do your homework
I was keen for the new boss to learn a bit about Watford’s history and traditions, as an extra bulwark against the possibility of the club losing its identity under the new regime. To be honest, it’s hard to tell whether he did or didn’t. All managers use interviews and programme notes to emphasis how much they appreciate the history of the club they’re lucky enough to be in charge of, and Zola was no exception. But in his case, I tend to believe him. He just seems like that kind of guy.

2) Give (our) youth a chance
I wasn’t the only one who was worried that opportunities for graduates of the Watford Academy might disappear, given the size our new squad. It’s true that the ‘lost generation’ of Academy graduates – Bennett, Mingoia, Hodson, Jenkins – found opportunities few and far between, and even though the latter two still have a year left on their contracts, I doubt we’ll see much of them next season.

But Zola skipped a generation to give game time to younger players whose talents were deemed more suitable to the new model Watford. Tommy Hoban and Jonathan Bond grasped theirs with both hands, Sean Murray less so, and Connor Smith had limited chances to shine. The only worrying thing is that they all suffered from injuries, with Bond’s arguably having a decisive effect on the outcome of our season. But with all four signed up for the next few years, they have a real chance to push on with Watford.

3) Find a decent penalty-taker
Missed penalties have been a miserable fact of life for Watford fans for longer than I can remember, but this season brought a big improvement. Abdi, Deeney and Vydra all scored two each, and if we did miss any, I can’t remember them. Another tick in the box.

(Oh, and the fact that we finally found a goalkeeper capable of keeping penalties out at the other end also came in handy.)

4) Keep us up
It’s hard to remember now, but for a couple of months there was genuine fear among Hornets fans that Zola wouldn’t manage this fundamental part of his job, as he struggled to shape a consistent and effective team from his enormous squad. But once he settled on a formation that suited his best players, he never looked back.

5) Don’t drop Doyley
Talking of his best players… Of course, Zola ignored my advice initially, just like every other Watford manager for the past decade. Lloyd didn’t feature much until late October, when the Italian saw the error of his ways. Then a rare injury kept him out of the team from mid-November until the New Year – but after that, playing on the right-hand side of a back three gave him the opportunity to show his defensive skills time and time again, and he was the standout player in our play-off campaign.

All in all, it’s hard to find much to complain about. I’m looking forward to seeing how Zola tackles next season, when his team will start as one of the favourites for promotion. That’s assuming we sign a few players, of course.

Dear Mr Zola

Having suggested what I’d like to see Watford’s new owners do, I’ve been thinking about how Gianfranco Zola might best keep me happy (which will, obviously, be one of his priorities). Here are five points he might like to ponder:

1) Do your homework
No, not on the opposition – on Watford FC, its history and traditions. Reading Oliver Phillips’ centenary history of the club would be a good start, and Lionel Birnie’s books paint a good picture of the high points of the modern era. I don’t expect the manager to be able to answer trivia questions on Watford, but equally, I’d like to think his knowledge extends beyond the reductive ‘Elton John’s money + long-ball game = success in the 80s’ view of the club.

2) Give (our) youth a chance
This ought to be a no-brainer, given the Pozzos’ stated business model, but the huge influx of exotically named loanees from our new ‘sister clubs’ is a little concerning, and rather reminiscent of Sean Dyche’s scatter-gun approach to squad building. The reinstatement of the seven subs rule ought to help, but I hope that our Academy graduates are given a proper chance to show what they can do this season – not just the occasional five-minute cameo.

3) Find a decent penalty-taker
This is one way in which Zola could distinguish himself from every one of his predecessors over the past decade or more. Watford must have one of the poorest penalty conversion rates in the league, to the point where I barely bother celebrating any more when we’re awarded one, knowing that it will be wasted. It shouldn’t be that difficult: identify a couple of players who are good at taking penalties and make sure they practice at every training session, until they can score with their eyes shut.

4) Keep us up
I suppose that should have been the first point, really, as it’s the minimum requirement for any Watford manager. The last few have done a good job in this regard, probably because (despite public pronouncements to the contrary) this was their main focus for the season. Now talk has shifted to the possibility of moving up the league rather than down it, and though there’s no immediate reason to worry, plenty of clubs in this division have found that ambition can be a prelude to relegation.

5) Don’t drop Doyley
Really, don’t even think about it. Most Watford managers over the past 10 years have dropped Lloyd at some point, only to see the error of their ways. So what if he’s not a marauding wing-back? He’s the best defender at the club, and one of the best in the division, and we’re a better team with him than without.

Now you see him…

So farewell then, Marvin Sordell (that ‘Scoredell’ nickname never really took off, did it?). He was here, and now he’s gone. Mind you, we may well see him again next season, the way Bolton are going.

The sale of Marvin is further proof that the Watford Academy system is working, if any were needed. That’s what it’s there for, after all; to produce players who can perform in the shop window of the first team and earn a big-money move to a club a bit higher up the pecking order. I just wish they’d spend a bit longer at Watford first. We got a season and a half out of Marvin, basically, and I can’t help feeling short-changed, whatever the harsh economic realities of the situation.

At least Marvin performed fairly consistently during that time, for all that his talent is still raw. All too often with attacking players in particular, we have to endure a couple of seasons of frustrating performances before they start to approach their potential – at which point another club makes them an offer they can’t refuse. Take Lee Cook, Hameur Bouazza and Tamas Priskin; all of them tormented us with glimpses of talent interspersed with longer periods of being a bit rubbish, and we never got to see them fulfil their potential. Mind you, nor has anyone else, which is some consolation.

Ultimately, we all know that really good players aren’t going to scrabble around in the bottom half of the Championship indefinitely. I think three years is a reasonable time to expect to be able to watch a decent footballer at Vicarage Road, though – long enough for anyone who’s had their name printed on the back of a replica shirt to get some wear out of it. On that basis, Marvin has left at least a season too early – and that’s without going into the argument that his long-term career might benefit from spending a bit longer away from the spotlight of the Premiership.

Still, at least the promising Sean Murray is finally getting his chance in the first team. Let’s enjoy it while we can. On current form, I wouldn’t bet on him still being a Watford player in three years’ time.

It’s good to be back

Finally, my first game of the season, and a corker too. A few miscellaneous observations from the 1-0 win over Barnsley:

- Henri Lansbury - wow! He must be a nightmare to play against, what with his incessant running and pressing, not to mention his skill on the ball. And the showboating must get on their nerves too.

- Was that really Dale Bennett’s first start for the first team? A fine example of a young player grasping his chance with both hands.

- And how satisfying that our first league clean sheet of the season came with a back four composed entirely of Academy products.

- That nurses’ home they’re building on the back of the Rookery is considerably larger than I was expecting. Still, it should be less drafty this winter now that both corners have been filled in.

- Cudos to Richard Walker for the new-look programme, and in particular for bringing back the section on the statistics page that shows each player’s total number of Watford appearances. It disappeared for the last two seasons, to my immense frustration. (I know. Humour me.) Just to confirm how new this squad is, we now have only four players with more than 100 Watford appearances - and one of those is Richard Lee, who’s unlikely to feature until we sell Scott Loach in the January transfer window.

To-do list

A bit late I know, but I just wanted to say well done - to Brendan, to the players, to the board, hell, even to the fans. To have got through the past 12 months and come away with a 13th-place finish in the Championship is quite an achievement, all things considered. And to finish with a smile on our faces is, if anything, even more of an achievement.

Last season (2007/08) was, as I kept saying at the time, a very strange season - and so was this season, albeit for different reasons. Above all, because, no matter what was happening in the boardroom or the dugout, the goals kept flowing (at both ends). Who’d have guessed, after the tedium of last season, that Vicarage Road would see more goals than any other Championship stadium? And that the last game of the season would see us so far ahead at half-time that the Rookery could spend the second half yelling ‘Shooooot!’ at Lloyd Doyley every time he got the ball in the opposition’s half? (Mind you, I was so confident that Lloydinho was finally going to break his duck that I put a tenner on him to score. Maybe next season...)

Others have reviewed the season gone by a lot more thoroughly than I can. So for what it’s worth, here are a few things I think Watford need to do to build on the progress made in 2008/09:

1) Sort the pitch out
A few years ago, the club boasted about some new technology they’d used whereby the grass was interwoven with plastic or something, making it stronger and more resilient. I can only assume the plastic melted, because for the last couple of seasons, the Vicarage Road pitch has been a disgrace. I’m sure the Saracens are partly to blame, but I can’t believe it’s entirely down to them that the pitch is bumpy and skiddy, often both at the same time. Bottom line: if we want to play proper passing football, we need to lay a new pitch and look after it properly.

2) Buy Gregor Rasiak
A tricky one, this: reports repeatedly stress that he wants a hefty sum in wages, the sort of sum we really can’t afford these days. Only this morning I read that Sheffield Wednesday have given up hope of signing him for precisely that reason. So I can only hope that he’s developed enough affection for Watford in his time here to take a pay cut, because he makes a real difference to our front line: strong in the air, skilful on the ground, able to hold the ball up and gobble up the slightest of half-chances, Old Greg is the kind of all-round striker we’ve seen all too rarely in recent years. Especially if Priskin buggers off elsewhere (as I suspect he will), we need Rasiak.

3) Give youth a chance
Our youth, I mean. Brendan keeps talking about his passion for developing young players, but so far he’s preferred to give match experience to other clubs’ young players. It’s hard to object to Jack Cork, who is clearly a star in the making and already out of our league. But Bridcutt, Hoyte, Rose - why did these players get game time ahead of the likes of Jordan Parkes and Lewis Young? And how many loans does Theo Robinson have to go on before the Watford hierarchy makes up its mind as to whether he’s worthy of a place in OUR team? I don’t pretend to know whether these youngsters are going to make it, but I do know that we’ll only find out by playing them in the Watford first team in serious competitive games.

4) Keep talking
An obvious point really, but after the secrecy and mistrust of the Simpson-Ashton regime, it’s essential for the new board to keep talking openly and honestly to the fans. We know that there are difficult decisions to made, and that we’re not out of the financial woods just yet. All we ask is that you tell it like it is.

Thank God it’s all over

I’ve had a week to digest it, and I haven’t changed my opinion that 2007/08 was one of the most unpleasant, and strangest, seasons I can remember in thirtysomething years of supporting the Hornets. Unpleasant because of the combination of hopeless football on the pitch and seething rancour in the stands – how many times were the team booed off the pitch at half- and/or full-time? And strange because for much of this time, in the midst of the mindless hoofing and the angry jeering, we sat at the top of the table and dared to dream of promotion. Even despite the painful end-of-season slump, I make this the 13th most successful season in Watford’s history (behind eight years in the top flight, three promotion seasons and one previous failed attempt at the play-offs).

It was also strange for being so utterly joyless. We football fans, hardened cynics as we are, can usually find something to laugh about, even in the pit of despair. Take the Vialli season: it was absolute pants, but I still have fond memories of the uselessness of Blondeau, Vega and Hughes (you had to laugh or else you’d cry), Pierre Issa falling off the stretcher, the inability of Paul Okon to make any impression whatsoever on a match...

Yet the hardened cynic and the incurable optimist live side by side, often in the same person, and the spirit Watford displayed in those two play-off games has given us a reason to dream again, and to utter that deathless phrase: there’s always next season. Even while acknowledging that the standard of the Championship is unlikely to be so low again for a while (well, at least until this season’s three promoted teams come back down in a year’s time), there are grounds for optimism.

For me, the main one is Aidy’s public acknowledgement that he needs to give the younger players in the squad a chance to show what they can do. He’s said this before, of course, without necessarily keeping his promise. This year only John-Joe O’Toole broke into the first team, though it seems likely that Jordan Parkes would have done the same if it weren’t for an untimely injury that ultimately forced Aidy to buy a replacement for Jordan Stewart rather than using the player he’d been grooming for the role.

Next year I hope to see, at the very least, Parkes and Theo Robinson making the matchday squad regularly. Moses Ashikodi ought to get a chance, too, and there’s been much talk of Scott Loach taking over the goalie’s jersey (though it’s a brave manager who pitches a 20-year-old with half a season of 4th division football behind him straight into the maelstrom of the Championship). Then there’s Tamas Priskin, who’s still only 21 – his status as an international makes it easy to forget that he’s still learning his trade.

Add to them a fit Gareth Williams, and maybe an experienced striker and centre-half, and you’ve got the makings of a decent squad. We’ll see. And we’ll also see if Aidy can keep another of his promises - to freshen up the playing style. God knows he needs to.