If There Was A Protest Against The Owner….

Can you explain it then? Because I’m pretty confident I knew what it was about 5 years ago but no idea since. The last thing we heard definitively was we were aiming to be the best of the rest and qualify for Europe.

 

Our midfield 4 yesterday?

 

Things are a bit cr*p right now but it would have been a full bucketload of cr*p on top if the Pozzos hadn't come in.

I think those of us who have seen the really dark days are a bit more lenient as the perspective is there.

 

Yep. I agree.

 

Why am I required to answer questions about the SuperBowl FFS? Ask me one about an interesting sport and you may get an answer.

It’s pretty simple, we have been crap, it’s depressing to watch. The cause? A mixture of being outgunned and poor decisions with the resources we have. Yes, some teams buck the trend in every sport and punch above their weight. Mostly though, they do not. Resources usually win out in professionalised sport.

Will I join a protest about it? No.

 

I was desperate years ago for the East Stand to be renovated. It offended my eyes just looking at it. Worst case here, we are back in the Championship with a decent stadium and a decent squad for that league. And we go again.

 

Surely the worst (but also realistic) case also has to involve a large and unsustainable debt burden?

 

My protest is putting my hard earned into a different club.

My cash ain't going nowhere near Watford.

 

A few weeks ago it looked like 3 from 4. Of the other 3, there was a way you could see each one would have:

Newcastle - buy their way out
Burnley - grind 1-0 wins to safety
Norwich - go for it and give it 110% each game

What did we have? Change another manager? Hope Sarr will come back and score 25 goals by himself?

 

What happened with Bellingham and Grealish? Did the big clubs just miss them?

 

It's about match day experience. I still support Watford, but going to Wealdstone has rekindled my love for football, which had waned over the last few years supporting Watford. Its not just the club's fault, the Premier League is ****.

 

It’s not my money and unless we do a Derby that’s just football.

 

Well no, it’s Macquarie Bank’s money. Secured against the stadium and the Deulofeu and Pereyra transfer fees.

 

Would only require 1% of fans to lob tennis balls on the pitch to stop the game and get the attention of the owners...do it twice, once per half on a televised game. Pozzos may sit up and pay attention then.

 

And do what exactly? Promise to be less ****?

 

Cool. It’s not your money either.

I imagine if it all goes wrong someone else will want the nice stadium, the contracts and whatever. You’ll all get your wish and have new owners.

Maybe they will be proper human rights abusers with lots of money!!

 

R u ok hun? X x X

 

A bit patronising. I was merely trying to help you worry less.

 

No I wouldn’t protest. The club has been in far worse states than this before and we came through it.

Have Gino and Scott made appalling decisions with the manager and playing staff? Yes. Do things need to improve? Yes. Are Gino and Scott fundamentally bad people who don’t have the best interests of Watford at heart? Of course not.

Therefore a protest against their ownership feels inappropriate.

 

What does that even mean? What defines a fundamentally bad person in football?

Duxbury has been lying through his teeth to us for too long now and Gino doesn’t ever address us.

To me, lying and to a certain degree deceit are both traits of bad people.

Is there any evidence to the contrary that they’re nice, kind hearted people? No.

It’s not personal, looking at it from solely a business perspective, they are failing at their jobs right now and not doing it to the best of their ability.

We’ve tried different players, different managers, different backroom staff, result has been the same so something else now must change. How much is Duxbury paid? Is there nobody out there who can do a better job at managing this business?

 

And there you have it. As long as you appear to be nice, it doesn’t matter if you’re incompetent in your job or mortgage the stadium.

 

I will sit there with a placard but won't make a noise

 

Great thread. Thanks for starting it. Some proper discussion rather than partisan posturing, or talk about having wet beds or being love children of Gino.

I’m not sure we’re at the point of protest yet. But we all hated the game against Norwich. I left that one early (phuck u for judging me, I have a train to catch. And don’t want to share it with squawking away fans). And I was bitterly disappointed about defeat to Brighton. This time I stayed til the end. Not because I thought we’d turn it round and get a point, but because I actually paid ULEZ and drove to Watford, so I wouldn’t be on the train with screechy seagulls on the way home. FFS. I knew we wouldn’t win. I knew I would need a lonely car journey back to London, with loud music, to start processing another lost opportunity.

If giving up my seat in the Rookery is a protest, then ok. I’m protesting. It’s been a gradual buildup over the past 3 seasons since the 6-0 humiliation. And yeah, it’s not just Watford but it’s the state of football generally. I hate Man City, Newcastle, Chelski and all that uber corrupt sh1t. And I hate West Ham and those seedy pornographers almost as much as I love my cat. And I bet you would love my cat too if you met her - even if you think you don’t like cats.

So now, for the first time in the Pozzo era, I am not renewing my season ticket. I’m not just thinking about not renewing it. I’ve decided. I will not be coming back to vicarage road much next season. I’m not gonna try and stop supporting Watford. That’s pointless. I just need the distance.

You’re all correct. Every single one of you. But I can’t agree with you all.

What I mean is, we’re Watford fans. It’s hard. We all agree about that. Things have got to change. Will they change because of a protest against a weird but intelligent owner, who treats managers like a mouthful of wine at a tasting? Not sure. I think dissent is important. But it’s effectiveness depends on how deep Gino’s narcissism runs.

My life, these days, has enough pain. I can not continue to be invested in such ongoing disappointment. I need to watch my team from afar. Call it protest, or a withdrawal of practical support. For me, it’s just a necessary bit of self care.

 

People who have been found guilty of match fixing and are alleged to be involved in tax evasion and money laundering don't tend to be particularly nice people in my experience. Nor do people who routinely lie, break promises and treat their employees with utter contempt.

 

Criticising the club owners = bedwetting

Openly stating you’re off to support a different team = *standing ovation*

 

That's right – GoingDown was referring to the club getting things wrong prior to the cup final and I was acknowledging that there were some obvious missteps in the run-up to the final. The Southampton game where they did the Rocketman stunt was in that period (April 2019).

 

Again, you hit the nail on the head for me.

And I think this is the most likely outcome. As @GoingDown and others have said, as a collective fanbase we are meek and mild. I suspect there will be some who have been holding out for a long time because if they stop coming to games, it would leave them feeling somewhat bereft every other Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday (or whatever day we play) - no more matchday routine etc. But more and more will be weighing that up against simply doing it for doing it’s sake. Why do it if you don’t enjoy it even one bit? I think some will look at those who take that choice and simply believe it’s a case of ‘not coming because we aren’t winning’ - but I think enough people now have said clearly that it runs far deeper than that. This simply isn’t the club they fell in love with presently. It’s about how the club ‘is’, not just about how the team plays.

I suspect more and more people are going to take the approach of @Victory Road.

Many won’t come to games for differing reasons. But if Gino and Duxbury continue with their current repetitive actions whilst remaining silent (or just telling outright lies when one of them does speak), then I think it won’t long in the grand scheme of things that they find themselves back to seeing thousands of empty seats every other week.

In reality, given our nature as a fanbase, I think that might be the starkest wake-up call there is going to be for them that is actually tangible.

A protest with placards and megaphones etc is not going to happen in the modern day with Watford. But staying away from games (or even just planned for one game in particular) could work. It wouldn’t work with bigger clubs because there is always a huge, readying list of day-trippers waiting to fill the empty seats. We don’t have that.

No doubt any such organised action like that above would be met with Roy Moore etc saying ‘the lads need our support, all together’ etc - but at what point does the penny drop?

 

I was referring to the semi-final victory, the immediate aftermath and the period leading up to the final, not the final itself, which I had hoped would have been very clear from what I wrote. Beating Wolves at Wembley to win an FA Cup semi-final is something that might never be repeated. Being there, witnessing that with some of the people I care about most in the world, was one of those moments that make all the years in between worth it.

The final, once the first goal went in, was horrendous, of course. But the morning of the game, meeting up and having a meal and a few drinks and travelling in to London and having photographs of us all full of hope that we might pull off a miracle remains fantastic. Perhaps I am fortunate that my brain can separate the two and can savour one while minimising the other, I don't know.

I've written about this elsewhere but on a personal level the whole thing meant something fundamentally deeper to me than the result and performance against Man City. I missed the final in 84 and wanted to go to one with my Dad before he was no longer able. A very good friend of our group died six months before the final and we'd been to Watford games all over the place for years before he became disaffected and went to support Wealdstone (before it was fashionable, I might add!)

Similarly I have a burning desire to see us play in Europe (I missed it all last time) and if that ended in a 6-0 aggregate defeat to Dynamo Igloo in the preliminary round I would take it. The joy, of course, is that you don't know in advance how it's going to turn out and that, perhaps, is what makes the current malaise so tedious.

You've sort of shifted the argument from saying that we'd have possibly got seventh if Deeney had missed the penalty to talking about how awful the final was and on the second point I'm in full agreement but I still wouldn't want to undo the cup run just because it ended dreadfully. It's possible to acknowledge the embarrassment and humiliation of losing 6-0 in front of a global audience without trashing what went before it.

Perhaps I'm just more philosophical about it all these days. That doesn't mean I don't get incredibly irritated and sometimes angry. I left the Norwich game very early. I didn't go to the Brighton game. Life gets in the way sometimes. I've supported Watford all my life, I've been fortunate enough to meet and write about a lot of the people who have created our greatest days and I will never not support the club. Apologies for the essay, I just don't happen to see the merit in getting retrospectively annoyed about what was, both objectively and subjectively, among the greatest periods in the club's history.

 

Things seem to have gone awry since the global humiliation of the cup final. I wonder if Gino is suffering from some form of post-Wembley PTSD that is affecting his judgement?

 

My conundrum is l’d quite like to renew and see if the rebuilt team can challenge at the top of the championship but I have very little interest in any of the remaining premier league games. Imagine how miserable the Arsenal game is going to be. Comprehensive defeat with Arsenal idiots in the home end.

 

To be fair, though, nothing is stopping you leading a protest. You don't need the 1881's say-so. As we've seen it takes a relatively small number of people to create a story. A march to the stadium, tennis balls on the pitch, a walk-out, a no-show, whatever it is, you could make a splash with a few hundred participants. The more creative and specific the protest the better, I'd suggest.

And then, if you're drowned out by 10,000 fans singing 'Here's to you Pozzo family' (a dreadful song at the best of times!) then that's democracy at work in real time.

You can do whatever you like (within the law and as long as it doesn't threaten or harm others) except insist that people agree with you. I suspect that turning on people who may be disaffected, just not quite to the point of protest, is likely to be ineffective.

Human nature is that the quiet majority tend not to march, they turn away and walk in the other direction, hence the growing number of empty seats this season. Any fanbase is made up of a hardcore and the casuals and the casuals don't feel the same sense of ingrained attachment so they simply stop going when it is less enjoyable.

 

They need to come up with a reverse half season ticket offering. Instead of the usual trick of trying to gets bums on seats ahead of an exciting end to a season, they could offer refunds for long-suffering season ticket holders who need respite until August.

 

Firstly, I enjoyed the cup semi-final victory as much as any Watford fan. I’m certainly not demeaning it. I’m talking about how I wish, based on our current situation, that we hadn’t got to the final. It’s hindsight talking but I would like a more stable club and it’s very very clear that the decline tracks back to that very moment. It’s not being retrospectively annoyed, it’s just a clear analysis of the facts.

I think our discussion is derailing the thread subject somewhat, what I mean to say is that fans like you (and I have the upmost respect for your admission of the type of fan you are) is the reason why any protest doesn’t have any legs, you aren’t overly upset by a defeat/relegation/questionable club ownership because of life getting in the way amongst other things. We have many fans like that. In fact, that’s the majority.