Top of the league

I knew that the Championship season started today - or at least that's what I thought - but when it came to watching the results come in this afternoon I was surprised to see that Watford weren't playing. "Did we have a Sunday fixture?" I thought, but teletext (yes I checked that before going to the internet as I had the remote control to hand) told me "no". Further teletext-ing showed me that in fact the league started last night without me knowing, and Watford had been playing away to Norwich as the first game. Not only that but we won 3-2. That meant that up until the about 4:45pm today Watford have been top of the league! Unfortunately now that more fixtures have been played we're back down to 8th - 6 teams got a better goal difference than us, and one (Crystal Palace) seem to have got above us due to starting earlier in the alphabet. Hopefully we can restore our place at the top next week, when I know we will be playing on Saturday in a 3pm kick-off against Coventry (although we play Aldershot in the Carling Cup on Tuesday).

Administrative error

After posting about the current financial woes of the physics and astronomy community I saw some other depressing fiscal news. It seems that Watford may be facing administration! We're being asked to pay back almost £5 million in loans (from a salad supplier!) by close of business today, which looks kind of unlikely. If we do fall into administration then the Football League will automatically deduct 10 points from us, and leave us just above the relegation spots - not a fun place to be. I really hope we don't go the way of Luton.

[Update: We seem to have been saved from administration after our major shareholder Lord Ashcroft stepped in and agreed to pay off our loan. We out of the worst for now, but there may be other problems going into the future. Unfortunately we lost our game today.]

Mid-table glory

Yesterday saw the final day of the Championship season (bar the play-offs). For some the main excitement was near the top and bottom of the table where promotion and relegation battles were obviously taking place, but I was still mainly keeping an eye on the mid-table where Watford had an outside chance of clinching a mighty 12^th place (i.e. the top half of the table) should they win and other results go our way. We got our win against Derby, but with Sheffield Wednesday also securing a win we have had to settle for 13^th - maybe that's better though as it means we're top of the bottom half the table, which is more impressive than being bottom of the top half isn't it!?

In other games Birmingham City managed a win to give them second place and automatic promotion to the Premier League (but will Alex McLeish still be there?), which means that they'll be two West Midlands clubs to replace West Brom when they get relegated (whcih I'd say is a certainty now). And down at the bottom Barnsley managed to secure Championship survival at the expense of Norwich City - if only they'd had some drunken shouting by Delia to get them worked up they might have been safe.

Six Cups

Yesterday I went to the pub for a double header of sport - I was watching both the Wales v. England Six Nations Rubgy match and the Watford v. Chelsea FA Cup 5th Round match at the same time (there were side-by-side screens showing the games). Neither match went the way of my hoped for results (i.e. England and Watford wins), but they were both enjoyable nonetheless.

In the rugby the fact that England were beaten by Wales wasn't a surprising or unexpected result, but the way England played was the most surprising aspect of the match. We actually played a decent game! We played some good rugby with movement and attacking options and managed to score two rather decent tries, and if it hadn't been for giving away too many silly penalties and getting players sin binned we could have taken the game.

In the football the excitement mainly came in the form of nail-biting tension as Chelsea pummeled the Watford penalty area, but without managing to score (for the first 75 minutes at least). And then Watford got a surprise break and a goal to take the lead! We obviously got the goal too soon as we then managed to concede a hat-trick to Anelka, but it was very nice while it lasted. Chelsea deserved the win, but we at least made them work for it in the end.

The draw

After our 1-0 win in the FA Cup third round against Scunthorpe (I have no idea how the game was as I missed the highlights and the BBC website has very little to say on the matter), we (Watford FC) have been drawn against the eventual winners of the replayed Leicester vs Crystal Palace match. So it'll either be a fellow Championship team we'll be up against, or Leicester who are leaders of League One, which I suppose isn't too bad, and I'm not really sure who I'd prefer. Maybe we can have a good run and emulate the (partial) successes of a couple of years back.

Carling Cup exit

Watford's one chance at glory (well the FA Cup is still to come, but our league chances are shot) this season - the Carling Cup - has got away from us after losing 1-2 to Tottenham this evening. Apparently it was a reasonable performance from us and maybe something new boss Brendan "Buck" Rodgers (I'd never heard of him before - well I'd never heard of Aidy before he joined us - but apparently he was Chelsea reserve team coach) can build on.

Candle in the wind

After the loss of our manager earlier in the week it seems that Watford have also lost our lifetime president Elton John. He'd previously voiced concerns over the running of the club and mismanagement of the clubs finances and I think his leaving is a reaction to that. It's a shame to see an end to Sir Elton official association with the club as he's had good run being chairman and owner on a couple of occasions. I'm not building too good an impression of current club chairman Graham Simpson at the moment.

We've now got former player Malky MacKay as our caretaker manager, so we'll see how he does today in the game against Swansea.

Headless hornets

Shock news just in! Watford manager Aidy Boothroyd has left the club after three and a half year in charge (they say by mutual consent, but I expect there was a bit of pushing from the board). He's done very well for us in his time, taking us to the Premiership two seasons ago and leading us to a couple of decent cup runs, but recent form has been his downfall. Last season we were doing very well for the first half, leading the table for a while, but fell away completely at the end to only just finish in the last play-off spot. This season we've been managing to score quite a few goals, but unfortunately we've been conceding even more leaving us sitting in 21st position just above the relegation spot (although the mid-table is still pretty tightly packed, so it's not a disastrous place to be). It is, however, quite telling that we've only won 12 out of 48 league matches since last November! There's probably not much more that Aidy could do for the club, so now might well be the right time for him to move on. A new manager could give the team a bit more impetus like Tottenham over the last week (although there's an equal probability that it could fail miserably). But Aidy deserves a lot of praise for what he's done for us, so he will be missed. [It should be noted that my views may not reflect the beliefs of proper Watford supporters who follow the club more avidly than my weekly check of their results on the internet.]

We wos robbed

This weekend saw Watford fall foul of an extremely bizarre refereeing decision. The final result of our game against Reading was 2-2, but the controversy surrounds Reading's first "goal" (and the quotation marks are very justified). Occasionally there will be times when the ball crosses the goal line, but the referee (or linesman) rules that it didn't and therefore doesn't give the goal. Sometimes the opposite happens and a ball that hasn't entirely crossed the line will be given as a goal. The common thing about both these kind of errors though is that the ball is in the mouth of the goal. What happened in the Watford game was a different kettle of fish. The ball did cross the line, but not didn't cross the line nor was it even within the goal mouth, and was in fact kept in by a Reading player, yet it was given as a goal by the linesman! There was some call for the game to be replayed, but that isn't going to happen. The only amusement I've got out of this situation is from a comments by Watford boss Aidy Boothroyd. When saying that he didn't blame Reading players for doing nothing to object to the goal he said "If someone stops you in a car park and gives you a present you don't say no do you?" Now I'd have to disagree with Aidy there. If a stranger came up to me in a car park, or most venues for that matter, and gave me a present I'd be very suspicious and rather unlikely to accept it.

One week in

I managed to miss the fact that the Championship season started last week, so only today did I find out the result of Watford's first game - a surely thrilling 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace. This started us off in 15^th position on the table, which will hopefully be the lowest we get this season. Today sees us up against Charlton, who recently acquired former Watford winger Bouazza on loan from Fulham.

[Update: We beat Charlton 1-0 to take us to 9^th in the table.]

The league that does start today is the Premier League, which also means the return of my favourite Saturday midday and Sunday night TV pleasures of Football Focus and MOTD2. I'll just have to see if I can watch these on iPlayer until I return from Germany as I need to get my fix of Chiles, Lawro, Dixon, Peacock, et al and hear their words of wisdom (although I think Chiles may be in Beijing for the Olympic coverage, so I might have to wait a bit for to hear his cheerful Brummie voice). I'll also need to check out any local Hannoverian pubs that show Premier League games, although I'm fairly sure that one of the Irish pubs in town will do.

Still on a football note I saw the start of the Bundesliga last night. The opening match was FC Bayern Munich vs Hamburger SV. This featured two former Tottenham favourites in the form of the teams managers - Jürgen Klinsmann for Bayern and Martin Jol for Hamburg. It seemed to be quite a lively game in the first half and finished with a 2-2 draw. The strangest thing about the whole thing though was that the opening ceremony featured a performance from former Britain's Got Talent winner Paul "not Pol Pot" Potts! Very bizarre!

Staying put

It's been a few days since the sad events happened and maybe it's taken a while to sink in, but it's true... Watford will be staying put in the Championship next season. The play-offs against Hull didn't start off particularly well with us losing 2-0 at home, although we apparently didn't play too badly and were unlucky to have an opening goal disallowed and our captain sent off. Things went from bad to worse in the second leg with us being thrashed 4-1 - we started off fast and managed to pull a goal back early on, but obviously that was not enough. We've only ourselves to blame for the position we were in due to our very poor form towards the end of (well for most of the second half of) this season. If we'd kept going how we started we'd have walked it into top spot in the league, but I think our brand of dull, long ball football (the true lower league mainstay of how to play the beautiful game) wasn't something that we could keep doing and still guaranteeing decent results^*.

I'm sure all the Premiership clubs are bitterly disappointed that they won't be able to pit themselves against the might Hornets, but they'll just have to wait another season! However, if Hull do go up it could see a bit of a blast for the past for the Premiership what with Nicky Barmby and Dean Windass in their side - that is if they're not sold/retire over the summer.

^* My views are in no way based on informed opinion as I've not seen a single game this season, but are only speculation from the few things I've read/heard about our games.

Scraping into the play-offs

The Championship season's ended and Watford have just about managed to scrape through with the final play-off spot. We were saved from being in the dreaded seventh position in the table by virtue of having a goal difference one goal better than Wolves! After spending large chunks of the season in an automatic promotion place with the potential of winning the league we somehow managed to let it all slip away (by playing shit) in the last couple of months! The play-offs are a complete lottery, so who knows what will happen, but I do remember when we previously went up it was after finishing sixth.

Back on top

The rightful order has been restored as yesterday saw Watford regain their place at the top of the league by beating Ipswich away 1-2. Prior to the game Ipswich had had an unbeaten home record for the season, so the results went against the form books. However our away record for this season has actually been a fair bit better than our home performances, with 10 wins away compared to just 6 at home. That said our recent performances have been somewhat inconsistent after the great start to the league, meaning that our once mighty 9 point advantage over the other Championship high-fliers has completely disappeared, and our current position is only thanks to other teams around us slipping up. It's still very tight at the top with four teams separated by only two points. It's definitely going to be a scrap until the end of the season for the two automatic promotions places.

In the world of rugby England just about managed to hold on to a win against Italy today, but did our absolute best to try and give the game away again! We just can't play for a full 80 minutes apparently! Hopefully some players will have new arseholes well and truely ripped and we'll learn how to hold on to the ball for a bit.

Playing with the big boys

Today the big clubs (in which I of course include Watford) enter the FA Cup fray to do battle with the lower league minnows. There're still three non-league teams in the mix with British Gas Business League Division One team Chasetown currently taking on Championship team Cardiff City (GOAL FLASH: WTF! Chasetown are 1-0 up after an own goal!), and later today Havant & Waterlooville take on League One high fliers Swansea and Cambridge Utd take on Wolves. The big game, in my eyes is, Watford's clash against fellow Championship team Crystal Palace in which we'll have to improve on our recent poor run if we're to get a result. Other people may argue that the biggest game of today is the all Premiership tie of Aston Villa versus Man Utd, but what do they know!

In other sports news today sees the start of the BDO World Darts Championships in Lakeside Leisure Complex, Frimley Green. I think the big match of the first round might be Martin "Wolfie" Adams versus Phil Nixon which is a repeat of last years final! Can I hear a "LETS PLAY DAAAAAARRRRTTTSS!.

[Update: We won 2-0, hurrah!]

Top table

I've been lax in not commenting on this sooner, but last weekend Watford went top of the league! Yes, with a mighty 12 points (from a potential 15) we took top spot in the Championship. Unfortunately, due to my slowness in reporting this news, we've now slipped down to second behind Bristol City following their 0-0 draw with West Brom last night. Never mind though as they are only ahead on goal difference and we have a game in hand. However, with a win or draw (preferably a win, obviously) in tonight's game against Cardiff we can reclaim our rightful spot at the zenith of the table.

[Update: We did it, we beat Cardiff 2-1 and went back to top of the table. Come on you mighty Hornets!]

Seasons greetings

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, but now the new football season's started I've become reinvigorated to write something.

Firstly I have to congratulate Watford on a fantastic start to the new season with a 2-1 win against Wolves (note that the BBC website doesn't really write as much about Championship games as they do for Premiership matches.) Apparently we played pretty badly in the first half at least, but if we can still play badly and manage to get a win that's the main thing - it's what champions do :)

The Watford game was actually being shown on Sky Sports, but I doubted that any pub would be showing it when there was the Aston Villa vs. Liverpool game on (and the England vs. France rugby match on), so I watched that instead. It was a 2-1 win for Liverpool, with a fantastic free kick from Steven Gerrard. The game wasn't that enthralling until the last 20 mins when things got far more exciting. As ever I can see a lot of Saturday and Sunday afternoons spent down the pub over the next 9 months (although after that there's the European Championship to look forward to).

The new season has also bought back some televisual delights in the form over Football Focus, and tonight sees the return of Adrian Chiles in MOTD2. My Saturday lunchtimes and Sunday evenings are complete again.

What we should've done

We may be down, but that doesn't mean we'll stop trying to win games. All a bit too late unfortunately, but maybe we'll make it to 30 points.

Down and out in Vicarage Road

It's finally happened. The inevitable has come to pass. With three games of the season to go Watford have become the first team to be relegated from the Premiership.

It's been fairly obvious through the season that we've not been of the same calibre as the majority of the teams in the top flight, but there've been a fair few games where we've shown plenty of spirit and fight (unfortunately goals are what they use as the arbiter of things in football matches - when will they learn!). In many games we just couldn't hold onto our lead, or clean sheet when the games were in the closing minutes. Ultimately our players weren't good enough despite our manager, Aidy Boothroyd's, always upbeat assessments of things.

What do we come away with from this season. Well the players will have gained some experience for when we go up again, but experience isn't always the best substitute for skill. Mainly we'll have come out of this season with lots of money. Aidy's been very frugal in his spending, and we made a job load of cash from selling Young to Aston Villa, so we're sitting on a whole wad of cash which should be of a lot of benefit in the Championship.

Hopefully next season, in our more natural surroundings of the Championship, they'll be a few more wins I can cheers on. Unfortunately I wont be able to watch any of them on TV. (It looks like Luton are going to League one, so they'll be no M1 derby next year.)

Radio free football

My first post from the APS meeting is being made whilst listening to the Watford - Man Utd FA Cup game (we're 1-0 down at the moment, boooo) on my laptop. I've spent much of this morning looking into ways of listening to UK radio stations while I'm using a US proxy address. I found this handy list of web proxy's through which I've been able to listen to certain BBC radio stations (I could here Trevor Nelson on Radio 1 fine) - although, very annoyingly, BBC Radio 5 live and BBC Three Counties, which are broadcasting the match, aren't connecting properly (maybe due to overload of listeners!). Instead I'm listening via the Man Utd website, which is broadcasting the Century FM commentary, and doesn't actually care where in the world my IP address is. I was going to try the Watford website, but it required payment. (GOAAALLLLLLLLLLL! - Bouazza just equalised, get in!) I did try and find somewhere (fuck, fuck, fuck - Man U just went back in front with a Ronaldo goal) to watch the game by going to the local Hooters (I've never been into a Hooters before - honest - but the outfits the girls wear are actually hideous). I asked the manager if they were able to show the game and he consulted a list of all sports being played, which did contain the match (result, I thought), but because it was Pay-per-view they weren't going to be showing it (damn).

Soon I should actually work out what sessions of this meeting I'm going to attend this afternoon.

[The dream is over, we've lost 4-1 :( So long Wembley!]

(Almost) gone, but not forgotten

I'd completely forgotten about the Premiership football fixtures today until I had a look at the BBC website just now. It seems that, after their dismal performance on Saturday, Watford have pulled off a win, beating Portsmouth 4-2. And we scored four goals in one match! It's pretty amazing considering up until today we'd only managed a grand total of 20 goals in 32 matches.

We've five matches to go before the end of the season and I think the only possible chance of top flight survival is if we win all of them - and even then it would probably be a very close run thing! However, this is probably about as likely as me winning the lottery jackpot 44 times in a row, being inundated with marriage proposals from the world's top supermodels, and finding that my next door neighbour is Elvis. A man can dream though! Which would I want more though,Watford to stay up or the rest... ;)

Our next focus is Saturday's match against Man Utd in the FA Cup semi-final. Winning this is just slightly more probable than us staying up. Unfortunately I'm going to be in Jacksonville, Florida at the time of the game. I'm not holding out much hope of finding somewhere to watch the game, but I'm definitely going to try.