Fao Fellow Sexagenerians

It could be worse, we could have the Chelsea owner £1 billion spent and 12 months later after six games, just 5 points, and grateful that the three promoted clubs are virtual certainties go go straight back down.

So you wonder if promotion is really achievable unless there is both an owner with literally £1/2 billion to invest in the project. Plus more critically has the ability to combine a football sports business model with that money.

Maybe that will come our way, but in the meantime being competitive in the Championship maybe enough to wish for.

 

Bloody whippersnappers

 

I'm 50 now and started going in 1979/80 season. For me it's not the recent downturn in our fortunes that has made me me far meh about football. Lot's of things have changed since I started going but the main reason is money and not mine. The fortunes paid to some players, it will only get worse with Saudi being involved, and the transfer fees have just made it almost a joyless sport. Like @Lloyd mentioned, I go to see old mates who I've been going to football with for years for a couple of beers and a chat. If it wasn't for them I probably wouldn't go, or certainly not as often as I do.
Our current plight has made no difference to my outlook as been there before through the 90's, Petchey, ITV Digital and good old Baz.
Football has changed and not for the better in my view and those wishing for the return of the GT years, you've just missed them with Pozzo. that was the best we can realistically ever hope for without a multi billionaire taking over.
Football has gone and it's not coming back

 

You started going at the exact same season as me. 1979.

I don’t think football is gone, but what we’re experiencing at Watford right now is *****. It’s all the lies and deceit from the top that is polluting.

It doesn’t really matter which league you are in, as long as you’re having a good season. If we went down again but smash it in League One people would love the season. Right now, supporting Watford is a futile, hopeless thing as there is no hope to cling to, but it won’t always be like that. Gino will one day pack his bags and go. We can only hope that time is soon, and the excitement of a new owner really gets everyone on board once more.

 

Not sure if serious or senile.

Too long? We were in an FA cup final only FOUR YEARS ago and were regularly beating top sides in the premier league with a squad of players who would have effortlessly beaten our great side of the 80s.

 

This thread is for people who are sexa and they know it.

 

I started 10 years before you and very much agree with you, when I started we had a Manager, assistant Manager, coach and chap with a sponge, which was Ken Furphy, Bert Slater, George Aitken and chap with a sponges name escapes me. The ticket office, all admin and everything else including running around the pitch once with a fire extinguisher was carried out by Club Secretary Ron Rollett.

Now we have a staff of over 200 including some chap called Teflonbury on over a million a year who does goodness knows what!

 

We might have been in it 4 years ago, but we were only in it for about 20 minutes!

 

It is for me and has been for a while. The money and the likes of SkySports couldn't care less about the fan anymore as shown by the scheduling. Paying players like Eric Dier £100k+ a week is absolute lunacy and he is by no means the only one. There are loads of bang average players getting paid fortunes. The years of GT were great and the way players were back then will never come back. It's just how it is and I don't like it.
I blame Pozzo a lot for the current issues but football as a whole has also helped cause this

 

We were still level after more than a quarter of the game. With a face full of hope, I turned to Mrs TuT and pointed that out at the time.

 

After weaning myself off a season ticket last season I'm now used to doing other things on matchdays that I actually regularly enjoy and are cheaper, if not free. As a sexig... sixug... as an over 60 yr old, I feel liberated! I'll still go to the odd match every now and then, but even if we get back to the Prem (which probably won't happen for several years at least) I won't get another ST. I still watch highlights, always look out for our results first and never, ever go into Shoutbox. After attending over 1,000 games Watford will always be in my blood but I'm happy to move on.

btw. Why does the club still officially have a season ticket waiting list? Surely not!

 

They may claim to, but it's a load of crap. My wife was on the "waiting list" and I rang up in the summer after the 21/22 season and asked "can I get a season ticket for my wife" and they said yes and started processing it with no mention of a waiting list or checking if she was on it. I can't imagine demand rocketed after last season's death by 46 cuts.

 

The waiting list is for those looking to quit rather than join.

 

Four years ago if we'd have spent £30+m on 3 quality defenders instead of Sarr we'd potentially still be there in year after year mid table obscurity like Palace.

 

If we had a sharp cookie owner that’s exactly what would have happened. But we have Gino. Smart decisions and him don’t mix.

 

Even 2 would have been enough!

That error was the biggest act of self harm in the history of our great club.

 

Harsh, but I'll rise to the bait, because annoying ar$ewipe of a poster that you are, I do occasionally enjoy what you post.

The FA Cup Final was a day to forget (apart from the flag-waving, obvs...).

And we were not regularly beating top sides in the Premier League at that time.

 

Would they really?

 

These days I'm sometimes bored at Watford matches but I'm resigned to the club being shambolic. I was only angry when Bassett was methodically dismantling GT's legacy.

 

Pat Molloy.

 

For me it is football that has been taken away from me. It is the money that has ruined it. I was looking at the La Liga table and feeling pleased that Girona are doing so well but know that the title will come down to the usual two (three?). The Premier league is not about the big six, it is about whether Liverpool or Arsenal will be able to wrestle the title from Man City. The French and German leagues are in the same position. All promotion earns for teams like Watford is struggle, followed by struggle to readjust to life in the Championship. What is the point anymore? If I still lived in the area I would be tempted to watch teams like St Albans or Wealdstone. I will always follow Watford but I said goodbye with my last ever visit to the Vic when we beat Blackpool last year. None of it matters any more. Oil money and the super rich have ruined football.

Having said all that I remember saying that I would never watch that lot again after another dismal defeat in the third or fourth division in the mid 1970s.

 

I've just discovered that Girona are owned by the same company as Manchester City.

 

It's always been like this though.

We got promoted to div1 in 1982 and relegated in 1988 with an FA cup final thrown in.

Not that much different to our recent successful spell under Pozzo is it.

Yet according to you people it's impossible for a club like ours to achieve anything.

Leicester won the league in 2016. How does that fit into your "woe is us" narrative?

The best day in the history of our great club, and arguably in all of football, happened in a championship play off semi final. Outside of the top league. That is what football is all about. It happened as recently as 2013.

Old people really are moaning twits.

 

Yes Girona were just a small non entity side until they were flooded with Citeh loans and Middle Eastern money. They are an example of how screwed up football has become rather than a happy fairy story .

 

Cheers his name escaped me, a fine chap whose testimonial is often mentioned!

 

The difference between the 80s and now is that back then, when you got promoted you knew you had a good team and would still be a good team in Div 1, so you didn’t expect to probably get immediately relegated. The gap between the divisions is way bigger now. Of course, medium-sized clubs will get relegated eventually, like us in the 80s; that’s always been the case.

However, I’m not one of those who subscribe to the view that the Leicester win “can never happen again”, it’s just highly unlikely. It was the best thing that has happened in the PL since it started but, rather than encourage the authorities to level the financial playing field, it has probably sent a message that everything is OK competitively. The tragedy is that the game is deliberately greatly skewed in favour of the biggest clubs (who have a competitive advantage anyway just by being big), because the authorities have never stood up to their demands.

 

Agreed, we pretty much know the top 6 and bottom 5 before the season starts, just a question of which of 2 or 3 wins the title, which of the 6 miss out on Champions League, and which of the current bottom 5 will avoid the drop. Anyone believing that half decent stewardship will see us re-establish ourselves as a prem side and would have kept us up indefinitely is kidding themselves. We won't see a small club like Watford finish 2nd or a newly promoted side like Nottm F win the title ever again unfortunately.

 

As someone else has pointed out, not since the 90s have all promoted teams gone straight back down. But that doesn't fit the narrative so is ignored.

Minnows like Brentford, Brighton, Palace, Bournemouth, Fulham are established premier League teams now. But that doesn't fit the narrative so is ignored.

Liverpool got all the decisions and hoovered up all the best players in the 80s, until the Mersey millionaires Everton disrupted things by being richer (sounds familiar doesn't it?). Man utd did the same in the 90s. But this doesn't fit the narrative so is ignored.

Things are just the same as they ever were. There is no golden era of football. You just got old.

 

Brighton are 3rd.

 

After 6 games, yes. They will clearly finish on 38/6 x 15 = 95 points for the season. What a fantastic season 23/24 will be for them .
Want a bet they don't finish in the top 6 ?

 

The answer is to adjust expectations so that the Championship is now the pinnacle, where the unfortunate consequence of success is a miserable year in the EPL, with the mitigating factor of coming down with a shedload of cash after refusing to play the 'gamble it all on staying up' game.

 

I'm sure that the same was said of us in 82-83. And it was certainly said of Leicester in 15-16.

 

As has been pointed out, the football world is not the same as it was 40 years ago. Sadly.
Is the fact that Leicester are the only non-big 6 club to win the title in almost 30 years, being held up to prove "anyone can win it" ? Maybe Brighton or A Villa will win it this season ?

 

Yes, it's been 'pointed out', but I don't fully agree.

Going back 45 years to 1978, the only 'non-big 6' clubs to win the title since have been Villa, Leeds, Blackburn and Leicester, each on one occasion only. So things haven't really changed that much, have they?

Of course, the 'big 6' has also churned in that time. And Spurs last won the League in 1961.

@Relegation Certs is spot on.

 

Yes, so that's 3 non big 6 in the period 78-95 and another in Nottm F if you go back one further year to 77 (which I'm sure you knew . So 4 non big 6, all winning once, in 18 years. And 1 in 30 since then ?
No-one is suggesting that every team in the top league had an equal chance of winning it, just that there was much more chance of a surprise winner, the top 6 wasn't effectively set before the season started (arsenal finished botton half, spurs, Man U and chelsea all relegated in the 70s/80s), newly promoted sides surviving, and even finishing 2nd like us or winning it like NF.
If you think it's just as open and unpredictable now, that's your view but I respectfully disagree !