I don’t know if it is football in general – the continuing failure of the National team, the increasingly hard to stomach Sky TV hype and equally nauseating commentary, Andy Gray (both of them), the wonky kick off times etc. – but (whisper it) I think I am losing interest a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I will most likely renew my season ticket next year, and if there is a game on the box or wireless I will probably watch or listen, but I don’t think I feel quite the same any more. This feeling has no doubt been magnified by Watford’s form of late, but I feel like something has been knocked out of me. I feel a bit sad really.

Take this game. At the start of the season, when going through the fixtures and mentally assigning a result to each one, this one would probably have been down as a draw. Most of us would have been happy with a 1-1 with recently relegated Charlton before the season started, so why did I struggle to get any pleasure from our hard fought result yesterday?

There were definite positives – Nathan Ellington is off the mark, Al Bangura is back playing football with his future seemingly assured, Jay Demerit continues to prove to be one of the footballing finds of all time and but for a rare Richard Lee mistake we may well have taken all 3 points. So why am I finding it so hard to take any enjoyment out of it?

I’ve never liked the rain, so the thought of trudging back to the car in the wet may have taken some of the gloss off, but I don’t think that’s it. I’m getting older, and as you get older you get grumpier and more demanding, but I don’t think that’s it either.

It is down to this bad feeling I have. This sadness. A sadness about football in general, and a growing sadness about my club. Our club. There are a broad range of issues that concern me, issues that I won’t go into here, but for one reason or another I am really struggling to see where we are going, let alone how we are going to get there.

It is my feeling that there are players at Watford who epitomise all that is wrong with football. It’s not that they are lazy, not that they aren’t bothered – for me it’s just that there are too many out on the pitch week in and week out and in the squad that aren’t bothered enough. I’m a Watford fan, and have been for long enough to realise that Arsenal we most certainly are not. However I had also thought that we were a club that championed hard work and honest endeavour – and always would be. It doesn’t feel like that is the case at the moment, and I think it’s this making it hard for me to enjoy trips to Watford.

I don’t care if we are crap, I really don’t, but our team must always, always, always at least be seen to be “giving of their best”. Do that and I’ll enjoy it. Don’t and I won’t.

I’m not.