It’s not that long ago at all when Watford were among many pundits’ picks for a season of struggle, or even relegation.

Before a ball was kicked, the Hornets were largely written off as potential relegation fodder and while the fine start to the season hasn’t turned them into promotion contenders, it has shown they may be a fair bit better than many expected.

“We use that as a little bit of motivation, those predictions that we were receiving before the season starts,” admitted Tom Cleverley.

“By no means do these first five results mean we can afford to get complacent and that we should have a completely different set of targets.

“It’s been very pleasing though, and yet on the face of it you can see we lost our Player of the Season and our Young Player of the Season.

“We’ve not reinvested too much but I’m more than happy with the business we’ve done and with the additions we’ve made to the squad.

“I feel certainly after the last couple of days, the squad is in very, very good shape.

“I think there will be a lot of Championship clubs who work to a similar model, where you might lose two of your best players but you look to replace them with two potential stars.

“That is what we’ve done here and I like to think I can be the coach to develop those young players, as well as getting short-term results on the pitch.

“We’ve made money in the process and we are building something on the pitch that I feel could be special.

“Now we just need to keep working hard in the same direction and keep proving those early predictions wrong.”

One aspect of the winning start that has particularly pleased the Watford boss has been how they have shared the goals around.

Fifteen goals scored in five games, and nine different scorers.

“That is something I would openly say I am really pleased with,” said Cleverley.

“When we came in last season we managed to sort out the team defensively and conceded far less goals, but we weren’t a threat going forward.

“We then worked very hard on attacking threat in pre-season and maybe didn’t see the fruits of that in our pre-season games – but we are now.

“It has given us belief as staff in the work we’re doing and you can tell in the players that they are gaining belief.

“As an attacking unit we look dangerous, and the goals are coming from everywhere which makes it hard to stop.”