Falling Out Of Love With Football

Not much more eloquently, based on this!

 

Possibly the post of the year. Well done.
Your paragraph about Leicester’s title win particularly hits the nail on the head. That was a great opportunity for the media to revel in a great upset of the type that defines the soul of football and of being a fan, but all they did was question what had gone wrong at the big clubs.

 

I don't think I was ever in love with football to fall out of it. I like football, sure, but Horse Racing is my no 1 sport interest.

 

The cheating culture in the modern game, players and fans alike, has never sat well with me. I recall posing the question on here not too long ago asking if it was extra time in the cup final and it was 0-0, would you rather it go to a shoot out or would you rather one of our players dived for a penalty to win it 1-0. Most people took the dive and the win. For me that would be a hollow victory that was hugely tainted. Playing with honour and professional pride is better than winning by cheating in my view, but sadly that is the minority view.

 

The most frustrating thing for me (I’m sure this goes for a lot of not most Watford pre Pozzo supporting) is that I’ve seen much worse players and squads run rings around our current crop in terms of work ethic, commitment and in most cases the pure ability to perform at consistent levels of quality game after game.
I started supporting Watford pretty much the same time as the itv digital collapse and we were absolutely broke. We were piss poor, fighting against relegation but the key word there that can not be dismissed is ‘fighting’. That is what we are missing and have been missing for most of the Pozzo reign - FIGHT. Stoke had a similar model to us when they were in the premier league and ultimately failed as we did. At one point they had the most Champions League winners in their squad in the league but they were all misfits and unwanted by the big teams and ended up at Stoke with the hope of them becoming big team players. This is our mistake, the players we bring in just don’t give a **** about us. No one is willing to fight for the shirt, even the manager is just existing it’s rotten from top to bottom.
Bringing in some youth has sparked a bit of excitement which is great, but the squad is turgid as is the management. I’m in the Ivor camp but I’m also sick of the Pozzo era as well. Yes we were broke before but we had an identity and I found the seasons much more enjoyable. We don’t have an identity now, no soul, a complete disconnect with fans. Bleak times lay ahead...

 

Thats not a Pozzo thing - it’s a hangover of being in the PL. The team that got promoted would absolutely piss all over this current mob because they wanted to succeed rather than feeling they had a divine right to be at the top table.

 

Gimme Prodl and Britos and (even though he's also related to the later years of our last stint in the Prem) Holebas any day of the week. They cared, they wanted to fight and bought into the idea of little old Watford wanting to prove to others we belong here.

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Yes, we're at our natural level, but this season more enjoyable than last?????

 

I’d say so, purely because we aren’t in the sanitised land of VAR hell in the PL. And we’ve won a few games.

My wife is a Sheff Utd fan and watching them endure what we had last season is a keen reminder how terrible it is.

 

To be honest, Bonser being so tight-fisted and authoritarian he forced Ken Furphy to leave, replaced him with George Kirby, then watched as Mike Keen took us down to the bottom division was not that enjoyable...

 

My u -10’s don’t listen to me as it is, so I can’t see these millionaires listening. But I’d quiet happily shuffle my size 9’d where the sun don’t shine.


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I agree with your points but it’s just an extension of wider society. The advent of 24 hour news and an infinite amount of online media sources that need to be filled with something, so they’re filled with any old crap, small things get made into big things. Then you’ve got reality shows about vacuous Essex people saying ‘oh my god’ backwards and forwards to each other, everything’s dragged down to the lowest common denominator. Sport and football was never going to escape, so now hours are wasted talking about and analysing things that wouldn't have even been picked up 30 years ago, but the same can be said about every other area of life now.

 

Reading this thread is almost as depressing as watching Watford this season, and it's all true. I hated the Bassett and Vialli eras but at least they were over quickly.

I changed my nom de website from Unhappy Bunny when Javi had us playing without fear but I'm regretting it now. However, I can't be arsed to change it, just as nobody at Watford can be arsed to change this miserable and not over-successful playing style.

 

Yeah I completely agree, I have said the same myself previously. Football is a reflection of society and it’s all gone soft hasn’t it.

 

Painful for sure. But teams generally went forward, didn’t fanny around at the back and the dreaded press hadn’t been invented. Ten minute intervals followed by the human half-time scoreboard. No VAR or rolling around and only one sub. I could go on (I usually do...)

 

It's shyt because we are shyt and watching it on telly with no crowds is also shyt.

Added to this is the fact that our trip to the Premier league went as well as it possibly could have done. Thrashing top sides, extra time semi final wins at Wembley, signing Argentinian internationals and household names like deulofeu. It was all beyond our wildest dreams, yet despite all that the experience was largely shyt.

Now we are back in the chumpionship fighting again for a repeat of an experience that we know will not actually be that enjoyable. And it is almost certain that if we do go up the experience will be closer to the boothroyd one than the pozzo one. So what is there to get excited about really?

We've got a dour manager playing dire football with hateful players so there's nothing to get enthused about there.

Added to this were all getting older and more jaded by the day.

All in all, until we can go back to watching the game with our mates pissed at farts to help take our minds off the absolute garbage served up on the pitch, then it's all pretty pointless.

But there is still no better feeling then deeneys goal v Leicester, or deulofeu's v wolves etc. And thats why we can bitch and moan but can never give it up.

 

That’s it! That’s why I have still carried on despite feeling quite apathetic about it all; those moments that live long in the memory.

I do wonder if it’s worth it though, especially as thing seem to have got so depressing.

 

Great thread!

This is s conversation that needs to be happening on the forum of every professional club in the country.

I'm very out of love with football and just don't care whether we win or lose. Even if we were to go up this season (and we won't) I honestly don't believe I would watch us this season.

The only match I've paid to watch this season is the one against Luton. I'll be giving up my season ticket once normality resumes.

I'm sick of the way that money has ruined the game and of Pozzo's mismanagement of the club.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who suffers from a lack of interest in football nowadays.

 

Can't say I've really fallen out of love with the game as I've not really been that interested in anyone else other than Watford or England (at major tournaments) since my late teens. I'll only ever watch another game if I'm down the pub and having a few beers with mates, even then I couldn't really care less unless I have a bet on it.

 

That’s precisely what I’ve been like, never gave a toss about other games other than Watford, but as per my original post on this thread, Covid and the lack of things to do has created a weird addiction/hate of all the other football games on.

I’m hoping as things return to normality I’ll drift away from it again.

 

Absolutely spot on, and the endless, repetitive, constant media focus on the mindless minutiae of the big 6 has become so so tedious and so so boring.

But to be positive, we Watford fans did recognise the significance of that great upset, we thanked LFC for allowing us all to dream - and that banner did get us a free drink


(No flippancy intended)!

 

It's somehow ironic that my falling out of love with football is what has provoked me to finally start posting on a football forum after so many years of lurking...

And what saddens me most is that whilst football continues to worship at the alter of mammon my kids will never get to experience the true wonders that football gave to me...

 

Like any break up , a bottle of Vodka, box of tissues and w@nk your way through it.

You ll come out the other side right as rain.

 

That is an absolute barnstormer of an article.

Superb.

 

I fell out of love with football or with Watford during Mike Keen's reign. We lost at home to someone like Torquay with a totally insipid display. I really couldn't see the point in spending my hard earned paper round cash on seeing that lot so I got a Saturday job in the record department of Woolworths. When SEJ took control my optimism returned and I started going again but by then I had left the area.
Nothing that is happening now can possibly match that nadir. Mike Keen was a nice bloke but a useless manager. Jim Bonsor was well into his dotage. There seemed no hope. At one point we were at the bottom of the Fourth Division.

 

Yes, that article really is superb.

The part comparing a fan of Burger King celebrating them having more profits than Macdonalds is something I tried to articulate earlier on in the thread but didn’t very well. How most real fans don’t pick a team based on how much money they make.

But the odd thing is it’s completely at odds with the bit about Newcastle fans. That they can get over 100,000 signatures in support of a highly morally questionable owner buying their club (more so even than the incumbent) is very strange.

Do people really love their football clubs that much they’d be happy to see them succeed at any cost? Is there any real joy to be had supporting Man City, and by extension, what Newcastle would ultimately become?

I know our fan base is split on our owners, many would like them replaced, but would anyone honestly want to become City?

It’s odd, I can’t really explain it or articulate it properly. I see absolutely no fun supporting these big clubs, how do these people take joy, or expect to take joy from it?

 

Well, it’s a sample size if precisely one but I spoke to a City supporting family on the tube on the way to the cup final about it, Mum, Dad and their two girls. He said it was great to start with but was now really really hard to support them properly. FA cups and league cups, all in London of course, champions league games, cup games, league games. As a family you basically need to be rich to support them properly and get to every final, which of course many aren’t. Much more preferable to have the odd final here and there or important game they can all comfortably afford to go to that also means more when they do.

The cost of taking a family of four from Manchester to the cup final would be more than a family holiday.

 

I recall talking to a City fan after the game who didn't see the trophy lift. "I've seen it before and I'll see it again, no big deal".

 

I completely agree with everything that has been written on this thread. I objectively hate 95% of everything football has become. Sitting here now I can make the case to myself that I don't really care anymore. Unfortunately this will not stop me getting pathetically excited when (if) we next score a goal.

 

Yeah, same here. As I was leaving the game early (I managed to stick it out until the 5th goal, what was I thinking?!), I saw a good few City fans heading back already, probably wanting to beat the traffic.

That just seems mental to me, being so numb to winning that you're not even being arsed about seeing your team win a major trophy - I usually applaud the players after a scrappy 1-0 win at the Vic!

 

There's nothing wrong with falling out of love with someone or something, that's life. Personally I fall in and out of love with women, cities and countries quite easily but football is in my dna. Its true the big picture could potentially destroy English football but when I look at the game there are so many great things going on. The technical ability of players and the quality of play has increased so much. We're just ending an era where the modern equivalents of Pele and Maradona played against each other between 2 and 6 times a season for the best part of a decade watched all over the world. The games between Pep's Barca and Madrid were simply phenomenal. We have also seen Leicester's fairytale league win and the rise of AFC Wimbledon above the club that tried to eradicate them and their return to Plough Lane in what is one of the most incredible and heartwarming stories in the history of world sport. As Watford fans we shouldnt forget our club's fortunes were transformed when we became the plaything of one of the richest musicians in the world. We bought our way up the leagues spending nearly 1.5m of Elton's money. We had an unfair competitive advantage against our lower league rivals. It may have been a fairy tale but it was a bl00dy expensive one. I really miss the 80s atmosphere, the terraces and the more working class culture in the stadiums. But overall I prefer the modern era. The switch from empty stadiums to 2000 capacity has just emphasised how electric a football crowd still is despite all the changes over the years. What we really need after covid is safe standing and to make sure the money men have ideas like the big picture stuck where the sun don't shine. But if u fall out of love with football, just find something to replace it. Nothing lasts forever.

 

I’d like us to become Man City

 

Totally inaccurate to describe WFC as Elton John’s “plaything”, as you should well know.

 

Absolutely. And it didn't cost £1.5m to get to the top division (net) either. GT jokingly reckoned he was 'owed' a hundred grand back from the million he told Elton it would cost to get from Div 4 to Dic 1.

The thing that cost the money was upgrading the ground to keep pace with the team. Yes, there were some expensive signings (Sims £175,000 – the most expensive for a Div 3 club at the time). Rice, Armstrong, Patching cost a decent whack for the time (either in wages, salary or both). But by no means did they clobber everyone with the chequebook. And the season Watford got promoted from Div 2 to Div 1 they bought one player – Richard Jobson, for a song from non-league Burton Albion.

It's also worth bearing in mind that while Elton did put money in, most of it was for infrastructure. GT's deal with the chairman was that all money earned from cup runs could be spent on the team. So to suggest the club was powered through the leagues with an unlimited supply of cash is not right.