I saw on another thread praise heaped on Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth based on their current status, but they could quite easily be Leicester in a couple of years. The three B's are having their time in the sun at the moment (and good luck to them (well maybe not Bournemouth)), but a change of opinion by a hedge fund manager, the death of the head of the investment family, investor boredom or a couple of bad injuries, can start a downward spiral that is hard to stop. The reality is that the big boys can spend £111m on a very young midfielder and still have yearly spend on player acquisition and wages that is so far out of reach for the "smaller" clubs as to make association football a non sporting activity at the top of the professional game. The ongoing danger is that we have oil rich state investors who are not concerned about turning a profit and have endless money to throw at their clubs, with others trying to compete and putting the future of their clubs at significant risk. The current implementation of FFP rules are as useful as a paper hat in a hurricane. Money is going to cause major damage to the sport, which, if unchecked, will slowly descend to an entertainment industry akin to WWF. As much as it pains me to say it, the super league might be the only way to save the sport for genuine locally supported clubs to compete on an even playing pitch. Watford's owners, whilst rich beyond our wildest dreams, are paupers in comparison to the owners of most clubs in the top divisions. At best, we can hope for an occasional spell in the premier league before the inevitable fall, dusting off and trying again.
To riff (sic) on a band name....Football Will Eat Itself. I think it's already had the canapes and is now awaiting the hors d'oeuvres.
I’m not sure any of us expect little old Watford to be spending big money and challenging with the big boys. me personally I would be very happy with a stable coach, players that give it their all for the club, entertaining football and the odd flirtation with play offs. If that leads to promotion then great. oh and financial stability so I know my grandkids will get to see the club play haven’t had that for a number of years
Good comments-this i think is what is happening to Wolves at present-the chinese owners are quoting FFP but the fans see no investment coming as the (international) fortunes of the Fosun group have nose dived and they are not going to pump more in hence players sales+no new signings (sounds familiar ) and change of head coach A fight for suvival-using Gary O'Neill is facing them rather than the " best of the rest" despite their 30k attendances/upgraded Molineux. Maybe new owners will come along but as you highlight how can an " average PL" side compete with billionaire owners/sovereign states/middle-east oil related sports washing-there is only so much available at the top and now 6/7 clubs outbidding each other for good players.
The problem is the Premier League as a business really only has one job and that is to sell the TV rights for the most money and distribute the cash. They don’t really want to have to do any dirty work and they’re only going after city for FFP because their other member clubs want them to. They almost certainly relish clubs like Newcastle being bought by PIF as the more money pumped in, the better the players and the more they can sell the product for. FFP could and should work, but it won’t because there is too much greed from all involved. If it were properly implemented, respected and enforced then that would be a start for clubs like us, but under the current set up it never will be. Alongside that we’d need a complete overhaul of money distribution and the introduction of salary caps so that a maximum percentage of specific revenue could be spent on them. The cliff edge between finishing 20th and 23rd in the pyramid needs to be smoothed out so that relegation doesn’t mean financial Armageddon. But again none of that will happen due to greed amongst those with the power to make such changes which would be much better for the game overall, make it far more competitive, but ultimately might see them slightly worse off in the short term. I appreciate that isn’t an answer to the question, but ultimately the future for a club like us unless any of the above changes were made is one of the PL becoming more of a closed shop over time, and any occasional visit there we ever make will almost certainly be for one season, or two at the absolute maximum.
We weren't close to the top table in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s (bar a couple of seasons thanks to one of the greatest managers who ever lived), 90s, 00s, 10s and we still aren't now. Why all the gnashing of teeth now? It was ever thus.
We've had a taste and a good recent run of prem seasons. Fans want to get back there and survive at that level again, irrespective of how tough that might be to achieve. Seeing L*ton, Bournemouth, Brentford , Sheff Utd in the prem makes eyes even more envious. Expectations in the 50s, 60s, 70s, late 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s up to 2015 were far lower than they are today.
But the point is back then when we went from division four to 2nd in the whole Pyramid that was something that was possible, Luton and Bournemouth have come up from the lowest league to the PL recently but now the best they can hope got is to cling in to survival.
I would rather support Watford who are my hometown club, than be a so-called glory hunter and support Man City, United etc. Half of those fans' are rumoured to be "plastics" hence the funny chant of "where you born in Manchester?" from some away fans back in the day. Winning every single week, season in season out, while sounding good would get (in my view) very boring. Yes it's nice to win of course it is, but where is the anticipation of a big match coming up, when you are almost going to win every game you play because your squad is filled with the best players in the world funded by oil/blood money? It's not exactly a fair playing field anymore, and hasn't been since the PL was established and got Sky and Barclarys Bank to bank roll the clubs. I wonder how many of the Man City fans' who go to games remember when they were struggling in what was then Nationwide Division Two, as broke as we are and struggling to even compete with likes of Wolves and Charlton? A few probably do, and I would say fair play to them but it's just a shame the younger generation knows nothing about losing a game of football due to the machine it is now. I may come across an envious and bitter, but yes, part of me is. But then again, I would like to support honest players who want to play for the shirt, town, club and the fans each week, Ok, we have had a group of mercenaries and shirkers for the past few years but overall most of the squads Watford have had are moulded into that GT philosophy and work ethic. Will we still exist in ten years time? I expect so, and I think most of the clubs around today will still be around also. Football has long lost it's tag of being a "Sport", and has joined the ranks of many others that have become a business venture for billionaires. Players' earn a lot of money for what they do, we all know that. But all we want to see as fans, win, lose or draw, is an effort put in each week with a level of entertainment. When a club fails in that most basic of offerings, through pure bitterness towards their fanbase, that is when clubs will fail. Unless, as I said before, you have so much money that fans' mean nothing to the owners. There is a lot wrong with this sport, and it may one day even be fixed so it's a bit fairer in the finance stakes, but that day is a long way off.
Is that the best they can hope for? Brentford didn't just cling to survival and nor did we. We were in the prem for more seasons recently than we were in the 80s, so I just don't see how it's all so much worse now.
Football is big business, the genie is out so far out the bottle he doesnt remember what the bottle looked like. The big clubs are billionaire play things now, status symbols and toys. As for clubs Watfords size we have proven we can mix it with the big boys but eventually the owners of clubs like ours that have a sustained run in the Prem take their eyes off the ball, enjoy the status of being a "big" club owner and forget to do the fundamental things that got them there in the first place. Brighton are the only club I can see bucking this trend if they can keep the conveyor belt going as they have a lot of money to reinvest and a very good manager at the moment. People bash the Prem for the money involved but the quality of product overall is by far the best in the world which you would expect seeing as the billionaire owners demand to be entertained.
We'll probably end up being sold off to someone richer in the next 5 years and we'll all be super hypocritical and love it if we end up doing a Brentford or Brighton.
Even if that happened, the most loyal of Watford fans' would never forget where we came from and who we are, and the struggles we have/had gone through even though at that point everything was honky dory.
Money ruins everything it touches - without exception. Music, art, sport. Everything. It corrupts, twists and despoils. As for Man City fans, I have to smile how every single one of them is definitely NOT a glory hunter. No, no. They've supported City for years. Since they were a kid. Always a loyal supporter. Funny that. You see plenty walking about in City shirts now, but you never ever saw them a few years ago. Never. Not once. And when we played them in Div 2 or 3 or wherever, I can clearly remember 2 or 300 of them standing in a little cluster on the bend there. Wonder what happened to all those loyal supporters at that time?
We didn't play them when they were in the 3rd tier ? We only played them when they came up to the 2nd tier and we had just appointed Vialli. The 2 favourites met on the first day of the season and they thrashed us 3-0 and went straight up I think.
The only way to create a level playing field is to legalise performance enhancing drugs for teams with an income below an agreed figure
Or for example; Watford v Manchester City, 04 March 1989 Score 1-0 to Watford Competition League Division Two Attendance 15,747
Yes much earlier. You’d mentioned 3rd division I think so assumed you were referring to a later era. This game was a very lucky 1-0 win for us when they won promotion and we blew it in the POs at home to Blackburn.
Yeah I vaguely remember them sinking to the third, but we must have been higher than them at the time. When they were in the 3rd, Man City shirts and declared supporters were about as common as Doncaster Rovers.
One of my 17 year old nephews has in the last year suddenly started supporting Man City. His Dad supports Derby (born there), and they all live in France. Completely denies being a glory hunter. What fun is there being a Man City fan? We scored / won 3-0 again. Yay. How joyless it really must be.
We played them (and lost) in the cup when WE were in Div 3/League1. They went down to the third tier I think as we went up so we passed like ships in the night.
In GM and Lancs they were fairly common, hoddly henuff being proundly worn by the "Against Moneyball & we aren't ManU" type Mancs. They had a very loyal base and were regularly getting 30K gates in the 3rd division. I know who worked with a bunch of them - when the Arab money arrived the moral justification for what they were doing to football used some highly contorted arguments. EDIT: ISTR City tops weren't that uncommon in the 'Pool in the late 80's early 90's (worn by students) and never raised any issues with Scousers.
The main European factory for the product line I was responsible for is based in Manchester and TBF the Citeh fans that worked there were long standing loyal fans… not sure how true that will be going forward.
