Watford And Modern Football

Watching Watford has been a slog the last few years but there are definitely signs of a re-build this season. However it seems a lot of the current grumblings about Watford aren't specific to us and are actually just how the game has gone in recent years.

The tippy tappy football out from the back, used to be just a few clubs doing it but now if you don't do it you get labelled as a 'dinosaur' manager whether you have the players to suit it or not.

Fans demanding sackings as soon as they don't get what they want.

Hipster fans online trying to overanalyse everything to show why they are right and everyone needs to agree with them.

Players playing at a half arsed pace constantly.

Wingers who always play backwards instead of taking on full backs.

The days of a team with the likes of Tozser winning strong tackles and midfield magicians like Abdi picking out a couple of goal scoring battering rams like Deeney and Ighalo have long gone - it doesn't seem to be just a Watford thing.

Top level football now compared to ten years ago is a really poor watch and it's getting worse.

 

I pretty much despise everything about football these days.

• VAR
• Sky Sports/BT wetting themselves over the big clubs
• The obscene money in the Premier League
• Matchday Vlogs
• Podcasters and YouTubers saying controversial things for 'clicks'
• Sky Sports giving these podcasters and YouTubers their own programmes where they shout over each other for an hour about whether Shearer was better than Haaland
• Jamie Carragher
• The general standard of refereeing
• L***n being in the PL
• Half and half scarves
• Gino Pozzo

 

And the time wasting and gamesmanship in every single moment.

 

A lot of people seem to rate players who are easier on the eye but ineffective, over players who are maybe more scruffy in their approach but more effective. Sema is a prime example for getting pelters when he actually delivers, yet other players will have 100% pass completion stats and get fawned over but throughout 90 minutes they have created nothing.

 

One of the easiest things to solve but the leagues won't for fear of upsetting the big boys.

 

Just smash it in the onion bag.

 

This 100%.
It’s a horrible game now.

 

What was better about it in, say, the 90s?

It was shyt then too, just for other reasons.

It wasn't better in your day, you're just an old qwunt now.

 

The time I enjoyed the most was 76/77 under Mike Keen not because we was good or football was better it was because we were attempting to achieve promotion, and as a 13 year old going home and especially away in those days was like visiting another country. Gillingham away in the cup, last minute goals, pitch invasions etc ......was so exciting for someone who rarely left their community at that time

 

Hopefully the Saudis buy all of football and take the so-called big six with them to a worldwide super league so that the rest of us can enjoy football. The Championship is far more interesting than the Premier League in its current state and the way Millwall kicked the sh*t out of us last season shows that there are still more ways to be successful at this level than just passing it around at the back.

Thanks for reminding me about T*szer, had completely forgotten about him!

 

No, football has never been good since the advent of the hateful ‘Premier’ League.

 

Arrogance and entitlement. This is pretty much just aimed at Jurgen Klopp. Whenever a minnow like us is beating his team, he will have that condescending smile on his face. He does it all the time.

He did it yesterday when Luton went 1-0 up, and when he got booked. When he was being booked, he purposely looked away whilst the referee was speaking to him. I find him so disrespectful, but he is a media darling that all the pundits on Match of the Day, Sky and TalkSport etc. wax lyrical about.

That's another thing in decline. Pundits with no personality, talking nonsense and just following the narrative of the day.

 

Unpopular opinion but I quite enjoy watching the average premier league game, rather than the old days of watching passes back to Ogrizovic on a muddy field who would pick it up and boot it into orbit!

 

Good games are always good to watch, but most top level games now are pretty boring in the main and also stunted. If you go more than 20 minutes with a physio coming on you've done well - the game has gone from 'pretend nothing hurts' to 'pretend everything hurts'. That and the fact that most corners/free kicks take an age to get played means the games lose their rhythm all too easily.

Some pundits and managers talk in derogatory terms about some games becoming "basketball games" where they are out of control and back and forth but those games are entertaining. Cov v Watford this season was the closest we've been to that for a while.

It seems that most games are sanitised and analysed to within an inch of their lives now at the expense of entertainment.

 

I think it’s a combination of age and football going to complete ****.

Fifa have been described as being no different to the mafia, they’re like an organised crime gang and they run the game. It becomes hard to care when you have people like that running the game, lining their own pockets and those of their Arab friends. I think a World Cup in Australia would’ve been pretty cool, but no they didn’t stand a chance because of the entirely corrupt process.

Then you have corruption in our own league, City riding roughshod over the rules but nobody cares because Halland is good for their FPL team. The OL are only doing something because the other clubs have made them, but ultimately they’ll probably get away with it because they’ll pay the best lawyers.

Now you’ve got Saudi buying Newcastle, which is ok because apparently it’s not Saudi, it’s just their investment fund so clearly has nothing to do with them. And again nobody cares, the pundits all just say that Newcastle fans deserve it, err why? Just because they place an over inflated importance compared to the rest of us on kicking a bag of air around, the deserve to be bought by a country so they can launder their reputation via our league? No, no they don’t deserve it.

I had sky sports up until the start of last season, I’d watch the majority of games but never properly watched them, they were just background noise. Then I cancelled it and never missed it, I don’t watch any games now, just look at the scores so I can converse with mates about it, I don’t miss it at all. Whenever I try to watch a game now I just get bored. I think it’s a combination of age and apathy, I never took any joy from watching Man City because it was a fake achievement, I think that has now extended to all of top level football for me, I just can’t get any joy from it now.

What used to be different in the last couple of seasons is if still watch out games and be invested in them even if I didn’t watch other football, now I can’t even be bothered to watch us. That isn’t age though, that’s just a similar apathy I’ve developed about other football manifesting itself through different reasons (how our club has been run the past few years and the clowns in charge).

 

Agree the time wasting is a blight, fake head injuries etc. That said I’m not sure it is just not a different format. I remember the fury of a visiting team with the lead against us constantly recycling the ball back to their keeper who would pick it up bounce several times then roll it out again.

I would say the big thing is the over exposure. The old days a live game was a treat and even listening to final scores filter through after being at the live game was exciting. Cup Final day was ace. Checking midweek scores on Ceefax!

Now there are just games kicking off at all times all live and goal updates are instantly known.

It’s a bit strange but vast improvements in communication and news circulation have removed all the mystery and intrigue.

If it didn’t cause human suffering I’d bring back the Iron Curtain so we could have euro qualifiers away in Yugoslavia where the commentary team sound like they are stationed on the moon.

 

This is why, if I watch anything at all, it is CL 'away' games. Nothing like this, of course, but still something (for me) slightly 'different' about a foreign crowd and stadium.

 

Over exposure is a problem, definitely. I recall seeing an interview recently from one of the presenters of Soccer AM from when it was good and he referenced that they used to be successful because you would see something funny on a Saturday morning that happened the previous Saturday in a random L2 game. Now if something happens of note in any game, the clip is on Twitter in minutes.

 

You enjoyed that more than the following 6 years?

 

I've clocked up watching about 8 teams abroad in various countries (from Sweden to Serbia) and every single one has a far more intense and enjoyable atmosphere. Feels like the majority of British football fans just half-heartedly go through the motions at games nowadays.

 

I agree. I've been to a few in different countries now and fandom in Europe is so much more intense and the whole matchday experience more fun. KV Mechelen in December and Werder Bremen in January both booked up. Cheap as chips to do as well.

 

Worse than that, I think there's a chunk of fans who seem to go to games just to go through the motions. Ooo the ref's given a freekick to the opposition in the centre circle so I need to stand up and sing with my two mates about him being a c*nt for the next 5 minutes, aren't I edgy?

 

Been to Kortrijk in Belgium a couple of times, not been to a German game.

There have been games in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia that I've been to that have had no more than 4,000 and the noise was deafening compared to the UK.

 

German ones are the best so far - Hertha Berlin was good, Fortuna Dusseldorf was excellent. I managed to get a game in Malmo in the summer that was decent but not at the same level as German games.

 

I'm a massive hypocrite, I find supporting Watford **** at the moment because we're ****, but if we're winning week in week out and/or near the top of the table I'd be loving it. No doubt those days will return eventually and I'll be there celebrating each goal/victory like a deranged chimp completely ignoring the shyte we've had over the last few years.

I think it also helps that when we're playing crap I just don't bother going any home games and watch a stream instead (and if we're really playing badly I'll just stop watching altogether for a few weeks), fair play to those of you who do go religiously but it's not for me.

I also really enjoy watching the PL this year, seems there's a few teams that could win it and there seems to be more teams around that can go up against the bigger teams. If a game is ****/boring I'll turn it off and do something else.

 

The quality of the football these days is way way above what it was decades ago from a skill/ability POV, however the predictability of the premier league, the obscene wealth of the players and the arrogance of the clubs backed by billionaires or ME states just makes it a horrible product. Right from the start of the season we knew the top 6 or 7 and the bottom 5 or 6 in the prem. The only uncertainty is which of the 6/7 will join winners in the champions league and which of the 3 promoted clubs might get to finish 4th or 5th bottom. At least the other leagues are less predictable (though the 3 relegated teams will finish top 6 in the champ) and the players are not quite as ridiculously wealthy.
Oh for the days when a small club could make it from the 4th division to the 1st and finish 2nd in the space of 6 seasons.

 

I went to Malmo v Midtylland in the Europe League a few years ago. Was probably the loudest crowd I've heard.

 

I also saw a clip the other day of a podcaster saying that you're not a real fan of football unless you support a big PL team along with your own team.

 

Saturday was dreadful for that. One pillock was shouting at his mate Ryan for bloody ages to get his attention, in the end Ryan looked round and the pillock called him a winker. Edgy stuff indeed.

Another drip from Saturday ended up getting thrown out for calling the ref a terrorist and then nicked after calling the steward a 'nig-nog'.

 

I notice you fail to mention the 74/5 relegation fiasco under the same manager…

 

So that’s you, is it?