Five league games into the new season and an earlier than usual first international break means time for the coaching staff at Watford to look back and reflect on what has happened since they arrived in the summer.

Of course, there are always jokes about Watford, their head coaches, and the penchant for making a change during international breaks.

It’s certain that Valerien Ismael will still be in charge when the next game against Birmingham City comes around on September 16, but how does the Frenchman view his time so far?

“It depends which side you want to see. I’ll try to explain one side, which is my side,” he said.

“I came to the club and it was about shifting everything and to change the mentality, to reshape the squad and to implement a way to play.

“It was very intense in pre-season. We put in a lot of work and I think we can see that on the pitch at the minute.

“We can see that something happened, and we see that we create a lot of chances every game.

“If you look at the games, if we beat Blackburn, if we beat Plymouth, if we beat Coventry, then everyone will say it is a great start.

“I will say that we didn’t play well in the first half at Stoke, but even there in the second half we should have been able to take a point.

“We have some strength in the squad, we see something in the squad. So now we need to adjust.

“We need to stop the mistakes, there are too many mistakes.

“We have our striker now, so we have two more weeks to work him. Players are coming back: Jamal Lewis can come back in, today was Sierralta’s first game back after his injury.

“Our need is to get all the players on the same level and I think if we get that picture when everyone is all on the same level, then we can talk about going to the next level where we win these games.

“At the minute we are able to put in performances with consistency, but now for sure it is all about getting points just to build that feeling of confidence that we need.”

One thing the Watford boss feels very strongly is that this season’s Championship is tighter than ever, and we are unlikely to see a team pull away as Burnley did last season.

“Did you see the results again today? It’s a clear statement about the Championship this season,” he said after Saturday's draw at Coventry.

“Nobody will be able to fly I don’t think. Everyone will have a bad run, everyone will have a good run.

“It will all be about the consistency you can put into your good runs to make sure you can win with consistency.

“You can see it will be difficult. Leicester lost at home, Norwich lost. It is very, very difficult.

“It will be more difficult when you consider that the January window will come, so teams that want to will go out and invest a lot of money.

“At the minute it is all about just getting you into the right position.

“If you want to get to the top at some point you are going to need to go on a run, but at the moment I think everybody is trying to find their strength.

“We haven’t had a lot of games so far so we can’t talk about tiredness or fatigue.

“In three or four months we will have a clearer picture about the Championship and I expect that it will be tight until the end this season.”