OF course there will be those, who read last week’s column, arguing that Michael Jackson, David Bowie or even the Rolling Stones were as big as the Beatles and will plead the case. However, while various statistics can be dragged out, the plain fact that it is extremely unlikely that any present or future music star will come anywhere near matching the impact of Elvis Presley or the Beatles. For that matter no one is likely to match the lyrical impact of Bob Dylan. Those peaks have been established because they were in at the beginning.

I can quite understand the frustration of modern fans who will be inclined to dismiss and denigrate previous music titans, but they do so out of preference. The impact on the world of that trio of musical acts will never be matched. The world was taken by storm and musically, as well as culturally, was never the same again.

I think there is a reasonable case for saying the same with reference to Graham Taylor at Watford. Hopefully, one day the Hornets will play in the Champions League, win the title or the FA Cup and the fans at that time will claim it is the greatest era in the club’s history.

But it will never match the impact of what Taylor did to Watford, taking them from Fourth Division also-rans and, as he put it, “attempting to plant” the Hornets in the top flight. Indeed, any subsequent success, will owe much to that halcyon era for Taylor and his men provided a much-vaunted platform from which future eras will be able to launch their upward moves. They will not have to try and make ends meet from the base of a ramshackle ground with 4,000 seats, two wooden stands heading for compulsory demolition and a resented greyhound track running round the pitch.

It was a mind-boggling transformation both in its planning and implementation.

Those in any doubt as to the special qualities and significance of the era were provided with a reality check within a couple of months of Graham’s departure in May 1987. Of course it was and is still fashionable to lay much of the blame at Dave Bassett’s door but he did not appoint himself. That decision was taken by Elton John with support from director Muff Winwood. The rest of the board was presented with a fait accompli.

Bassett had his attributes and his strengths and when you add up the achievements, he gained as many promotions as Graham. But then so too has Neil Warnock.

There was a logic in the choice of Bassett as Taylor’s successor but Elton lost sight of what made Watford special - something he helped to create - as he looked to bring in a bit of steel and street-smarts.

The disciplinary record, carefully fostered by Graham over the ten years up to 1987, went out the window. The Hornets were no longer to be mentioned in the same breath as Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest as the leaders of “fair-play football” in which bookings were a rarity.

The commitment to the community began to slip and within a few years the Vicarage Road outfit was going through the motions of being a family club – developments that were in no way down to Bassett but the overall leadership, in which some went to sleep on the job.

Yes, the brutish, stripped-down model of the so-called Watford Way, and the tedious offside game were part of Bassett’s transformation on the pitch. More recent recruits David Bardsley, Richard Hill, Marc Falco, Steve Sims and Kevin Richardson were shown the door very quickly and they were replaced by lesser talents, preferred for their functionality.

The club spiralled downward, the trend accelerating under Jack Petchey’s uninspiring ownership and we experienced 10 seasons of being a very ordinary and largely unsuccessful club. Some recognised and identified the malaise but lacked the power to change the direction.

Graham’s second era followed but he was hampered by the debt to Petchey (foisted on the club by the new ‘owners’) and the lack of drive from the rarely involved Elton. In a sense Taylor’s two successive promotions were a remarkable achievement because he did so on a shoestring and was caught relatively unaware by his own success, finding himself in the top flight with what was basically a third-tier squad.

I have read and heard it said that Graham was not bitter about his experience as England manager. I think he was and he certainly reflected that in his conversations with me at the time, but he learnt to shed bitterness and left it behind him.

He once told me the occasion that really hurt him was his axing from Wolves. Here was a sleeping giant of a club that he had taken to the play-offs and then lost en route. The disappointment in the dressing room was devastating and Wolves struggled to find their way back. Before he had a chance to turn things round, he was axed and so his hope of regaining his credibility at a big club and planting them in the top flight was stolen from him.

So when he did come back to Watford, he did so almost reluctantly. He knew he had to change the ownership of the club if there was to be any real progress and believed he could achieve that more easily from the inside. The second era had its highs but it could never match the quality and the ambience of that first 10 years. We loved and revelled in the charge to the Play-off Final and victory at the old Wembley Stadium was one to savour but the fact was, we had been there before back in the days when we never thought that remotely possible.

And when we got to the top flight, we struggled, whereas back in 1982-83 we had stormed to second place.

Ask the young fan who delighted in Graham’s second coming and the or she will remember those two promotions fondly.

Some people felt that way about Oasis, but in the pop pyramid, they weren’t within in five divisions of the Beatles.