The foundations laid by Chris Wilder have been built upon by Valerien Ismael, and as a result the hard work done by the club’s Academy in developing a player like Ryan Andrews has seen the defender sign a new contract at Vicarage Road.

It would be easy to forget the role of the club’s Academy system in taking Andrews from a young schoolboy through to the club’s Under-21 team, where he then performed well enough to get an FA Cup debut under Slaven Bilic in January before Wilder gave Andrews a run of league games at the end of last season.

Ismael’s arrival has further accelerated Andrews’ progress, and the new contract shows the head coach and all at the club believe in their homegrown talent.

“Ryan Andrews has a lot of quality but he’s not at the end of his journey,” said Ismael.

“With this new contract we now know that we will have time to work with him. He’s already going the right way on the right path.

“He’s an Academy product and is the new face of players from within Watford, and I’m very pleased he has got the new contract.

“Ryan has many qualities. He has physicality and he is very fast. He’s extremely competitive, and is able to play every three days at a very good level.

“I think he needs to work tactically on some situations on the pitch, but that is my job to work with him. Technically, he needs to work on his first touch and to be more decisive in the final third.

“We need more crosses and assists from him, and maybe more goals. We know he’s able to score goals and he can contribute much more to the team that just defensively.

“These things take time, and are what we work on with him. We go through things with him on the training pitch, we go through video analysis with him, and then he has time to reflect.

“We’re delighted that we can continue to work with him, because we believe he has the possibility to become a top defender.”