Money, it's a gas...

Sunday 1^st October

On Thursday Watford announced a £32.5 million redevelopment of the Vicarage Road stadium, which means tearing down the condemned East Stand that has been standing half-empty for the home games this season. It will increase the capacity to about 22,500 and the dressing rooms will be relocated into the southwestern corner, which is where we enter at the moment. More than half the money is coming from “affordable housing provider”, Origin, as the redevelopment will include a number of homes for key workers at the hospital next door, which is where, back in 1969, I made my first entrance and where Joss did too, 12 years ago yesterday.

Last week’s 3^rd round draw for the Carling Cup saw Hull being invited to take us on at the unreconstructed Vic in the week of my half-term, which means I won’t be working that Tuesday evening. Hopefully, a little cup run will be good for us, though in Betty’s email this week, he responded to “a number of emails and letters from fans expressing their feelings that I had either not taken the competition seriously or that I should have played a full-strength team” (isn’t that the same thing, rather than an “either/or”?). Anyway, he went on to say that he wants to win “the Carling Cup, the FA Cup, the Premier League and the Eurovision Song Contest this year”.

I would not normally question Betty’s motivation but if we are focusing on the Eurovision Song Contest, will we really have two eyes on the Premiership? Not just that, but considering the quality of football pop songs, can we even expect to get more points than we already have in the league? (At least we’d beat Jemini’s total of 2003.) Maybe if club life-president Elton John wrote the track? Perhaps Watford old-boy John Barnes could be persuaded to get involved…Ahh, nostalgia is dangerous.

Elton, whom I spoke to as a kid at a few games and who is a “very very nice man”, has already done loads for us, not least putting on a concert in June last year at the ground, the proceeds of which helped us buy back the freehold for the Vic. That was the second of Graham Simpson’s, the current chairman, three aims when he took over in 2002. The collapse of the ITV Digital deal left lots of clubs like Watford in financial difficulties and deferring payments to staff (the first of his aims was to pay that back). The East Stand was the third priority.

This all leaves me wondering what the current majority shareholder, Lord Michael Ashcroft (billionaire) KCMG is doing for us. When I heard a major Tory party donor and UK tax-dodger was buying 42% of the club, my second thought was that we might at least see a little philanthropy. (My first thought included a lot of bad words.) After all, 6 months ago he was named by the party of Little Englanders during the “Cash for Peerages” scandal (he loaned them £3.6 million) so he obviously has a few quid to “bung” around...

In his time, Elton made interest-free loans to the club. In the publicity surrounding the redevelopment, I don’t see any mention of Mr. Number 66 on the Times Rich List offering any such deals (funding comes “through a combination of sensible long-term bank loans and/or equity”). Methinks the “Baron of Belize” is at WFC to see what he can get (ask not what you can do for your club, but only what your club can do for you). Does anyone seriously expect anything else these days? I really have to deal with this whole nostalgia thing.