Just as every club has a local rival who are referred to by their supporters as “the Scum”, and just as every club’s supporters seem, with a straight face, to label themselves “long suffering” so it is true that every club has a favourite manager, a legend against whom all successors tend to be compared. Nottingham Forest springs to mind as a club where this process of comparison and the height of achievement of the benchmark have been of particular recent hindrance.
However few clubs’ supporters have had to endure their hero being torn to pieces in the glare of an unforgiving and irrational national spotlight. And as recent incumbents would surely testify, there is no position in British football to which less leeway is afforded, upon which media scrutiny is more intense and of which expectations are less realistic, than that of national team manager.
Let us begin by nailing our colours firmly to the mast, for there is little dispute as to Graham Taylor’s credentials amongst Watford supporters, least of all those who, like ourselves, were introduced to football during his first spell at the club.
His record speaks for itself: promotion from the fourth to the first in five seasons, a second-placed finish in the club’s first season in the top flight and four solid mid-table finishes thereafter, a Cup Final, an improbable UEFA Cup run… and then coming back ten years later and racking up two more back-to-back promotions. These achievements, however impressive, only tell part of the story, though.
What elevated Graham Taylor above the level of most other successful managers was not what he achieved but how he achieved it. He built the football club in his own image; it was proudly proclaimed the “Family Club” but in reality it was much more than that, a club without cynicism. With Taylor at the helm, Watford was allowed to dream, to submit to an innocent belief in infinite possibility. It would have been childish and naïve were it not for the simple fact that history records the dream coming true not once, but twice.
The football played so often shone with the same innocence. With a few exceptions, the insatiable attacking and consequently extraordinary scorelines were not such a prominent feature of his second spell in charge, but talk to any Watford fan of a certain age about his first spell and they'll tell of a time when we were not just successful, but brilliant and dashing and thrilling and heroic too.
Crucially, and unlike most who followed in our footsteps, we rose from the depths not by being ugly and negative. We rose by playing football that appeared to be exploiting a loophole in the laws of the game (surely attacking like lunatics and trying to score thirty-seven goals in every match was, at the very least, not sporting?) and that delighted as many as it offended. In following a script that could've been based on any imaginative school playground kickabout or a fan's fanciful daydream, it was a defiant and triumphant return to the true meaning of "the people's game". A rude awakening indeed to discover, post-Taylor’s first spell, that football didn’t always involve your team pelting full-tilt at the opposition for fifteen minutes without catching a breath.
So. That’s us then, that’s our position. A somewhat prejudiced perspective from which to judge Taylor’s much-derided spell as England manager, it would be fair to suggest. No less prejudiced, however, than the position dictated by national consensus: that Graham Taylor was a Bad England Manager, a failure. All debate, opinion and mitigation is eroded by time, all that is left is that one undisputed easily-digested fact. That, and memories of the documentary, and of Geoff Thomas’ shot against France. Proof. We don’t all choose to remember it that way.
Taylor didn’t come in to the job at the easiest time, taking over a side whose over-achievement in reaching the 1990 World Cup Semi-finals – an uncomfortable first round followed by fortunate wins over Belgium and Cameroon – had been eclipsed by the gusto, drama and heartbreak of the semi-final performance and penalty shoot-out in Turin. An unrealistic marker had been set, and for the retiring Shilton, Butcher and ultimately Robson, only in Tony Adams, already with 17 caps, was there arguably an heir apparent in waiting.
The finals tournament of Euro 92 was reached by a narrow margin, albeit undefeated. Qualification was finally confirmed by a draw in Poland from a tough four-team group also featuring the Republic of Ireland, soon to scale heights in the USA, and a rapidly improving Turkey.
The tournament in Sweden was the last eight-team event before UEFA’s expansion contributed to the doubling in size to sixteen for 1996. As such, in going out in the last eight, Taylor’s side recorded no worse than a par by the markers set down by England teams before and since, even if reaching the Quarter-Finals is still mystifyingly lambasted as “failure” by the national media.
Indeed Taylor’s competitive record stands up well to scrutiny. Three competitive defeats over his two campaigns, all away to strong sides, is comparable to the scorecard of his contemporaries, and mirrors that of Bobby Robson’s first two campaigns for example. So why were the knives so clearly out?
His club record clearly didn’t help him. Undisputed success at this level had nonetheless yielded no silverware that ranked above the fourth division trophy and he had no “big club” experience – Villa, in seemingly terminal decline when he took over, couldn’t then be regarded as such even when squinting furiously. Whether this limited his effectiveness or not, it was a ready-made stick to beat him with. Some, now News of the World correspondent Rob Shepherd in particular, did so readily.
His player selection also came in for criticism, but again popular recollection of this is somewhat distorted by history. Certainly Geoff Thomas, Tony Daley and arguably Carlton Palmer’s selections aren’t cast in a favourable light by the passing of time. During Taylor’s reign, however, just as much criticism was leveled at the inclusion of the likes of David Batty, Dennis Wise and particularly Teddy Sheringham, all of whom continued to flourish at international level after his departure.
Just as much stick was afforded to his treatment of perceived senior players. Most memorably, Gary Lineker’s substitution as England chased the game against Sweden back in Euro 92 has been ludicrously misrepresented both then and since. England needed a goal and surely the retiring Lineker, one short of Bobby Charlton’s goalscoring record, was not a man to substitute in such circumstances?
What’s often forgotten is that Lineker, hampered in part by illness affecting his fitness leading up to the tournament, hadn’t scored for the national team since the previous February – the France game in which Geoff Thomas tried that shot, a game which England won 2-0. Indeed, both of your authors came roughly as close to scoring as Lineker had, despite watching the tournament back in England. Alan Smith meanwhile, who was brought on to replace Lineker, sent a header narrowly wide in the final minutes in Sweden. Shepherd and friends chose not to let this colour their favoured interpretation; nor indeed has Lineker, whose cheap jibes at Taylor and Watford during his second spell at Vicarage Road lessened his standing amongst Hornets fans considerably, whilst betraying a man who could really do with watching videos of his performances at Euro 92 for a bit of perspective.
Failing to qualify for the World Cup in 1994 was always going to be impossible to recover from whatever the circumstances, but once again it’s not difficult to identify mitigating factors if one chooses to do so. A qualifying group including Poland (again), Turkey (again), the Netherlands, Norway and San Marino was a big ask, particularly since Norway, at their most direct and effective, quickly claimed the first qualification spot with seven wins and two draws in the first nine matches.
Both games against the Dutch were memorable and in neither game did England get the breaks; in the home tie, England were two-up in twenty minutes before Jan Wouters smashed Gascoigne’s jaw with a stray elbow. Gascoigne, who only played in a losing side four times in 57 caps, was subbed at half time and the Dutch pulled back to 2-2. Then famously in the return game at de Kuip in Rotterdam, referee Karl-Josef Assenmacher failed to send off Ronald Koeman for felling David Platt, failed to award a penalty, and then, to rub salt into the wound, subsequently permitted Koeman to retake a free kick at the other end, with which he ultimately knocked England out of the tournament.
And much of this without what would otherwise have formed the spine of the team; Shearer, Gascoigne and Adams all had long spells out of contention during Taylor’s tenure.
Taylor obviously made mistakes as national coach, and would doubtless concede as such. Whilst the infamous Channel 4 documentary probably changed few opinions about Taylor on either side – it wasn’t screened until six months after he left the England job - it surely hardened those that already existed. One might wonder why a manager under pressure would provide access to such a risky enterprise. Perhaps his largest mistake was to assume that we were all on the same side.
Meanwhile, the position of your average Watford supporter during this period was a difficult one. Defending the inclusion of Barnes over Waddle (whose omission during an unsuccessful period, in common with every excluded player ever in such circumstances, awarded him status as The Answer in the eyes of many) was one debate that was warmed to; we were well practiced at that one. Indeed, in playing Barnes at the back of a diamond that saw Gascoigne operating behind the front two during the World Cup qualifiers, Taylor arguably coaxed more consistent international performances out of him than either Waddle or Barnes had managed up to that point.
But it was a backs to the wall existence, and watching an England game with anyone other than the most trusted was a risky business. Certainly the 2-2 draw with Holland was one of the more acerbic pub visits that one of your authors has experienced; only the Villa fan at the end of the bar was fighting the same corner. For the others, the practiced position of “England should win every game” was adopted; national considerations more detached than club loyalties but somehow simultaneously less forgiving. This wasn’t just another England manager being lambasted though, albeit to a greater extent than Bobby Robson had before the Argentina World Cup, for example. This was our Graham, the head of the family.
In late August 1994 one of Taylor’s first away trips as manager of Wolves was to bring his new side to Vicarage Road, his only return as an opposing manager. It’s difficult to imagine that rival supporters in previous games had been anything but hostile, but the Vicarage Road end, a new stand where the uncovered terrace had celebrated Taylor’s first coming, rose to a man, woman and child to the appreciative surprise of the Wolves support. The hairs on the back of the neck still stand up now at the memory. A season and a half later, Taylor would return first as General Manager and then as team manager to take Watford back up two divisions. But that was impossible to predict, an unheralded future. For now, Graham just raised a hand in grinning acknowledgement as Vicarage Road bellowed a familiar, unbowed tribute.
“One Graham Taylor”.
