Liverpool's manager Bob Paisley made a confession to Graham Taylor after the match back in 1983 when the Hornets won and secured second place in the top flight. “People call us a passing side and we are, but only when we are 3-0 up and then we pass sides to death,” said Paisley.

Graham recalled that in September 2000, when the Hornets recorded a 3-0 win over Crewe Alexandra and the Watford boss admitted he had never relaxed until the third goal went in, three minutes from time.

“Crewe play what is termed good football and we fell into the trap of trying to match them. It was a mistake. Cut them open, lift the crowd by peppering in some shots. After two good away results they were expecting us to win, so they sat back and waited but we needed to lift them and excite them. Had we played our normal game, we could have had that victory sewn up and then we could have passed them to death for the last 30 minutes,” he said.

Taylor’s Watford were given a label of being a long-ball side, but in many ways, that after-match reflection on playing Crewe, gave an insight into Taylor’s philosophy. Shots and goalmouth action was what he wanted because the crowd was enlivened by such action. When you have the opposition by the throat, plunge the knife in and then you can try some fancy stuff.

I remember sitting in front of Daily Mail columnist Jeff Powell in the Watford press box one afternoon in 1982 as the Hornets were heading for promotion to the top flight. Wilf Rostron went down the left and some 15 yards from the goal-line, looked up.

“Whack,” said Powell as Wilf hit the ball towards the centre. “Crash” said Powell as Ross Jenkins climbed up and headed the ball down to a colleague.

I found his cynicism interesting, particularly in the light of the subsequent furore that descended on Watford when they took on the might of the top flight. I have watched many players go down the right or left and “whack” the ball into the centre.

They can be playing for sophisticated footballing sides, but it is not deemed “whack” and “crash”. They are crossing the ball and someone is attempting to head it down or goalwards.

So a forward pass to Ross breaking our to the right, which reached him and allowed him to control the ball and turn and play it back, was called “hoofing” or “hit and hope”.

It saddened and frustrated Graham that his football was dismissed; that hard work and closing down was described as “rough-housing”, “mauling” or “bullying”. He believed a team was at its most vulnerable when in possession in its own half, and so he sought to win the ball back in the opposition’s half, closing down and harassing the defenders into errors. You see it in every match now, and the commentators speak admiringly of the application. They don’t talk of bullying or mauling the opposition. The likes of Ballotelli are criticised because they do not undertake such work, whereas Ross and Luther et al worked at closing down 35 years ago.

Graham was always looking at tactics, tweaking this and that. I recall at West Ham, when he played John Barnes and Mo Johnston up front and took the Hammers to the cleaners one evening. Watford fans voted the performance the Display of the Season? (Remember that award? Another victim of the trio of Simpson-Boothroyd-Ashton). Graham did not play a big striker that night against the Hammers centre-half, Billy Bonds, who was all at sea against the nippy duo.

I had to laugh to myself that night when I heard Jeff Powell acknowledge to a colleague: “Yes they have changed their style. I can see that.”

My point is that had Mo Johnston been 6ft 4in and played exactly the same way, Powell would have deemed it the same old Watford, because labels stick. However, Taylor used his tactical acumen and put in fleet-footed, smaller men, so the style had changed, apparently, although Watford still looked to break quickly.

It became something of a football myth and the qualities of Barnes and Nigel Callaghan and the speed and ingenuity of Blissett were forgotten.

I saw Ross Jenkins last month and he was unaware that the myth had developed to include the fact Taylor played a big striker, Ross Jenkins, who used “to throw himself about, bullying the opposition”. In his toilet at his home in Javea, he has a framed copy of his booking against Brentford, circa 1976. The reason it is given a place of honour is because it was the only time he was booked in a professional career at the sharp end of the game stretching over 16 years.

The summer Watford were dubbed a team without a midfield, Les Taylor was voted Player of the Season: a midfielder.

There is no doubt Watford looked for the early ball, and I recall Graham saying how sides, when losing and approaching the last minutes, tended to launch the ball upfield in an effort to score. So the passing game is no longer valid, he asked? Even now you can hear the fans on the television, berating their players for passing the ball from centre-half to full-back and then back again, when they are losing and time is running out. They want the ball up the sharp end.

When Dave Bassett took over in 1987, on pre-season tour, we had a match in Finland. After the game and the training session, Kenny Jackett (a member of Watford’s “invisible” midfield) came in and bemoaned the fact that they were now going back 20 years with Bassett’s tactics. Not, five or ten, but before Taylor to an earlier decade. He should have passed that observation on to Jeff Powell.

This article was first published in Friday's Watford Observer.