1) Singing at football matches is fun
That feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself, part of an ecstatic, bellowing mass of humanity all hell-bent on encouraging your team to greater heights – you can’t beat that, can you?
I haven’t read much football history, but I suspect this may have been one of the key factors in football’s first upswing in popularity in the late 19th century: the chance for factory workers, miners, steelworkers and whoever else to get away from the monotony of their jobs for one afternoon a week and sing “Come on you [insert team name here]!”, knowing that this was a passion they’d chosen for themselves, and one that they shared with thousands of their fellow supporters.
2) Singing at football matches is hard to get going
It’s like starting a fire, essentially. The first spark catches, the fire spreads through the tinder around it, and then onto the kindling around that. But if the kindling is damp, the fire will stop spreading and soon burn itself out.
That’s what happened in the Watford end at Wembley last week. From where I was sitting, diagonally up from the right corner flag on the lower tier, I could clearly see the 1881 jumping up and down, singing and waving. But I couldn’t actually hear them, because between them and me there were hundreds of people standing silently, the damp kindling that stopped the fire from spreading. We did our best in our section, but there’s only so much noise you can make if the people around you won’t join in.
3) Singing at football matches should be spontaneous
I can’t have been the only person at Wembley who found the Palace fans’ scarily well-coordinated celebrations after their first goal (which encompassed the entire lower tier from one corner flag to the other, around 6,000 people, all singing and waving flags in time) reminiscent of a Nuremburg rally. How did they do that? Did they have mass practice sessions in Crystal Palace Park the week before? Or was some kind of coercion involved? (“You vill sing ‘Glad all over’ or you vill not see your children again.”)
For me, the best moments in a football crowd are the spontaneous ones. At Upton Park, a few days before the semi-final, someone behind me started up the Valon Behrami chant to the tune of ‘La Bamba’. Okay, it may have been practised in the pub before the game, but the singers still took a while to master the tricky rhythm, and it needed a hoarse-voiced MC to yell “three-four-five-six-seven-eight” between verses to keep it going in time. But keep it going he did, for quite long sections of the game, and it was fantastic. I can honestly say I enjoyed singing that more than I enjoyed Sebastian Prödl’s bizarre consolation goal.
4) Singing at football matches doesn’t make any difference to the result
I wrote about this recently, so I won’t rehearse the argument again. Suffice it to say that if having passionate fans made any real difference, Sunderland and Newcastle wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of relegation right now.
Of course, the fact that it doesn’t make a difference is no reason not to sing. (See point 1, above.)
5) Singing at football matches is not compulsory
I love singing, lots of us do, but it’s not a condition of entry to the ground. Quite frankly, I don’t want to see 10-year-olds joining in with a rendition of “You’re f***ing sh*t”, and I wouldn’t expect to see OAPs doing so either.
Moreover, Watford’s support is (and probably always will be) more middle-class and reserved than that of many of our rivals, what with South-West Hertfordshire being one of the wealthier and more comfortable parts of the country, and there are always going to be plenty of fans, even in the Rookery Stand, who are not natural singers. That doesn’t make them bad people, or bad supporters for that matter. It just means the rest of us have to sing a bit louder.
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
A good tradition
Having spent the past few seasons banging on about the importance of Championship Survival Day – the point at which our continued participation in English football’s second tier was assured – it’s only fair that I inaugurate what I trust will be a long-standing tradition and celebrate last Saturday, April 16th, as Premier League Survival Day.
I know that, mathematically, we’re not guaranteed Premier League football next season. But passing the 40-point barrier has equated to safety in the vast majority of PL seasons, and quite frankly, I can’t see Norwich, Sunderland and Newcastle collectively stirring themselves to get anywhere close to giving us sleepless nights.
No, we’re safe, and that’s cause for celebration. As we’ve learned twice before, the euphoria of promotion can quickly dissipate and the following season turn into a dispiriting procession of defeats. Not this year, though, and for that we must give huge credit to all involved with the club. Yes, the league performances haven’t been great since the turn of the year, but this could still turn out to be one of the greatest seasons in Watford’s history.
I know that, mathematically, we’re not guaranteed Premier League football next season. But passing the 40-point barrier has equated to safety in the vast majority of PL seasons, and quite frankly, I can’t see Norwich, Sunderland and Newcastle collectively stirring themselves to get anywhere close to giving us sleepless nights.
No, we’re safe, and that’s cause for celebration. As we’ve learned twice before, the euphoria of promotion can quickly dissipate and the following season turn into a dispiriting procession of defeats. Not this year, though, and for that we must give huge credit to all involved with the club. Yes, the league performances haven’t been great since the turn of the year, but this could still turn out to be one of the greatest seasons in Watford’s history.
Monday, 28 March 2016
Nineties nostalgia, pt. 5 – End of an era
The programme for the last game of the 1992-93 season, at home to Oxford, is unusual in that it doesn’t show any footballers. Instead, a photo of the Vicarage Road End terraces is juxtaposed with an artist’s impression (it actually looks as if it’s been drawn by a teenager as part of an art project) of the new, all-seater stand that will replace it. So I’m pretty sure that May 8th, 1993 is the last time I stood at a Watford home match.
The season had been the very definition of mediocrity, with Watford sitting 15th in the table at kick-off, one place ahead of their opponents. They’d gone out at the first stage of the Anglo-Italian Cup and the FA Cup, and after beating reigning League champions Leeds 2-1 in the 3rd round of the League Cup (the highlight of the season by some distance), they’d crashed out 6-1 at Blackburn in the following round.
The programme, a flimsy 26 pages, reflects this with a lacklustre tone throughout, as if the club really didn’t feel it was worth looking back on such an average season. Manager Steve Perryman’s notes (uninspiringly headed ‘Some bright spots, but it’s been a season of inconsistencies’) are brief and consist mainly of paying tribute to the scouting and coaching staff. Everything is bitty, with most pages divided into panels of varying sizes, and nothing gets more than two pages. The nearest we get to a player profile is a centre spread featuring Nigel Gibbs – who, in keeping with the downbeat vibe, had actually missed most of his testimonial season with an injury.
It’s hard to find anything at all to inspire, though Kenny Jackett’s notes on the youth team do mention the six young players who’ve been taken on as professionals, who include Bruce Dyer and Robert Page. Dyer has already been featuring regularly in the reserves, captained by Luther Blissett, no less, who could no longer get into the first team – yet another reason to admire the great man, if any were needed. The reserves were looking forward to playing Barnet in the final of the Herts Senior Cup, but they went on to lose 4-2. Of course they did. It was that kind of season.
As for the first team, and the Vicarage Road End’s last hurrah, we lost 1-0 to Oxford, who leapfrogged us in the table and pushed us down to 16th. I can’t tell you if it rained, but if it did, it would have been entirely in keeping with the mood of the programme, and the season.
The season had been the very definition of mediocrity, with Watford sitting 15th in the table at kick-off, one place ahead of their opponents. They’d gone out at the first stage of the Anglo-Italian Cup and the FA Cup, and after beating reigning League champions Leeds 2-1 in the 3rd round of the League Cup (the highlight of the season by some distance), they’d crashed out 6-1 at Blackburn in the following round.
The programme, a flimsy 26 pages, reflects this with a lacklustre tone throughout, as if the club really didn’t feel it was worth looking back on such an average season. Manager Steve Perryman’s notes (uninspiringly headed ‘Some bright spots, but it’s been a season of inconsistencies’) are brief and consist mainly of paying tribute to the scouting and coaching staff. Everything is bitty, with most pages divided into panels of varying sizes, and nothing gets more than two pages. The nearest we get to a player profile is a centre spread featuring Nigel Gibbs – who, in keeping with the downbeat vibe, had actually missed most of his testimonial season with an injury.
It’s hard to find anything at all to inspire, though Kenny Jackett’s notes on the youth team do mention the six young players who’ve been taken on as professionals, who include Bruce Dyer and Robert Page. Dyer has already been featuring regularly in the reserves, captained by Luther Blissett, no less, who could no longer get into the first team – yet another reason to admire the great man, if any were needed. The reserves were looking forward to playing Barnet in the final of the Herts Senior Cup, but they went on to lose 4-2. Of course they did. It was that kind of season.
As for the first team, and the Vicarage Road End’s last hurrah, we lost 1-0 to Oxford, who leapfrogged us in the table and pushed us down to 16th. I can’t tell you if it rained, but if it did, it would have been entirely in keeping with the mood of the programme, and the season.
Friday, 25 March 2016
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
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
Sunday, 6 March 2016
You’re not singing any sense
After Watford played Brentford at home last season, I asked my friend Stuart how on Earth he and his fellow Bees fans could justify singing things like “Is this a library?” when the Rookery End, inspired by the 1881, had been making a racket for pretty much the entire 90 minutes.
He replied that in the Vicarage Road End, they couldn’t hear anything of the sort – and maybe it’s the acoustic peculiarities of the ground that are to blame for my current irritation. Because I’m getting a bit fed up of away fans reeling out the same old tired chants about the Watford fans not singing when we clearly are. The Leicester fans were at it again yesterday.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like my football songs to make sense. I admit that when Watford fans, buoyed by a particularly fine performance, sing “We’re by far the greatest team/The world has ever seen”, it’s not a claim that would pass unchallenged in any court in the land, but we can be forgiven the occasional excess of exuberance. On the other hand, singing “Sh*t ground, no fans” at the newly spruced-up Vicarage Road when there’s scarcely an empty seat to be seen is just stupid.
The more fundamental problem I have with this is simply this: who cares? If you go to a football ground and the home fans don’t sing or chant, what does it matter?
Don’t get me wrong – I love singing, and I think the 1881 have done an incredible job in coaxing the historically reticent Watford fans into creating something that can occasionally, genuinely, be called a cauldron of noise.
On the other hand, no one ever won a trophy because their fans sang louder than the other team’s. Let’s look at the English clubs with the most famously passionate fans: clubs like Wolves, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Manchester City, Sunderland. How many trophies have any of that lot won in the past 20 years or so? Okay, City have won a couple, but it was Abu Dhabi oil dollars that made the difference, not mouthy Mancs.
No, it’s the infamously silent prawn sandwich munchers of Old Trafford and the team that used to play at a ground known as the ‘Highbury library’ that have carried off most of the silverware in modern times. (Chelsea fans aren’t particularly vocal either, unless the caterers have run out of smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels.) In other words, there’s no correlation between the noisiness of a team’s fans and their propensity to win football matches.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sing our hearts out, of course. It makes us feel good, for one thing. Moreover, the players always say they appreciate it, and I have no reason to doubt them when they say it matters to them.
But at the same time, I secretly long for the day when an entire home crowd stays pointedly silent for 90 minutes while their team wipes the floor with the opposition, just to prove that all the playground yah-boo-sucks ‘we make more noise than you’ nonsense actually makes no difference whatsoever.
He replied that in the Vicarage Road End, they couldn’t hear anything of the sort – and maybe it’s the acoustic peculiarities of the ground that are to blame for my current irritation. Because I’m getting a bit fed up of away fans reeling out the same old tired chants about the Watford fans not singing when we clearly are. The Leicester fans were at it again yesterday.
Call me old-fashioned, but I like my football songs to make sense. I admit that when Watford fans, buoyed by a particularly fine performance, sing “We’re by far the greatest team/The world has ever seen”, it’s not a claim that would pass unchallenged in any court in the land, but we can be forgiven the occasional excess of exuberance. On the other hand, singing “Sh*t ground, no fans” at the newly spruced-up Vicarage Road when there’s scarcely an empty seat to be seen is just stupid.
The more fundamental problem I have with this is simply this: who cares? If you go to a football ground and the home fans don’t sing or chant, what does it matter?
Don’t get me wrong – I love singing, and I think the 1881 have done an incredible job in coaxing the historically reticent Watford fans into creating something that can occasionally, genuinely, be called a cauldron of noise.
On the other hand, no one ever won a trophy because their fans sang louder than the other team’s. Let’s look at the English clubs with the most famously passionate fans: clubs like Wolves, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Manchester City, Sunderland. How many trophies have any of that lot won in the past 20 years or so? Okay, City have won a couple, but it was Abu Dhabi oil dollars that made the difference, not mouthy Mancs.
No, it’s the infamously silent prawn sandwich munchers of Old Trafford and the team that used to play at a ground known as the ‘Highbury library’ that have carried off most of the silverware in modern times. (Chelsea fans aren’t particularly vocal either, unless the caterers have run out of smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels.) In other words, there’s no correlation between the noisiness of a team’s fans and their propensity to win football matches.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sing our hearts out, of course. It makes us feel good, for one thing. Moreover, the players always say they appreciate it, and I have no reason to doubt them when they say it matters to them.
But at the same time, I secretly long for the day when an entire home crowd stays pointedly silent for 90 minutes while their team wipes the floor with the opposition, just to prove that all the playground yah-boo-sucks ‘we make more noise than you’ nonsense actually makes no difference whatsoever.
Sunday, 28 February 2016
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.
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.
Sunday, 14 February 2016
The wait is over
Sadly, the title of this post doesn’t refer to the awful Arthur Wait Stand, surely the worst away accommodation in the Premier League, with its view-obstructing pillars and overhanging gantry, and leg room that only a pygmy would find adequate. I did read somewhere that Palace are finally planning to replace it with something more modern, and it can’t come a day too soon.
No, I’m referring to my long wait to witness a Watford victory at Selhurst Park. True, I haven’t made every away game over the years, but if I tell you that the last time I saw us win there, the home team was Charlton Athletic, you’ll get an idea of the timescale. (For younger readers, Charlton ground-shared with Palace from 1985-1992, as The Valley didn’t meet the league’s safety standards.) Since then, I’ve seen us defeated, often heavily, by both Wimbledon (another of Palace’s tenants) and Palace themselves, on a number of occasions. Probably the worst was a 5-0 defeat in December 1999 to a Wimbledon team that was already one of our rivals in the bid to scramble out of the relegation zone.
A common factor in all these defeats was miserably cold, wet weather (one reason why I’ve missed a few chances to visit – there’s only so much suffering a man can take), so when I saw the conditions yesterday, my hopes of breaking my losing streak were dented.
Then there’s the Zaha factor. I don’t know if something bad happened to Wilf in Watford at some stage – maybe he got cut up while driving round the ring road, or a girl he fancied dumped him in whatever the nightclub at the top of the High Street is called these days – but he seems to reserve his best performances for games against the Hornets. Let’s face it, if he played like that every week, he’d be starting for England (and probably playing for a bigger club).
Sure enough, he did well enough yesterday to turn Allan Nyom into a gibbering wreck who looked like he didn’t know which was up any more, and there was a period in the second half, as Palace tore into us with pace and verve, when yet another Selhurst Park defeat looked inevitable.
Yet it didn’t come, and for that you have to give credit to the grittiness of this Watford team. By any objective standard, we didn’t play particularly well yesterday. The midfield rarely looked in control of the ball, the forwards saw very little of it, and the defence were hanging on by the skin of their teeth at times. And yet we won, thanks to a superb, instinctive finish by Troy Deeney and a tenacious rearguard action for the last 10 minutes.
If any player exemplified that grittiness it was Valon Behrami, my man of the match for the way he stayed in the Palace players’ faces throughout, challenging for the ball aggressively while skilfully staying just on the right side of the rules.
So, win against Bournemouth in a fortnight’s time and we can start to relax. Quique has promised to play a bit more expansively once safety is ensured, which will be fun to see. In the meantime, my personal Selhurst Park hoodoo is broken. Maybe next season, the sun will even shine in South Norwood. I wouldn’t put any money on it, though.
No, I’m referring to my long wait to witness a Watford victory at Selhurst Park. True, I haven’t made every away game over the years, but if I tell you that the last time I saw us win there, the home team was Charlton Athletic, you’ll get an idea of the timescale. (For younger readers, Charlton ground-shared with Palace from 1985-1992, as The Valley didn’t meet the league’s safety standards.) Since then, I’ve seen us defeated, often heavily, by both Wimbledon (another of Palace’s tenants) and Palace themselves, on a number of occasions. Probably the worst was a 5-0 defeat in December 1999 to a Wimbledon team that was already one of our rivals in the bid to scramble out of the relegation zone.
A common factor in all these defeats was miserably cold, wet weather (one reason why I’ve missed a few chances to visit – there’s only so much suffering a man can take), so when I saw the conditions yesterday, my hopes of breaking my losing streak were dented.
Then there’s the Zaha factor. I don’t know if something bad happened to Wilf in Watford at some stage – maybe he got cut up while driving round the ring road, or a girl he fancied dumped him in whatever the nightclub at the top of the High Street is called these days – but he seems to reserve his best performances for games against the Hornets. Let’s face it, if he played like that every week, he’d be starting for England (and probably playing for a bigger club).
Sure enough, he did well enough yesterday to turn Allan Nyom into a gibbering wreck who looked like he didn’t know which was up any more, and there was a period in the second half, as Palace tore into us with pace and verve, when yet another Selhurst Park defeat looked inevitable.
Yet it didn’t come, and for that you have to give credit to the grittiness of this Watford team. By any objective standard, we didn’t play particularly well yesterday. The midfield rarely looked in control of the ball, the forwards saw very little of it, and the defence were hanging on by the skin of their teeth at times. And yet we won, thanks to a superb, instinctive finish by Troy Deeney and a tenacious rearguard action for the last 10 minutes.
If any player exemplified that grittiness it was Valon Behrami, my man of the match for the way he stayed in the Palace players’ faces throughout, challenging for the ball aggressively while skilfully staying just on the right side of the rules.
So, win against Bournemouth in a fortnight’s time and we can start to relax. Quique has promised to play a bit more expansively once safety is ensured, which will be fun to see. In the meantime, my personal Selhurst Park hoodoo is broken. Maybe next season, the sun will even shine in South Norwood. I wouldn’t put any money on it, though.
Sunday, 24 January 2016
Matters arising
It’s been so long since I wrote anything on this blog that I feel a need to state my position on various burning topics related to Watford FC – mainly to remind myself what my position is.
The summer signings
Back in July, I expressed serious misgivings about the sheer number of new players arriving at the club. I wasn’t the only one, but that’s no excuse; clearly, I was wrong to be concerned. In my defence, I was assuming that the players who got us to the promised land would all be pushed out by these upstart newcomers, and that soon proved not to be the case. Deeney, Ighalo, Gomes, Cathcart, Watson, Abdi and Anya have all played most games, and that’s created a stable base for the likes of Britos, Aké, Capoue, Jurado and Nyom to establish themselves. So far, at least, it’s worked.
You could still argue that the transfer policy was flawed, since so many of the new signings have barely featured. Oularé and Berghuis are clearly works in progress, and Prödl and Behrami are useful squad members; but Arlauskis appears to have been merely a stopgap, judging by the recent recruitment of Pantilimon, while Holebas never wanted to be here, Diamanti doesn’t like being on the bench, and Ibarbo and Guedioura seem to have been signed purely to fill slots in the squad.
Of course, we’ve been lucky with injuries so far. In an alternative universe, some of the above-named would have played more of a role and their presence would have been amply justified.
The ones who were let go
I know this argument has long since died down, but for the record, I (reluctantly) acknowledge that the decisions to send various beloved squad members out on loan were largely correct. Most of them are currently doing the job you’d expect – but in the Championship, and without suggesting they could replicate it a level higher.
The one I really regret seeing go is Fernando Forestieri. I’d love to see him coming off the bench with 15 minutes of a game to go and confusing the hell out of Premier League defenders. We don’t have a player who can do that at the moment, and I wish we did. But the fact that Fernando is averaging a goal every two games at Sheffield Wednesday (11 in 21 starts so far) is probably the result of him being a regular starter, and that was never going to happen at Vicarage Road.
Jurado
Yes, he’s an impressively talented player, great with the ball at his feet and a skillful passer of the ball. He showed all this and more against Newcastle yesterday, and he’s getting better all the time. BUT his failure to score a single goal to date irks me. Someone playing the role he does really ought to be chipping in with five or six goals a season.
Perhaps the answer is simply that if he combined an eye for goal with his other talents, he’d be at a bigger club than Watford.
My favourite player
And finally... Regular readers have doubtless been on tenterhooks since August, when I announced it was time for me to choose a new favourite Watford player to replace Lloyd Doyley.
In the end, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone to learn that it’s got to be Troy Deeney. Almen Abdi has a special place in my heart (and I think there’s more to come from him), and Odion Ighalo is one of the most instinctive goalscorers we’ve ever seen in a yellow shirt. But Troy is the beating heart of this team, the one player whose absence would really worry me. He’s been central to the Pozzo project almost from day one (well, apart from that unfortunate incident and its consequences), and I fervently hope that he’ll stay and see it through to the next stage. Right now, it’s hard to imagine a Watford team without him.
The summer signings
Back in July, I expressed serious misgivings about the sheer number of new players arriving at the club. I wasn’t the only one, but that’s no excuse; clearly, I was wrong to be concerned. In my defence, I was assuming that the players who got us to the promised land would all be pushed out by these upstart newcomers, and that soon proved not to be the case. Deeney, Ighalo, Gomes, Cathcart, Watson, Abdi and Anya have all played most games, and that’s created a stable base for the likes of Britos, Aké, Capoue, Jurado and Nyom to establish themselves. So far, at least, it’s worked.
You could still argue that the transfer policy was flawed, since so many of the new signings have barely featured. Oularé and Berghuis are clearly works in progress, and Prödl and Behrami are useful squad members; but Arlauskis appears to have been merely a stopgap, judging by the recent recruitment of Pantilimon, while Holebas never wanted to be here, Diamanti doesn’t like being on the bench, and Ibarbo and Guedioura seem to have been signed purely to fill slots in the squad.
Of course, we’ve been lucky with injuries so far. In an alternative universe, some of the above-named would have played more of a role and their presence would have been amply justified.
The ones who were let go
I know this argument has long since died down, but for the record, I (reluctantly) acknowledge that the decisions to send various beloved squad members out on loan were largely correct. Most of them are currently doing the job you’d expect – but in the Championship, and without suggesting they could replicate it a level higher.
The one I really regret seeing go is Fernando Forestieri. I’d love to see him coming off the bench with 15 minutes of a game to go and confusing the hell out of Premier League defenders. We don’t have a player who can do that at the moment, and I wish we did. But the fact that Fernando is averaging a goal every two games at Sheffield Wednesday (11 in 21 starts so far) is probably the result of him being a regular starter, and that was never going to happen at Vicarage Road.
Jurado
Yes, he’s an impressively talented player, great with the ball at his feet and a skillful passer of the ball. He showed all this and more against Newcastle yesterday, and he’s getting better all the time. BUT his failure to score a single goal to date irks me. Someone playing the role he does really ought to be chipping in with five or six goals a season.
Perhaps the answer is simply that if he combined an eye for goal with his other talents, he’d be at a bigger club than Watford.
My favourite player
And finally... Regular readers have doubtless been on tenterhooks since August, when I announced it was time for me to choose a new favourite Watford player to replace Lloyd Doyley.
In the end, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone to learn that it’s got to be Troy Deeney. Almen Abdi has a special place in my heart (and I think there’s more to come from him), and Odion Ighalo is one of the most instinctive goalscorers we’ve ever seen in a yellow shirt. But Troy is the beating heart of this team, the one player whose absence would really worry me. He’s been central to the Pozzo project almost from day one (well, apart from that unfortunate incident and its consequences), and I fervently hope that he’ll stay and see it through to the next stage. Right now, it’s hard to imagine a Watford team without him.
Saturday, 12 December 2015
Silence is golden
I’ve just realised that it’s over two months since I last posted on this blog. That’s just life; sometimes, work and other stuff gets in the way of my offhand musings about the past, present and future of my favourite football club.
But I wonder if, subconsciously, my recent silence has also been a reaction to the sheer amount of noise around Watford this season. I can’t be the only one to have noticed that, as the number of matches the team actually plays has diminished since promotion, so the amount of discussion of the club has increased.
Part of that is a natural consequence of being a Premier League team: match previews and reports as a matter of course in the national press, more attention from the BBC and Sky. Locally, too, coverage has increased exponentially, largely as a result of the launch of WD Sport, which has created a competition with the Watford Observer to see who can publish more flimsy stories a day, even when there’s nothing to say. (Seriously, I really don’t want to read another word about Emmanuel Adebayor, unless it’s to say that he’s signed or he’s turned us down.) The team at From The Rookery End have increased the number of podcasts they produce as well. They’re unfailingly interesting, but I do sometimes look at my iTunes page and wonder how I’m supposed to keep up.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a great time to be a Watford fan, in terms of what’s happening on the pitch and the coverage the club gets. But until I have something original to say, I don’t feel a burning need to add to the online chatter.
But I wonder if, subconsciously, my recent silence has also been a reaction to the sheer amount of noise around Watford this season. I can’t be the only one to have noticed that, as the number of matches the team actually plays has diminished since promotion, so the amount of discussion of the club has increased.
Part of that is a natural consequence of being a Premier League team: match previews and reports as a matter of course in the national press, more attention from the BBC and Sky. Locally, too, coverage has increased exponentially, largely as a result of the launch of WD Sport, which has created a competition with the Watford Observer to see who can publish more flimsy stories a day, even when there’s nothing to say. (Seriously, I really don’t want to read another word about Emmanuel Adebayor, unless it’s to say that he’s signed or he’s turned us down.) The team at From The Rookery End have increased the number of podcasts they produce as well. They’re unfailingly interesting, but I do sometimes look at my iTunes page and wonder how I’m supposed to keep up.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a great time to be a Watford fan, in terms of what’s happening on the pitch and the coverage the club gets. But until I have something original to say, I don’t feel a burning need to add to the online chatter.
Thursday, 1 October 2015
‘Tales From The Vicarage: Volume 4’ by Lionel Birnie
Founded in 1960, the group of French-speaking writers who called themselves Oulipo devoted themselves to writing fiction under certain constraints. Most famously, George Perec set himself the challenge of writing an entire novel without using the letter ‘e’.
Perec died a long time ago, but if he was still alive, I reckon I could set him a tougher challenge than that: try writing about pre-Pozzo-era Watford without mentioning Graham Taylor. Judging by TFTV4, I don’t think even Oulipo’s finest could have managed it.
Entertaining and illuminating snapshots of GT crop up throughout the latest volume in the excellent TFTV series. Here he is in 1983, “donning a three-piece suit, bowler hat and stick-on moustache” for a nostalgic friendly against Corinthian Casuals (a game I often think I dreamt, so I’m grateful to have independent verification that it actually took place). Here he is the following year, sitting in a room in an airport hotel in Glasgow, waiting nervously for John McClelland – who has just agreed to join the Hornets – to return from a room down the corridor, where he knows that Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson is trying to gazump him. Here is again in 1996, on his first day back at the club, giving all the players a piece of paper and a pen and telling them to pick a team for the next game (Tommy Mooney not only picks himself, but names himself as captain). And yet again in 1998, persuading Allan Smart to sign on the dotted line in a series of conversations and messages that make him feel “like the best player in the world”.
The credits for the TFTV series have shrunk over time, from the varied cast of writers employed for the first two volumes (myself included on Volume 1) to the two-handed, interview-themed Volume 3. Volume 4 is a Lionel Birnie solo album, but it’s none the worse for that. That’s largely because of the variety of material covered in the 10 chapters, where extended interviews are interspersed with both topical material (the first three chapters are broadly themed around Watford’s journey to the Premier League) and more nostalgic digressions.
To be honest, the latter were my favourite parts of the book. For instance, the chapter on the friendly games of the early 80s (many of which I attended) makes you realise just how much less seriously professional football as a whole – and Watford in particular – took itself in those days. Can you imagine a team today going abroad to play a friendly just three days before the final game of the season, and one that would determine whether or not they won promotion? That’s what Watford did in May 1979, and that’s not even the strangest part of the story (which I won’t spoil for those who haven’t read the book yet).
I could go on, but you get the point. TFTV4, like its predecessors, is full of wonderful stories and intriguing insights into the club we all love. And pretty much every chapter underscores how lucky those of us of my generation are to have been Watford fans in a period that has encompassed both GT in his pomp (twice!) and the Pozzos.
Perec died a long time ago, but if he was still alive, I reckon I could set him a tougher challenge than that: try writing about pre-Pozzo-era Watford without mentioning Graham Taylor. Judging by TFTV4, I don’t think even Oulipo’s finest could have managed it.
Entertaining and illuminating snapshots of GT crop up throughout the latest volume in the excellent TFTV series. Here he is in 1983, “donning a three-piece suit, bowler hat and stick-on moustache” for a nostalgic friendly against Corinthian Casuals (a game I often think I dreamt, so I’m grateful to have independent verification that it actually took place). Here he is the following year, sitting in a room in an airport hotel in Glasgow, waiting nervously for John McClelland – who has just agreed to join the Hornets – to return from a room down the corridor, where he knows that Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson is trying to gazump him. Here is again in 1996, on his first day back at the club, giving all the players a piece of paper and a pen and telling them to pick a team for the next game (Tommy Mooney not only picks himself, but names himself as captain). And yet again in 1998, persuading Allan Smart to sign on the dotted line in a series of conversations and messages that make him feel “like the best player in the world”.
The credits for the TFTV series have shrunk over time, from the varied cast of writers employed for the first two volumes (myself included on Volume 1) to the two-handed, interview-themed Volume 3. Volume 4 is a Lionel Birnie solo album, but it’s none the worse for that. That’s largely because of the variety of material covered in the 10 chapters, where extended interviews are interspersed with both topical material (the first three chapters are broadly themed around Watford’s journey to the Premier League) and more nostalgic digressions.
To be honest, the latter were my favourite parts of the book. For instance, the chapter on the friendly games of the early 80s (many of which I attended) makes you realise just how much less seriously professional football as a whole – and Watford in particular – took itself in those days. Can you imagine a team today going abroad to play a friendly just three days before the final game of the season, and one that would determine whether or not they won promotion? That’s what Watford did in May 1979, and that’s not even the strangest part of the story (which I won’t spoil for those who haven’t read the book yet).
I could go on, but you get the point. TFTV4, like its predecessors, is full of wonderful stories and intriguing insights into the club we all love. And pretty much every chapter underscores how lucky those of us of my generation are to have been Watford fans in a period that has encompassed both GT in his pomp (twice!) and the Pozzos.
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