It’s time to issue a rallying call. It’s time for all of us to put on hold whatever we may think and feel about Watford Football Club now and do what it is we’ve always done, and always will: support them.

So many of us went home after Saturday’s draw with Wigan feeling dejected and disappointed – emotions that we’ve all felt far too often this season, and for most of the last few campaigns.

It’s certainly been a story of shockers not champagne moments for Watford fans.

On Sunday a look at the league table showed the Hornets in 10th, having failed to beat the team bottom of the pile who hadn’t paid their players and staff.

Incredibly though, despite such an underwhelming afternoon, Watford ended the weekend a point nearer the play-offs than when it started.

There is still hope, slim though it may be. And while there’s hope, we have to harness it and embellish it with our own passion and determination to try and help Chris Wilder drag this team to a place in the league that anyone without connections to WD18 will understandably think is beyond us.

The Watford play-off hopes are a patient that still has a pulse, and although the vultures may be gathering it’s too early to start picking hymns for the funeral quite yet.

Of course, very many of you will have serious concerns around finances, the direction the club is heading, the high turnover of head coaches and much more besides.

But until the mathematicians tell us that all hope is lost, it seems to us at The Watford Observer that we must urge everyone with a love for our football club to put aside those differences, quell the anger, calm the frustration, pause the doubts – and get behind Wilder and his players.

Yes, they have had, and not taken, ample opportunities to earn our support already. Yes, we are now coming to the end of two consecutive seasons of purgatory. And yes, it may all be in vain.

The thing is, if we as supporters give up, we lose the high moral ground. We forego some of the right to point fingers. We do the thing that currently is the biggest single complaint levelled at the players: we stop performing and trying.

By taking a deep breath, not rounding on those who don the yellow shirts and instead – probably against our better judgment – stand with them cheek by jowl, then we are doing all we can. We are presenting a unified belief and march forwards as one.

And remember, if ever we needed to enter a battle as one giant galvanised, undivided army, then our very next game is the occasion.

There will be a time for questions and a demand for answers. On that subject, after more than a decade of not facing the music, we now have the promise of an occasion when owner Gino Pozzo will talk to fans, face to face.

We know not when, or how, or where, or even who will be able to ask the questions. Because of that, it’s easy to understand why so many fans are sceptical.

But surely any progress, however small it may be, is better than none at all? Of course there is an EFL obligation to do such things, but when other clubs fail to pay their players or are under transfer embargoes, it would be easy for Watford to commit the lesser crime of not holding a fan engagement event and hope to get away with it.

And rather than round on those fan groups who are being consulted over how this event should take shape, let’s wait and see what it looks like, how it is managed and what level of information and transparency it delivers.

The success, or not, of that event will - just like the last throes of this season - be presided over by the fans as judge and jury. We will all have ample time to make our voices heard and our opinions felt – and we, as the local newspaper, will facilitate that.

But for now, the Watford Observer has one message as the season pauses before the last eight games commence: suspend your discord, disbelief and disapproval and use whatever energy and passion you have left to give Watford FC all you can while we still have hope.