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Yet Watford are a club with some tradition, former a year before the Clarets and have been based in Watford ever since. A real football club with real roots and it is good to know we are playing this sort of club after the dreadful match against Franchise on Saturday.
In fact Watford were one club who stood up to the bullying tactics of Franchise and told them to get stuffed in no uncertain terms when they came begging to share their ground, and this despite Watford’s lack of money.
And they are a struggling club who found it necessary to sell their ground last season on a lease back scheme and are now raising money to try and buy it back. They left the Premiership having been sensible with their brass but then a year later replaced Graham Taylor with Gianluca Vialli and Hannibal Lecter Ray Wilkins – did he not like that?
Suddenly the well was dry, Vialli and Wilkins were gone and Ray Lewington was left to pick up the pieces. He did well last season and they ended it in 13th place with a creditable 60 points and that was certainly much better than they had hoped.
They lost a number of players during the summer and these included Dominic Foley, Allan Nielsen who returned home to Denmark to play for Herfolge and Gifton Noel-Williams who signed for Stoke.
Also departing were Stephen Glass to Hibs, Stephen Hughes to Premiership Charlton and just last week Tommy Smith moved to fellow First Division Sunderland and that means both the cup scorers against us have now moved on.
There were two new permanent signings before the season started, both on free transfers. Former player Bruce Dyer returned from Barnsley whilst Danny Webber, on loan there last season, joined from Manchester United.
Lewington also signed Manchester United’s Jimmy Davis on a year long loan, he had been a Burnley target, but tragically the youngster was killed in a car crash on the opening day of the season with Watford’s game called off.
Since the season started he has boosted the numbers with the signing of Paul Devlin from Birmingham for £150,000 and two further loan signings in Chelsea’s keeper Leonard Pidgeley and Stephen Kelly from Spurs.
Things haven’t gone too well though and their 3-1 televised victory over Millwall is their only win of the season with a draw at home to Gillingham providing their only other point. Only Franchise remain below them in the league and then only on goal difference.
Saturday saw them come close to a point at home to Ipswich and they actually took the lead through Scott Fitzgerald. But Ipswich came back to equalise through loan man Shefki Kuqi before it was won with a spectacular goal from Jim Magilton eight minutes from time.
Manager Ray Lewington found the latest reverse difficult to take and said after the game, "This one hurt. We came out of the traps nice and lively in the second half, got a goal but immediately sat back and just tried to protect what we had rather than pushing on and looking to kill off the opposition."
Watford lined up: Alec Chamberlain, Stephen Kelly, Sean Dyche, Neil Cox, Paul Robinson, Paul Devlin, Gavin Mahon (Bruce Dyer 84), Neal Ardley, Lee Cook (Jamie Hand 75), Danny Webber, Scott Fitzgerald. Subs not used: Leonard Pidgeley, Marcus Gayle, Ashley Young.
No doubt the Clarets will be looking to get back to winning ways and will certainly want to make amends for the three defeats last season.
Click HERE to see all Watford’s results this season.
Past Results in the last 20 years
Season | Div | Ven | Result | Att | Scorers |
a | |||||
1994/95 | 1 | h | 1-1 | 11,739 | Eyres |
a | 0-2 | 9,297 | |||
1996/97 | 2 | a | 2-2 | 6,450 | Gleghorn Smith |
h | 4-1 | 8,269 | Cooke(3) Parkinson | ||
1997/98 | 2 | a | 0-1 | 11,155 | |
h | 2-0 | 9,551 | Cooke(2) | ||
2000/01 | 1 | a | 1-0 | 13,653 | Taylor |
h | 2-0 | 18,283 | Payton Mullin | ||
2001/02 | 1 | h | 1-0 | 13,162 | Little |
a | 2-1 | 12,160 | Cox Weller | ||
2002/03 | 1 | a | 1-2 | 13,977 | Taylor |
FAC | a | 0-2 | 20,336 | ||
1 | h | 4-7 | 10,208 | Taylor(3) Davis |
Click HERE
to see more results against Watford.One from the past
A bright new dawn but not the start we wanted
Watford 1 (Lee) Burnley 0
Nationwide League Division 2 – Saturday 9th August 1997
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Manager Adrian Heath had walked in the summer to go and work with Howard Kendall at Everton and we had pulled off something of a coup by appointing Chris Waddle as the new boss.
Waddle had brought with him a new assistant manager in Glenn Roeder, replaced Harry Wilson as reserve team manager with former Villa star Gordon Cowans and even added Chris Woods as goalkeeper coach.
The town hadn’t been so excited for years and we couldn’t wait for the season to start. We’d even beaten a Brazilian team in pre-season although the fact that they were not up to much seemed not to matter.
Adrian Heath had promised us Mark Patterson (a confirmed Burnley hater from Darwen), Lee Sandford and Mixu Paatelainen but Waddle had gone for Premiership players and we had signed Michael Williams from Sheffield Wednesday, Mark Ford from Leeds and Steve Blatherwick from Nottingham Forest. On the eve of the game there was further excitement with the news that Lee Howey would be signing from Sunderland.
It was a fantastic day and arriving at Vicarage Road in temperatures soaring into the nineties the scene was set for what was surely going to be a promotion season.
The new coaching team came out onto the pitch during the warm up to a sensational welcome, we didn’t appear concerned that former Watford boss Roeder was getting some stick from the home fans who told us that they were thankful to be rid of him.
The new boss sprang a major surprise by naming Phil Eastwood for a debut alongside Paul Barnes up front, Andy Cooke was suspended and with a wing-back system the midfield was completely new with Waddle, Ford and Williams in the key roles.
It didn’t quite follow the script though and we didn’t really get started, in fact we were thankful to new defender Blatherwick and keeper Marlon Beresford for keeping us in it. Blatherwick made some superb tackles whilst Beresford was alert on more than one occasion.
We fell behind when pineapple head Jason Lee scored on the half hour although he was lucky to be on the field after lashing out at David Eyres. Any decent referee would have given him a straight red card but we were without a decent referee and had to settle for Paul Danson who was in charge of his first Nationwide League game after being axed from the Premiership.
There was a lot of possession from Burnley but little sharpness up front and we hardly mustered a shot of note during a second half when Watford were content to let us have the ball.
But with Cooke to come back and Howey set to sign things were still looking positive. It finished 1-0 though. We had played well at the back but struggled to create going forward. Little did we know that we would fail to score in each of the following five games.
Our promotion campaign had got off to a losing start against a side not expected to break any squares. In fact Watford won the league, had 36 points more than the Clarets who of course only stayed up on the last day of the season.
A bright new dawn it might have been but it was another couple of years and one more manager before we got there.
The teams were,
Watford: Alec Chamberlain, Nigel Gibbs, Peter Kennedy, Robert Page, Keith Millen, Tommy Mooney, Gifton Noel-Williams, Micah Hyde, Jason Lee, Richard Johnson, Stuart Slater. Subs not used: Steve Palmer, Steve Talboys, Dai Thomas.
Burnley: Marlon Beresford, Richard Huxford, Chris Brass, Steve Blatherwick, Mark Winstanley, David Eyres, Chris Waddle, Mark Ford, Michael Williams (Jamie Hoyland 77), Paul Barnes, Phil Eastwood (Damian Matthew 52). Sub not used: Chris Woods.
Referee: Paul Danson (Leicester).
Attendance: 11,155.