Was It All Worth It…

Absolutely. We should have stayed there forever and ever as they no doubt will . Sorry my sarcasm levels are high this morning as have covid and feeling a bit crap !

 

I get the criticism of Gino/The Board. Many many mistakes the last few years. What I don't buy, and I guess we will always disagree on, is the suggestion that if they had just done a reasonable job of managing things, we would still be there, be established and become another guaranteed mid table side. All smaller clubs only have a limited run in the top league and then fall back. You are right that CP are on a great run, but I think they are the single exception that proves the rule. Burnley had a great run, fell back down but made much better decisions in the summer than us and are heading back. I doubt the will still be there in 3-5 years.

 

We had great times, they had the chance to build something but sadly, like a lot of clubs that come up and stick around in the Prem for a few years the owners had no future vision. All that money we had that could have been used to keep a conveyor belt of talent coming through was squandered on older players with no resale value who lacked talent and mental fortitude. I could have forgiven them for us being relegated if we had a new batch of players coming through to take the reigns from the old guard. The hiring of Ubenga and co was too little too late in my eyes but hopefully if we arent totally screwed financially there is a clear vision going forward.

The investment in the ground and training facilities have been good but as mentioned above, investment on the pitch has been woeful after our initial successes.

From when they took over the club up until Gracia was sacked it was good fun, the decline afterwards not so much.

 

It's a great question. So many ups and downs over the past decade. Having missed 1984 reaching the cup final scratched an itch that had been there for 35 years. Yes, the cup has been ludicrously devalued both by apathy and the grinding reality that the big four/six win it without really being bothered, but it meant something to me and despite the result I am glad it happened. I'd have loved a Europa League preliminary round trip to some East European outpost and a League Cup final too.

We probably achieved about as much as a club our size can realistically hope to achieve. I think I'm right in saying that in the first four of the seasons in the Premier League we didn't spend a single matchday in the bottom three. Extraordinary, really. Yes, it was 'boring' at times. Yes, there were the inevitable hammerings and a sense that certain fixtures were pointless. But, unfortunately, without a billionaire or gulf state's ownership that really is about as good as it gets.

Right now, though, all that sticks in my mind is the words of a mate of mine who would say – on a semi-regular basis after a great away win – "Remember this, because when we're watching AFC Watford at Kings Langley, these will be the moments to think back to."

Pozzo and Duxbury have long since run out of the goodwill that allowed them their relative silence. While things were going well, or even just okay, Pozzo could sit in his big chair like some Roman emperor and give the head coach the thumbs down every so often. He could get away with not explaining what he's doing, what he's thinking, even why he owns the club. He could get away with the lack of scrutiny regarding the finances, the loans and their restructuring, the associations with Udinese and questionable agents. He could get away with all the weird transfers, the sense that the squad is put together at random with good performance on the pitch being a nice side-effect of the wheeling and dealing.

He could get away with sending Duxbury out once a year to say what he couldn't talk about and reassure everyone that everyone's going to plan.

But all that goodwill has been exhausted. Yes, there are glimmers that the January recruitment was an improvement on the previous four windows but the constant resetting, the rinse and repeat of Duxbury coming out to insist that the lessons of 18 months ago have definitely been learned without having the self-awareness to realise that he'll be saying the same about what's going on now in 18 months' time, is just tiring.

The silence is what has ground the supporters down, especially those of us who remember the way Elton and GT communicated. Elton would do a big interview with Oli Phillips at the WO once a year or so. He'd write notes in the annual handbook or a programme at the start of the season. Yes, they were simpler days when communication was easier and less likely to provoke anger, but those notes set out where the club was and where it wanted to go next. They earned the trust of supporters.

There's none of that now.

 

Forever ?
That was our peak for >30 years, and we have no excuse not to have stayed there ?
If your logic is that once you are there at your peak, you should be able to just stay there indefinitely, there are a hell of a lot of badly failing clubs in the championship who should still be comfortable premier league teams.
That's where we disagree.

 

You can’t have your cake and eat it though, there are also a lot of similar sized clubs to us sustaining themselves in the PL.

 

Your reasoning appears to be that because we are now failing, it was inevitable and therefore, the mismanagement is excused. Any examples given of it not happening with other clubs is excused by ‘it will eventually’. Pretty flimsy.

 

Essentially the bad decisions should never be justified by us as fans saying "well it would happen eventually"

Duxbury is paid a fortune to run the club for Gino. Gino could earn a fortune from football by running things better.

We should demand better.

 

We’re all going to die, but people might argue that if I decide to heat my morning toast by bringing the toaster into the bath with me to save time, I might have been able to delay it by doing things slightly differently.

 

I can see what TuT is saying. For a club of our size to maintain long-term status in the PL, while paying low wages, you need to be close to perfect every season. You need recruitment to be pretty much spot on, and you need a bit of luck. The first time we slipped up in that regard - ignoring the CB issues, buying Sarr for a manager that doesn't use wingers, we were punished. Even then remove the bad luck of Deulofeu's injury and we possibly stay up. Since then it's mostly been floundering around, hoping to strike gold again, much like the Stoke's, Blackburn's and Hull's of the world.

 

Lots ? There are far more in the champ and League one.

 

Well of course, that’s just down to maths, and the fact there are only 20 places in the PL and 72 not in the PL.

 

That's not my argument at all. My argument is based on how many clubs the size of us are comfortable in the prem vs how many are in the champ and League one, and like us, used to be prem sides. Why should we be in the prem while Swansea, Reading, QPR, Blackburn, Middlesbro, Sheff Utd, Stoke, Norwich, WBA, etc aren't ? Should we expect to be far more successful than them ?
My argument is that WFC and those clubs occasionally get everything right, as Brentford are right now, and get to the top league, as we did. While they compete against the bigger clubs they have to be smarter, operate better, in order to stay competitive at that level. They can only do that for so long (unless they are bankrolled), and at some point they fall back down, as all those I've listed have done. One day Brentford will too.

 

Exactly.. It's tough to be part of the 20 consistently isn't it, without huge finance behind you ? Easier and more likely to be part of the 72. Every now and then when we get everything right we will get a shot at staying in the top 20 for a while.

 

Not sure anyone is using that to justify his poor decisions of the last 4 years or so.

 

Ding ding ding!

 

Not sure anyone is saying we have a right to be in the Premier League. Relegation was always a possibility. One or two wrong turns and it was a more obvious possibility. As in any elite sport, the moment you think you've cracked it, you're the most vulnerable.

And spring 2019 is when they thought they'd cracked. Chasing a place in Europe, through to the cup final. The club as a whole thought it was time to move on to the next level. They dropped Z-Cars – in itself not a terrible idea but indicative of a certain type of thinking, that it was time to be moving on and embracing our 'new' identity. They did the absolutely embarrassing display for Rocketman. Yes, thank you Elton but allowed ourselves to be a billboard for his film.

Then came Duxbury's email the morning after the cup final when humility was required and what we got was 'Don't worry, we've got everyone where we want them.'

Then the disruption of the summer. Disagreements over who was eligible for bonus payments. A failure to properly reinforce the areas of the team that needed attention. A long chase for Sarr. Admittedly, I was delighted when we got him but in hindsight it was a mistake. Then the 2019-20 season was mistake after mistake.

Everything started to look like a gambling addict chasing his losses in Vegas. The squad got more and more uneven. The recruitment after getting back up again looked, on the face of it, to be a repeat of 2015 but they were not good enough.

And with each passing month, the consequences of the mistakes begin to look more serious and the attempts to get back on track increasingly desperate.

 

We can demand better communication, for sure. Unfortunately, in a market like football, the salaries don't ensure anything.

The game enriches a relatively small number of people and rewards / compensates plenty of people extremely handsomely despite failure.

 

I'm not annoyed at getting relegated as such, it's always going to happen eventually, but I am very annoyed that we've left ourselves in a position where we're on the precipice now, we had a golden opportunity to, for want of a better phrase, establish ourselves as a 'top 26' club which is now fading

 

I have no issue with being relegated.

I have issues with having all that PL money only to have such a poor squad and masses of debt. Not to mention an average of 3 coaches a season and lies from the upper reaches of the club about 'lessons being learned'.

They took the first step of earning back some trust by appointing Edwards and making all the right noises. They have taken a number of huge steps back since then.

 

A lot of recency bias in this thread, I think a lot of people forget how **** we were before Gino and we were only headed one way (league 1). Yes it's miserable now, but if you're weighing up the good and the bad, the good is still outweighing the bad.

People often use these comparisons as some sort of stick to beat anyone who still thinks Gino has some credit in the bank, but who else would have honestly bought our club post Bassini? I can't see that anyone would have, and I can't see that we'd have had anything other than miserable season's finishing midtable in League 1.

Instead we've had 6 years of PL football, and FA Cup final and not finished lower than 14th in the championship. I'd be willing to bet my house that 90% of Watford fans would have bitten your hand off for that when we were about to go into administration under Bas.

I think we all know it's gone downhill since the relegation season, but Covid was also a huge factor there for our finances. I think most people who share my views have been pretty pissed off with how things have been but there does seem to be a lack of nuance these days. I've also said it before but I think a lot of people's frustrations are as much with modern football as they are with Watford and Gino.

 

I just don't think there is a right or wrong answer when it comes to 'was it all worth it?'

People support their clubs in different ways. Some would be happy to be a truly sustainable, maybe even fan-owned, club in L1 and would have taken us going through administration to achieve that. Some would be happy to sell our soul for a place at the top table. And many have feelings that are in many different places between those 2 points.

One thing I will say though is that I find the whole argument about 'who else would have bought it if not Gino' a bit strange really. No one on here knew of the Pozzo's before they arrived. So there is nothing to say that a few weeks later another party could have come along. They are not the only people in football.

 

I personally can't see who would have bought Watford, the state we were in, and been as successful as the Pozzos have been. It's hypothetical, but IMO we'd have been far more likely to end up with another Bassini type if the Pozzo's didn't come along.

One thing I would add as well, is don't underestimate how many new fans we'll have gained from those years in the PL, so if nothing else they've helped bring in a new generation of Watford fans. Kids in Watford who would have otherwise supported Spurs or Arsenal are now Watford fans which will have a big impact on the next generation of Watford fans.

 

But presumably you couldn't have seen the Pozzo's buying us until they arrived on the scene? That's my point.

And given the comments around this weekends game, and previous away games in particular, doesn't sound like its unanimously a good thing that we attracted some teenage fans in 2016 or whatever!

 

Absolutely it was worth it. Supporting a club like ours means that a long period of success is hugely unlikely. The list @WatfordTalk posted gave me a nice warm feeling again. Those memories cannot be taken away and when I remember the early nineties and how bad we were as a team and a club it just makes me happy to think we've had those memories.
Would anybody seriously swap the first few years under Pozzo for being a lower Championship/top half League One side with a couple of academy products in the team.
Football has changed and that time under Sir Graham with the way the club was run, the players being part of the community is unlikely to ever be repeated because football is a business now.
It's horrible at the moment and it does feel as though it will get worse but in 5 years time I can still look back at those results, goals, days out at Wembley etc with great fondness

 

I take your general point, but they had already owned Udinese and Granada and had raised a few eyebrows in the footballing world through their loan system which they famously brought here, so I had heard of them!

 

I don't want to set you off here, but I actually think Edwards was a really poor choice of coach. At FGR he was at a brilliantly run club and he inherited a really good "team". He proved he was a safe pair of hands but even then the wheels really came off in the second part of his only season. He did nothing to earn a shot at a club who's expectation was an immediate return to the Premier League (IMO).

He looked completely out of his depth at a club where he HAD TO gain promotion, and the key point here is, he needed to build a broken club, who were used to losing week after week. There is nothing in his career to suggest he was capable of doing that. He got 14 points from 10 games. Only 7 from his final 7 and the 7 he got from his first 3 games, whilst impressive, were quite lucky. I remember both West Brom and Burnley opened us up time and time again and we rode our luck. Of course it now looks like a bad dismissal because of how well he's doing at Luton. But Luton were in a very similar situation to FGR. A brilliantly run club and he inherited a really good "team". Again, he's shown he's a safe pair of hands and has kept it going, but it was the work started by Jones.

So for me, we should only have employed Edwards had we a really good "team" in the first place, and had promotion not been a non-negotiable. It was never going to pan out and only an experienced man would have been capable of knitting together a good team from the squad we had. I believe had we got Bilic in straight away, we'd have been a lot better off than we are now. Although, he was incredibly unlucky with the injuries, which basically killed us and he paid the price for that. Even when the players started to come back it coincided with probably the hardest run of fixtures back-to-back of the season.

 

Happy to agree to disagree.

I would say plenty of coaches earn their shot by being given the shot. Football has plenty of coaches who probably didn't earn the big chances they got - but went on to be successful and not sacked after 10 games (which included wins against the current Top 3 I might add ).

 

Perfect summary.

 

This is the best summary of the last few years I've seen.

 

He's not a bad coach, clearly, but he wasn't ready for Watford. He was a bad fit for us given the mandate was we needed to be promoted (or else) this season. This is the only point I'm making. A decent coach, but not the one we should have gone for with the clear expectations we had.

If you're the owner of a football club and you absolutely need promotion, you hedge your bets and get a guy with a good track record. Hiring someone who only had one season in League Two, was a ridiculous gamble (IMO), which was unlikely to pan out (and that was proved).

Had we a really tight-knit team with a laidback attitude towards promotion, he'd have been an excellent appointment. He was just a bad appointment under the parameters we set.

 

Really interesting responses. Reminiscing on the highlights from @WatfordTalk list makes me now believe that it was all worth it TO DATE…but if the mismanagement over the last 4-5 years have huge knock on effects for this club then that view may change

It’s just a shame - as the last period could have been an extension of the previously experienced highs

 

Really not sure how you can say that was proved after less than quarter of a season.

But we won't agree so no point in debating round in circles as you say.

 

Were Hodgson and Ranieri not experienced enough, but Xisco somehow was then?

You wanted Steve Bruce as manager for a while, so you’ll understand if some of us don’t take your opinion on who was right and wrong for the job that seriously.

 

By that I meant it was proved in the eyes of the owner, as he sacked him.

It's not a question of agreeing/disagreeing really. My view is Edwards is a decent coach, but was not ready for the challenges Watford set him, given their intolerance to perceived failure. Edwards is an ideal candidate for a long term project. I think we probably agree on that. It was a poor appointment given how Watford operate. It was na*ve at best thinking he'd be given a chance. Basically the owner wanted promotion on a shoestring, but ended up paying for three coaches with compensation pay outs of over £1m. More false economy.

The of the biggest issues with Gino, is that he underplays the importance of the head coach. He sees them as a disposable commodity, failing to grasp the significance of how important this position actually is.