Dire

Watford v Scunthorpe United

Saturday 26^th April

Air and Rod joined me at Euston for the train to the Moon and the ground to meet Joss, who had my season ticket. Their tickets hadn’t arrived so I’d phoned to have them left at reception and we were in before kick-off. The fans started in good voice but, in an all too familiar routine, there were boos when we went in goalless after forty-five minutes.

After sixty Ellington and Ainsworth came on and one of the kids in front of me who booed the Duke was given a right telling off by Liam, who suggested that our number 18 might score the decisive goal. “Optimistic,” I chimed but agreed with the wider point. It was Lionel Ainsworth who made the move of the match within minutes though, a run down the left followed by a cut-in and blocked shot but it was to no avail. Less than five minutes later, as I sat from chanting, I noticed their keeper’s hand go up and realised he was celebrating them going ahead.

The single goal won the game and after chants of “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” and more booing, any thoughts Betty may have had of coming to address the once-faithful were abandoned. The fact that Palace lost at Hull and Wolves only drew meant that despite this run of results, a play-off place remains in our own hands (and those of Blackpool next Sunday).

Congratulations (but not for the football)

Andjelka's Wedding
Watford v Crystal Palace
Saturday 19th April

Leaving it late as usual, we had to catch a (loathed) black-cab from the wrong direction we'd been sent after Pimlico station but we arrived at Sacred Heart Church on Horseferry Road before the bride-to-be, which is all that matters. Our subsequent movement from (rushed) groom’s side of the church to (correct) bride’s precipitated motion in others yet it was more gratifying to see we weren’t the last in.

I hadn’t been to a wedding (bar my own) since my mum’s in 1991 so it was no surprise that I found ten-year-old artefacts in my jacket pocket. What I was doing with a “Subway” card, though, I’m not sure. Andjelka came in with her mother, sister and bridesmaid (Martin was waiting with his dad and best man) and we proceeded to take the obligatory photos of the back of the soon-to-be-married couple’s heads. The service was largely in Croatian, which seemed fitting since the most devout members of the congregation seemed to be on the same half of the aisle as us.

After the vows pictures were taken on the street and said some hellos before boarding a double-decker for the reception in Epsom. Jun and I waved regally from the front of the top deck as pedestrians looked up in surprise. Champagne was provided and later so was a Balkan spirit whose “bouquet” was sufficient to discourage me. We took more pictures at the hotel and started on the champers they had there ahead of the meal. With so much to organise I felt complimented that a vegetarian option had been ordered.

After the bouquet had been caught by the bridesmaid, I called Joss, who told me – before the score – that it had been a good game, thereby getting my hopes up only to crush them with the news that we’d lost two-nil. It didn’t ruin a great evening though. We toasted the happy couple, ate, drank, danced and gambled on roulette and blackjack tables before catching a late train back.

A point won

West Bromwich Albion v Watford

Saturday 12^th April

Jun, Joss and I visited the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and took in some Rodin and Canaletto to use up the extra hours we had arriving for a 3 o’clock kick off when Sky had obliged a 5.20 start. We ate and watched a little rugby in a Wetherspoons and then left Jun in the town centre to catch a tram from Snow Hill. A few other Watford boys were on the platform but I talked to a Baggies fan as we disembarked at the Hawthorns.

The start could not have been better: six minutes in and we were a goal to the good but as there was no stadium announcement it wasn’t until after the game that we discovered it was Leigh Bromby who’d poached his first Hornets goal following a corner. The team sat back somewhat after that and Jordan Stewart, Lloyd Doyley and Danny Shittu all made vital contributions to keeping us ahead at the break, which afforded the fans their first opportunity to sit. However, the home team levelled soon after half-time. One WBA free kick had gone over and another hit the crossbar in the first half but early in the second a third led to a headed goal and although we’d had other chances to score during the first forty-five it was West Brom who played the better football and looked most like getting a second in the rest of the match. Three or four great saves from man-of-the-match Richard Lee earned us a good point.

As most of us had no doubt expected a mauling after Wednesday, relief was probably the dominant feeling among the travelling Yellow Army and with Bristol City and Hull drawing in their games too, Stoke were the only top five side to get three points and they are top again. Watford remain in fifth and likely to enter the play-offs.

We met Jun and, due to a rail replacement service, caught a couple of buses to Bedworth via Coventry, where Brian and mum picked us up after eleven. Cups of tea and trifle finished off the day, but not before “Nanny and Grandad” received the Xmas presents we’ve been holding for more than a hundred days. Sunday we spent some time in the garden and went bowling, where the younger Watford Boy won two of the games before we trained it back home.

To boo or not to boo? That is the question.

This Watford fan (for twenty-nine years) is struggling with the arguments around how to respond to his team’s lacklustre performances.

What is the role of the football spectator in the modern game? It may seem a slightly dramatic question but I couldn’t help but wonder after I’d hushed my thirteen-year-old nephew as he cat-called during Watford’s latest home defeat (Wednesday’s, to relegation-threatened Barnsley). In retrospect I (very) slightly regret infringing his freedom of expression (ok, I’ll stop with the melodrama) but I’ve done my best over the years I’ve been taking him to instil in him my own values as a supporter.

For me, the word says it all. I take the definition of “to support” to mean “to encourage/to help” and pride myself on leaving many games hoarse as I cheer on the Golden Boys whether they win, lose or draw.

In that way I have to admit to a slight sense of superiority to those who go to games and hardly make a noise (and trust me, at Watford’s Vicarage road stadium there are thousands) even when the team is playing well and winning.

A great memory from last year’s relegation season was going to Old Trafford mid-week and out-singing 70,000 Manchester United fans as they cruised past us 4-0. My nephew and I joined in the deriding of those “plastic supporters” but at the Vic it would be hard to describe the “Yellow Army” as anything approaching a genuine twelfth man.

Nevertheless, I understand the argument that people have paid good money (£25 to watch from where I sit) and therefore have the right to respond to poor performances in a manner they deem appropriate. For many on Wednesday, that meant booing individual players during the match, booing the team at half-time when we were only a goal down and had created chances of our own, while others voted with their feet before the hour mark after we’d conceded a third.

My first reaction to those who booed so early remains unchanged. I believe that this is the only noise these people make at Watford matches: in game after game the front and back rows of the stand I am in cheers the team on whereas the silence from the middle is as noticeable as it is from the Rous stand.

Coded messages of thanks from the manager, chairman and captain after an exceptionally rousing ten-man night against Leicester a couple of months ago had a clear subtext: “Why can’t you always give us that level of support?”

Digression aside, the question of the spectator’s role remains. Is football now merely another form of entertainment, which demands no more loyalty than the latest play at the local theatre? (I choose that comparison because in a cinema booing would have no effect on the performers.)

Money has flooded the sport and changed it forever. Nevertheless, for those who choose their team because of a loyalty to locality rather than a desire to be identified with “a winning product” (hence the legions of United and Arsenal “plastics” in Watford), surely the team does not need to “earn” support anew at every match?

The raising of expectations undoubtedly makes their disappointment a harder fall. Watford sat nine points clear at the top of the Championship in November and have produced only a handful of good performances since then but were still expected to beat Barnsley (despite their FA Cup heroics).

Similarly, the size of a club is not an unrelated matter. How happy must many of the fans of FC United and AFC Wimbledon be with their league performances compared to fans of Tottenham or Newcastle? Obviously more booing has been heard at the Premier League sides than at the non-league ones.

Perhaps there is something else? After all, the reactions of many of those who turn up to watch matches seem implicitly to agree with Bill Shankly’s legendary assessment of the beautiful game: that it is much more important than life and death.

Not for me; Perspective, Shankly, have a word. Whether we go up through the play-offs or not, I will not be booing Watford or leaving matches early. I do not believe this fact alone makes me a “better” supporter than those who do but ceteris paribus the ability to laugh in the face of defeat, yes, and even humiliation, might make me a better man.

What is the role of the spectator? Is it ever justified to boo your team or individual players? What would cause you to boo a performance?

Woeful

Watford v Barnsley

Wednesday 9^th April

Jun, Julie and Jo joined me for the trip from Euston to Watford where I reminded them that we could go top with a victory tonight. Phil came in with Joss to make a row of six of us watch the Hornets outplayed, outfought and outthought after a bright opening period. John Joe O’Toole stood and watched as a loose ball was simply played wide then crossed in for Sunday’s semi-final losers to open the scoring and the cat-calls started after the Rookery had begun with a wall of sound. There were boos at the half-time whistle.

The second half was two minutes old when the visitors scored again and within another seven minutes (in which Nathan Ellington had a header cleared off the line in front of us) they had added a third and people started leaving. I tried to get things going with “Wem-ber-ley, Wem-ber-ley, we never wanted to get promoted automatically” but nobody joined in. It was the same story with “Aidy Boothroyd’s banana army” later and after JJ (family friends of whom we had met Sunday) missed a sitter from three yards, it was a case of waiting it out until we could get back to the Moon Under Water. In the garden of the pub, another spectator opened his conversation by inviting agreement with the word that makes up the heading for this post.

A good day

Watford v Coventry City

Saturday 5^th April

For the second home game in three there were ridiculous queues to get into the Rookery (named after a silk mill at this end of town) and fans were getting angry with the stewards, especially after one directed us through previously shut gates telling us that she’d managed to get another turnstile open, only for us to be turned back again and have to hear her apologies. Last time it was due to a power failure but it seems to be down to the building work now. Why fans weren’t warned in advance if that is the case, I don’t know, but have mailed the club to complain.

We were in our seats five minutes into the match and had the surprising greeting of a goal from the perennially uninterested Duke, Nathan Ellington. If he is indeed a confidence player, the level of his self-belief can be no higher than the shot he had that slid along the turf and into the back of the net past Kasper Schmeichel, who was making his second visit to the Vic after blowing a kiss to a heckler near us in his previous loan spell (Cardiff on Boxing Day). Waving flags that had been given out before I got there, the fans cheered on the team as we dominated the rest of the first half and had a couple of good chances but only took a single goal lead into the break.

I used half-time to have an each-way flutter on a couple of horses in the Grand National (based only on their names) and watching Sky Sports News on the screens on the concourse stands so as to stay out of the rain, we were pleased to see Bristol City losing at Southampton. The other teams at the top weren’t playing: WBA had lost their FA Cup semi-final to Portsmouth earlier and Stoke host Crystal Palace on Monday. Other fixtures were affected by the fact that two more Championship sides meet in the other cup semi tomorrow.

Coventry took the game to us after the break and on about the hour mark they equalised, resulting in the predictable frustration from the less than faithful among the Watford “supporters”, and soon there were shouts for the manager to make the sort of changes he has failed to inspire with on too many occasions this season. As we got close to the eightieth minute I’d heard that Comply or Die had won the National so went to collect my winnings in the belief that I wouldn’t be missing much. Slim Pickings, my other horse, had come in fourth so there was money due on that too. I was watching on the screen as Tommy Smith latched on to a Richard Lee punt and put us back in front. I shouted first, alerting all the other frustrated fans around, and collected more than £50 winnings as the team took all three points.

Who will be next year’s April Fools?

If you want an early punt on who will be bottom of the Premiership in a year’s time, look no further than the winners of the Championship Play-Off Final on Saturday 24^th May at Wembley.

In the Premiership, Derby’s failure to beat Fulham coupled with Birmingham’s win meant the Rams become the first team to be relegated from the Premiership before April Fool’s Day and they look likely to record the worst points total ever. Meanwhile, in the Championship, five teams are vying for the two guaranteed promotion places with the potential misery of the play-offs for those who don’t go up automatically.

It may be heartbreaking to see dreams of promotion dashed in the play-offs, but for the play-off winners, it looks increasingly like the trophy won at the single most lucrative game in world football is no more than a chalice coated with a slow-working poison (it took ten months for its effects to ‘kill’ Derby’s dreams though some bookies were paying out on them for relegation in September last year, a mere four months after promotion).

Four of the last five play-off winners went straight back down (in reverse order: Derby (2008), Watford (2007), Crystal Palace (2005), Wolverhampton Wanderers (2004)) and for Wolves and Palace (it’s too early to call on the others) neither parachute payments nor the experience of playing in the Premier League were sufficient to facilitate a second, more successful promotion.

Who are in the running to be next year’s Derby? Three of the following five teams will almost certainly be in the play-offs with the other two going straight up: West Bromwich Albion, Bristol City, Stoke, Hull and Watford. The other play-off place will probably go to either Wolves or Ipswich.

Before I go any further I should emphasise the unpredictable nature of the league: no one team is dominating it and bottom has beaten top on more than one occasion in 2007/8. However, since November the Baggies, the best footballing team in the Championship, have looked most deserving to top the division and their goal difference makes this outcome even more likely. Indeed, West Brom, three points off first place with a game in hand on the other teams, and despite having four of their remaining six games away, including a tricky visit to the Molineux in two weeks’ time, should finish champions.

As things stand, Bristol City are in line to be the other automatically promoted team, a fantastic feat for the club promoted from League One at the end of last season. Nevertheless, whether through the play-offs or not, survival in the Premiership will be too much too soon for Gary Johnson’s side and immediate relegation beckons should they hold their nerve in a run up which includes a visit to second-placed Stoke and a home game with Wolves.

Stoke City won five games in a row in February, storming to the top of the division, but have only won once in seven matches since and seem to have peaked too soon for automatic promotion. They have arguably the easiest run-in of the top seven, with only one match against any of their immediate rivals and that at home, but they do not have the momentum to stay in the top two.

In stark contrast, Hull City are the Championship’s form team, with wins at Plymouth and West Brom in February and five victories in March, including a convincing 3-0 defeat of promotion rivals Watford at the KC Stadium. With the second best goal difference in the league, the Tigers should feel confident that if the teams above them slip up, they have what it takes to win automatic promotion.

Watford make up the fifth team in the running. Very briefly twelve points clear in November, the Hornets play four of their remaining six games at Vicarage Road. Their home record, however, is so poor that even twenty-first placed Barnsley have more home points. Despite all of the early running, the Hornets, who seem unable to score from open play since talisman Marlon King left, look doomed to the play-offs.

Ipswich have the best home record in the league, which has kept them just off the top pack, while Wolves’ late push for the play-offs is partly due to the inability of other teams to string wins together. Perhaps the meeting between the two will decide who has the extra games at the end of the season.

In summary, though, it is the unpredictability of the league that makes it so exciting and will keep fans on the edge of their seats till the final day. Judging by the season as a whole, it is not only the matches between the top teams that will matter. Cardiff, Coventry or Crystal Palace, each of whom plays three of these top teams, could yet decide who makes the top two.

Would you want to be next year’s Derby? Most fans would still rather have a year in the top league than failure at the last hurdle and the Championship for another year. I am with the Derby fans: there were more than thirty three thousand people at Pride Park watching two likely-relegated teams play. Loyalty may not be reciprocated by results but that is football.

Bristol City, Stoke City, Hull City and Watford are middling clubs who are punching slightly above their weight. Real fans will be happy about that even if they may also want more...What fan doesn't want more? More goals, more points, more clean sheets, more passing, more inspired substitutions, more tackles, more great signings…Hope is the fans’ life. However, if their team goes up, hope may be their only lifeline.