Although admitting Watford has changed its way of working and new manager Rob Edwards will be supported “through hell and high water”, chairman Scott Duxbury also said the club would still have made the manager appointments it did last season.

“I say that because we believed that each coach we appointed would find the magic formula with what we believed was a talented squad of players,” he said. “But it became clear as well, during the season, that we had to change our thought process. It’s not just about changing coaches. We had to find a coach who shared our values on work, with the way we want to play and with the direction we want the club to go. And then it’s about sticking by that coach and believing in him.

“Communication is key. We had a number of different coaches who were not communicating to the supporters, not communicating to the players and we just didn’t have a smooth, fluid way of working. The way we communicated wasn’t at the level we needed to drive the club forward, and Rob Edwards gives us that.”

To be fair to the coaches, do you think last season you had assembled a squad that was as committed to the club as they should have been?

Duxbury repsponded: “I believe it is down to the coach to get that commitment from the players, to get that togetherness and to get things working. For a variety of reasons, that didn’t happen.

“Roy Hodgson’s away record was excellent: points at Man United and Burnley, wins at Southampton and Aston Villa. But he never got it together at home. Is that the coach’s fault? Is it the players’ fault? Or is it a problem because the culture at the club wasn’t right? I believe it was a culture problem.

“I don’t think you can just blame last season on a coach or a player. The culture was wrong. To fix that takes time, takes patience and the belief in an individual you feel can truly create that culture and show the right leadership.

“If the coach creates that culture and gets his team to buy into his message they will fight for him and for each other. You can’t just do that overnight, by constantly changing coaches and thinking ‘he’ll do it, no he’ll do it, no he’ll do it’. You have to find the right person, show belief in that person and then work with him to get what we’ve been searching for.

“The model of constant change brought periods of success, but it’s clear it doesn’t deliver the sustained success that we want. That is why we have changed our philosophy.

“Were we immune to the criticism we took for changing coaches? No, and it was fair. Do I think sometimes we don’t get enough credit? Yes, I do. We hear lots about the amazing things other clubs have achieved in the media, and yet we’ve achieved too and we don’t get credit for it.

“The reason we don’t get credit is because the media focus on the changing of our coaches.

“We want our supporters to be proud of their team and their club. I don’t want our supporters constantly reading and hearing the media ridiculing us because of the regular changing of coaches. I’ve remained proud of the club for the last ten years but I can also see why the supporters haven’t been. I want them to feel pride again, and that’s what has driven change.”