Many people reading this will remember the period between November 1978 and February 1979, known colloquially as The Winter of Discontent in the United Kingdom.

Those older than me will recall greater detail, but my own hazy memories are of a strike by the binmen and TV pictures (in black and white in our house) of various other sectors picketing outside their workplaces with fires to keep them warm.

On the football pitch, it was a time when being a Watford fan was truly wonderful as Graham Taylor and Elton John were leading Watford to back-to-back promotions.

The Winter of Discontent was gripping the UK but, in a small corner of Hertfordshire, it was a time when levels of contentment for Hornets fans were high, about to get higher still and then reach levels that are likely to remain unsurpassed.

How ironic, then, that the only regime that has come anywhere near to matching the achievements of GT and Elton are currently presiding over the club’s very own summer of discontent.

I personally can’t remember a summer when the feelings among the majority of the faithful has been so gloomy, so negative and so lacking any sense of unity. It’s toxic.

It has been sad to see and hear so many supporters arguing among themselves, turning on each other, name-calling, abusing and attacking each other’s views.

No fanbase will ever be totally in agreement but in the last few weeks it’s been horrible.

Personally I find it impossible to subscribe to the extremes.

Those who sit baying for blood every time a pre-season friendly is lost or a player the club is linked to signs for someone else, as if they take delight in accentuating every negative.

And those who almost blindly shake pom-poms and sing ‘ra ra ra’, regardless of anything and everything happening in front of them. Anyone remember Iraqi foreign affairs minister Muhammad Saeed Al-Sahhaf telling the world media that the “infidels were facing slaughter” just as the US tanks rolled into Baghdad over his shoulder in 2003?

The truth of the situation lies between those two antithetical viewpoints – but even during the last few seasons, which have been dire, the dial has never been nearer the negative than it is now.

Having referred to the Winter of Discontent earlier, and gone back to the 70s, let me use something which younger readers can latch onto.

There have been huge amounts of shade thrown at Watford FC this summer, and for the most part, it’s been justified.

Aside from the £200k compensation paid to Celtic for Rocco Vata (whose signing is surely the best thing to happen so far this pre-season?), there has not been a penny spent on new signings.

Clearly the sale of Ismael Kone was another example of the player trading which the club have, to be fair, never shied away from as being key to their business model.

However, it’s not unfair to hope, even believe, there would have been some money set aside in the budget to give to Tom Cleverley, is it?

A year ago the club cashed in on Joao Pedro and Ismaila Sarr, this summer Kone has departed. That’s more than £60m of income from player trading – only a few percent of that has been reinvested.

Where does the money go? Are the club now debt-free, as was suggested would be the case a year ago? Have costs been cut? What’s the longer-term prognosis for Watford FC’s finances?

They aren’t rhetorical questions.

When the digital share issue was announced, one of the lines in the launch documents was that the club was “prepared to contribute significantly to the squad in the 2024/25 push to reach the Premier League”.

Now I’m far from feeling my glass is totally empty when it comes to Watford, but even I find it hard to type/read that line without sniggering to myself and thinking the club really had some cojones to say it publicly.

Pre-season games are glorified training matches, the results of which must be taken with a large dose of reality - a sizeable win is no greater indication of a stellar season being ahead, than a heavy defeat is reason to assume relegation is nine months away.

I’ve not seen every game, but from what I have seen I was encouraged by the shape, approach and style in which the team are attempting to play.

What did worry me was that, from what I could see, the squad was still short of new faces in two key positions (No.9 and left wing-back) and could probably do with competition in at least a couple more.

To be in that position with the new season only 12 days away is worrying. And that’s as things stand, never mind if any more players leave.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, the club had/has no intention of selling Yaser Asprilla.

But with so many rumours linking the Colombian with moves away containing figures the size of which would – as my article also stated – require the club to take a second look, then the likelihood of seeing him back in a Watford team appear slim.

To sell for a very good price is perhaps understandable, though I’d say Asprilla’s value wouldn’t go down if he stayed and played 30-plus games for Watford, who would have a greater chance of a better season if he did.

And the big question is how much of any fee would be released to buy replacements. After all, you can’t play a huge wad of £50 notes in the No.10 role…

Then there’s the fog that has hung around the future of captain and Player of the Season Wes Hoedt, further spoiling the summer.

Could/should the club be more forthcoming with updates, if only to set expectations and prevent a vacuum of information being filled with guesses which are eventually perceived as fact?

Communication is still a problem. It was when I returned to the Watford Observer two years ago, and while I like to think we have gone some way to improving it, there is still much more the club could do.

For instance, as I said earlier, pre-season games don’t overly concern me. But having said that, I don’t see any decent reason for the line-up/subs for those games to be withheld from supporters.

It’s not all been totally negative this summer, and there is a need to try and be balanced.

We have two quite stunning new kits, and a return to red shorts which so many fans have asked for.

Those kits are available without the sponsors logo too. Whatever you may think about sponsors and their logos, I don’t know of many clubs, if any, who make it possible for fans to purchase a logo-free replica shirt.

Let’s remember that sponsors pay for that prime piece of kit real estate, and I know from experience of my time working in football that most potential sponsors would do an about-turn in an initial meeting if a club said they’d like to sell shirts without a logo.

The Vicarage Road pitch, which has been the envy of teams in the top-flight never mind the Championship, is already in exceptional shape.

That may sound trivial, but anyone who was at Sheffield Wednesday last season will have seen what happens when you don’t invest in the people, equipment and technology that delivers a lush, green playing surface all year round.

Then there’s the coaching appointments at all levels. I know ‘Watfordy’ isn’t a word, but it’s the only way I can describe the feeling at London Colney now.

In Cleverley, we have a respected, likeable, successful former player who knows the club inside out.

Alongside him, two coaches in Damon Lathrope and Arman Kavaja who have a wealth of Watford experience – all three are also excellent professionals and equally good people (and I can’t judge Alberto Garrido as I’ve not met him, but those who have tell me he’s in the same mould).

The impact Charlie Daniels has had on the club’s Under-21s is evident in the progression of many of his squad to the senior ranks.

The return of Dan Gosling to work with his old Bournemouth teammate is hugely positive on many levels: excellent professional, so keen to develop young players, quickly grew a love for Watford, and approaches the game in the right way (remember his interview from two years ago?!).

Then the Under-18s have former Academy product and Women’s team coach Matt Bevans in charge, someone I got to know very well last season and who is a truly empathetic role-model for the younger professionals.

Alongside him, club legend Lloyd Doyley. It almost goes without saying that having Lloydinho back at London Colney is a great move, but the impact he can have on the teenage Hornets is underlined by the fact that he did exactly what they hope to do – progress from the youth teams to the first team.

Overseeing the Academy are Richard Johnson and Jimmy Gilligan, two more who can draw upon their own experiences to inspire the youngsters of today – and a duo who are Watford through and through, their careers moulded by the great GT.

What is actually rather sad is that just when the club has assembled a group of coaches and staff who embody all that we love and respect about our club, they arrive at a time when so much anger and vitriol is being thrown, and they are on the receiving end of some of it.

In this summer of discontent, everybody has had the finger pointed at them, and received criticism, blame and accusations.

From Cleverley and his players, through fans who hold opposing views, to myself and the Watford Observer.

At some point, all of us have been told to do more to sort things out, to put right the wrongs, to stand up and be counted, to explain what is happening, to answer questions.

And yet there is only one person who can do any of that – Gino Pozzo.

Apparently, he spent the weekend in Austria at the Udinese pre-season training camp.

 

Of course, he’s based at London Colney so he’s hardly an absent owner. But what’s he doing glad-handing with players and officials of another club? Obviously there’s a family link, but the optics just don’t look good.

I wonder if he is aware that the discontent among Watford fans has gone from simmering to boiling so hard it’s rattling the lid of the pan?

And if he is aware, is he bothered?

A year ago, to the immense credit of those fans involved, the owner faced supporters for the first time ever. That they organised an event he attended is something many considered impossible.

However, what those laudable fans could not control was what the fans asked, how they asked it and their reaction to the answers given.

So while Pozzo was there and was questioned, it was far from a grilling. Key parts of multiple questions were skipped, answers were seldom interrogated and some topics were missed altogether while other more frivolous categories were discussed.

As a very well-educated and experienced businessman, Pozzo was able to take the microphone and skip round the questions like cones on a training pitch.

What was needed – what is still needed – was a thoroughly prepared series of questions and supplementary follow-ups which dug deep into each area of interest and concern, with answers scrutinised and, where necessary, forensically tested before moving onto the next subject.

It’s what journalists do. No surprise, then, that one of the first things the owner said at the fan forum was that he doesn’t like talking to the media.

He has, though, seemed more willing to face the Italian press over the last dozen years.

 

Since that fan forum we’ve not heard a word from the owner. We’ve sat through another truly awful season, especially at Vicarage Road, had two more head coaches and Watford are rated as 5/1 shots for relegation by many bookmakers.

We’ve seen our sporting director moved into a job share with Udinese, since when he’s done far more talking to Italian media than he has over here.

Of course, some will say that chairman Scott Duxbury could say more. He probably could, and he was certainly far keener to do so before the whole ‘Rob Edwards/high water’ saga.

When he made his comments about Edwards, he believed them. He was totally committed to the new young manager.

So when Edwards was shown the door, the chairman had the rug pulled out from under his feet and everything he said back then has been derided since.

Bearing that in mind, I’m not overly surprised at his reticence to give interviews since. What that whole sorry episode showed, I felt, was that even the chairman couldn’t be sure what the owner might do next.

To be fair to Duxbury, he still makes himself available to me and is helpful. He may not be quoted very often, but he offers a valued amount of information.

In Cleverley, we have a head coach who is as willing to talk and insightful as you’ll get.

Yet he’s been accused of lying, of being a yes man, a puppet.

He’s none of those. Not even close. But because of the anger and lack of trust flying around, he’s unfairly tagged.

I feel particularly for Tom, and will defend him. He doesn’t deserve the things said and written about him by some of our angriest fans.

If it was Roy Hodgson on the receiving end of it all, I’d be saying ‘how do you like those apples’ and enjoy watching him suck it all up. His time at Watford was worthy of no defence whatsoever.

But Tom deserves to be cut some slack, and given some latitude. He’s had nine games, two-thirds of a pre-season and, thus far, only been given loose change with which to strengthen his squad.

Gino Pozzo did many wonderful things for Watford Football Club, and comparisons with other recent owners of the club are simply not warranted.

Ask anyone whose time at Vicarage Road goes as far back as when a red builder’s hat was de rigueur, and they’ll tell you that while the current situation is far from enjoyable, it’s infinitely better than those truly frightening days when even having a club to get angry about wasn’t a given.

However, the direction of travel over the last three years has been very definitely and rapidly down, and it’s come to a head with this current summer of discontent – which currently has the portents of becoming even darker if Cleverley cannot work some wonders on the pitch.

And I believe we’re now at a point where everyone has to join together. A fragmented fan base that attacks each other or those within easy reach is helping nobody.

There is truly just one person we need to hear from.

For all we know, Pozzo may want out but is seemingly hoping to sell an Austin Allegro for the price of an Aston Martin.

And until he sells up and moves on, it’s increasingly difficult to feel any connection with the owner: he seemingly cares not what anyone thinks, feels no need to justify anything and is comfortable letting everyone else take the blame.

The role of the Watford Observer, and my job, is to be a conduit between the fans and the club. In that sense, I have failed. The owner has never spoken to me, and I have not been able to provide answers that fans want and need.

That may not change, but it doesn’t mean – as the club’s local paper – we cannot say we feel we all desperately need to hear from the owner.

The pillars upon which football clubs are built are the fans. The pillars at Watford are crumbling.

It’s time to talk Signor Pozzo, to answer questions and to be prepared to be challenged.

The silence has to end. Don’t become Watford’s version of Nero.