‘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.

What a life

I finally got round to trying out the My Premier League Life tool on the BBC Sport website the other day, and very illuminating it is too. I never knew that I share my birthday with Michael Essien and Christian Benteke.

More pertinently, I learnt that, of the nine ‘trophies or promotions’ Watford have achieved in their history, eight have occurred in my lifetime (the one I missed being a 4th-place finish to win promotion from Division 4 in 1959-60). Looking into the details, I was reminded that we’ve only ever actually won three trophies: the Division 3 title in 1969-69 and 1997-98, and the Division 4 title in 1977-78. In other words, we’re not bad at getting promoted, but we’ve rarely done it in style.

Here’s the thing, though: if we stay up this season, there’s a pretty high probability that we won’t win another trophy in my lifetime.

If we don’t stay up, then there’s always the Championship title to play for; with the Pozzos’ backing, we’d have a decent chance of going one better than last season. But if we do stay up, and we establish ourselves as a Premier League club, then it’s probably not worth investing in a trophy cabinet.

Look at the records of some of the mid-ranking Premier League clubs that we can realistically aspire to sit alongside in the years to come:

• Newcastle United – last trophy: Fairs Cup, 1969 (apart from the Championship title or equivalent, which they won in 1993 and 2010)
• West Bromwich Albion – last trophy: FA Cup, 1968 (apart from the Championship title, which they won in 2008)
• Stoke City – last trophy: League Cup, 1972 (apart from the 2nd Division title, which they won in 1993)
• West Ham United – last trophy: FA Cup, 1980 (and they won the 2nd Division title the following year)
• Southampton – last trophy: FA Cup, 1976 (surprisingly, they’ve never actually won the Championship or equivalent)

You see the pattern: the only way for clubs like these – like us, potentially – to win silverware in the last 30-odd years has been to drop down a division and come back up as champions.

There are occasional exceptions, of course. Since the turn of the century, Swansea, Wigan, Birmingham and Portsmouth have all won one of the two cup competitions, though only one of those is still a Premier League club.

That’s our best bet, though. Unless something cataclysmic happens to English football, the Premier League title will remain out of Watford’s reach, as it is to all but a handful of clubs. The European competitions? I can see us qualifying for the Europa League in a few years’ time, if all goes according to plan, but winning it? Since it switched to the current format, the only English club to win the trophy are Chelsea.

Maybe we’ll win the FA Cup or League Cup one day, then. But that does rather depend on whether we actually take those competitions seriously, as Southampton, West Ham and the others listed above did in the 1970s and 80s. A cup run was something special in those days, the three-week gap between rounds filled with eager anticipation. Nowadays, the only thing we have to look forward to when the cups come around is the chance to see players in action who spend the rest of the season warming the bench if they’re lucky.

(I don’t blame Quique for selecting the team he did against Preston in the League Cup, by the way; in the circumstances, it was the only chance he had to see those players in competitive action. I do blame the players for being rubbish, though.)

So there you have it. If I’m lucky, I’ve maybe got another 30 or 40 years of supporting Watford ahead of me before I pop my clogs. But I doubt I’ll ever see them lift another trophy, unless we get relegated. Which is why I’ll never forgive them for chucking away the Championship title against Sheffield Wednesday in May.

Decision time

Regular readers of this blog (and judging by the statistics, there must be one or two of you who’ve been reading my ramblings for a while) will know that at this time every year, I observe a quaint little ritual. I open the debate over who will be my ‘official’ favourite Watford player – and then promptly close it again by declaring that it’s still Lloyd Doyley. Indeed, back in 2007, the third post I ever wrote did just that, and even then I said that he’d been my favourite “for a few years”.

But all good things come to an end. Lloyd is still at the club, of course, but suffering from a protracted absence due to injury. Even if he makes a full recovery, there’s a question mark over whether he’ll be offered a new contract. And even if he overcomes that hurdle, I can’t see him making many first-team appearances this season, unless we go on a decent run in one or both of the cups. I think it’s finally time to choose a new favourite.

If you’d asked me at the end of last season, I’d have said the choice was a fairly straightforward one, between the silk of Almen Abdi and the steel of Troy Deeney. But, having witnessed our new-look team in action for the first time on Saturday, there’s suddenly a raft of potential new candidates. Among those who caught my eye were the tireless running and dynamism of Allan Nyom at right back; the midfield mastery and dribbling skills of Etienne Capoue; the solidity of Sebastian Prödl at centre half; and the tricksiness of José Manuel Jurado in the attacking midfield role. I still have my misgivings about the sheer number of new players we’re trying to integrate into the team, but on the evidence of the West Brom game, there’s no reason to doubt the quality each individual brings.

Still, one swallow doesn’t make a summer and all that. I think I’ll wait till the transfer window closes and make my decision in early September, when I’ve had a bit more chance to assess the candidates. It’s a nice choice to have to make.

Living on an island

It may just be my age, but I sometimes think there’s too much Watford FC news and comment out there these days. There’s 24-hour sports news on TV, blanket coverage in the newspapers, numerous websites and blogs devoted to Watford on the internet, not to mention dozens (hundreds?) of Twitter feeds and all the other social media I don’t bother with – Snapchat, Instagram, Vine and the rest.  It was bad enough last season, without factoring in the absurd levels of hype associated with the Premier League. I occasionally find myself pining for the days when the Watford Observer accounted for approximately 80% of all the coverage of the Hornets in the media.

So I’m quite pleased that I spent the week leading up to the start of the new season on holiday on the tiny Channel Island of Sark. Internet connectivity varied from patchy to non-existent (often from one minute to the next) and the availability of newspapers depended on the time of arrival of the boat from Guernsey. True, I did have access to a TV and radio, but no Sky Sports News. In practice, I deliberately restricted myself to the occasional half-hour of BBC News 24, just to check I hadn’t missed news of an imminent apocalypse.

Thanks to this (only partially self-imposed) media blackout, I’ve missed any number of pre-season previews, 95% of which I can confidently assert, without having heard/seen/read them, were pitifully ill-informed. This can only be a good thing.

I thus arrived at the first day of the season feeling refreshed, both in general, and as a football fan, and actually looking forward to the whole thing damn starting all over again. (This is my 45th season as a Watford fan; you’ll excuse me if I can’t quite summon up the boundless enthusiasm of the teenage me any more.) Our plane was due to land at Gatwick at 3.20pm, so I reckoned that I’d be able to listen to the second half on 5 Live on the car radio on the way home – something to look forward to on the seemingly interminable journey back from an island that is, after all, in the English Channel.

True, by the time we finally reached the car in the long-stay car park, it was still half-time, and I’d gleaned that we were one-nil up. Said car then decided to overheat while I was circumnavigating the M25, necessitating a stop at Cobham Services and a lengthy diagnostic process that finally revealed that the car was out of coolant.

When we were finally moving again, I switched on the radio just in time to hear news of Everton’s second equaliser, and spent a nervous few minutes in fear of an even worse announcement. In the end, a draw felt... okay, I suppose. We’re up and running, and I’m looking forward to going in to work tomorrow and taunting my Arsenal- and Spurs-supporting colleagues that we’re above them in the table.

Football’s back, and goddammit, I’m excited again. I may not be a teenager, but it still gets me every time.

Enough is enough?

Am I the only Watford fan who is beginning to be concerned about how many players we’re signing this summer? This morning’s announcement of Jose Manuel Jurado brings the total to seven, and with the transfer window open for another six weeks, that number may well reach double figures before we’re finished.

I happily confess that some of my misgivings are founded purely on sentiment. Last season was very special, with head coach, players and fans forming a special bond as we strove for promotion – a unity that was strengthened after the horrific attack on Nick Cruwys. So it would be nice to see those players given a chance to show what they can do in the Premier League. And, given that we’ve repeatedly been told over the past couple of years that the Pozzos have been recruiting with the Premier League in mind, it seemed reasonable to expect that a fair number of those players would get that chance.

Yet as it stands, when the Hornets run out at Goodison Park in a few weeks’ time, it’s not unfeasible that Gomes and Deeney will be the only survivors from the promotion-winning team. And that would be a shame.

My other objection is more practical. While it was always obvious that some strengthening would be required to cope with the rigours of the Premier League, it seems rather reckless to start the campaign with a whole team’s worth of new players, even if they don’t all make the starting eleven – not to mention a new head coach as well. Yes, there’s continuity behind the scenes, and that’s great, but still, we seem to be gambling on the team gelling very quickly.

We’ve been here before, of course, when the Pozzos first arrived and presented Gianfranco Zola with a pick’n’mix selection of players from which to fashion a squad. And, to his immense credit, he did, after a slightly chaotic start, so maybe I’m worrying about nothing. But that was in the Championship; I dread to think what would have happened if Zola had had to find out whether Neuton and Jean-Alain Fanchone were up to scratch by fielding them against the likes of Everton and Manchester City.

Personally, to prepare for the Premier League, I would have strengthened the team with four or five new signings, used loans to fill in any gaps, and then reviewed the situation at Christmas and brought in additional players as needed in the next transfer window. But what do I know?

What I do know is that it’s reached the stage where, every time I read the phrase “Watford have confirmed the signing of...” my heart sinks.

Bye-bye Johnny

I’m probably late to the party with this one, but it was only on reading the latest issue of Mojo that I discovered that Johnny Keating has died. No, not a long-lost Watford midfielder from the 1970s, but a significant figure in Hornets history nevertheless; Keating was the man who composed the Z-Cars theme which the players run out to before games at Vicarage Road.

Although the club dates back to – what was the year again? Oh yes, 1881 – it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s that the modern Watford FC as we know and love it really took shape. That was when the club colours changed to yellow and black, when the ‘Hornets’ nickname was adopted, and when the Z-Cars theme was first played over the tannoy. The story goes that it was manager Bill McGarry’s favourite TV show, and from the day in 1963 the players first ran out it to it, they didn’t lose another home game all season. The tune was seen as lucky and has  welcomed the Hornets onto the pitch ever since.

Well, almost. Over the years, a series of club employees who understand a bit about marketing and  very little about football have looked down their nose at Z-Cars and replaced it with something more modern, in imitation of other clubs.

As a result, I’ve come to view the running-out music as a barometer for the spiritual health of the club: as long as Z-Cars is being played, we’re in good hands. In this regard (as in so many others), the Pozzo regime has shown itself to be trustworthy – though I didn’t like the way the music was quickly turned down last season once the players were on the pitch, depriving us of the glorious jazzy solo in the middle of the tune.

So RIP Johnny Keating, unwitting contributor of an essential component of the Watford Way. Oh, and if anyone can tell me what instrument it is that the jazzy solo is played on, I’d be very grateful. Is it an oboe? A treble saxophone? It’s been bothering me for years.

The greatest hits album

My last two posts have been read by unprecedented numbers of people. (Well, unprecedented for me, at least – I dare say those bloggers who can be bothered to write more than once a fortnight would regard my stats as rather puny.) So, since I presumably have some new readers, and since there’s nothing much to talk about until the fixtures are published on Wednesday, I thought I’d share some of my favourite posts from the past eight years. Good grief, have I really being doing this that long?

A quick introduction for those who are new to the blog; I tend to leave match reports and commentary on the latest goings-on at Vicarage Road to others, with the occasional exception when something has got my dander up, or when I think I’ve spotted something no one else has commented on. Instead, as the subheading suggests, I write about memories from my 45 years of following Watford, crackpot theories about the Hornets and the wider world of football, and anything else I feel like rambling on about.

Two of my personal favourites are memories from my childhood. Confessions of the world’s worst ballboy features my inglorious contribution to a long-forgotten pre-season friendly at the Vic, while Just once, oh lord… is a tale from my equally ignominious career in schoolboy rugby. At the time it was intended to encourage my favourite player, Lloyd Doyley, who had yet to score a goal for the Hornets, that he might one day manage the feat. Less than two years later, he did so. Coincidence?

The demolition of the old Main Stand the season before last sparked reminiscences (pithily entitled Main Stand memories) of my early days peering around its pillars to follow the action. The ironically named Confessions of a groundhopper is about an accidental visit to a reserve team fixture at a northern non-league ground in the depths of winter. I include it here chiefly to prove that I am capable of writing about something other than Watford.

Last but not least, The myth of home advantage is about just that; my conviction (undimmed over time) that the notion that the team playing at home has some sort of head start merely by virtue of that fact is complete baloney, a giant con trick perpetrated by the entire football world, and that said football world would be a better place if we stopped pretending home advantage existed.

So there you are: memories, ramblings and rants. Expect more of the same next season, with the occasional mention of the Premier League if you’re lucky.

Managing the transition

Given that this is supposedly the quietest period of the off-season, with the transfer window not officially open for another three weeks, it’s been a busy week at Vicarage Road. We’ve signed two new players, re-loaned Matty Vydra from Udinese for another two seasons, waved goodbye to the head coach and two assistant coaches and replaced them with a new trio.

The fact that these things happened in the order that I’ve listed them is significant, as it highlights that the changes on the coaching staff aren’t actually quite as important as the rest of the football world may think. In the traditional English football club model, it’s unlikely that new players would be signed while the manager was in the midst of negotiations about renewing his contract. At Watford, player recruitment isn’t part of the head coach’s remit, and he is expected to create a winning team from the squad assembled for him by Scott Duxbury and co.

Although I’m sad to see Slav go, and there are the inevitable fears that accompany the arrival of a new head coach (will he get the players on his side, will he get his tactics right, will he understand the ‘Watford way’?), in one way I welcome this week’s events precisely because they deemphasise the primacy of the man on the touchline. It’s a truism that we (by which I mean the whole football world, from the fans to the media) fetishise the role of the manager, making him the focus of way too much praise and blame. Not only is that not fair on the poor sod in charge, but it gives the rest of the club, from the players to the board, an easy get-out when things are going badly. “It’s not our fault, it’s the manager’s; sack him and get someone else in, and everything will be fine.”

In fact, professional football managed perfectly well without managers for half a century or so; the club secretary picked the team and the players got on with working out how to win matches. I sometimes wish we could go back to that system. After all, shouldn’t 11 grown men be able to work out how to beat the opposition without having to be told?

Ah, but it’s all about motivation, isn’t it? Really? So if a team goes in at half-time 2-0 down, they wouldn’t be bothered about trying to get back into the game in the second half if there wasn’t a man in a suit there to shout at them and chuck teacups about?

I should say that I’m writing this as someone who – apart from a few five-a-side games in my twenties with a team from work – hasn’t actually played organised football since junior school. And I acknowledge that the example of Graham Taylor does rather undermine my argument about the role a manager can play in a team’s success… But I stick by the point that it’s good for the game of football if the manager isn’t viewed as being solely responsible for the performance of the team. At Watford, Quique Flores (we don’t have to say ‘Sánchez’ every time, do we?) will have an important part to play, obviously; but only within the framework created by the executive team.

Of course, it could all go horribly wrong and we could be in a crisis by Christmas. But I don’t think we will. The point of the Pozzo model is to create continuity within the club that means it can survive the departure of a successful head coach. I can’t wait to see how Quique gets on.

We aren’t the champions

I was planning to mark the end of the season with a cosy article running through my memories of the celebrations I’ve been lucky enough to be part of as a Watford fan, from our Division 4 title in GT’s first season to the Play-Off Final against Leeds in Cardiff. But, like most Watford fans, I don’t feel like celebrating right now.

I think it was the play ‘An Evening with Gary Lineker’ that made the point that watching football, uniquely among leisure pursuits, has the ability to affect your mood for days after a match has finished. I’m not usually too bad on that score: by the time I get home on a Saturday night, I’m more or less over the triumph or despair that followed the final whistle of that afternoon’s game. But the outcome of the Sheffield Wednesday game has soured my mood for the entire Bank Holiday weekend, and it’s all the worse because (like most Hornets fans) I was expecting a repeat dose of the euphoria I experienced at five o’clock the previous Saturday.

I texted a friend before the game that all the clichés of an end-of-season celebration were present and correct: flags, balloons, beach balls and other inflatables, fancy dress costumes, even giant trophies made out of cardboard covered with tinfoil. By the end, we’d witnessed another set of clichés, representing the dark side of football celebrations; from the harmless but moronic Mexican wave (something that has no place at any serious sporting event) to the equally moronic, and definitely harmful, pitch invasions that scuppered our slim chances of grabbing a late winner. And don’t get me started on the flares.

So I found myself, once the final whistle had blown, standing watching the heaving mass of fans on the pitch, listening to the plaintive appeals for them to leave so that the lap of honour could begin, feeling as low as I’ve felt all season (well, perhaps with the exception of the kick in the guts that was Ipswich’s last-gasp winner six weeks ago). Which is absurd, of course, given that Watford have achieved their goal of reaching the Premier League, and this in the most competitive Championship season in living memory. But that’s football fans for you, our emotions always governed by our most recent experience.

To judge by that lap of honour, the players are no different. I have fond memories of the equivalent tours of the pitch at the end of those seasons under Rodgers, Mackay and Dyche when we’d finished somewhere in mid-table, and when the lap of honour celebrated a communal feeling of joy and optimism for the future. There was precious little of that in evidence on Saturday, for all the stadium announcer’s laudable efforts to raise the mood. The players knew they’d blown it, just like we did, and it was pointless trying to pretend none of us cared.

So, we aren’t the champions after all. But we have been promoted, and as the days pass, it’s that fact that will come to take precedence over all the bad memories from Saturday. As a wise man once wrote: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.” We got what we needed from this season. Bring on the Premier League.

10 reasons why it’s great to be a Hornet

I’m sure I’m not the only Watford fan who is still utterly incapable of calm, dispassionate analysis of our season or the implications of yesterday’s results for the club’s future. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I keep spontaneously breaking into a rendition of ‘Tommie Hoban’s having a party...’ and finding myself grinning stupidly at inappropriate moments.

Still, I had to mark the moment somehow, so here’s my list of 10 reasons why it’s great to be a Hornet right now:

1) The Pozzo family...

2) ... thanks to whom we finally have a proper four-sided ground again, complete with stands rightly named after the two people who did more than anything to establish the Watford FC we know and love today

3) We’ve got Lloydinho...

4) ... and, possibly more importantly for the outcome of this season, Troydeeneyo

5) The 1881, who’ve achieved the improbable feat of making Vicarage Road a cauldron of noise

6) The many and varied media channels that comment on and support the Hornets, all of them unfailingly classy and intelligent: the Watford Observer’s simultaneously passionate and objective reports, the brilliant From The Rookery End podcast, the always shrewd and witty BHappy blogs, the ever-growing archive of Watford lore that is the Tales From The Vicarage series of books, plus other bloggers and tweeters too numerous to mention

7) Goals galore. While Chelsea fans watch their team bore their way to the Premier League title, we’ve seen lots and lots and lots of fabulous goals this season. And I write as someone who missed the home win against Blackpool

8) Slav. A different kind of manager, and exactly what we needed this season. Focused, intelligent and fearless. Deserves a shot at the big time

9) We will hopefully never again have to play our supposed rivals from a horrible town in Bedfordshire that I can’t bring myself to name, who are currently, and deservedly, marooned in League Two

10 Last, but most certainly not least... We are going up, I said we are going up!