With the start of the Barclays Premiership season now just under four weeks away manager, Aidy Boothroyd and his Watford team are getting ready for the biggest challenge of their lives.
Trips to the likes of Crewe Alexandra, Brighton & Hove Albion and Millwall have been replaced with daunting looking excursions to Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal et al.
However, the mercurial Golden Boys boss is nothing if not meticulous in his planning, and he for one is looking forward to establishing himself as a top flight manager and hopes his side can hit the ground running as he explained exclusively to the League Managers Association.
“The first thing is that I'm a Championship manager that's got to prove himself in the Premiership. It's the same with all the players, they're Championship players that have to prove themselves in the Premiership. So we start with having to establish ourselves early on.
There is so much to do, I've already brought players in but there are others that I need to get into the system, so that we have a good chance of doing something this year.
We've got to get fit, we've got to do our individual work, our unit work and then we've got to get to our team stuff. We'll have meetings on discipline and on how we are going to go forward. There's a multitude of things we've got to get done in the next 4 weeks and that's why it's a great time for us.”
Boothroyd is clearly aware that the style of attacking play that worked so spectacularly last season may have to be modified in the Premiership, but nevertheless he remains positive about his side's chances, and hopes his team can emulate some of those before them who had been fancied to struggle at English football's top table.
“I tend to look on the positive side of things, I look at the teams who've gone up and done remarkably well. Like Ipswich, when they finished 5th, Bolton, who've done it over a period of time, Charlton, and last year Wigan and West Ham. We'll be looking to do what they did. If we focus on anything else that's probably what we'll get. So, we look at the positives and at what can be done. We'll work as hard as we did and go beyond what we did last year, because this is a whole new level, we're up against a lot tougher opposition. We've therefore got to be better, so we've got to focus on being a better team.
You wait for the fixture list and you look for an easy game, it was the same last year, but you never get easy games. We've got a tough start, Everton away, West Ham United at home and Manchester United at home.
I honestly don't know how we'll do, I know what I expect and want us to do but what I believe is achievable by us as a group of people needs evidence to back it up. That's why we need to get results in these 3 games, we need to pick up points early on.
We'll be positive and try to win matches and at the same time we'll not be as ‘gung ho' as we were last year because we'll get punished a lot more severely. I've sat down with the coaches, Dave Hockaday and Keith Burkinshaw and we've analysed where we did well and where we didn't do so well and where we might get punished. We know the areas we've got to shore up and the areas where we've had success that we've got to continue to get.”
Interview reproduced courtesy of www.leaguemanagers.com