New Watford boss Walter Mazzarri has demonstrated very good tactical ideas during his coaching career in Italy and his best work has come when he has not been under pressure.

That is the view of Italian football expert Tancredi Palmeri after Mazzarri was confirmed as Watford’s head coach on a three-year deal.

The beIN sports correspondent believes Mazzarri’s tactical awareness was responsible for helping turn forward Edinson Cavani into a prolific finisher at Napoli.

Palmeri said: “At Napoli for example Cavani was signed by them for €15 million and he was already a great forward at Palermo when they signed him. But he wasn’t the centre forward scoring lots of goals.

“It was Mazzarri’s intuition to put him at the centre of the attack because he was playing as an external forward in a line of three. It was exclusively Mazzarri’s idea so this is a man with very good tactical ideas.”

Watford Observer:

Mazzarri’s coaching career has been a success in Italy with the exception of his most recent job at Inter Milan. He was sacked in November 2014 with the club ninth in Serie A after struggling to handle the demands of being at a big club.

But Palmeri says Mazzarri has proved himself whenever he has coached teams where there has been less pressure on him.

“His problem and issue is when he had pressure on then he was too engaged in his tactical ideas,” he said.

“But as I said when he was given time and had no pressure he could always work in the right way.

“Unfortunately at Inter he flopped in a very noisy way. He not only flopped he started to find excuses that were ridiculous.

“The last month at Inter overshadowed all the good things he did before.”