Tom Cleverley has described Watford head coach Xisco Munoz as “a breath of fresh air” and said he is already impressed by what he has brought to the club.

Despite being relatively inexperienced as a coach, having only managed Dynamo Tbilisi for a short period before arriving at Vicarage Road, the midfielder who faces his former club Manchester United in the FA Cup this weekend believes the new boss will have a long and successful career.

“He’s a proper breath of fresh air,” said Cleverley. “He’s positive, upbeat, he’s laughing and joking but on the pitch, he’s serious, he’s trying to get us in more of an attacking mentality.”

That attacking mentality is something Cleverley hopes the team can develop with the midfielder accusing the team of being “predictable” going forward. He hopes new signing Philip Zinckernagel could help Munoz unlock their potential.

“As a team, I think we can gel together a lot,” he said. “We are a bit predictable at times and obviously Phillip looks really good in training and maybe he can be that player who can knit the midfield and the strikers. We’ve got things to work on, we know that because we don’t want to be sixth in the league we want to be top two.”

A game against his former club will of course remind Cleveley of the most successful period in his career, when he won the Premier League title with the Red Devils.

However, he claims he is not lacking motivation this season despite the challenge being a less glamorous one.

“You want to right the wrongs that happened last year and I’m massively motivated to do that,” he said. “That’s basically the be all and end all. It never crossed my mind to leave the club and I just want to get them back and do everyone proud this year.”

Although he has only worked with Munoz for two matches so far, Cleverley believes he is the right person to be leading them into the remainder of the season and thinks there is a lot for him to learn from the new coach.

“I’m pretty impressed with how he’s preparing the team to say he’s inexperienced as a manager,” he said. “I think the individual video clips and things like that, he’s really good with that and something that I would take in to my coaching career if that was ever to happen.

“He’s great at that and you can see he’s definitely looks a long term manager for the future.”

Cleverley may be trying to learn as quickly as he can from Munoz, given that the Spaniard is the sixth different head coach the team has had in the past season and a half. While Cleverley said he could see some benefits from changing the coaches, he did think it would help them create a brand if they were able to work with one for a longer period.

“Every time a new manager comes in here, the players automatically have that extra desire to impress the new guy,” he said. “But long term it’s hard to get a way of playing or philosophy because you are changing managers so often. Short term, it has positives, but long term maybe you’re better having a process.”