Has anyone noticed how badly Watford are perceived in the media. It all gets a bit tedious but I always wonder why we get so many haters in the press and comments section of national papers. I guess if you throw enough **** at something some is going to stick. We actually got a mention on the national news yesterday and there wasn’t the usual snide comment Very refreshing, but rare. The comments section from the Daily Mail is 95% negative regarding Munoz/Ranieri. Some of it you can just put down to lack of knowledge about the club. I do think the club are not great at branding. If Brentford and Bournemouth can win over media surely Watford could. The image of Watford has to change if it is to grow. An ideal opportunity could be against Liverpool next game where most of the football world will be watching. If the club think that Harry the Hornet banging a drum is the way forward then we are in for a tough time..as usual.
I'm not sure it's ever come up before, to be honest. I've certainly never seen any suggestion of that on here. Heaven forbid.
Why are you reading the comments in the Daily Zeig Heil? I dont really give a toss about how the media portay anything, most of it isnt real journalism and it is just designed to grab clicks these days.
Do you really wonder why though? We go through 'head coaches' like hot dinners, have a chairman who caused a scandal at West Ham, an owner that gives zero airtime to fans or media, and bad-mouthed our leading-ever goalscorer on official club channels. Not to mention we had a player break lockdown twice and publicly embarrassed ourselves in the Cup Final. All of that is just off the top of my head. Yes, the club has done great things - like the NHS last year for example. But that just does not hit home with football media like endlessly sacking managers does. If (big IF) Ranieri can steer us up the table over this season, and come out with his usual antics to the media, thats probably our best way to turning this round in the eyes of the media. But realistically, we will always be panned until we get a coach that we stick with for more than 2-3 years. (And you absolutely should not be using the comments section in The Daily Mail as a barometer for anything other than just how racist and vile some people can be)
The only issue for me is that the negative press spills over into the psyche of officials. We do get a lot of bad calls, certainly more than we should. I put that down to the negative bias that follows the club around. I couldn’t give a toss what messers Lineker, Owen, Sutton, Merson & co spout, as they all have issues in their private lives which probably goes some way in explaining their poisonous attitude.
The ‘long ball’ thing from the GT era stuck with us for years but that’s probably too long ago now. I do think it’s mainly the manager sackings. The Cup Final defeat was obviously very visible but I think most were praising Man City for that. All the other things you list are internal club issues that we know about but the media and the public don’t bother with, any more than they bother to find out why we might be sacking the manager or indeed who plays for us now that Deeney has gone.
I'd rather be spoken about in a negative context than not at all like Norwich. Who even cares about them? What are they doing? Just a complete nothing club.
The press have been against us for decades, starting with Bobby Moore not getting the manager's job. Then turning over Spurs at WHL in November 1982. The perceived style, yet somehow Wimbledon with their very basic version of long ball and the team pretty much being a bunch of thugs still got better plaudits than we did.
The obvious and clear response to your thoughts are: - Why should we be bothered what others think? - I think you might be overstating outsiders’ interest in all things Watford. - There is a case to be made that we have punched above our weight for a decade or more, so some things are working. - The Daily Mail? Really? If we were in a good light with that paper, I would be more concerned. Forgetting what non Watford fans think, I would prefer stability in terms of a head coach, and I’m sure the Board would too. In reality, we cannot attract the big names, so we have to take a punt or look for emerging talent. If it works, they will be likely poached by the bigger clubs. It is an up and down ride, just need to go with it.
They spend their time moaning we sack managers then speculate about the future of others albeit ones at high profile clubs. TBF some in the media seem delighted Ranieri is back as he will no doubt give them some good quotes and humorous.
We are Squires famous today - cartoon in the Guardian with Watford Managers as Squid Games contestants. Heh!
Gray breaking lockdown was front page tabloid stuff - twice. There was nothing ‘internal’ about that!
We’re an unfashionable club and always will be. Small clubs also only tend to get the fairytale treatment once, we’ve had our rags to riches story back in the 80s and even then we were unpopular because of the style of play. We aren’t going to get that again regardless of what we do. Bournemouth won’t get it again, Brentford won’t get it again. There is the established elite, then everyone else. You’ll be looked on favourably once, but beyond that you’ll never be looked upon like the traditional ‘big clubs’. We’re also quite an unfashionable place, nothing wrong with Watford but nothing great about it either is there? Then there is how we run the club, in this day and age political parties have to dumb everything down into three word slogans to get peoples interest. 99% of football fans and pundits aren’t going to be interested in looking below the surface and understanding why we operate in the way we do. There is a pre-conceived model of how a football club should be run, and we fly in the face of it. The media and most fans hate that and will not bother to take the time to understand why it actually works, as far as they’re concerned it shouldn’t work, and they’ll keep repeating that until it doesn’t and believe they’ve been proved right whenever it fails, repeat ad nauseam. For the average pundit or football fan there really is nothing likeable about us at all and hence we get the coverage we do, and always will.
With you on all that apart from the bit I’ve put in bold. I think after the amount of managerial changes we have had, we have to put to bed the idea that the owner/board want stability. I know, it sounds mad. But you just don’t have that much turnover if you’re seeking a stable club. You eventually look for a different way of finding it that doesn’t involve just blaming the coach.
I was at the Spurs game. Les Taylor scored the winner if memory serves correct. I couldn't believe the hostility towards Watford after that. It was a case of how dare a poxy club like Watford come to the elite and win. I remember Jimmy Hill calling Watford imposters, taking the game back 20 years. Watford's style cannot be allowed to be successful, blah, blah. The snobbery was to the extreme, but alas, that still remains to this very day. Although it's not our style anymore, it's the fact we actually sack managers that upsets the media. No other club sacks a manager apart from Watford, don't you know. There must be a law change to prevent Watford from doing this type of thing, just as there was law change because Watford loaned some players. No other club loans players, only Watford, so that has to be stopped also. I think the root cause for all this hostility is the perception of Watford. We just don't know our place. You can be cute and cuddly like Bournemouth and Brentford, and you'll be the media darlings. You can be admired by being thuggish and loutish like Wimbledon. But Watford don't really tick those boxes. We are seen as vanilla, but we keep coming back as tutti-fruity.
Yes, the media have been nothing short of a joke with their uneducated and boring ramblings about the Club and the owners, as have supporters of other clubs. However, I don't think I have spoken to one single Watford fan that didn't think sacking Xissco was the right choice.
There is no benefit to having favourable media columns written about us, or having two-braincell ex-footballers prattle on about us at half time on sky. Footballers will play for us regardless as we have money, are a top-two division club and we are near London. Watford fans don't care if there are negative reports. Who cares
I’m not sure that’s true, they’ve been talked about so much recently for being so bad, with questions raised about whether they’re ‘cheating the premier league’. I’ve listened to conversations on the radio about them and we’ve been in the conversation as well yet they’ve not even said our name.
Speaking of negative media, From The Rookery End have completely and utterly lost the plot - genuinely embraced late-stage Soviet era hypernormalisation: I'll take insane, meaningless reframing for 10, please Alex.
I'm just sick of the all the n0b heads who think they're original with comments about "gone by christmas", "he'll be sacked before he even starts", "every manager in football will have managed them in 5 years" etc. The weak attempts at humour or recycled lame, flogged to death jokes makes me want to vomit blood.
Amazingly they've actually tried to double down in the replies with some of the most equally laughable logic/excuses you'll ever see.
Yes a strange comment for them to make. This season's transfer window was purely self-funded through player sales (give or take). Very little of the Prem money was used to bolster the side. Giaretta did an excellent job on a zero budget, but it clearly didn't go far enough. It was obvious to most before a ball was even kicked, we needed more investment in defence, especially at CB. We also needed another viable central striker. If we look at who we had when we were relegated, we had Geri, Bobby, Welbeck, Sarr and even Deeney and Gray. We had numbers and quality in forward areas. Now we do still have quality, but not so much in the central areas and we're down on the the numbers. For me King is the only viable central striker. Pedro, Cucho and Dennis can fill in, but it's not really their game at EPL level. Fletcher isn't good enough, IMO. In midfield we are down in quality. We've not got anyone as good as Doucoure, Capoue or even Hughes. The midfield is not bad, but we do need more quality. I felt we did well with a zero net spend, but now it's time to land the plane and invest a little on areas in real need. January can't come soon enough for me.
They were very mildly critical of Gino on this weeks podcast so I imagine they’ve been rebuked for speaking out of turn and are back on the defensive.
Can you imagine the hate we will get when we sack everyone's favourite granddad in a couple of months time ?
Plus the fact we only bring in foreign players and managers doesn't help. Ps yes remember the game, wasn't Les's winner in the 86th minute or similar ???
I’m not sure about that, IIRC many people in the media were glad when they finally went down in 2000.