Is This The Least Enjoyable Season Ever?

It's like a numbness isn't it. Just numb to losses and performances. Even last night and tonight as more nails were hammered in to the coffin it's just, "oh well".

 

We were young then though so it didn't matter.

Now we don't even have our youth to comfort us.

 

The rest of our lives to be spent outside the prem. Beneath, and repeatedly beaten by Luton until we draw our final breaths. Come sweet death…..

 

I don’t think it did, it was a pretty anomalous performance during the last three months of 2020-21 when there seemed to be a unity and team spirit that we haven’t seen much of since the QSF season (if we’d shown even half of that this season we wouldn’t be bemoaning recent results going against us).

The manner in which the match panned out was much more due to Xisco’s tactical naivety and lack of knowledge of English football and how intense rivalries can get beyond those between the big clubs. This season’s team would have likely lost to that Luton team much more heavily, and would probably have got hammered by the current Luton one.

 

Our gutless players didn't show in a game which meant loads to the fans, but nothing to them


Seems pretty typical of the toxic disconnect and contempt for the fans that has been a constant in the past 3-4 seasons.

 

We'll always have the world record cup final defeat to look back on though. No one can take that treasure away from us.

 

This season has been utter gash and I hate most of the squad.

End of.

 

Hard to top the last two seasons but if Luton replace us, it’d be fittingly horrific enough to be the worst ever. Will need a huge injection of defiant flag waving to get through it.

 

With a quick scan I first read this as ‘deviant flag waving’. Same thing though really.

 

How can last season come close to being one of the least enjoyable ever?

 

I get it, it was pretty joyless. No fans for most of it, the start with all the players that didn’t want to be here being exiled, the fact we only stumbled on promotion because Deeney got injured, the fact we never seemed to play well in any game even if we won. As far as getting promoted was concerned it was the blueprint for being the absolute worst possible way to do it. And we lost to Luton.

 

Who knows ? This season has not finished yet . If we survive then it will be a classic . For sure .
There has been many 2cnd tier mid table from start to finish yawn-a-thons in years gone by
that will be worse than this season whatever happens .

 

Yeah. Promotion celebration was utterly forced and none of it felt great or exciting. It's almost like we all knew the utter turd sandwich that it would lead to.

 

I was interested so checked this, and Muff are actually only 4 goals off our entire tally for the 20-21 season with a whole 10 games left to play! I think their form has wavered for periods once or twice, but they're also quite a bit more capable of freewheeling than we ever were - I'd be shocked if they didn't end up significantly topping our total, and frankly it will probably come naturally as a function of getting automatic promotion. They're not quite Fulham, but then who are

 

I remember going to Peterborough and winning 3-4 with Dennis Bailey coming off the bench and scoring the winner after we had gone behind 3-2 . Really shyte season that one. For sure . Stayed up tho .
Beats this one hands down for crapness .

 

Surely not even you could have predicted the way it was going to pan out though (apart from Munoz’s short-lived spell in the Prem)? Even taking into account the gap in quality no one could have predicted a side conceding 30 goals and winning 19 at home not keeping a clean sheet the vast majority of the season and losing 8 home games on the bounce.

I thought if we were going to struggle it would be like Fulham last season or Middlesbrough, ie decent defence for a promoted side but struggling to score goals (eg Pedro would still be raw and unproven at that level, Sema would be ineffective, few goals from midfield).

 

Bournemouth aren’t that great, they’re there largely thanks to the inconsistency of the chasing pack who’ve had numerous golden opportunities to keep in touch but have blown most of them, and in-form teams like Sheff Utd, Forest and Boro who are too far behind to catch up thanks to poor starts which led to them all changing manager. They’re also on course to get fewer points than we did last season - so I guess that makes their season likely to end up being one of their least enjoyable ever…

 

I personally didn’t read anything into how good our defence had been at championship level, it had been awful the season before and we were relying on far too many of the same players, plus WTE and Rose, both of whom I thought would be a disaster and ultimately were.

 

You must be joking? That season had 3-2 v Oxford, 4-3 v Bolton and Peterboro, 5-2 v Birmingham, 4-4 v Leicester and 3-4 v Derby and Millwall.

It also had good late recruitment to see us soar clear of trouble (Millen, Foster, Mooney, Bailey, Ramage). And ended with winning 2-0 away to the champs.

That was a great season that left me full of hope for the season ahead. And fans and team seemed completely united all the way through, not like the empty farce that is Pozzo's player trading platform.

 

Really ?
Stayed up by 3 points courtesy of 5 wins and a draw from final 7 matches and up until then the season had been bobbins.
If you are judging that season on the final 7 games then , for sure, wow what a season !
As for being united take a peek at the gates. 7000 was the norm we even had barely 5000 for 1 match

 

I’m judging it on the large number of high scoring games, the buzz of the good run to avoid relegation and, yes, how I felt about the team and the club. Of course gates are going to be much higher in premier league. For me personally I loved that team. I can’t stand the current one. I can’t fathom why you’d prefer this season to that one in a vacuum.

 

With the results of Thurs/Fri I'm on the side of yes it's the least enjoyable. I've been a fan since the mid 90s.

For me it comes down to a sense of deja vu in how completely and utterly avoidable this situation is again.

It's been mentioned many times matches where we just didn't show up, and it's more than a handful. Brentford and Norwich topping those lists, games we absolutely could and should have won.

Win both of those and that would have us currently 1 point above Brentford and 14 above Norwich in sitting pretty 16th place. Realistically looking at winning 2 more games and a draw stumble across the safety line. Christ with even a draw at Brentford we'd be 4pts behind them and outside the relegation zone with the 4 winnable home fixtures against teams around us.

It's this point which leaves me so frustrated. Despite how absolutely sh't we have been, staying up would still be completely achievable with even the smallest smattering of consistency and mental nouse.

The average football fan could see what was needed on the pitch. Couple that with some of the current players evidently suffering from self-confidence issues when it's not going well, not hiring a sports/performance psycholigist is negligent in the extreme.

If you can't afford to improve the quality on the pitch at least put some support in place to get the most out of those that are lacking in quality. The evidence is there in the Brentford and Norwich games in that you don't need to squeeze that much more out of the duds we have to survive

 

That was a poor season but a gripping one with a lot of highlights – many of them mentioned above. There was the infamous 0-3 defeat to Grimsby and the storming of the directors' box which perhaps persuaded Petchey to spend just about enough on cheapo transfers and loans to steer us clear. Mooney, Millen, Bailey and Foster all came in in the following couple of weeks or so. Ramage had arrived a little bit earlier. The 3-0 win against Southend, scoring in the first minute, if my memory is right, was the big one and then we had a full house (or what passed for one back then) of 10,000 for the final home game against Portsmouth and a 1-0 win.

The season I found the biggest struggle was 1996-97, following relegation. GT moved upstairs, largely to sort out the mess behind the scenes but also because there simply wasn't any money to spend on players until Petchey was finally eased out and Elton and his uneasily put-together consortium came in. We signed Steve Talboys in the summer and that was it.

Early on we lost back-to-back home games. 0-2 at home to Millwall on the Saturday, 0-2 at home to Plymouth on the Tuesday night and my 20-something entitlement and assumption that we were going to romp to the title were shattered. After that it was a case of revising ambitions downwards. Perhaps we can win the Auto Windscreens Shield at Wembley? Nope. Perhaps we can win the play-off final at Wembley? Nope.

There was the intrigue of visiting a lot of new grounds (having not seen us in the lower divisions before this). But we drew so many games – there was a period in October-November when it felt like every game was 1-1.

After beating York 4-0 in April I thought we would push on and make the play-offs but we lost four of the last five and the other one was a 0-0 draw to champions-elect Bury on the day they announced Elton was coming back. There were mitigating factors – the injuries to Gary Porter, Craig Ramage and Kevin Phillips were very damaging and the fact Petchey refused to spend anyting on a club he was negotiating to sell being a couple of them.

I do remember moaning about drawing at home to Gillingham or whoever it was and hearing older fans say: "I remember when a 0-0 against Gillingham was a good result."

 

Stuff all the 'Our time is now' branding about the Vic and the training ground. That there should be what they print on a sign and slap directly above the tunnel. Sums up our club mentality to a tee.

 

That season was summed up by the 0-0 draw at home to Bury which effectively ended any playoff hopes we had against an already promoted Bury side...yes BURY ! I think we missed a pen ? If I recall, the good news that day was that it was announced Petchey was selling to the consortium that included EJ, so it was the dream ticket of GT&EJ again - well sort of.

 

Yes it was a truly dreadful season. We hardly scored, hardly won, hardly lost. Was really positive about the season looking forward to Connolly & Phillips tearing up that league but Phillips was out for about a year (in fact that Bury game was his last performance in a watford shirt) and Connolly was injured for most of the season before buggering off to Feyenoord on a Bosman freebee, so we hardly scored at all that season.

 

Yep. I do remember chesterfield absolutely playing us off the park at home. And also travelling to Stockport and watching them play with us before winning 1-0. Mind you, the opening day at Bournemouth was fun int he sun!

 

I remember Kevin davies racing away to score a great one-on-one goal in that 0-2 defeat to chesterfield. Did he get both in fact ?

 

That was a fiercely hot day, as was the first game of the season two years later at Portsmouth.