Watford Quiz

Watford were formed by a merger in 1898, spent 24 years at Cassio Road and have played at Vicarage Road since 1922. The Hornets nickname did not arrive until 1959-60, when the club dropped blue for gold and black and supporters voted the new name in. Elton John became chairman in 1976, with the club in the bottom tier of the Football League, and a year later they went looking for a manager. Graham Taylor was at Lincoln City, where he had become the Football League's youngest manager in 1972 and won a divisional title in 1976. His first season at Vicarage Road, 1977-78, ended with the Fourth Division won, eleven points clear of Southend United. In October 1978 a Third Division Watford side went to Old Trafford in the League Cup third round, trailed at half-time and won the tie with two Luther Blissett headers after the break — the club's first ever win over Manchester United.

Promotion took them into the First Division in 1982, and they finished 1982-83 as runners-up, behind a Liverpool side playing out Bob Paisley's final campaign in charge. Blissett topped the First Division scoring charts with 27 league goals that season and was sold to AC Milan for £1 million; he managed five league goals in Italy and was back at Vicarage Road a year later. The 1983-84 season then ran on two fronts. In the UEFA Cup, Kaiserslautern and Levski Spartak were beaten before Sparta Prague ended it in the third round, 2-3 at Vicarage Road and 4-0 in Prague that December, 7-2 on aggregate. With Blissett in Italy for the whole of that season, Taylor had gone north in November for Mo Johnston of Partick Thistle, a forward with 41 goals in 85 games in Scotland behind him, and Johnston answered with 20 league goals in 29 games in his first year.

The other front was the FA Cup. George Reilly, the 6ft 4in centre-forward, headed in a John Barnes cross after eleven minutes at Villa Park to beat Third Division Plymouth Argyle in the semi-final — still the only time Plymouth have reached that stage. Wilf Rostron never made the final: the left-back was sent off at Luton Town in April by referee Roger Milford after a tangle with Paul Elliott, and the suspension left Les Taylor to lead the side out at Wembley. Everton won it 2-0, Graeme Sharp scoring before half-time and Andy Gray, the Scotland centre-forward who had joined them earlier that season, adding a second still argued about: he appeared to head the ball out of Steve Sherwood's hands. Howard Kendall's side ended a 14-year wait for a trophy that afternoon and won the league title the season after. Then Watford's came apart. Johnston went to Celtic in October 1984 for around £400,000; Barnes, signed from non-league Sudbury Court for next to nothing, left for Liverpool in 1987 for £900,000; Taylor followed that May, to Aston Villa. Relegation arrived in 1987-88, the season straight after he went, with Dave Bassett sacked in January and Steve Harrison unable to save a top-flight run that had begun with promotion in 1982.

Taylor came back from managing England for the return nobody had scripted: Birmingham City beaten 7-6 on penalties in a 1999 semi-final that finished 1-1 on aggregate and ran deep into sudden death, then Bolton Wanderers beaten 2-0 in the play-off final, Nick Wright's overhead kick landing just before half-time and a second arriving in the closing minute. That August Tommy Mooney won 1-0 at Anfield inside the opening quarter of an hour, past Sander Westerveld, though the Premier League season around it brought six wins from 38 and bottom place on 24 points. Aidy Boothroyd went up through the play-offs in 2006, Jay DeMerit — an American centre-back in non-league football in England a few years earlier — scoring the opener in a 3-0 win over Leeds United, with Ben Foster on loan from Manchester United for the promotion campaign. The Pozzo family, Udinese already theirs, completed their takeover in June 2012, and their first head coach, Gianfranco Zola, reached the 2013 play-off final by way of a semi-final settled in one passage of play: Manuel Almunia keeping out Anthony Knockaert's stoppage-time penalty, Troy Deeney finishing the counter-attack seconds later. Deeney was captain when promotion came in April 2015 under Slaviša Jokanović, and Odion Ighalo scored 15 Premier League goals the season after, striking with Adlène Guédioura at the Emirates to knock the holders out of the 2016 FA Cup. The 2019 run ended at Wembley again — Gerard Deulofeu twice as Watford came from two down to beat Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-2 after extra time in the semi-final, then a 6-0 defeat to Manchester City in the final. Every answer here explains itself.

The Watford set runs the full range — easy starters, a medium core, and hard questions a devoted fan has to think about.