Ramon Vega has delved into Watford’s inability to click into gear under manager Gianluca Vialli throughout the 2001-2002 campaign, claiming that their failure to gain promotion was rooted in the players’ difficulties to embrace the Italian’s tactical innovation while jealousy between certain teammates did the rest.

Watford’s Premier League ambitions swiftly turned into an uphill battle to even stay in the division and Vega pins the blame on "too many new things" as the club brought in 14 new players that summer in an attempt to break with the past.

Eager to spearhead the Hornets to the Premier League after a two-year absence, Vialli was backed by chairman Sir Elton John in the transfer window as the club’s summer arrivals included household names such as striker Marcus Gayle, AC Milan legend Filippo Galli, South Africa international Pierre Issa and Vega himself, a fresh treble winner with Scottish giants Celtic.

Besides Vialli, who had won six trophies as a player-manager with Chelsea, also had a new backroom team in place as the Hornets ushered in a new era on and off the pitch.

“I think that Gianluca was too far ahead of what the team was," said Vega. "In the team we had experienced players like Filippo Galli, Allan Nielsen, myself…we had good experienced players but that is not enough because it was more about having all these players connected together, and that wasn’t the case, which was the main issue that season.

“All thing considered, the club had a new manager, new staff and too many new players, another big hurdle to adjust to. It was just too many new things in one go and that potentially was the biggest problem we had. It would have been more simple to add one player at the time.

“When Gianluca was at Chelsea he was not just a player but also a manager, then suddenly at Watford he was the manager. First of all, it was strange to have such a young manager at Watford, but you could see, he had ambitions. He had the so-called ‘Italian way’ which I knew extremely well from my time at Cagliari, such as preparation before the game, Italian staff, nutrition, preparatori Italiani, tiny camps, everything was structured and done the Italian way and super new for a club like Watford at the time.

“He brought with him a completely new way of thinking, where you had to look after your body, be careful what you ate, all of that, the tactics, the strategies, the tactical awareness on the pitch. Everything was new.

“The problem? Most of our players had never even played in the Championship and found it difficult to adjust to a new way of thinking and playing.

“It would always take time to (learn) to play into that system and that was the biggest challenge Vialli had, for the players to buy into his style of play and his way of seeing football.”

But that wasn’t the only obstacle the former Chelsea manager had to overcome at Vicarage Road as the Hornets ended the season in 14th position.

Throughout the campaign it quickly dawned on Vega that Watford had no sense of togetherness and were anything but a ‘united squad’, but rather a collection of individuals where everybody ‘thought selfishly’.

“We weren’t really a team. Everybody thought about what was best for himself individually, not for the team, selfish attitudes,” he said.

“Some of the Watford players had never previously played in the Premier League, and for them playing with us was ‘something’.

“Those players were envious that we older players earned more than them. Honestly, I have never seen anything like that, in the Premier League you don’t have it to such an extent. It’s a shame because even in the Premier League you have players who earn less than others but even there I never witnessed something like at Watford. I repeat, there was a great amount of jealousy and envy and the squad was not united.

“When things like that happen and someone looks at you thinking, ‘he earns more’ instead of concentrating on football, then you waste mental energies.”

Vega ends by sharing an anecdote about the Watford dressing room. Unlike at most clubs in world football at the time, there wasn’t really ‘only one man in charge’ who made the speeches and rallied the troops.

“Our leader? Given his age, I’d say Galli but his English at the time wasn’t the best so it was difficult and most of the time I was his translator”, Vega chuckled.

“Filippo had just come to England and was learning English so sometimes I helped him and translated from Italian to English. People often came up to me but there were too many new players who joined Watford at the same time and there wasn’t really one leader who was holding a speech every time.

“It was not as if we had one season under our belt or spent 2-3 years together already and you start to crystalie who’s the leader coming out of this. I think we were all leaders in that dressing room.”