Former Watford owner Elton John has said he is “upset and disappointed” by the club’s form following their 4-0 home loss to 22nd-placed Burnley.
The Hornets sit 20th in the Championship table having lost three straight league games and five of their past six.
In a now-deleted response to a club post on Instagram, external, the global music star said: “As a lifetime supporter of Watford FC, I am very upset and disappointed at the decline over the past few weeks.
“I really feel for the supporters who have to watch this.”
Watford appointed Alessio Dionisi as their manager in June on a two-year contract, with the Italian becoming their 12th head coach, not including interim bosses, since the end of the 2020-21 season.
His side negotiated a challenging start to the season well, beating Southampton at Vicarage Road and then drawing away at Wrexham and at home to West Ham.
They have picked up points in just one of their subsequent fixtures, beating Preston 2-1 at home last month.
They were 3-0 down inside 25 minutes on Saturday, going on to lose to a Burnley side who had previously won one league match in 2026, against Crystal Palace in the Premier League in February, and had not won an away fixture in almost a year.
Childhood Watford fan John has had two spells as the owner of Watford, initially overseeing their rise from the fourth tier to a second-placed finish in Division One and European football under Graham Taylor in the 1970s and 1980s.
Returning to takeover the club in the mid-1990s, he re-appointed Taylor, who took the club into the Premier League in 1999 with successive promotions.
The 79-year-old, who released a book, Watford Forever, in 2024 that detailed his relationship with the club and has a stand named after him at Vicarage Road, relinquished control of his boyhood side for a second time in 2002.
Former Watford captain Troy Deeney also spoke of his fears for the club on X, external, saying “the writing is on the wall and has been for months”.
Deeney, who scored 140 goals in 319 appearances for the club, listed “removing talent”, “allowing for poor standards” and “a lack of accountability” among the issues with the club, stating in a follow-up post, external that he was “never bitter, some times angry at what I see”.
The Hertfordshire side have not finished higher than 11th since relegation from the Premier League in 2022.
Speaking on an official club podcast this week, chairman Scott Duxbury said: “We’ve got a lot of players who people on the outside will say shouldn’t be here. They’re here because they believe in what we’re trying to achieve but this has to be a season where we achieve it.
“I’m tired of seasons where we say on paper we’ve got a great team and we fade away. This year, no excuses, we’ve got to achieve our potential and have a successful season.”