Where Are Our Ex-Players and Staff Now?

They just cannot defend - got some good quality up front to score.

 

Silva gone now
Strange feelings about it
Not particularly pleased about it or feeling sorry about it
I still think the villain was the owner of Everton for the "illegal"" approach, and Silva did not say the right things and our form nosedived
But seeing what happened to Everton, maybe our form would have collapsed anyway

 

I do know we do not love Brenda, but, how hysterically funny would be if Leicester won the title on the last day and Herrr Klopp was carried off the pitch a jabbering idiot, and all the Scousers crying their eyes out thinking their world had come to an end

 

Moshiri should do the right thing and go now too for the whole tapping up affair and a complete lack of judgment on bringing the wrong man in.

 

The start of a story on SSN saying Everton want Vitor Pereira who’s at Shanghai SIPG as their new manager. But he’s in a job already, right Moshiri?

 

What difference would that make

 

Ron Saunders that big bustling centre forward who played for us in the mid-sixties died today at the age of 87. Probably the best player for us who transferred into a very successful manager.

 

I didn’t know he played for us, but remember him as a kid at Villa. RIP.

 

1964-5 he played 38 games for us, scoring 17 goals. The following season he only played one game before being transferred to Charlton. In 1969 he was the Norwich manager, and Villa manager from 1974 for about eight years I think.

 

And then managed West Brom/Birmingham too!

Not related to Watford but Jim Smith has also passed away at 79 - I guess we will lose a few of the managers from GT's great era who will join him in the management hot seat in the sky.

 

Bless him, Mark. Remember him well. Wasn’t he at Oxford at a time when we were oft compared as smaller clubs punching above their weight?

 

Layun on for Monterrey!

 

Interesting chat with Andy Snr, who has been going to Vicarage Road for over 75 years. He alerted me to this:
https://www.watfordfc.com/teams/first-team/shipwright-how-things-have-changed
And said how Mr Shipwright talks about Mickey Benning (I think I’ve got the name right!) who Andy Snr went to school with. Dad said that Mickey was going to be signed by Tottenham but his Dad wouldn’t let him sign because Mickey had a good apprenticeship “in the print”. Dad’s Dad worked for Sun Printers, hence the lingo! Dad said Mickey should really be remembered like Nigel Callaghan, a great man known largely only to the fans of his club, not wider, because he put the ball in “for the glory boys to put it in” (to quote Dad). Interested if any of you remember Mickey so I can relate that to Dad.

 

Of course I remember Mickey Benning very well, and did mention on here that he had just died. He was an out and out winger, unlike a modern one who has to know all about tackling back. He was fast and as you Dad says he certainly knew how to cross a ball onto the head of Holton or Uphill. Like Cliff Holton he was only a part-time player, doing a shift in the morning at the Sun and Gravy, before turning out for the team in the afternoon. He only ever played league football for Watford for just three full seasons, but with him on one wing, Freddie Bunce on the other one, there was a goal glut in the year of promotion that none of us who witnessed it will ever forget.

 

Dad loved that you knew of him, ofh.
He wondered next if anyone remembers ‘Gurney’, who was a butcher, and would come on at halftime and dribble with the match ball (left on the spot by the ref ready for the second half!) down to one end and score to huge cheers, before he replaced the ball and went back into the crowd!

 

I remember someone doing just that, but would not know who he was. My memories of halftime go back to when they would put the latest scores up on lettered boards that were hung on the fencing around the outside of the dog track. With the aid of your programme you could see how the teams that were in the latest relegation battle with you were doing. The other halftime memory goes back to the days when the Watford Prize Silver Band came out onto the pitch, marched from one end to the other a couple of times before the ten minutes were up. If you were on the Vicarage Road terrace, by the time they were down by the current Rookery you had no idea what they were playing. Most of the time you could wander down in front of the wooden Shrodells stand to be on the cinder bank if Watford were attacking that end second half. I have often wondered if I stood next to Elton as he describes standing down there.

 

Read this out to Dad. He laughed at the band not being heard, and remembered all you said. Although later, he remembers an LP of ‘South Pacific’ being played incessantly before the game and at halftime. He said you would hear a pause when they turned the record over!

 

Dad used to be on the terraces below the Shrodells stand, and remembers ‘Mr Happy’, a man in mac and trilby, who stood near Dad and my Grandad, and watched the game but was implacable to any goals or anything that might move any mortal being!

 

Micky Block died last month. He was more of a bit player for us but is remembered by the old folk at Brentford. He was in the Chelsea youth team with Jimmy Greaves and Barry Bridges.
https://www.brentfordfc.com/news/2019/december/micky-block-rip/

 

Layún won the Mexican legilla with Monterrey.