Watford chairman and CEO Scott Duxbury has described the club's promotion to the Premier League as the biggest achievement in his career.

The financial constraints of dropping down a division, coupled with the added pressure of the global pandemic meant that the odds were stacked against the Hornets, but their win against Millwall on Saturday confirmed they would be returning to the top flight at the first time of asking.

Speaking to the club's matchday broadcast Hive Live after the game, the chairman explained just how difficult things had been throughout the last season with no matchday revenue due to the coronavirus outbreak and said the achievement meant "everything" to him.

"I genuinely believed we would do it [get promoted] but for it to actually arrive and the manner in which we did it with the stress, a 1-0. It's surreal. It's the finest moment I've had in football," said Duxbury.

"Relegation's tough as it is, but when you have a worldwide pandemic, you have the Coronavirus, it nearly brought the club to its knees and to be able to navigate through that, and come back and be back in the Premier League, it's everything. This club means everything to me.

"There were moments where it was touch and go whether we thought we could actually continue, but we managed to find a way through, we managed to adapt, and we've got back to the Premier League, which is everything for this football club. It's the biggest achievement in my career. 

"Everything was against us. We had the worldwide pandemic, we had no fans here. We stopped for a year and we were relegated. That is tough to actually deal with and we had to do that and we had to keep a team that was competitive with literally no income that was coming into the football club.

"So for us to be able to deal with that and get the team spirit to come back, was remarkable."

Duxbury claimed that financial pressure was not the only thing the club found it difficult to contend with during the season, saying that the Watford "family" not being entirely on the same page at moments during the campaign caused added stress.

"I view it as a family," he said. "And there were moments where the family was a little bit against us. They didn't see quite what we were doing, but I like to think that, as we proved what we were trying to do, the family stayed with us and then they saw that we were trying to build a football club that was going to achieve success.

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"There was moments where we weren't perhaps achieving what we thought we would do and people were turning against us, and the fans were turning against us, but we believed in what we were doing. We believed in the players, we believed in the vision and then people came with us."

Ultimately, the Premier League is where Duxbury and the rest of the Watford's hierarchy believe the club ought to be. 

The plan now is to establish the Hornets in the top flight once again and grow from there.

The CEO said that will only be achieved if all at Watford, fans, players and staff, are together.

"I've always said from day one that together we can achieve great things and it's not just rhetoric, it's the truth," he said. "That's been our biggest strength that, as a fan base, as an ownership, as a management, we're all together. And if we stay together, we will continue to achieve great things.

"We are a Premier League football club now. That's where we should be. So it's grea that we've had a fantastic season in the Championship, it's great that we've won so many consecutive games and were fantastic, but we're a Premier League football club. That's where we've moved Watford.

"We came here eight years ago, we are now an established Premier League football club and that's where we belong."