Feel free to throw the world’s oldest cup competition for money, but don’t expect the fans to applaud you for it.

Anyone who thinks that the FA Cup doesn’t matter should have been in the away end at The Den yesterday. In 20 years of supporting Watford I have never seen the players receive such a toxic reaction at the end of a match. There were ten minutes of non-stop booing from the majority of the 2500 travelling fans and it was difficult to find a single one who still believes manager Walter Mazzarri should keep his job.

We’ve sat through woeful defeats home and away to Stoke, a loss at Sunderland that dragged us closer to relegation trouble and a 4-1 home loss to Spurs which should have been 14-1. All of these losses were more damaging to the Watford business and the unambitious goal of Premier League survival than yesterday’s defeat, yet Millwall was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Why? Because the manager wantonly destroyed all the supporters’ hopes for the rest of the season. Some of the most dreadful football in the league was just about tolerable as long as we had the relief of a cup game every three weeks, but now there’s absolutely nothing to look forward to. Staying up when we were 7th in November? Give me a break.

Walter Mazzarri, with his seven changes, was far from the worst culprit when it comes to disrespecting the FA Cup. That accolade goes to Jurgen Klopp in this round and Eddie Howe in the previous round. But unlike the monolingual Italian Watford boss, both those managers have change in the bank with supporters, even if Liverpool were booed off by an Anfield crowd that almost never boo their own team.

None of that is to say that Mazzarri was wrong to field the team he did. He will go home, get a pat on the back from the owners and keep his job so long as he doesn’t lose a Premier League game to a relegation rival in such a pathetic manner.

As a fan, I understand the team selection. I understand that the business is set to earn over £100m for Premier League survival next season and a manager who jeopardises that for a cup which offers minimal financial return will be for the high jump like Louis Van Gaal.

But as much as I understand it, I simply don’t care. The club’s ambitions as a business do not always have to be the same as a fan’s ambitions for his or her club.

It won’t be much of a sell to future generations if all Watford supporters have to say for our club is, ‘once upon a time we finished 16th in the top flight playing the dullest football imaginable’.

That doesn’t quite measure up to tales from the previous generation of our run to the cup final in 1984, a memorable comeback win over Kaiserslautern in the UEFA Cup, or a League Cup match where we were 4-0 down against Southampton in the first leg and came back to win 7-1 at Vicarage Road.

If your club won’t seize the moment when they are safely in the top flight rolling in the dough, then when?

I’d place a decent bet that if you asked Wigan and Portsmouth fans whether they would have traded winning the FA Cup for another five years making up the numbers in the Premier League, the answer would be a pretty unanimous ‘no’.

Maybe Watford will somehow turn things around in the league, produce champagne football and secure a top half finish, but so what? The nature of the Premier League is that any bottom half club knocked out of the cup in January will either be in a relegation battle or play four months of glorified friendlies where the performances are pretty irrelevant because either way we have to start again at zero next season.

It’s good enough for the business, but it doesn’t have to be good enough for the fans.

Thanks Walter, but it’s time to say arrivederci.