Enter Glenn Roeder

Welcome to the latest episode of Oh My Word, a podcast about Watford in the 1990s with Matt and Michael, two Watford fans who started supporting Watford at the turn of this decade just as they became crap. So the reason we're focusing on the '90s, sure you know by now, is because this is a sort of a seminal decade for English football, but also for us as Watford fans and for many others that we've discovered since we started this podcast is a decade that was really sort of fundamental in, you know, in shaping how we got to support our football club Watford. It certainly wasn't a decade that was as glamorous or successful as the '80s have been for Watford, but it did have lots of important moments and memorable games that we want to reflect on. And share with you. So Matt, how are you doing?

Good. Nice to see you again, Michael. This is a fun season we're about to talk about, and we're looking forward to it.

Yeah, I think we've both been looking forward to getting into this period of the '90s. What was going on in your life, Matt, in 1993, the summer of '93? Can you remember?

No. 12 years old, 12 years old, about to turn 13. So, okay, going to— going from one school to another. Yeah, probably terrified about that at the time, kind of hoping that Watford would hold on to their, their, their Division 1 status.

I think, I think this is sort of entering the awkward teen years. I think I was a— I'm a couple of years older than you, but yeah, it was, it was a period for Watford is when I think we both really got to feel like, you know, proper supporters of Watford and going to lots of games and really starting to feel sort of a real strong connection with the club and the players. And this one, this season in particular, had a lot of, and a lot of moments, as we will come on to discuss. So, Matt, why don't you tell us a bit more about what was going on at Watford in the build-up to the start of this '93-'94 season?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, this was a season that I remember more strongly than the last couple we've talked about. Some of the moments really stick in my mind, so really, really excited to go through it. But where are we? 1993. So we're coming to the end of the recent recession in the early '90s. The economy.

Still really struggling, but not really declining in the way that it was, and indeed would go on to grow for 15 years in a row. There was a real good feel-good factor around the country, just kind of just emerging. It wasn't quite there yet, but we could see the germs of it in popular culture, in music and in film particularly as well. You had the likes of Suede's Brett Anderson photographed against a Union Jack with "Yanks Go Home" written on the cover of Select magazine. The emergence of Britpop, it was just coming through, you know, it was kind of reacting against some of the musical styles of America, the Seattle grunge period, stuff like that. So, but you had the likes of Suede, Paul Weller, Blur, Oasis would come. There were British people writing about British things, which had been a bit of a change from what we'd seen before.

On the pitch, we were looking for sort of similarly positive vibes. We were a British squad. We didn't have the continental or indeed worldwide players in our squad that we do now. We just finished 14th after a couple of relegation battles, and there's kind of hope, I think, for an improvement, for some continuation, for a decent season ahead. And at the helm, Glenn Roeder. We hired him from Gillingham. We had to pay a fine for that though, it was an illegal approach was made for Gillingham, which seems like a really, really un-Watford thing to do, but it was something like £10k and an additional £30k or something like that.

Roeder was really well liked at the club, you know, a few years ago he'd been that sweeper in Perryman's system that kept us up, kind of a linchpin of the defence. By this time he's had a couple years at Gillingham, he's player-manager, sort of 37, 38, and he says, 'I'm retired as a player, but I will turn out for the reserves if needed.' I guess there's a sort of weird transition between him having played with some of the players at the club and now the boss, and I guess some of them kind of might have seen him still as a teammate. I think he kind of tries to make it clear that he's the boss, doesn't he?

Yeah, that's right. I think coming into the club, he would have known some of them from his time as a player, or at least some of them might have been quite young when he was there. I'm thinking players like Jason Drysdale and co would have been around the first team squad when Roeder was there, sort of breaking into it. Bazeley as well. Definitely there was a few. David Holdsworth, who would have been, who was a, you know, first team player, probably played alongside Roeder at Watford. So yeah, he came in and had to sort of like be, you know, I'm Mr. Roeder.

They're very much the, you know, trying to separate himself from the playing staff from he's now the boss, which must be a slightly awkward thing to come into. But the other thing about his unveiling, which I was chatting to Watford fan Pete Fincham, who I'm sure many of the listeners will know, was telling me about the unveiling of Glenn Roeder was also one of the first times we saw Harry the Hornet. And Harry the Hornet, who people sort of just associate with Watford now as the club's mascot, but they actually hadn't really had a mascot until the start of this season, and the new marketing team that came to the club wanted to cash in on the mascot trend, and so had this Harry the Hornet costume made, which Pete was the first person to actually put on and get involved in the promo, in the PR shots when Glenn was manager, and also at the start of the season. So that was another major development, I suppose. Harry, who we did start to see, was quite— became quite a very visible part of Watford over the '90s, and we'll probably talk about him a bit more in future episodes.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the Harry the Hornet mascot went through quite a few iterations, didn't it, in terms of costumes. So, and there was a Harriet the Hornet as well, and I'm sure we'll get to that. Those are big things. We will get to that. We will get to the '90s. In terms of stadium new developments, you know, we spoke last time about the new Vicarage Road end and the work on the lower Rous Stand.

These new developments are almost finished, but they haven't got a safety certificate. So the club isn't allowed to have spectators in those stands at the beginning of the season. They will open up shortly afterwards. The family terrace though is also out of action because that's where the contractors keep their equipment. Got 2 new kits made by Hummel, home and away, both of which sponsored by Blaupunkt. We started the season without a shirt sponsor, but Blaupunkt come in later in the autumn, in November. The home kit is a yellow shirt with black shoulders and stripes down the arms with black shorts.

They would occasionally have to wear red shorts with that shirt, which I think looks really, really, really bad. Regardless of whether you like the standard home kit or not, it definitely takes a hit with the red shorts. And there's kind of far less red overall than there'd been in the last couple of seasons. That was a trend that would continue through the next little section of the '90s. Away kits, we've had some controversial ones. I think this kind of falls under that banner as well. It's essentially a blurred vertically striped blue and white kit, but the stripes are really blurred.

They're kind of— it kind of feels quite '90s, doesn't it? It kind of feels kind of like— I like both of them. I do. I like the, I like the away kit particularly. I think people don't like it, but with white shorts as well, I think I think people find it controversial. But I do, like you, I like the home kit with the black shorts, not the red shorts. Yeah, I do like the away kit as well.

I think these are two, these are two great kits. I think the home kit, I'm pretty sure it was a Denmark, the plate, the template was a Denmark kit. Yeah I'll have to, I'll have to fact-check that, but I think it was it was used by the Danish national team and then they just basically, you know, recolored it for Watford. But it was a good— it was, it was very— it stood out. It was— no, it was— what the kits generally do. But I liked it. I have that home kit still.

It's a little bit snug now, but I can still just about get into it for 5-a-side.

Are you sponsored by Blaupunkt or not?

Sponsored by Blaupunkt, yeah, absolutely.

On the backs of the shirts, we could have had squad numbers, we could have had names on the shirts. It was optional at this time. Our first match of the season is against a team that did have this, but we didn't. We chose not to take part in that, and in fact we wouldn't do that until much later in the '90s. Another rule change: you could name a keeper on the bench. So as well as your 2 substitutes, you could name a substitute keeper. So beginning of the season, Jack Petchey is still in charge, and there's a bunch of questions being asked about fans in the stand, fans in local media.

We've sold a lot of players for big fees, but for 7-figure fees. And we haven't signed anyone for 7-figure fees. We've hardly signed anyone for 6-figure fees. Where is that money going? I'm not here to rehabilitate Jack Petchey. We'll talk about him as we go on, but the average attendance has been sort of 7,000 to 8,000. You know, it dips into the 6s, there's a couple of 5s.

The club is not breaking even in terms of its attendance, which at the time was its real primary source of income other than player sales. So. You know, the club was fishing around for money, didn't have a lot, did it, Mike?

No, I think that's right. And he wasn't a, you know, he never made any claims to be a sort of sugar daddy owner, Jack Petchey. He was trying to run it as a going concern, I guess. And that meant that you had to balance the books, and that meant that if we were losing money, yeah, you would sell a good— if they find their good players, they'd sell them for a big profit. A lot of that money then had to go back into running the club, essentially. And so there wasn't as much for players. But I did— it was not exactly exciting then as a fan to think if you sold a player for a decent profit, as Watford seemed to do quite regularly during this time, that money sort of disappeared into the ether.

And then you'd be totally— you know, they were shopping around in non-league for. For players, which they did quite successfully. But it was, yeah, it never felt like there was an opportunity to really invest in the squad to get them, you know, with a fighting chance, you know, of an outside promotion challenge. I suppose the other thing as well is that they did spend a lot of money on the stadium during this time as well as you've already mentioned. So there was a lot of investment in the stadium, which was needed. You know, there is some mitigation there. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of love for Petchey, and he wasn't exactly showing a tremendous amount of ambition with the club.

So it cuts both ways.

Yeah, that sort of reflected on the fact that there was no real signings to speak about in the summer before the season. Instead, Roeder was kind of having to rely on what early in the season he sort of introduced Bruce Dyer. Richard Johnson had been breaking through and he gets his chance. Ditto Gerard Lavin. And then to a lesser extent, you get some of the players that are kind of hovering around the squad. Julian Alsford, Alex Inglethorpe, Simon Sheppard, because Perry Suckling starts the season injured. People like Jason Solomon as well, they've been in and around the team for 2 to 3 years, never really kind of making a, making really a case for them to be a first-team player.

And as we go through, we'll talk about, talk about them a little bit more, and indeed how they'll be replaced by a, by a new set of players towards the end. But on the pitch, as we start off, we've got a testimonial match. It's against QPR for Nigel Gibbs, who sadly injured in his testimonial season. And this is Gary Porter's testimonial season. He's had a period out of the team over the last 2 years, but he proves to be a bit of a mainstay in this one and carries on. And I think Watford fans have a lot of love for Gary Porter and what he brought to the team in his 12 or so years that he was there. Going into the season, the pre-season favourites to go up were Palace and Forest.

They've both been relegated in previous year. Millwall have been doing well for a few years and they're there as well. Leicester have lost the last two playoff finals, so this is their chance to kind of really, kind of really do something, I think. But how's it looking as we go into the season, Mike?

Well, it probably won't surprise anyone to say that the opening of the season was patchy, inconsistent, frustrating. A few signs of promise thrown in amongst that, sounding very familiar to pretty much every other opening we've done so far. I think the first game is worth mentioning because the opening game of the season was away at Luton, so not really what you'd want on the very first game of the season when you've got a new manager, you've got a lot of young players you're trying to sort of, you know, get the team settled down again under a new manager, and you've got to go to Kenilworth Road. First day of the season, it's not, it's not the result that Watford would want. They lose 2-1, Paul Furlong gets on the scoresheet, but at one point, well, there's several problems in this game. I think they have, they have injuries very early on and have to use all their substitutes very early, Watford. Then they have, they have 2 players sent off during the game, down to 9 men, and actually battle really hard and so despite losing the derby on the opening day of the season, I think there's there's actually quite a lot of warmth towards the players for that performance because, because they go down fighting.

And there's a lot of— I think there's quite a burning sense of injustice from that one as well, which will probably feature throughout the season as it sets the tone for indiscipline in terms of bookings and red cards, which, which is a problem for Watford in this season, which they don't really get to grips with, do they? But there's some encouraging signs despite going down on the first day of the season in just the players are clearly fighting and playing for the new manager. I think as that sort of opening period goes on, the other thing to note from the first couple of months of the season is the emergence of another product of the youth team at Watford who would go on to have a really impressive season— Bruce Dyer. Scores his first goal for the club in a League Cup tie away at Brentford. Really well, smartly taken goal, and he's one that gets everyone a bit excited. Watford have been good at producing young players throughout this period, but when they're a really sort of pacey winger with an eye for goal who look like they can beat a man and can finish, then that is— that's the kind of— that's really the kind of player that you want coming out of your youth team, isn't it? That's— those are the ones that you do get excited about going to the game to see, and they give you a reason to sort of have a little bit of excitement about what's to come.

So he gets on the scoresheet, so does Paul Furlong. We talked a lot about Furlong last season. Dyer, and you know, being there to start to learn to play alongside him, is one of the best positives of this opening phase of the season, I think. And they will do a lot of damage together over the next few months. There isn't, you know, a real pattern to Watford's play in that early part of the season. I think with Roeder, you know, trying to get to grips with this team and try to get them organized, as you know, every manager has tried to do over the last few seasons that we've seen.

They're scoring goals, they're conceding goals. Furlong, you know, is gonna get on the scoresheet, and he does. The other players who sort of you see popping up are, you know, reliable players like Gary Porter who starts to get on the scoresheet again. The other result I wanted to mention from this phase, at the end of towards the end of September, we play Notts County at home. This is the opening of the new North Stand, as it was called then, the Vicarage Road end the new, the new stand that had been developed following the demise of the Vicarage Road Terrace last season. It's, it's the first match, you know, you know, it's open to the public after it's been declared safe. I think that's a relatively fast turnaround given that it wasn't that much earlier that people were still standing at that end of the stadium at the end of the previous season in May.

So to have it open on the 18th of September is a fairly rapid building project, I think, to have people in there. The first goal at that end is— well, if you're going to script it, then it would have been something like this, because if the new stands open up, Watford win that game 3-1, but it features an absolute piledriver from young fullback Gerard Lavin, who lets one go, and it sort of actually goes quite centrally down, but he hits it with such venom that it sort of flies into the roof of the net, and you see the Vicarage Road end really erupt. And that sends Watford up to 9th on the 18th of September. So a decent, a decent start. And whilst they've let in a few goals during that period as well, there's probably a bit to be positive about there with the new stand open and some good young players starting to feature regularly on the pitch.

Yeah, I remember really well going to that Notts County game. It was such a great goal from Gerard Lavin. Unreserved seating, you could just go in. It was a bit like, a bit like the Villa Terrace. You could go in and you could kind of go wherever you wanted. I felt quite lucky that we were there in on the first day of, first day of the opening and sat fairly centrally, sort of two-thirds of the way up, got a really good view of Lavin's goal. I hadn't really seen that, you know, I'd been, had a couple of games in the East Stand, but mostly had sat in the Upper Rous, which is great for getting a good view of the pitch and the match as it goes, but being behind the goal, so relatively high up, seeing it fly into the, perhaps as you say, not quite the top corner, but certainly top of the goal.

It was a, was a real positive experience. I really liked it. I thought it was great. Did you go to that game?

I wasn't at that game, no, but I did remember, like, I went shortly afterwards and the unreserved seating thing was— I mean, that was for the next couple of years really.

It definitely carried on for a while.

Yeah. I mean, you just paid, you paid your money at the turnstile and went in and you could just sit where you want. So you saw like clusters of fans in certain areas that would, you know, always try to be together. But yeah, I liked it because. The roof seemed to actually add a bit of atmosphere to that end, I think, because, yeah, kept the noise in a bit more. So, and it felt just— it felt more like a proper stadium to me once we had that. So yeah, I was— I.

I guess because I didn't, like we mentioned last time, I didn't have this sort of experience, real like affinity for the terrace because I'd only been on it a few times. So I liked Stats Land.

Yeah, same for me. Going into the next stage of season, I'd like to talk to you about Mike Vince, if that's okay.

Please do, please do. One of our favourites.

One of our favourites, and indeed where we get the name for the podcast from as well. If you've listened to the entirety of any podcast, you would have heard him say 'Oh my word' at the end of it. Barry Ashby, 'loitering with intent.' 'Loitering with intent' is a good one, comes out with that a lot. And I don't want to pick on Mike at all because every commentator has their crutches and their catchphrases and their clichés that they use, and it helps kind of lubricate, I think, what they say, and it helps them give a sense of what's going on with a familiar pattern of words to them. But 'loitering with intent' was definitely a good one for him, as was scoring goals and conceding goals at will. And I kind of struggle to think when would a team ever want to concede goals? Why would they, why would they ever be conceding goals at will?

It's cropped up a few times in this season and indeed seasons to come as well, but is emblematic really of the, of the next chunk of games. They're not good. Ashby scored in a draw against Sunderland. Conceding goals at will refers to a 4-1 defeat away at Millwall, which isn't great. We played Middlesbrough in October, and I think that's probably worth talking about. It was on TV and there weren't any Premier League games that weekend, so we had quite a lot of media attention on us. So it was probably broadcast on LWT and it might have been broadcast for other ITV regions as well.

There was a really good goal from Furlong in the first half and another great one from Dyer late on. Dyer's already kind of making his mark on the team. He's, he's proving to be exactly how you described him. He's. He's skillful, he's powerful, he's fast. He's kind of a junior Furlong to us in a sense, coming in from wide generally. So can play as a winger, can play as a striker as well, and he kind of gives it the finger gun celebrations when he scores.

I was there that game. Do you remember much of it?

I was watching it on TV. It was on— it was on the Sunday, wasn't it? Because it was a Sunday match on ITV, and I was I was actually really, really excited to get to watch a live TV match with Watford because obviously, like, the media, they just would never be getting any media attention at all. So the opportunity to actually just sit down and watch them on telly was a real novelty. And to see, like, the players that I really like, particularly Paul Furlong, doing his, doing his thing on a live TV match was really exciting. And I was absolutely like I was sort of jumping up and down in my living room punching the ceiling. I think I punched, actually literally punched the ceiling and hurt my hand when Bruce Dyer scored the second because he, yeah, he gets put through, doesn't he, and he goes around the keeper and then slots it in and the finger gun celebrates.

So it looked really cool and doing it on TV, I was like, yes! Yes, everyone's gonna sit up and take notice of this incredible football team with these incredible players. Obviously no one was really watching apart from me, like none of my mates watched it because they were like, why would you spend Sunday afternoon watching Watford versus Middlesbrough in the Endsleigh Insurance League Division 1 when— especially the ones who dad— whose dads have. Probably pay for Sky Sports. So they— was there no Premier League that weekend, you're saying? Is that why?

Yeah, maybe it was an international weekend or something. Yeah, it must have been.

Yeah, we didn't have Sky Sports in our house, so it was, it was Football Italia, which my dad did watch a lot of, to be fair, or the ITV Endsleigh game.

Same for us.

Yeah, but it was, yeah, it was good fun. It was good fun and two really good goals.

It was, yeah. That really is the emergence of Dyer, you know, on a semi-national stage, I guess. You know, he's, he started the season well, he's got amongst the goals and he's doing really well. Furlong gets sent off again. He's been sent off earlier in the season against, against Birmingham away. Then we come to a sort of curiosity of a game. And something that our listeners have talked about a lot, we played Bolton at home towards the end of October.

We were kind of overpowered by Bolton, even though they didn't really get out of second gear. They were 2-0 up at halftime. They scored the third on sort of 50, 51 minutes. I remember going to that match. I remember taking one of my friends Jamie with me and him kind of saying to me, like, why are people leaving? Like, why are they getting up and walking out? Like, It's only just been halftime.

Little did they know they would be missing one of the most amazing comebacks that we could possibly imagine. But it took a lot longer. It took to the 70th minute for Porter to score. He scores again a couple of minutes later. Ken Charlery scores as well, the edge of the box, about 82 minutes. Turns out to be his last goal for Watford. And we kind of think, amazing, comeback complete.

You know, we've gone 3-0 down and it's 3-0. It's the most unlikely comeback. But I can remember being a 12, 13-year-old, just lifting my arms to the top of the new Vicarage Road roof and just chanting, '4-3, we're gonna win 4-3!' And Gary Porter takes a corner, there's a handball from it, we win a penalty, Porter slots it home, it's injury time, and we win the match. It's 4-3, and it's the most incredible comeback. That I can, that I can remember watching, watching in a Watford match, really.

I think it's one of the most incredible comebacks that there's ever been in professional football. It's absolutely— it's absolutely absurd. Like, but also in the context of the game, because it's not just a scoreline. Bolton, like, completely outclassed Watford for those first 70 minutes. I mean, they were, they were absolutely dominating Watford at Vicarage Road. The reason people left was because there was, there was nothing in it for Watford.

They barely laid a glove on Bolton, and Bolton looked like they could score more, you know. I think, I think they maybe had hit the woodwork as well. I think McGinlay hit the post, hadn't he? Yeah, so it could have been 4-1 0, and they were just, you know, they just looked like they could continuously carve Watford open. I mean, they look like it's a much better team.

They didn't even look like they were particularly trying, and they still managed to do that. Yeah, we were that bad in the first 70 minutes of the game. We were so terrible.

And then they just suddenly made— yeah, it just— football can look— sometimes scoring can look like the hardest thing in the world, can't it, in football? And you just, you struggle so much to just create a sniff of a chance. And then all of a sudden you get, you get a goal out of nothing, and then it just looks like everyone can score and everyone's surging forwards with confidence, and it looks— scoring a goal looks like the easiest thing in the world. Yeah, it's that sort of weird momentum thing that happens in football, the sort of momentum shift that can just affect all sorts of teams. Even the best teams in the world can be affected by that shifting momentum and teams just start to shrink and the other team grows, and suddenly there's space everywhere. And it's very hard to explain why it happens or, and how it happens, and must be just absolutely horrible for coaches who, you know, just see their game plans go down the toilet like that.

But I mean, yeah, it was, it was incredible. I think like we could do a whole, whole podcast about this game because it was just ridiculous. But it was, you know, we've— we'll see some other really important victories later in the season for this team. I suppose what it does show you early on was that despite, you know, being really up against it, there was a spirit there amongst this team that Roeder had that they would, you know, they didn't always know they were beaten, which they would need over this season. And brilliant for Gary Porter as well, because this was his season in a way, wasn't it? This is probably his, you know, his moment.

And this game in particular, it means that he has a moment in his— what, for a really long established Watford career? But this is like his legacy, I suppose, isn't it? Is this game in a way, because a hat-trick—.

I think a lot of, a lot of football fans, a lot of Watford fans will remember him for this game particularly.

Yeah. Because he wasn't one that always sort of stood out, I suppose. Very dependable player, wasn't he, Gary Porter? But you wouldn't expect him to score a hat-trick.

No, you wouldn't. No, I mean, he scored some great goals this season. He scored some absolute scorches. You know, we'll talk about him more as the season goes on. But hadn't really shown— I think he had been quite dependable. I was going to say he hasn't really shown that, but he, you know, he put a few away, but. Scored a lot of penalties in the last couple of years.

Drysdale took some penalties while Porter was out of favour or injured. But this was season he kind of really came to the fore. And I don't think midfield was really Watford's problem this season. You had Porter, you had Hessenthaler, you had a couple of others as well. It was really the defence that was a problem. We didn't quite score enough goals given the firepower that we had up front. But at this stage, we're in 8th, you know, is we should remember that, you know, this is the end of October, we've just beaten Bolton 4-3 after being 3-0 down, we're in 8th place, and we do need to pour one out for Jason Rose because he missed it.

His dad went to it, but he went to go and watch Buddy the Musical, which I think is probably, probably something that he regrets until the end of time. One of our listeners, Jason, so sorry about that, Jason. But commiserations, commiserations indeed. But what it doesn't do, probably because Jason wasn't there, what it probably doesn't do is it doesn't really ignite the team's form in any way. In fact, probably the opposite. It's the start of a horrendous run of form. We get more red cards.

Hessenthaler gets sent off. We lose 4-1 up at West Brom. We lose 3-0 away at Southend. 3-1 at home to Stoke. So it's really, really bad. We play Bristol City and we draw 1-1 at home, and Roeder in his programme notes kind of makes his point that he knows the players that he wants to sign, the types of players he wants to sign, he knows the sort of squad that he wants to assemble, but he kind of feels that the transfer market is sort of at a standstill, and he kind of equates it to the economic nature of the country as well. You know, we're out of the recession, but we're not quite in the boom years yet, and there aren't enough players moving to transfer the cash around for other teams to want to buy players.

And he kind of bemoans this, what he calls the middle range of players being available, the 40 to 50 to 100K range. So the sort of players that Watford look for at that time, you know, we might be selling players for a million, a million plus, but we tended to fish around in that sort of market. And Roeder's kind of saying, the players that he wants, he values at that range, just aren't really there. So only a few games have gone since we, since we beat Bolton, went up to 8th place. We've lost 3 games, lost another one, we're now down to 17th. I guess that kind of shows you how tight the division is at that time. We play a game against Crystal Palace, we lose 3-1, Nogan scores.

There's another game on TV and part of this run of games where we're just suffering so much from injuries and suspension. Furlong suspended, Hessenthaler suspended, but we do get Blaupunkt joining as a club sponsor, so we don't have to worry too much about having having no sponsor on the, on the shirt at the time, which probably must have been quite embarrassing at the time, I suppose. Around this time, Graham Taylor resigns as England manager. We beat San Marino 7-1 or 8-1. It was the game where San Marino score after only a few seconds. It's not that result that means that we don't qualify for the World Cup, it's it's actually other results as well, but we don't qualify for World Cup USA '94, and he resigns from his England position. He would go on to join Wolves in the month, but this time we've lost again, we're down to 21st.

So another 3 defeats in a row, we lose 2-0 in each of them, and at this point we scored 4 goals in 8 games since that Bolton win, which is terrible really. Furlong suspension, and then there was a little bit of an injury crisis going on in the background, but they've really hurt us. We've gone from 7th to 23rd, so one off the bottom, in only 3 months. It's really a dramatic collapse, really, like kind of hard to see how that would happen, but happen it did, and we're really struggling this time.

Yeah, I think that's just the nature of like what we've seen so far over, you know, looking at the seasons that we've covered so far, the mediocrity does mean that there's, you know, not— there is very little between most of the teams, and there's very little in terms of points-wise as well. So as we've seen in other seasons where Watford suddenly shot up the table towards the end of the season and finished towards mid-table having looked pretty rubbish throughout, I think this season they started, they started very, you know, reasonably well, and where you look like they were sort of comfortably top half of the table. Actually had a bad run of form and suddenly realised that they're, they're right down in it as they go into the Christmas schedule. And that's it. Yeah, it was already facing up to be a fairly, you know, bleak winter for Watford, down at the bottom again. And I think without that, as we've said, a lot of young players in the team, and that looked to be what they were missing, I think, this season, and particularly during this phase, was some experience, some leadership on the pitch. They had some talent, but they didn't have the wise old heads to steer them through, and particularly to keep the ball out of their own net.

What we see over the next phase, going from Christmas into January, is a lot of goals, a lot of goals at both ends, but it is good fun. They— that starts with the home fixture, the home derby against Luton. And I was at this one, really, really— I'm still angry about this one because we were— we go 2-0 up, 2-0 up at halftime. They really should have put the game to bed, Watford. They were all over Luton. Dyer's absolutely on one, he scores twice, and then and then they're going back into it and end up conceding a late equaliser and drawing 2-2. To make matters worse, I'd gone to that game with a friend.

We went back into Watford, off into the high street afterwards to go to Burger King. This was part of the matchday routine for me at the time. And it was really like— I've had— I've always had an issue with like really stuffy places, and I think it's because I've got quite low blood pressure. If it's really stuffy and it's— there's not much oxygen, and I sometimes start to feel a bit faint. And I was queuing for ages in Burger King, and just as I got to the front of the queue and ordered my food. The guy behind the counter could see that I like sort of turned white and I was like, it's like, you all right, you've not even tried the food yet, right? I hadn't even tried the food. I just thought, I just need to sit down.

And he went, I'll bring your food over. And I just, I turned around from the counter and the next thing I knew I was just lying on the floor of Burger King because I just passed out. And everyone sort of stood around me in a circle staring at me. And someone had called an ambulance. I knew that, I knew what had happened. As it happened to me before, so I knew it was nothing serious. But they'd obviously all freaked out because someone had just literally collapsed in Burger King, so they called an ambulance.

And then the ambulance insisted on taking me to hospital. So then I ended up getting taken all the way back to Watford General, which is right next to Vicarage Road. And that's just basically just go in there and have someone say, yeah, there's nothing wrong with him. And then so then I had to walk all the way back into town again.

And yeah, I mean, I should say I'm only laughing because I know how this story ends and I can see that in front of me now.

Yeah. I mean, that was just— it was a really grim because it was by that time it was like sort of late on Sunday afternoon and it was cold and it was— there's nothing more depressing than I think after you've, you know, you're walking back, trudging back past an empty Vicarage Road way after the event, and it's all sort of ghostly and deserted, and you're still bitter about the result. So I have a very— I think it's probably come across— I have a very visceral memory of that and would rather forget it. I think I'd like to have that erased from my memory, but sadly I cannot. The other thing about this time was that you played back-to-back games over Christmas. So we play on the 27th of December and on the 28th. And I remember that happening a couple of times during the '90s. So, I mean, that's just.

Just insane, isn't it, that you would play a day— a game the day after you played one?

Crazy, isn't it? You can imagine like Pep Guardiola or Klopp just having an absolute field day about something like that.

They don't know how easy they've got it. I mean, we play away at Leicester and have a 4-all draw on the 27th of December. Furlong and Dyer both score a brace. That is a fun game. The lead sort of changing hands frequently in that one. And then, and then on the 28th of December, we're back at Vicarage Road. So it's literally like everyone on the bus.

Back to Watford, get some sleep, be back here tomorrow for the next game. I mean, that's just— I mean, absolutely crazy. They win, they win the next game, then they have 3 more defeats. They're starting to really look a bit grim. The attack's all right, but we're still conceding. And then another of our favourite games of this season, we play Birmingham City at home. Barry Fry's Birmingham.

Barry Fry, a legendary figure of the '90s. You know, probably single-handedly sustained the lower league transfer market, I think on his own, particularly at Birmingham with his player trading. Seemed to sort of buy and sell 20 players a month when he was at Birmingham. We did— we go 5-0 up in this game. That comes out of absolutely nowhere. I mean, Birmingham are not good, but there was no sense that Watford were about to hammer someone. Furlong scores a brilliant hat-trick in this game to a close-range finish and a penalty.

But in between that, he scores an absolutely majestic sort of chip, lob, curl— I don't quite know how he pulls off because it is a chip. He chips, he sees the keeper off his line but the keeper's only a few yards off his line. Yeah, he's not far at all, is he? Yeah, he sort of chips it but with a lot of topspin, so it comes in at pace but straight up and over the keeper and down into his net. And it is— and that is one of the best goals that I've ever seen live at Vicarage Road.

It was glorious, wasn't it?

Yeah. And it really demonstrated— that was Furlong really showing off his repertoire, I think. And that was I was probably a goal that I was getting— I think it's getting scouted a lot at this time by bigger clubs. They saw that, they would have thought, he's, yeah, he's ready for the step up, because that's not your average lower league get-on-the-end-of-crosses type centre forward. That's a, that's a player with some, with some skill. The other thing that was typically Watford about this is that Birmingham have 2 players sent off in the game but still managed to score 2 goals. One of the goals they've got, we're 5-0, 5-1 up at this point, and Birmingham have been reduced to 9 men.

And somehow managed to score a goal with 9 men on the pitch, which— if that doesn't tell you that Watford have got a problem with defending, I don't know what does. But yeah, a wonderful game. Were you at that one, Matt?

I was, yeah, I was. I've got a particular fondness for Furlong's hat-trick goal, the penalty. I've kind of rated it up there with Kevin Pressman's penalty.

He leathers it, doesn't he?

He leathers it sort of slightly with the outside of his foot. I remember being, being really like being sat in the Vicarage Road end, right in the middle, again about two-thirds of the way up, and I could see it kind of very slightly fade away into the top corner. But it hits it so hard, it's kind of the power of a, you know, latter-day Troy Deeney penalty, but with the precision of, of somebody else. It was, it was really good. It was a really good penalty, one of the best penalties I've ever seen live.

Yeah, I agree, I agree. So it's, it is, it's up there. It's definitely up there. It was a really impressive penalty. What else to note about this period of games? Yeah, more defeats, a lot of defeats. I won't go through them all individually because that's just depressing.

It would take too long. It would take too long. It's not a good period, this sort of Jan-February period. They keep losing games. They're just losing one after the other. Even when they managed to score 3 against Derby at home, they lose— they concede 4, and they just can't hold on to leads. I suppose another impressive notable bit of activity during this period is that they sign.

Craig Ramage they get him from Derby for 90 grand. He'd had a lot of injury troubles. He was very highly rated as a youngster, Craig Ramage, but he had a lot of injury problems. So hence Watford get to pick him up relatively on the cheap. We will clearly hear more about Ramage in future seasons, but this is when he arrived at the club and was pretty much instantly thrust into the team to try and add some something to the midfield, mullet and all. Mullet and all, yeah. And Bruce Dyer is sold at this time as well.

So having scored 9 goals in his senior career, he's off to Palace for £1.25 million, which is a significant amount of money, the British record for a teenager at the time. But it does mean Watford have lost one of their, you know, outstanding players and someone who's been a, you know, a constant goal threat and had been creating goals for Paul Furlong as well. He's off to Palace who are, you know, they're on their promotion train. They're sort of looking fairly nailed on certs with Forest to go up. The other, another, and this sort of immediately after that, I suppose, sort of following the sale of Bruce Dyer, the disillusionment of the fans starts to boil over. Play Grimsby at home and we lose. It's a midweek game, it's on a Tuesday night.

I was at this one, it was pissing with rain, and we get absolutely played off the park by Grimsby, who beat us 3-0 in front of a fairly pathetically low crowd. It's, you know, it's looking— it's relegation form. People have, people have had enough. It's a very— there's, there's no, there's no sense of like, where's the turning tide going to come from? There's no way to stop the slide. We see a really big, Petchey out demonstration. I didn't know it was going to happen.

I was at the— it was in the Vicarage Road end. All of a sudden, people started sort of massing towards the front of the stand, and then all of a sudden, match ended and everyone was on the pitch. Everyone's just charging onto the pitch. I sort of jumped over the hoardings because I thought, this is exciting, what are we doing? And then realised they were charging over to the director's box. So me and my mates thought, actually, we better not get involved in this. This looks like it could get a bit— so we sort of went on and then sort of quietly climbed back over the fence again.

Like, I mean, the stewards, there was like about 3 stewards there, so they had absolutely no way of stopping everyone. But yeah, there was a lot of very angry, very angry people running over to the director's box in the East Stand to chant, chant for Petchey's head basically, and was sort of like trying to storm the director's box. So scenes like that, you mean. You don't, you don't associate that with Watford, do you? Like, that sort of like actually people climbing up and trying to get into the director's box and stuff. It feels very feral, doesn't it? But yeah, no, it was real.

There was a lot of passion at the time, you know. There was real like, where is the money going? As I said before, we can kind of look at it in hindsight and kind of, I think, probably try to understand that slightly better. But at the time it was very opaque. We didn't know where the money was going. We didn't know at all. And there were players being sold.

Bruce Dyer most recently. Being sold for 7-figure fees, and where was the money come from? And, you know, we're going into the middle of March and we're in relegation form, we're looking nailed on for relegation, and we just sold, you know, not our best player but probably our second best player.

Yeah, no, definitely. And it was— I didn't know, I didn't know, I was quite naive about the sort of, you know, how football clubs works and all the, the wider politics of all of that. But I got the anger, and I got the fact that we were rubbish and we'd sold one of our best players. So I totally under— I did kind of get on the most basic level why everyone was really fed up. And I also, like, let's be honest, I was quite cool to be able to go into school the next day and be like, yeah, I was, yeah, I was on the pitch, like, we were like chanting for— we were trying to get in the director's box and stuff. The fact that I literally sort of went about 2 metres onto the pitch and then turned around and went back into the stand.

No one ever needed to know. So that was my— that was— yeah, still counts, still counts. So yeah, so that was— so that was that. Petchey did resign afterwards, but he resigned and retained finance. He was still the owner, he just wasn't chairman anymore. So Stuart Timperley becomes chairman. But with 21st, the last things I'll say about this season, because they are really important to set up what comes next we had Tommy Mooney joining on loan from Southend, but he would have, you know, a significant impact on the club, but we didn't know too much about him when he arrived.

They also then, Roeder, made a real flurry of transfer activities. So I guess prompted by the desperate situation they were in. Several other players followed before the sort of transfer window closed. So they brought in two new centre-backs, Colin Foster and Keith Millen, with Barry Ashby went to Brentford as part of the Millen deal. So bringing in experienced— an experienced pair of centre-backs, and they went straight into the first team. And also they were signed as actual permanent signings, but we also brought in Dennis Bailey on loan and Dennis Bailey was most famous for scoring a hat-trick for QPR away at Man United at Old Trafford in a televised game. So there was quite a lot of excitement about him coming, I think, because he thought, well, he wasn't getting regular football at QPR, but we thought he's someone who at least knows where the goal is, and we've lost Bruce Dyer.

So I think, didn't we— didn't know what to expect from all those signings, but it was just, there was some relief, I think, that they've done some business, because clearly if they just carried on doing what they were doing, it was probably not going to end well. So they needed, they needed some fresh legs in there and a bit of competition for places to shake things up a bit. And then we'll see, well, Matt, what happened next?

Well, as you say, we brought these players in and I mean, the defence so far has consisted of Holdsworth, my man Keith Dublin, Barry Ashby who's just gone, Mark Watson, the Canadian centre-half, very few. He was pretty rubbish. Very few people remember him really. Julian Alsford is, he's spoken about before. So you can kind of see where the problem lies. It's, it's the permeability of our, of our back four, particularly the central defenders. And having Foster and Millen arrive kind of instantly transforms the team, particularly Foster as well.

And their signings kind of spark the start of quite a famous run-in. We haven't kept a clean sheet in 27 matches, but we play Millwall at home and we win 2-0. Lavin scores after only 13 seconds, and after the match, it's— it comes out that he put a bet on himself to score the first goal. He didn't touch it at all. I don't know if it was officially ever given to him or not, but it wasn't at the time. He never touched it, but presumably he made his made his money back from that £5 bet. And Hessenthaler does what he did a few seasons before.

He breaks through from midfield and he runs through and he scores a goal. But it's really Colin Foster, I think, as we talk about the next few games, it's his presence that really makes the biggest difference. He gets us that clean sheet not on his own, but, you know, inspires the defence to get us that clean sheet in the game against Millwall. And he gets injured, which is really annoying, but we still got Keith Millen in, which, which just holds the defence together somewhat. So the next few games while, while Foster's injured, we struggle a little bit, but having him back in the team later on really works very well. So we lose to Forest, we lose 2-1, great long-range goal by Gary Porter, by the way, that was a really great goal. And then we play Leicester at home and Dennis Bailey scores a really, really late equalizer.

It's the first of 3 goals that he scores in consecutive matches to really, I think, make his mark on the season as a loanee. But we're still in 23rd and we're into April. When you're in 23rd and in April, you think you're probably going to go down. The next match, a few days later against Peterborough away, is, I think, a famous match and possibly even a contender for the most important win of the decade given the circumstances. It's, it's a 4-3 win, but it's really all about what's, what's going on at the time. Peterborough were, if not bottom, then next bottom at the time. We were, we were very low down.

Essentially, it kind of felt like the loser of the match was going to be relegated. It was a real six-pointer, and it was a real, as it turned out, a real seesaw match where we won 4-3. To spoil the ending, the goals were seesawing in at either end. Gerard Lavin towards the end of the game scores this in amazing 30-yard drive into the, into the far corner. And then we win the match with Dennis Bailey scoring, just a complete scramble at the end of it. And it's absolutely amazing scenes at the terrace. I remember just being thrown about in a way that I'd never been in any terrace, in any match, in any game.

It was one of the more memorable moments of my life supporting Watford at that time. It was amazing.

Yeah, I was at that game as well, and I think the terrace, like, because yeah, that was one of those— probably as a go at standing on the terrace, that's my defining memory of being on a terrace. Yeah, it's that game because it was a sort of packed away terrace at London Road, and the crowd was so up for it. It was such a big game. There was a lot of just, yeah, just like a real sort of like crackle of electricity at that one because it was such an important game for Peterborough down there as well, and because it was just such a bonkers game that both teams looked desperately short on like quality at the back, that they just let the goals—.

The goals were terrible. They were like—.

Lavin's one was the only good goal basically. The rest, it was, it was a good goal.

I mean, by this time so Simon Sheppard started the season in goal, Perry Suckling came in when he wasn't injured, then he went out because he was injured, but then we had Perry Digweed in goal and it's around this time, it was a great run-in, but he made some significant errors. And this was a match that he played at least one, at least one of them.

He wasn't exactly a commanding presence in the goal, I think. No, he wasn't. Your man gets on the score sheet as well, doesn't he?

Forever a legend. Forever a legend.

What a moment.

This was his goodbye to Watford, I think.

Yeah, good old Keith Dublin getting on the score sheet.

What a goal it was.

It's just another one that just— yeah, there's several goals in this.

It's just somehow found its way into the back.

Yeah, that sort of seems— as the ball seems to start rolling towards the goal. It looks like there's about 25 players in the way, but it somehow passes through everyone and ends up in the net, and someone just claims it because, you know, just the whole thing is just quite comical, isn't it? Yeah, the Lavin one I remember, like, just because he just— that was a sort of— the world sort of stood still when someone hits one of those long-range drives, and because he— it skids along the surface.

It's really low, isn't it?

Yeah, really low. He just absolutely spanks it and it skids along the surface. And those ones are sort of— when you see those live, although the ball's moving really fast, there's a sort of a moment where everyone's just sort of frozen watching it, isn't there? It's sort of— it seems to sort of— the inevitable seems to be happening before you see the ball. You see the net bulge and you know, you can kind of see it happening before it happens. But there's just sort of a few seconds where everyone seems to be suspended in time as the ball makes its way on its sort of journey of destiny towards the goal. You know, it was a fantastic game to be at.

When you have one of those like big games that means so much, to come out of it the right side of it is incredible as a fan. And I think that is, that is why you go to football, because, you know, to watch it live, because you get, you see like a lot of crap and a lot of rubbish, and then every now and then you get to see something like that, and then you remember it forever. Yeah, and I just— the other thing I want to say on that game is getting on it, because I went on the supporters' coaches because I was still quite young. Again, on it where everyone was really like, get the radio on, get Five Live on, or whatever it was at the time, thinking that, you know, they'd be talking about that quite a lot because it was such an important game for us. And it literally like— I think it was on the sort of bulletin, the 10 o'clock bulletin, it just sort of went, and in Endsleigh Insurance League Division 1. Watford beat Peterborough 4-3, and that was, that was literally sum total of the mention. It was like, for God's sake, what do we have to do for anyone to pay us the slightest bit of interest?

But it didn't really matter. It didn't matter. Incidentally, I also got to, I got to travel home after I got back, after the coaches dropped us off at Vicarage Road. I got to travel back home on the team coach because they would— the team coach was provided by Smiths Smiths of Tring, because it was Jeff Smith who was the vice chairman. His company was Smith's Coaches. Oh, he was— he was a coachman. I don't know if he had other things as well, but he was— yeah, so he was, he was from, he was from my manor, and he took us— he's— yeah, we got with the players, all got off.

So I sort of stood there, this awkward teenager sort of standing there as Paul Furlong got off his coach.

Do you reckon you got his seat back to back to—.

I hope. Well, I made sure I sat one of the— there was a few— there was one of the— it was the executive class coach, so it had some actual— had some tables with sort of little lamps on and stuff in there, which felt very exciting and glamorous. It wasn't very glamorous, but it seemed— it was the most glamorous coach I'd been on. So I don't know if I was sat in Paul Furlong's seat, but I'd like to imagine that I was. So it was a nice end to a very enjoyable evening.

My memory of it was another one of it just taking absolutely bloody ages to get out in the car. Yeah, but made enjoyable by lots of Watford fans going, all the way through, all the way home. But that was Peterborough. So how do we celebrate such a victory away at Peterborough? Well, we lose 2-1 at home to Tranmere. Dennis Bailey scores again, and Colin Foster's back from injury. He's missed the last few games.

He played that game against Millwall. And transform the defence. And he's back in now and he can, he can continue to transform the defence really. We beat Barnsley 1-0, Paul Furlong scores, and then we come into a game I really remember. We play Southend at home and we score 3 goals in the first 10 minutes. So we get Bailey, Mooney, and Foster. And then this time Mooney is on loan from Southend to Watford, but he's really not shy at all about scoring his goal.

In fact, he gives it, gives it as much as Andy Kennedy did a couple of years ago. He's, he's really loving it, you know, as he should. I mean, he's playing for a team desperate to scrap for their lives. But that 3-0 match, I remember that we did the work in 10 minutes and then spent another 80 minutes just kind of making sure it carried on. Did you go to that?

Yeah, I did. Yeah, I remember thinking it was going to— we were going to be in for sort of a world record scoreline, and then actually getting really bored in the second half because they didn't really barely have a shot in the second half. It was, it was just one of those games that sort of played out because Southend, Southend were not that arsed, and I think once they sort of stopped the initial rot. It just sort of petered out into one of those sort of dead rubber games after that where they weren't really interested. Yeah, but that was fine because after what had gone on, just having a comfortable 3-0, who wouldn't enjoy that? So yeah, very nice.

Exactly. We're up to 20th at this point, so we're out there, out of the relegation zone. We draw against Bristol City, Paul Furlong scores, and it turns out to be his last goal for Watford. It was, it was, it was a good goal. It was kind of a lob on the run from the edge of the box over the onrushing goalkeeper. And then we end the season with two great results really. We beat Portsmouth 1-0 at home.

Andy Hessenthaler scores, gets us up to 19th, but we're not safe. We go into the final game of the season. We're playing against Palace away. Palace have already won the league. So this is quite a dangerous position to be in. Lots of our other rivals are also playing away. So we do really need to get the win if we possibly can, just to make sure that it happens.

And we do, we win 2-0. This was on TV as well, I think. Hessenthaler and Mooney score. We kind of ruin their promotion party, and a couple of listeners have kind of pointed this out. Gareth Robbins, Paul Goldsmith have kind of said how much we, you know, we ruined their day. After all this, we finished 19th. And so as it turns out, if we'd lost, we might have actually gone down.

I mean, there was a bit to do with the mathematics of goal difference, but the other results didn't go our way. Almost every other team below us won their matches. At the end of the day, we finished 19th and we're very happy to do so. Having spent every month since November in the, in the relegation zone, finally we're out of it and we know that we're staying out of it as well. So we finished 19th and what an amazing run-in. How much did those players transform our team, really?

Yeah, it's probably the most dramatic transformation from a transfer window Watford have ever had. So basically signed a new, you know, a new, a new central defence, they immediately just looked so much— I just remember them, their sort of first game, that game against Millwall that you talked about, they just immediately, anything that was launched towards them, just, they just soaked it up.

And also was just a magnet for that, wasn't he? Yeah, he could just do it at both ends.

They were just absolute no-nonsense, like, tough centre-backs who had been around the block a bit and knew how to play centre forwards at that level. And so they just immediately transformed the team. And then you brought in. Yeah, the goal threat of Dennis Bailey, but also just the sheer enthusiasm of Tommy Mooney who, you know, was just sort of bundle of energy. And that just galvanized— gave everyone a lift, galvanised the team, got them over the line. Absolutely. I mean, the signing— the signings transformed the team in our form, and because of that, we stayed up.

You know, we won the 6 of the last 10, we got the results that we needed, won the games that mattered, those decisive games. And that's what kept us up in the end by the skin of our teeth. But they did it. I think Furlong had another outstanding season, not quite as prolific as the previous season, but it was a team that was struggling for form a lot more than he'd had the previous season as well. So the fact that he's still got 19 goals, I think reflects on his ability to just find goals out of, you know, scraps. He was feeding off scraps a lot of the time.

I think he would have scored more had he not been suspended so much as well, having that, having had those I mean, this was a season that was really decorated by red cards, and you know, he got a couple in quick succession, so missed like 6— it seemed like 6 or 7 games in a row, like, yeah, a really long time. And I think he would have got more than the 19 that he got, but still kept up his scoring rate from last time. It's basically 1 in 2, isn't it, which is what he got last year?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Definitely. And he was supported by other players as well. Obviously, we mentioned Bruce Dyer, and Gary Porter got 10, so double figures from midfield for Porter. And that's enough to get him voted Player of the Season in his testimonial year. And I think, you know, there was just— it wasn't just that the goals with Porter, it was obviously some of the performances as well.

As one of the senior players who did step up, I think, and never shied away during that what was a very difficult season, he always seemed to, you know, stand up to be counted and wanted the ball and was prepared to take takes some responsibility with, you know, not just that performance against Bolton, but, you know, penalties in really crunch games and things like that, and some really good long-range goals as well. Some really good long-range goals, yeah. He was, you know, a very— like we've said, he's a very reliable player. But I think in this season we needed him to do a bit more than be reliable, and he did. In terms of what, you know, where that left the league so Peterborough, who, you know, came off worse in that big six-pointer against us, they went down. So did Oxford, and so did Birmingham.

So Barry Fry's Birmingham went down to the third tier. Palace, Forest, and Leicester through the playoffs go up.

Interesting to see Leicester. They'd lost the previous two playoff finals. Yeah, it's really unusual that they would— that any team would get to consecutive playoff finals, but. But 3 in a row as well. But so for them to lose the, lose the first 3 and then go up, you know, good for them.

Yeah, they were consistently sort of challenging throughout that time, weren't they? Them and Derby— Derby were always up there as well but couldn't seem to get out of this league, but they were always one of the challengers as well. But yeah, Palace and Forest have both gone straight back up. I remember like Forest were like— it was big for Forest.

It felt like they were like a big team to be down there at the time because, yeah, our attendance against Forest was something like 13,000 when we were getting 7,000 every week.

Yeah. I mean, they were like, they were a name, like they were a club that, you know, done things in English football and had pedigree. And so for to be playing them was like, I remember being really excited about us playing Forest and the fact that they still had some really like proper players from their time in the top flight as well. Plus they had Stan Collymore now as well, who's really establishing himself as, you know, one of the sort of outstanding young centre-forwards in England. Man United in the top flight did the double, league and cup. They lost to Villa in the League Cup final, preventing them doing a treble. Don't want to talk about Man United anymore because I was absolutely loathing of them at this time because I was seeing so many glory hunters at school suddenly declaring their eternal love for Man United.

And, yeah, just no, let's not go there. Sheffield United, Oldham, and Swindon relegated to join us in Division One. Swindon, who we waxed lyrical about Swindon, didn't we, last season.

So they didn't quite make it, didn't quite transfer that to Premier League quality, did they?

No, because Hoddle had gone to Chelsea and then John Gorman had been in charge and they let in 100 goals in the season in the top flight, which I think is a record.

Well, let's try, we can probably beat that, can't we?

We could— we're having a good go. Looking to next season more departures. So no great surprise that Furlong moved on, went to Chelsea for £2.3 million. So that is a big sum of money for a second-tier striker, and obviously left a huge hole in our striking roster. So we'll come on to next season, what Glenn Roeder did to try and fill that and how he spent that money.

I think it's a story that, story that continues through the mid-'90s, doesn't it? Yeah, not to spoil it, but our search, exactly, our lack of search for the striker.

Yeah, number 9. I think, I think that's right. And I suppose the last thing to mention about this summer before we get into the '94 season is the World Cup in USA, so England weren't there. As you mentioned, Graham Taylor had left England by this point. Terry Venables was now in charge, but England weren't there for the USA '94 World Cup. I have quite fond memories of watching that one.

It was on at sort of ridiculous o'clock, wasn't it? All the games. Yeah, I remember it as well early hours in the morning. But yeah, there's some, you know, particularly Romania, Gheorghe Hagi, Bulgaria. I think Bulgaria beating Germany Stoichkov lashing in that free kick, that was tremendous, tremendous fun. Italy getting all the way to the finals, Baggio's World Cup, and in a very, a very dogged and like pragmatic Brazil side, wasn't it? They weren't like a particularly entertaining Brazil side, but they did have Romário and Bebeto up front who were, who were reasonably good, to be fair.

Beat Italy on pens in a fairly awful final. But yeah, anything else, Matt, from you before we finish up to reflect on this season?

No, not really. I think I think the season tells its own story. You know, we were, we're so dreadful at the back, and throughout the whole season really until the end, we— Furlong and Dyer. And the addition of our later strikers really helped us score those goals. And it really took the signing of Foster and Millen to shore up the hole at the back. But I think those signings turned it from a terrible season to a great one with the additions of Bailey and Mooney and Ramage and those other people who played. Played a real part.

Interesting that some of those signings that in that period, some of them turned out to be Watford legends, some of them turned out to be extremely important but only with the club for a very short space of time. But I don't think anybody who was around at the time will forget them. So rather than going straight through to the next season, our next episode is going to be more about the matchday experience at Vicarage Road in the '90s and how it changed over time, the faces that came and went, and the ground that started with terraces at both ends and ended with all-seater stadia. Michael, a lot of changes in the ground, lots of changes in the matchday experience. Any previews about what you want to talk about?

No, I think, I think it'll be. There was a lot of change, as you said, over that decade, and the whole experience of going to the match changed quite a lot for people in different ways, and probably changed as the sort of club changed as well over that time. So it'd be nice to reflect on just how that changed, what it was like, the atmosphere, the routines that people had going to the stadium, and like you say, some of the faces and sights and sounds around Watford at that time as well. So we'll try to cover a bit of that. In the next episodes, and that will give us an opportunity to talk about some things that don't fit neatly into one season.

Yeah, so you've got any memories about that, any particular things you want to talk about, about going to matches at Watford in the 1990s, please let us know. We're on Twitter at @OhMyWordPod, and we'd just be really, really grateful and interested to hear anything you have to say about Watford in the '90s. So see you next time and goodbye.

Oh my word! No wonder the smiles are there.