The pattern is simple enough. It’s the same old cycle, long-established; it’s the one that we’ve written about for the last eleven years: wave-crests of euphoric celebration, troughs of discordant despair. Oh, and lots of stuff in between that seemed terribly important at the time but no-one, except Matt, can now remember.

Stand selling fanzines on Vicarage Road of a Saturday afternoon and you’ll quickly realise that collective identity is a complete myth. There is no Yellow Army, just a bunch of people who happen to have a connection with the same town, many of whom seem like remarkably cheerless, uncharitable souls. On the crest of a wave, none of that really seems to matter amid the rush of shared celebration. At the other end of the scale, it all seems to unravel in the most harrowing fashion, and the idea of using the word “club” to describe the resulting melee of shouting, counter-shouting, theatrical finger-pointing and so forth is laughable. Pretty obviously, I love thinking about football and I love trying to put those thoughts into words. Analysing it too much, however, is a very dangerous thing.

Because, judging by last night’s shameful little episode, a large part of the Rookery is populated by the kind of dimwitted, parochial little bigots that I’d cross the M1 to avoid. It’s rather hard to express the sheer helpless shame of being in a stand that’s proudly belting out a song about World War Two in the name of Woffud and Ingerland, and doing so at considerable length and volume for the benefit of a television audience. That’s our Watford, is it? Plucky underdogs, family club, Elton John and all that, fine line in nationalistic bollocks on the side? Anyone fancy a chorus of “No Surrender” while we’re at it?

And amid it all, one of the most resourceful and committed team performances that Vicarage Road has seen in recent years, reducing Arsenal’s vastly over-hyped ice-skating-on-grass football to scraps and bits and hilarity. Still lost, I know, but the fight was truly something to behold. When the team needed and deserved our fullest support, a few hundred were crassly bellowing about a country whose history apparently ended in 1945 and distant deeds that they have absolutely no claim over, while the rest of us were shaking our heads in silent disbelief and wishing that the ground would open up. Never has an atmosphere been deflated so quickly without a goal being scored.

W-A-T-F-O-R-D, we’re the Watford Rookery. Shame on us.

Inevitably and understandably, there have been some fairly disparaging comments about the club’s various attempts to build an inspiring, intimidating atmosphere ahead of recent fixtures. Disparaging, and not entirely fair: given that inspiring and intimidating don’t come naturally to Vicarage Road except on extra special occasions, someone has to make a bit of an effort. Otherwise, the soundtrack to our epic struggle - oh, don’t be churlish - will just be the usual chattering and grumbling and rustling, like a screening of Gladiator in a cinema with duff speakers.

Of course, the inevitable consequence has been exactly the reverse: a screening of Gladiator in a cinema run by an ageing metal fan who lost his hearing at a Maiden gig in 1983 but likes to turn the volume up so that he can feel the vibrations, man. There must be some kind of middle ground. Not contenting itself with moving Z-Cars from its natural home yet again - an act that has in itself become a bit of a club tradition, irresistible for those who simply can’t stop themselves from polishing frantically away at football’s scratched surface - and putting yet more sugar in Richard Short’s pre-match cuppa, whoever determines these things has now given us a pre-match build-up so full of foggy, cloudy bluster that it’s a wonder we can still see the pitch when the teams finally emerge. Do tell us, please, what we’re actually supposed to do during all of this deafening orchestral kerfuffle; there’s no point in singing, after all, since even Brian Blessed with a megaphone couldn’t make himself heard above the clatter and crescendo. There’s nothing to clap along to, unless you’re rather more skilled in the art than I, or there’s a baton-wielding conductor somewhere that I’ve missed. What else, then, except to be suitably (and silently) overwhelmed by the immense spectacle that is before you, the sheer gravitas and splendour of Watford versus Reading…?

If you heap pomposity upon pomposity, you end up with a great big pile of pomposity. Well done, you. That whole “less is more” thing has simply passed football by, leaving a world in which the preposterous and the laughable barely raise an eyebrow any longer. After all, nothing does a better job of killing the pre-match atmosphere than the Premiership’s own self-congratulatory, self-promoting mock-ceremony, in which both teams are required to line up on the halfway line and face whichever bigwigs happen to be present in the directors’ box; salutes are not yet required during the playing of The World’s Greatest League’s anthem, but it’s surely only a matter of time. (For those who haven’t been to a game lately, I’ve made up the bit about the salute, but not about the anthem. That really exists. No, honestly.) While all of this nonsense is going on over there, we must stand around patiently until our team arrives in dribs and drabs and is officially allowed to acknowledge the presence of the unwashed masses. Heaven forbid that we should be permitted to roar the lads from the tunnel as we once did. It might start a revolution or something.

What’d happen if we didn’t bother, I wonder? What could they do if we just dashed out of the tunnel and charged towards the Rookery with fists aloft, leaving our opponents to shake hands with themselves? It won’t happen, of course. It never happens. Still, depressing as it is to be clutching at straws as early as December, it appears that life in the Football League is not without its small mercies. For now, at least. But bitter experience tells you that it’s only a matter of time before someone down there reckons that the pre-match build-up is lacking a certain something….

You know, this is a moment worth remembering. Not worth savouring, clearly, but worth storing away for a rainy day. And that rainy day, for it will come soon enough, will involve somebody coming over all conspiratorial and hatching a plot to get promoted to the Premiership, spend barely a penny, get relegated by Christmas and stuff the cash into a huge sack in the cupboard under the stairs to spend on crisps, beer, DVDs and the East Stand everyone seems to think we need. And Freddy Eastwood, or whoever happens to be in vogue at that particular time. It’s a rubbish plan, of course…but to prove it so, you need to remember.

Specifically, you need to remember just how unutterably miserable last night was. Just how it gradually sapped the spirits and dispelled the initial bluster, first with the sheer poverty of the football on display - a better argument for an eighteen team Premiership has surely never been put - and then with the gradual and inevitable realisation that we weren’t even going to draw a veil over the ugly spectacle by snatching a scrappy winner. Worse, we were going to allow our opponents that pleasure. Worse still, our best attempt at changing the inevitable involved sticking a great lump of a central defender in the general vicinity of the opposition penalty area and hoping for the best; that, with a substitution and a supposed striker still in hand. Good grief.

It’s not fun. It might well be that it’s unavoidable, given that we were promoted with a squad that was thin even for the Second Division and given that we had less time than most to strengthen; hard to believe that better forwards than Danny Shittu weren’t within our price range, mind you. It might well be all sorts of things…but it’s not fun. In truth, Adrian Boothroyd’s miracle has been to keep morale high for so long, to preserve the spirit and the standards; anyone starting to doubt his motivational abilities really needs to look at the knocks this team has taken thus far and the displays they’ve produced in direct response.

But performances and results don’t stay out of sync for ever. For me, Portsmouth felt like one last bloody-minded, furious and not a little heroic attempt at wrestling that equation in our favour. Against a side that was patently superior in every department, not to say vastly more elegant in its football, we played with such heart and soul that we managed to bring a stunning result within view, almost within reach. A result that would’ve been roared from that away end like a famous victory, that might - just might - have kick-started something. And then we had those efforts sneered at by the sad, depressing cynicism of modern football. It felt like one final kick in the teeth, too much to take.

So, really, we were overdue something ghastly, something memorably atrocious. It had to happen, in the end. Lo and behold, performances and results were in perfect harmony last night. One fears that the equilibrium might last; for all Aidy’s boisterous (and occasionally inspirational and occasionally tiresome) cheerleading, he has left himself and his players desperately short of options. Anyone fancy trying to motivate Doris for another ninety minutes of chasing the ball as it appears from somewhere over the horizon and then disappears back again? No, thought not. Poor sod.

To return to the age-old get-promoted-and-take-the-cash plan, it completely fails to take into account the damage to the morale of the entire club, players upward. Losing hurts, full stop. It seeds doubts, arguments, idiocy, temptation; it breaks up teams and it ends careers. It brings nothing that’ll be of any value back down there and it destroys a fair amount that money can’t buy. It is not something to build upon.

And it’s just not any fun.

It’s always tempting to over-dramatise the significance of individual games, as Sky are wont to do on an almost weekly basis and particularly so this weekend.  Nonetheless, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that tomorrow night’s game has rather a lot riding on it.

Not only are we pitched against a side who are immediate rivals for position at the foot of the table, a side who we’ve been regular adversaries of over the years with more than a few memorable encounters even discounting the two epic meetings last season.  But in the context of our wider season the implications are perhaps further reaching than the three points at immediate stake.

Marlon’s injury is without reasonable dispute the most consequential development of our season so far;  it’s easy to forget that many of those draws where three points were missed by dint of our failure to convert chances occurred with King in the team, nonetheless a lack of cutting edge has been our downfall thus far and addressing this shortfall in January is imperative.

In this context, getting some points on the board between now and then is kinda imperative from the point of view of who we might attract.  Win a game or two, leave ourselves at least in touch with the rest of the division and we might be able to cherry pick from all but the very richest pickings from Division Two (David Nugent, one assumes, is already beyond our means, as are the majority of experienced Premiership strikers worth taking).  But struggle and even they might question whether they’re not better off where they are.

Between now and Christmas we have difficult away trips to Liverpool, Newcastle, and most immediately Manchester City, whose flimsy away form has been propped up by points harvested at home.  So wins in our two home games are a must, and in Tuesday’s game all the more so in setting the tone for what must follow.

It hasn’t fallen badly for us.  The weekend’s Blackburn postponement has given our players a break, whilst Sheffield had a trip to West Ham which left them in victim mode after being denied a late equaliser by a contentious refereeing call.  Meanwhile articles on the club’s Official Site and recent public appearances by Aidy Boothroyd can leave none in doubt regarding the emphasis placed on the importance of a rowdy following.

From that point of view it’s probably no coincidence that the two games in recent years in which Vicarage Road really has risen to the challenge, the Palace play-off game and the pivotal relegation scrap with Derby two seasons earlier, were both under floodlights.  Both had a gravity that added to the intoxicating intensity, but this game is hardly insignificant.

At the Supporters’ Trust AGM a week ago, Aidy Boothroyd’s reaction to being told that Health and Safety concerns had prohibited the distribution of free Trust rattles was that folk should “smuggle them in anyway”.  Whether it involves smuggling rattles, saucepan lids, steel bands or just your lungs in tomorrow night, just bloody go for it.  It’s not as if we’ve not been practised in smuggling items into football grounds after all.

Sheffield have one away goal all season.  We can’t allow them a sniff tomorrow night.  By giving it some welly from the stands, we’ll be doing our bit.

As our performances have, to quote my co-editor, “become less and less scary with every game” and as, despite one defeat in seven, we still await our first league victory of the season, attention has been drawn this week to Watford’s somewhat direct style of play.

Managerial veteran Stewart Robson (record: two defeats and one win as caretaker at Southend in 2003) has let rip in the Telegraph, lambasting Boothroyd and suggesting that the style of play that Robson sees him proposing could “set the country back twenty years” (where have I heard that before?).

Meanwhile Boothroyd has been quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that critics of the way we’re playing within the home ranks can “stay at home” if they don’t like it.

As occasionally happens when his strident public face is slightly battered, Boothroyd comes across as defensive in the article, perhaps understandably. As he observes, complaints amongst the Watford support were few and far between when a no less direct style of play propelled us unexpectedly to the top flight. No less direct, but executed more successfully and with no little panache.

And this is the nub of the matter, as far as Watford fans are concerned. The individuals involved might argue otherwise, but ultimately the sticking point is that we haven’t won a game. As such a style of play which was always going to be direct has degenerated further as the failure to win games has battered confidence. It was always thus… the “passing game” of which Stewart Robson probably sees himself as a proponent is no less unattractive when executed ineffectively by players short on confidence or motivation (witness the Vialli season). Failure to win is the bottom line, style of failure a lazy hobbyhorse to fall back on.

As for critics of our style outside of the Hornets’ ranks… well they are likely to multiply in number as soon as we win a game. Bring it on, I say. A big part of me would enjoy us reverting to sub-Wimbledon Route 1 tactics if it got us results, just to see the likes of Robson, Paul Merson (another with a fine track record), and other self-styled defenders of the game explode with indignation.

More likely is that whatever success we achieve in this division will come about from direct football that will look less spartan for the confidence that it will bring about.

Criticism from outside is tiresome but inevitable. Criticism from inside, from people too stupid to watch Chelsea or Manchester United and see a direct style of play executed by exceptional players, is nigh-on unforgivable.

Boothroyd has suggested that pretty football comes later in the grand plan, that establishing ourselves by whatever means is an essential first step. There are certainly any number of clubs in the top half of the table (Blackburn, Bolton) who have grabbed a foothold based on an aggressive, direct style and added the frills later.

Whatever. Boothroyd has earned the right to make these decisions and forgiven a lot more mistakes than he’s already made (and a failure to strengthen the squad adequately is only arguably one of these). Above all he shouldn’t be pilloried for achieving so much more than anticipated last season and struggling with the consequences; had we narrowly missed promotion, and had another season in the top half of the second division, he might have been treated more realistically.

It’s another one of them at Charlton tomorrow… a game whose outcome will again colour much of what follows.  Just as the Fulham result destroyed our confidence at a critical time, the difference between winning and losing tomorrow is colossal in terms of how the rest of it looks.  Even a draw, away point or otherwise, would be a disappointment… whereas a win would see us out of the relegation zone and everything looking rosy, for a day at least.

And a win is not impossible… the Addicks have lost seven of eight this season to our four, and what started out as teething problems of a new manager coupled with a few unhelpful injuries has picked up a bit of downward momentum - momentum that would, one suspects, be hyped to insufferable levels if they capitulate to us tomorrow.  

Chris Powell and Dan Shittu return to their old stamping ground, albeit in Dan’s case his spell at the Valley was never much more than a watching brief.  There are no ex-Orns in the Charlton line-up, but Iain Dowie, who is finding replacing Alan Curbishley a predictably sticky task thus far, is a recent adversary, and Bryan Hughes was in the Birmingham side that we beat in the play-offs in 1999.  Star turns thus far, such as there have been, have been Darren Bent, who seems to carry much of the goal threat, and loanee keeper Scott Carson.  The highly rated Jerome Thomas is back in contention tomorrow though, as may be two of Dowie’s summer recruits Omar Pouso (he of that goal for Uruguay against England) and Souleymane Diawara.

Well, not always.  But our record at Highbury wasn’t half bad… Won three, lost three, drew one; scored ten, conceded ten in league matches.  Then there was the popular contender for bestest game ever, the 1987 Cup Quarter-Final victory.  Last time out  it took a late Kanu goal and a violent but unpunished assault on Allan Smart by Alex Manninger to earn the home side victory.

A new venue this time of course, and good record or not Arsenal away will always be a tough proposition.  It’s perhaps not fallen badly for us though, as locations on the fixture list go… only Ashley Young of our squad was involved in international action over the past week, whereas the majority of the Arsenal squad played games, with Emmanuel Eboué, Fredrik Ljungberg and Julio Baptista all picking up injuries that rule them out of Saturday.  With Lauren still out with a knee injury, William Gallas still a worry and both Gaël Clichy and Phillipe Senderos short of match fitness the home side have issues at the back.

As for ourselves, original prognoses should see Chris Powell available again, although Jordan Stewart has done well in his absence. 

The Fulham game was a catastrophe, but is done and dusted; this is a new kettle of fish altogether, with expectations and pressures entirely different to those of our last encounter.  The Arsène Wenger ten-year love in is a possible distraction for the home side, but we’ll still need all the breaks to be going our way.

It’s about time a few did, mind.

Rafa Benitez became the latest to bleat about compensation for clubs from national federations this week after Dirk Kuyt picked up an injury playing for the Dutch national side.  Anyone would think that he isn’t paid handsomely to cope with such obstacles.

I find the recent plague of whinging in this direction utterly depressing.  From my legally uneducated standpoint there would seem to be a miserable inevitability to the G14-backed “son of Bosman” legal case in which Charleroi (what is it about Belgians?) are attempting to sue FIFA for compensation after one of their players was injured in an international two years ago.  Miserable, because the only conclusion that you’d put any money on is some sort of insurance premium, probably a hefty one, being payable by International Federations if they want to use clubs’ players in international fixtures.  Whereas richer federations might be able to stretch to this (what do I know?), what seems likely is that less well-off federations will find it much harder.  This could knacker international football as we know it - which whatever the legal niceties just has to be a Bad Thing, even if it means that Alan Green doesn’t have to travel to Latvia any more.  It’s difficult to conceive of a greater blow that could be struck to world football than removing one of the last ostensibly level playing fields in the sport.

And largely at the behest of the G14  of all things.  The poor dears.  The irony is that the greatest threat to footballers’ weary legs is not international football but the grotesque Champions’ (sic) League, the one change in the fixture landscape over the last twenty years.  But of course the clubs profit directly from that.  I can’t believe the general absence of vitriol directed at this self-interest group (”the voice of the clubs”, my arse). Devoting the rest of my waking hours to a boycott of all G14 sponsors has never been more tempting.

Finally, last week, the club were able to release details of the proposed ground redevelopment, several years after they were first trumpeted.

The announcement may be regarded by some as constituting something of an anticlimax.  Elements of the plan had already been released or at least hinted at in the interim; additionally it’s scarcely possible to conceive of a plan that would have satisfied the rabid expectation generated by the intervening years of implied planning.

What we’ve ended up with, however, looks a pretty decent plan as far as one is able to judge.  Partnership with the hospital and Origin not only generates funding, it is likely to have impacted positively on the Council’s regard for the development - Brighton fans will tell you have difficult life can be without that support.  As for what we get… a functional but at least legal East Stand, Directors’ facilities worthy of the name that might, in time, attract further investment (loveable as the current Main Stand is in many ways, it was never going to pad the ego of a potential director), enhanced facilities in the Rous and the Rookery, all to a realistic budget.

There are a few ifs and buts of course.  They’ve still got to deliver on the plan for one thing, and construction contracts have come in over budget in the past.  They’ve also got to relocate folk from the Upper Rous likely to be displaced to make space for the new directors’ box.  Remembering the appalling lavatory conditions in the Vicarage Road end, one might also ponder whether the limited space at that end of the ground really prohibited improving matters.

But on balamce, and mindful too of the newsworthy clampdown on spending by NHS Trusts, there’s every reason to be delighted by the announcement. 

Unless, like my co-editor, you maintain an unhealthy fascination with the East Stand.  But quaint or not, a stand that folk can’t sit in ain’t much use to anyone…

The problem is quite a simple one, in essence. It is that “REVELATION!” is no longer a word which has any gravitas within football whatsoever. On the contrary, it has much the same effect as being loudly commanded to sit still for “A CONTROVERSIAL INTERVIEW WITH JOSE MOURINHO” during the half-time break of a Champignons League match on ITV4; that is, a stifled but heartfelt sigh. It’s a bit like going round the Saatchi Gallery in London, where so many of the pieces address themselves directly to the reactionary media for a predictably hot-under-the-collar response, leaving you, once the audience for all of this and therefore an important part of the equation, with no real role left to play. You might as well not be there.

And so, Tuesday’s Panorama documentary did indeed offer a rather effective exposé of certain unpleasant practices within football. Bravo. Backslaps all round. Thing is, it did so in the commendably, hopelessly old-fashioned belief that anyone watching - beyond those wanting to fill back pages and news bulletins with yet more REVELATIONs, of course - would genuinely give a stuff. Most of us, I suspect, are way past that point.

What is modern football, if not a monstrous, seething feeding frenzy? What fuels it, if it’s not pure greed, arrogance and infinite ego? God bless Mike Newell for suggesting that we should care because supporters’ money is involved…because, deep down, he’s absolutely right about that. Except that if we’re going to care about that, we should care about the whole stinking, ugly, rotten mess, not just a few quid here and there to oil a transfer deal. Not just fairly arbitrary rules being broken. Really, why should it make any difference to me if a manager is taking a cut on the sly? That cash would be used to reduce ticket prices, would it? Or improve facilities? Or buy better players? Or fund schemes in the local community? Nah, it’d just find its way into someone else’s fat pocket: an agent, a player, an investor, a chairman. Someone’d gobble it up sharp enough and buy themselves another 4×4, conscience clear.

Anyone who casts more than a passing glance over modern football doesn’t need to have it exposed, revealed, stripped of romance. Not necessary. On the contrary, most of us spend as much time as possible trying to conjure up that romance from somewhere, to shroud the stark reality in mystery for the duration of a Saturday afternoon, at least. It’s supposed to be fun, after all. In the main, we have no power whatsoever to influence anything ourselves, no means of triggering the drastic change that would be so desirable and so incredibly beautiful. The revolution would be televised, of course…but it’ll never happen.

So, instead, we have what football supporters have always had: a largely misguided sense of passionate loyalty to something that can’t be clearly defined. Without that, nothing much. “Football’s big business now!” bellow those with their faces in the trough. It’s a boast, a brag, a justification for all sorts of extremely unbusiness-like nonsense. Amid it all, you start to wonder where the product of all this relentless and feverish activity is, beyond mere hot air, expensive watches and stupid haircuts. And whether there’s anything left to watch except ridiculous sums of money swilling around, hither and thither, for all eternity.

Yawn.

*Or has someone else already used that one…? If so, insert some kind of convoluted wordplay involving, say, “bungee jump” and we’ll say no more about it.