The current banner headline on the homepage keeps reminding me of the waking dream/nightmare, or whatever the fuck it is, going on at Watford, and it's made me want to try and work out exactly how I feel about this.
What's concerned me most is that I only vaguely care. This isn't massively surprising in itself as I long since stopped being a regular at games, and don't often find myself in the area at all, so it's easy to feel a disconnect. Also, the last few years have had some particular (football) low points which have made me more ambivalent toward the club, so I've been moving away from it, in some form, for a while now. But I've always considered myself a Watford supporter, and a big part of that was the type of person I often came across while at games (friends and strangers alike). By and large we all seem to share modest expectations, good humour and a realistic sense of our place in football. Some of that went out the window during the Boothroyd years, but even that didn't represent a break from what the club and its fans were, or seemed to be; just a bit of a low period. The club itself has always been very community-based, a friendly enough place to visit for most fans, and has a youth tradition which brought pride to us all.
This, however, is very much a break. It's easy to ignore the creeping sense that something not necessarily good is happening when it's not plastered in the media or on the front page of the WSC site, but then it is, and I have to read comments from some fans along the lines of how we're going to get 'back to the Premiership [sic]', as if that's where we fucking belong or have a right to be. From the Trust, ffs. And there don't seem to be nearly enough people questioning the fact that we're now owned, essentially, by another club, and are in all likelihood part of their wider strategy, not our own. It's all this, really. This talk of ambition out of scale with our club, the willingness to put ourselves in this position, and the lack of dissent or complaint. It's all making me feel much more remote from a club I once loved.
I'm aware, of course, that money talks, particularly toward the top of the game, and that as a smaller club punching above its weight, that what's happening to us has an air of inevitability about it. The Championship and Premier League levels have long since gone the way of a financial competition, but it was easier to suspend disbelief and try and enjoy the sporting aspect of it all when your club wasn't whoring itself out. In a way, I'd rather we'd accepted a relegation if it came, stayed who we are, and that the club and ideals I supported had stuck around. But right now it looks like that club left ages ago and I just didn't notice.
I feel a bit bad ranting about this sort of shit when there are others in far worse positions (I mean, we still have the same badge and play in yellow, so there are some vestiges of our independence left). I'm now also aware that it looks from the rant above that I do more than vaguely care, so that first sentence was just me kidding myself.
Am I overreacting? Is there only very low-level dissent because it's really not that bad? I can understand that we were all willing to be rid of Bassini, and I am glad that we have owners who offer stability. But it just seems that we've signed too much away.
Sorry for the overlong rant, Friday feelings and all that. In any case I'm probably going to be sticking with my current habit of going to watch Brentford. It's not the same, it won't ever be, but it's cheaper, nearer and much less depressing (although the D&R game the other season under Scott could be considered an actual assault on vision from which I've yet to recover).
