New football season in Britain- same old faces.

New football season in Britain- same old faces.

After the first three games of the new Premier League football season, the familiar names are there at the front of the queue, the same old faces and names still very much instantly recognisable. Before long the furious debates will be held and those by now customary egos will take centre stage. If all goes according to plan then the likelihood is that one team may well run away with the Premier League emerging with the top prize by several swimming lengths.

At this stage it may be impossible to find an obvious indicator as to how things might turn out but by this time last season Manchester City were already preparing their acceptance speech. By last Christmas the Premier League had been won, done and dusted, clinched handsomely without any of their challengers anywhere to be seen and a sense of shuddering anti climax setting in. In the second week of May City were Premier League champions because nobody could possibly catch them. They were, quite literally in a League of their own.

We may be in the season's infancy and inevitably Liverpool and Chelsea are setting the pace with a triple whammy of victories under their belt. But hold on, look who's behind them. It's Watford. Yes Watford. Now this may be the time to rub our eyes with bemusement because Watford aren't supposed to be in the top four of the Premier League and yet they are.

 Watford are intruders, impostors, party poopers, supposedly average, totally unfashionable, also rans, not to be considered as serious contenders for anything let alone the Premier League title. Or even a place in the Europa League and, quite possibly, a place in the Champions League. That's plainly wishful thinking, too daft to contemplate. Even in Watford's wildest fantasies this is not the way things will pan out. Surely, they'll wake up and conclude that this isn't the set for an epic Hollywood movie. This is real life or is it?

Just over 30 years ago the late Graham Taylor, freshly scrubbed from his managerial apprenticeship in the lower Leagues at Watford, guided, cautiously steered, gently encouraged and eventually revolutionised a football club who had been heavily snoring in the old Fourth Division. He had at his disposal a workmanlike group of players including Wilf Rostron, Nigel Callaghan, John Barnes, Luther Blissett and Ross Jenkins.

Vicarage Lane was, and still is, Watford's very traditional looking ground, an eminently respectable piece of Hertfordshire turf. Watford were a side of very few ambitions and just survival on their immediate itinerary. Then Taylor arrived with few fanfares, few guarantees and no promises. There were no airs or graces about Taylor. He knew what he was looking for and for a number of seasons he did exactly what others might have thought impossible. He dragged Watford from the muck and bullets of the old Fourth Division to the aristocratic staircases of the old First Division which is now the swanky Premier League.

And then in one astonishing season, Watford almost won the old First Division championship or became the League champions in the old currency. They finished second to Liverpool and the club's supporters must have felt that the thrilling roller coaster ride that had taken them to the giddy heights of fame, celebrity and global recognition would never stop.

In the years that followed there were moments of leanness and hardship for Watford. When the dark clouds of struggle and mediocrity began to gather for both Graham Taylor and the fans, the Hertfordshire club began to wave the white flag of surrender. There was a painful sense of drift, a breakdown in momentum, the awful realisation that a feared collapse was about to be met head on whether they liked it or not.

For a whole succession of seasons Watford's rather allegedly ugly, predictable and one dimensional approach to the game had been rumbled quite disturbingly. Taylor belonged to the old school of football where the long ball, up and under and flatly functional game still ruled the waves. Taylor told us that all of those fancy dan, tippy tappy, pretty passes would never work in British football.

 It was all very over elaborate and unnecessary, superfluous to requirements and besides who ever won the League with all of that attractive approach work and the kind of inventive football that remained on the ground. Who needed arty sophistication when you could always rely on that unsightly long ball? But to his eternal credit Taylor stuck by his guns refusing to budge from his principles and perhaps deludedly believed that the way forward was very much onwards and unfortunately upwards. This is where Taylor and the critics parted company because the purists wanted a completely different end product.

Undoubtedly though Watford still seemed like some very dated anachronism, footballing dinosaurs, footballing cavemen who scribble their very indecipherable carvings on walls scratched by a thousand messages. Watford were stubbornly independent, insistent that their way was the right way. The ball had to be transferred to the forward line as quickly and urgently as possible in case it caught light or burst unexpectedly when a Watford attack had been picked up by a passing helicopter.

Now though Watford are a brand new creation with lethal forwards such as Argentine Roberto Pereyra, English red blooded types such as Will Hughes buzzing around like the club's controversial mascot Harry the Hornet, the cultured Jose Holebas full of cool,calculating thought processes, Daryll Janmaat, a Dutch delight always available for the right pass and Etienne Capoue delivering an experienced eye on the game, Watford were firing on all cylinders.

This morning Watford, under the quiet but very businesslike management of Javi Garcia, have crept into third place in the Premier League almost unnoticed. They remind you of one of those studious sixth form school boys with copies of Tolstoy's War and Peace in their pockets. They are neither rebels, or a major threat to the established status quo and the chances are that the bigger boys around them will muscle in on their act. Maybe Watford will find their level and drop into their very precious comfort zone.

But the fact remains that the legacy that Graham Taylor left behind will always be remembered if only for what seemed at the time like the wrong reasons. Recently, Sam Allardyce seemed to find a Taylor imitator with his very blood and thunder, cavalry charge style of football, football laced with sweat, hard work and unfussy pragmatism. Allardyce may well have found a kindred spirit in Graham Taylor because both men had no truck with all those elegant flourishes or neat touches.

Still here we are with three games into the season and Watford are sitting happily third in the Premier League and nobody seems to mind much as long as they don't get any big ideas above their station. On Saturday against Roy Hodgson's disappointing Crystal Palace, Watford did indeed resemble the club's hornet design. There were the broad yellow and black stripes that looked as if they had plenty of venom, a side of bite but now craft.

It suddenly occurs to you that their once very extrovert chairman Elton John may have to remind all of us that Watford are indeed still standing after all these years. From the very bottom of the old Fourth Division to the dizzy heights of top flight football Watford are living proof of a team that fully embraced the rags to riches story. At this rate the Elton John piano may be required to celebrate a new chapter in Watford's history. This may be more than a pipe dream. Stranger things have been known to happen but you never know. Let's hear it for the Hornets.