Watford will not make the same mistake they did last winter in prioritising games over a busy six-week run which begins on Saturday at Newcastle United.

The Hornets’ road trip around England starts with a long trek to the North East which signals the start of a run of 10 games in 38 days up until the trip to Manchester City on January 2.

Last season, then-boss Walter Mazzarri essentially threw the game against an out-of-sorts Manchester City in mid-December, resting key players including Troy Deeney ahead of a weekend six-pointer at Sunderland.

Those kind of decisions can look inspired if they come off - but after losing both games, the Italian was left with egg on his face.

And Marco Silva, his successor, has no plans to second-guess the Hornets’ performances over the packed festive season.

“You need to see game-by-game how our players are,” he said. “We play on Saturday and then on Tuesday we play again, we’ll need to understand how well our players recover. 

“Some players will be doing this for the first time under us, they need to recover and then we’ll take decisions what to do from there.

“Our focus is only on the next game. We don’t plan our season to prioritise – you never know what games you can win. 

“Maybe everybody was saying we would beat Stoke, we were in good form and we played them with people thinking we would win - but you saw the result. 

“We know what’s happening during the month of December, we can prepare something but the next game is the most important for us.”