As someone who commentates on the Premier League and presents two football shows Darren Fletcher is well placed to assess Watford’s start to the season. And he admits to being “really surprised by them”.

Formerly part of BBC Radio 5 Live’s commentary team, Fletcher is lead commentator for BT Sport’s Premier League coverage and hosts the channel’s Saturday morning football show Fletch & Sav as well as 5 Live’s 606 phone-in alongside Robbie Savage later on the same day.

The Watford Observer spoke to the presenter before Saturday’s game against Manchester United at Vicarage Road, having been invited to spend the morning behind the scenes of Fletch & Sav.

“I’m really surprised by them. I didn’t think they’d be as effective as they are in the Premier League,” Fletcher said of the Hornets, who were 11th in the top-flight table with 16 points from 12 games at the time of speaking. “I thought they’d have a problem in that they’d score regularly enough but wouldn’t be that good at the back.

“My recollection of Watford last season, albeit not having been at the ground and seeing them on a regular basis, is that they were really good at scoring goals and not great at the back but they’d got so much firepower that they were able to get up. If you’re the other way around coming out of the Championship you can be more effective because you can nick games, you can draw games.

“But it’s actually been the opposite. The players that they’ve brought in have made them more solid. We’ve got a graphic that we’re going to use this morning that if all the games finished at half-time Watford would be top of the table with Man United. I didn’t think they would be that effective, so I’m really surprised by them.”

As well as changing head coaches after winning promotion with Quique Sanchez Flores replacing Slavisa Jokanovic, Watford also brought in more than a dozen new players and changed their style of play.

“It’s remarkable they can do what they’ve done and it’s settled so quickly,” Fletcher said. “Normally when you bring in this amount of players it takes a while, and it did take them a little while. The first five or six games there’s a bedding in process and it wasn’t going as well as it has. But they played West Ham off the park here – a West Ham side in form – and I think they’ve got a chance to get a result today.”

And Watford very nearly did achieve a result when Troy Deeney cancelled out Memphis Depay’s goal with an 87th-minute penalty, only for the Hornets skipper to then slide Bastian Schweinsteiger’s ball into the six-yard box across his own goalline.

But Fletcher concluded: “It’s not very often you can sign that amount of players, put them together and it gels in the manner that it has. And I think the key for me is you can sign a lot of players and they can kick on and score goals but to have them as solid as they are and as organised as they are, he (Flores) must be doing a pretty good job on the training field to get them working as they are this quickly.”