Our main GK Ben Foster is very good, despite the stick some want to give him. He used to play for Man Utd and England. All our defenders are ‘ok’ but not great. Our midfield has become quite weak - Will Hughes when fully fit is our best player there. If they are played in the right positions and coached properly then Pedro and Sarr could be very very good. Sema performs well but is limited I’d say. We don’t have any forwards which is strange I know but we just believe in giving the opposition a helping hand in games.
No, rational. 2 years ago it would have been irrational. Today, the quality and form of our other strikers means that throwing Success in could actually be the right thing to do.
Against a weakened Man Utd team, which they usually play in the early rounds of the cup, keep it tight, hope to create a couple of decent chances, sneak a goal, ride your luck. I seem to remember a League Cup win with Luther getting a brace, and a couple of games in the 80s when Watford scored last minute equalisers. So to say we never got decent results at Old Trafford is wide of the mark. Goodison Park on the other hand is the real bogey ground.
So is Bradford funnily enough - we've never won there and we've had plenty of opportunities! https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/head_to_head.sd?team_id=2741&team2_id=234 Luton at least at home was a bogey team until this season.
You only “seem to remember” it? One of the first great GT results: https://www.watfordfc.com/memorable-matches/manchester-united-1-2-watford-1978
Didn't realise that about Bradford. Even though we have come close to beating them there (even in our ill-fated GT Premier season). Will always remember the first time seeing us beat Luton. That 1983 5-2 home game in the spring sunshine.
Sorry, I DO remember a League Cup win at Old Trafford. It was a really big deal at the time. Apologies for using a figure-of-speech. I remember being woken up specially so I could watch the highlights on Sportsnight, as it was a school night.
I remember not listening to it on the radio as I knew it was on Sports night so watched the highlights "live" so to speak. Luther and GT were on Nationwide the following evening if I remember correctly.
That’s more like it! I DO remember listening to it on the radio. Radio 2 in those days, I think? Was it called “Soccer Special”? With Bryon Butler. It was great supporting the ‘Orns back then.
Bryon Butler’s nephew was one of my best friends growing up. I met Bryon a few times. Top man, top broadcaster. It was him and Peter Jones who used to do the commentary on Radio 2, the forerunner to 5Live for football coverage. It was all a mystery as to which Saturday 3pm match was to be the commentary game. They only did the second half and never used to reveal it until halftime. It was that and sitting watching Ceefax going round and excitedly hoping we’d have scored while our page wasn’t the one on display.
I totally agree, even when the result didn't go our way, you knew they would give it a real go like this League Cup game in 1982: https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/35807.november-10-1982-nottingham-forest-7-watford-3/ Even Brian Clough came into the away dressing room after the match (almost unheard of at the time for an opposing manager to do this) to say how well they played and that they were a credit to the club and its supporters. High praise indeed. I think the deal with my parents was that I could watch it "live" on Sportsnight later on if I went to bed an hour or so earlier. Can't remember the Nationwide program the following day, but I do remember the back pages of the national press, and classmates cutting out the pictures and sticking them on the classroom wall. For the non-Watford following public, that was the day GT's Watford had "arrived".
Sign of getting older. Fondly reminiscing about the good old days when, in fact, there were good bits and a fair amount of crap too.
We had strikers who could score back then though But yes, you’re totally right. We look back fondly on our teenage years and forget things like school, acne, rejections from the opposite sex, being broke, not being allowed out late at night or to meet who you want etc. Mind you, some of those things are still topical due to lockdown!
Re-live it here: https://github.com/patrickcunningham/ceefax-football Well sort of ..... if you have the know-how.
Certainly didn’t come close to beating them that season. We lost 3-2 but the result flattered us and although we were level very briefly through Hyde’s goal, after Gareth Whalley scored to make it 2-1, there was only one winner. And to cap it all, Sheffield Wednesday got an unexpected win at Spurs to finally send us bottom, where we remained for the rest of 1999/00 - one of the dark spots of a tough season, along with the Selhurst Park thrashing and the early FA Cup exit to Birmingham the previous calendar year. We may have come close to beating them in 2002/03 (a game I don’t remember at all apart from losing 2-1) and in earlier encounters, but generally the pattern was, starting around the time I started supporting them in early 2000, that we were well beaten, sometimes getting one or two late goals to add some gloss to the scoreline. One of those grounds we didn’t fancy playing at for some reason, like Burnley (a few memorable wins apart).
In the 80s there was also Mike Vince, a big WFC man, in more ways than one, and Chiltern Radio, with phone-in reports by Oliver Phillips and that horn that sounded when there was a goal in a featured game.
Forest away under Brian Clough was often slim pickings. My first visit was when we were in pre-Wembley high spirits and lost 5-1. Steve Hodge (who played for us under Roeder) had a really good game that day.
GT- A man in a million by MikeVince: It's been a shattering day, since I got a text on my mobile telling me the news that Graham Taylor had died suddenly at the age of just 72. I could write for days about the 20 years I spent working alongside one of the most inspiring and charismatic leaders I have ever met, as Radio Reporter and Commentator and then working much closer with the club. His record in football club management speaks for itself and as one of those who suffered the agony of seeing our home town football club crash ignominuously but deservedly out of the FA Cup at lowly Northwich Victoria months before Graham set foot in Vicarage Road I do remember how it used to be. We used to joke Graham was a passable left back- you could pass him either on the left or the right and his worst day as a player was probably at Vicarage Road when a Stewart Scullion inspired Watford scored 7 against him. But the youngest ever top badge holder of his generation was to become quite simply the outstanding manager in the history of our football club- rewriting record books and definitions of the words like success at every move. The charge from Fourth division to the First Division in that golden era which led to Europe(I went back to commentate for TV at Kaiserslautern a few years ago and one senior club official went green at the gills as I mentioned I was from Watford!) and the 1984 FA Cup Final was the stuff noone would believe you if you told them about without the history books to support you. There were the great players- Barnes, Blissett, Bolton, Jackett, and in the later years Smart, Wright and Helguson, and a ten thousand or so phalanx of supporters who had this quite extraordinary relationship- and it all came from the man at the top. Yes we mourn an oustanding football manager, but we also salute a truly outstanding human being. So Watford wanted to instal the first Family Enclosure in a British Football Stadium. How was the money raised? GT ran the London Marathon- one of many such examples. Being part of the club mattered to Graham he encouraged and supported anyone with yellow and red in their vanes- and throughout his time as Manager, Chairman and Non Executive Director he was 'one of us'. I was reminded of that by the story reprinted in the Watford Observer today about the lifelong Hornets fan who got a phone call from him as he was admitted to the local hospice. And to someone so lucky as me, who first met him as a opart time reporter working in the City in the week and covering matches on saturdays there was encouragement, support and wisdom- all of which I shall cherish for the rest of my life. And there was fun, too, in the right context- including a memorable exchange when it was announced he had rightly been made a Freeman of Watford which gave him the chance to drive sheep up the High Street - 'I have been rounding up lost sheep in this town for years' came the response and being ambushed by him and the players one match day eve when going to do a weekly interview and being told he was saying nothing until I spilt the beans, in full, on the lady two of the players had seen me arm in arm with the previous afternoon. His beloved Rita, who I first had the pleasure of meeting nearly 40 years ago knows, I hope that as she mourns her devoted husband there are tens of thousands in Watford, Birmingham and beyond offering her, their daughters and family, love, prayers and sincere sympathy. Football has lost one of its greats, Mankind has lost someone even more special. I'd have felt honoured to have worked with Graham for 2 years, that he put up with me for almost ten times that speaks volumes for a man who was 'Graham' to everyone. It would have gone against everything he stood for for it to be any different.
Sorry to namedrop further but I often used to have coffee with Mike V. He was often in my neck of the woods covering racing or interviewing the likes of Pipe, Nichols, Hobbs etc. He’s since moved down here actually. A big Watford supporter, who was never happier than when talking about GT and never happy than when talking about Baz or the excesses of the Vialli season.
So far we've had one 'fourth gear', one 'second gear' and now one 'third gear' for Man U. And people still hoping Watford will get in the 'automatics' or that 'the wheels will come off'. All we need now is a joke about Bachmann going into overdrive....
..... and Watford suffering a 1-0 reverse. For the neutral, it wasn't a classic. Sorry, I'll get my coat .......
Mike Vince also did the (very)post-match commentary for some of the Season Review videos. Conjuring up excitement for the Lee/Perryman eras must have needed a massive dose of Prozac and Pro-Plus.
