Watford boss Nigel Pearson admitted he can’t stand fake crowd noise and compared it to American comedy shows with canned laughter.
This week the Premier League came back behind closed doors with numerous new systems being put in place to improve the experience for players, staff members, and supporters watching from home.
The implementation of artificial crowd noise, which clubs have the right to turn on while the ball is out of play, has been one of the most controversial changes.
During a friendly weekend against Brentford, Watford trialed the sounds over their loudspeakers at Vicarage Road, and number one goalkeeper Ben Foster was left frustrated by the random interruptions.
“It upset me. We ‘re all agreed we would rather not have it,” said Foster, after the match.
During a press conference on Thursday, Pearson reiterated the feelings of the English shot-stopper, while disclosing that when they host Leicester on Saturday, Watford won’t use the device again.
He said: “What we have to do is just deal with the situation, our stadium is going to be the same as any other stadium-no fans. It’s a real shame, let’s be honest this is supporters game. Bringing our fans here would be cool, but they aren’t so it’s the way you ‘re able to cope with the situation. Our players will hopefully be able to isolate all of the emotional sides of it and deal with a sterile environment.”
“We ‘re not particularly interested in-I don’t know if you like American comedy shows, I can’t stand them with canned laughter-but we don’t want to create an area where there’s a false atmosphere here. We have to tackle our situation and know that our fans are behind us a lot. We know that anyway, we are a club that has an identity in the community, and the way the club supported that community was very, very good during the pandemic. We just have to try and win as many games as possible and cope with an extraordinary collection of situations in any club in the same situation,” he added.
