Former England and Aston Villa boss Graham Taylor calls for stability after becoming Watford chairman (From Watford Observer)

Former England and Aston Villa boss Graham Taylor calls for stability after becoming Watford chairman

2:20pm Friday 8th January 2010

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(14)

By his own admission becoming a chairman was not something Graham Taylor particularly wanted to do, nor envisaged doing, but that is the position Watford's most successful ever manager has agreed to take up – for the next six months at least.

The only person to lead the Hornets into the top-flight of English football twice, reach Europe and an FA Cup Final became interim chairman at last month's annual meeting of the club's parent company, Watford Leisure Plc, following Jimmy Russo's dramatic resignation and on Monday he was confirmed in the post until June 30 when the situation will be reviewed.

"It's something that I haven't planned for," the 65-year-old admitted when he spoke to the Watford Observer the following day. "I came back to Watford a year ago as a non-executive director, which gave me some independence, certainly at board meetings. I'm not in the position of talking about what's happened in the past year but obviously it's very apparent that the board became split and from that moment on I now find myself agreeing to be chairman until the end of season so that we can get hold of some stability.

"The reason I have to say that is I hope the supporters understand that when I chose to leave football from Aston Villa I did so because I wanted to do other things, even though a lot of them are associated with football behind the scenes. Obviously people will be aware of my summarising for Radio 5 Live, but a lot of things I do – like Radio 5 – they're contractual situations, so I can't suddenly just walk away.

"There are a number of things I do which don't hit the public eye. I'm an ambassador for a firm called Precision Training which promotes grass roots football and there are a number of other things to which I commit myself, not least writing a regular column for the Daily Express.

"The point I'm trying to make to the supporters is I never expected this to happen but at the moment the club does need a period of stability off the pitch and I'm prepared to take on the role as chairman from now until the end of the season, but because of my other commitments it is absolutely impossible for me to be at every game.

"I haven't been at every game and that was acceptable when I became a non-executive director. I get a DVD of every game so I see every match, but I don't want people to say if I'm not there 'why is he the chairman?'.

"I can't break the contract I've got with other things I'm doing in my life, I just can't walk out of those contracts. So that's the reason why at the present time we're just leaving it until the end of the season and just seeing what happens and what develops."

While the former England boss will, as fans would expect, keep a close eye on what happens on his watch, he will not be a full-time chairman, instead preferring to let those with day-to-day responsibility for running the Hornets get on with their jobs.

"I want to be what I call a non-interfering chairman, certainly from the playing point of view," Taylor explained. "Since I've been here Malky [Mackay] knows if he wants anything he only has to ask, but I'm not bombing up to the training ground and things like that.

"The reason I say that is when people talk about my association with Watford Football Club, obviously it goes back to those wonderful years, particularly those first ten years when Elton John was the chairman.

"And whatever people may say and think about Elton he was fantastic to work for because myself, as the manager, I then employed Bertie Mee, an older man with great experience as my assistant – and I still maintain that was one of the best signings I ever made – Eddie Plumley came as chief executive and Caroline Gillies, who we took out of the English Tourist Board, and she became marketing manager, and the four of us were the management team.

"In Julian Winter we have a first-class chief executive and there are a number of people working behind the scenes at Watford who are first-class people, who have Watford's interests really at heart. And what I and the rest of the board are hoping to do, and certainly I as the chairman, we'll let them manage and let them run the club and let them take responsibility.

"That's exactly what happened to me when I came all those years ago and there was never any question if things went wrong of me, as the manager, saying 'it's the chairman's fault'. I was given the responsibility to run the football side of the club.

"I've seen it change so much over the years but why do we appoint people to become managers and then interfere?"

Asked if he liked the idea of becoming a chairman, or saw himself in the post, when his football management days came to an end, Taylor responded: "Not really. Before I left Watford to go to Aston Villa I think Elton's view was he would have liked me to stay on at the club and ultimately became the chairman. But sometimes that's not possible because you're too long at one place and you have ups and downs.

"It's another experience for me obviously. Within the league I've managed at every level, along with the international scene, and I've had bags of experience now – football has been my life. Obviously this will be a new experience being chairman of a football club but I think I've got things to offer in terms of how I see things now.

"I see things have changed and I think some of the things that have changed are not necessarily the way that Watford should go. You have to be strong enough to say this is what we are as a football club, this is what we believe in.

"Everybody wants to get back into the Premier League and of course that's what we will want to do but at the present time, if I was to be perfectly honest, you look at our ground and you'd never think we'd been in the Premier League, would you?

"We are not a big club," the chairman continued. "We are a town of 80,000 people, we're in a catchment area of half a million people who include Tottenham supporters, Arsenal supporters, Chelsea supporters, Queens Park Rangers supporters – we share that half a million with many others. But not being a big club doesn't stop you thinking big. And that is what we did all those years ago. But times have changed and if there's anything that shows how things have changed it's Sunday’s game at Chelsea.

"I've seen Chelsea play probably about eight or nine times live this season and whatever people say about Watford, I'm telling you that is one of the best displays I've seen by Chelsea of one-touch football, of moving the ball about quickly and making sure their possession is ending with shots in.

"They're strong, they're physically big and when we're saying 'a Watford player didn't do this, a Watford player didn't do that' it's different now from all those years ago.

"There's a bigger gap, we've all seen the gap developing and so we have to be sensible, we have to be right about it. It doesn't stop us thinking big, our aim will be to get back into the Premiership, but at the present time there's a long way for us to go.

"What we've got to do is stabilise ourselves, but even when we finished runners up in the old first division and got into Europe we were a family club, we were a community club, we were a community-based club so that when football teams came to us it was like they were playing against the whole town, not just John Barnes or Luther Blissett, they were playing against Watford.

"We need to make sure we never lose that because it's one of the great strengths about us, that it actually enables us to say 'this is our club, this is what we're about' and I think we have to take a step back at the moment and get some stability about ourselves on and off the pitch.

The former Lincoln City, Aston Villa and Wolves manager added: "If people read these comments as negative what I can say to them is they have no idea who I am, they just don't know me at all.

"All I'm saying is we just need this period and it was very much like when I was here before. We got promotion from the fourth [division], promotion from the third and then we were three years in the second division before we actually got into the first division. That was a learning process for us.

"People forget that in our first year in the second division we finished 18th and were nearly relegated and that was very good for us. It was good for Watford and it was good for me that actually we didn't go straight up, we spent three years in the old second division and we were nearly relegated. It made us rethink certain things, it certainly made me rethink certain things, and I don't think things like that have changed."

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(14)