Different reporters, but predictably the same sort of questions.

Head coach Slaven Bilic faced the media this morning and was once again asked about job security and whether he needed to quickly get Watford secured in the top six or up to the automatic promotion places, in order to keep owner Gino Pozzo onside.

“Look, first of all the owner wants exactly the same as I want,” said the Croatian.

“That’s why I came here, to achieve that success.

“It’s too early to start doing the calculations about where we will be in the league if we win this game or that game. You have to set out to win every game, one at a time, and if you can’t win the game then get something out of it.

“Now is not the time to be thinking how far we are from the top or the play-off positions or whatever. Just play football and concentrate on the next game.”

Bilic said there probably was a bit of the ‘new coach bounce’ about Sunday’s performance and victory at Stoke, but he was quick to tell the players they achieved the result, not him.

“There was an element that a new manager arrived, the players want to take their chance,” he said.

“But my job is to make sure that this energy never drops. I can’t ask the players after just a few days to do things they’ve never done.

“So what the players did on Sunday was something they mainly did themselves. I told them ‘you did this, I didn’t do it’.

“I will tell the players to look at what they did a couple of days ago, and then go and do it again. Do it again and do it even better.

“For me, football was and still is a simple game. Of course, it’s easier to talk about and harder to do it. But I don’t like when people try to make football too complicated. It’s a game.”

The head coach emphasised that away wins are great, but they have to then be backed up by performances and results at home to start a run and keep it going.

“In today’s football, you need momentum. If you get three points or even a point, you want to follow that up. It’s good to play well also, but it’s very important to stay on that wave of confidence.

“Everything is built on confidence. You now have the big guns, like Liverpool, talking about confidence, and in a club like Liverpool you are talking about players you expect to be confident no matter what. But it happens to world-class players just like anyone else.

“Losing confidence happens to all players at some time, regardless of who they are. Not everything can be good all the time, so when you have confidence you want to keep it and build on it. You want to see confidence flourish.”

As well as confidence and momentum, Bilic said anybody, in any walk of life, will not succeed without one key aspect to their attitude: commitment.

“I learned in my life that whatever your job, commitment makes the difference. It’s not that commitment is important – no, commitment is everything.

“No matter what job you do, if you’re a journalist, an actor, a footballer or whatever, you’ve got to be completely committed. No quality can compensate for commitment.”