Reports that Watford have a target to cut their wage bill by 30 per cent, and/or the size of their squad, are wrong – and have left chairman Scott Duxbury both angry and perplexed.

“I’m aware of the stories and they are just wrong, and simply not true. Nobody asked the club for a comment or even checked if it was accurate,” he said.

“They are untrue and I don’t know where stories like that come from. There is just no cost-cutting pressure, we have no aims to reduce costs by any percentage.

“The financial position of the club is something I documented in The Watford Observer recently. Nothing has changed and stories saying otherwise are unhelpful.”

Duxbury explained that the club and players knew what the salary situation would be this season because the arrangements were written into contracts.

“We have no need to reduce any player salaries because all player contracts have provisions in them that deal with whatever league we are playing in,” he said.

“There is no further cost cutting required. The reduction in numbers in the squad is purely for reasons where players may want to leave because they don’t want to play in the Championship.

“We don’t have targets for trimming the squad by a certain number or anything like that. If the market delivers a deal that we are happy with, that’s great. If it doesn’t, the players stay.”