Up next in the Fans' Forum at the training ground last night, there was discussion around coaches and cukture, as well as the roles and responsibilities of the owner, the Technical Director and the Sporting Director.

I’ve been supporting Watford since ’72. The last four years have probably been the worst that I’ve felt supporting the club. Not for the reason that the players are worse than they have been before, but more about what the expectation is of our club. So I’m going to be greedy and ask you two questions. Gino, how important is a coach to you? Because when I look at the players out on the pitch that we’re watching every single week, it feels toxic, it feels they’re lazy, it feels they’re not motivated. How much of that is through a culture of revolving doors of coaches? If they’re not playing well the coach goes. You don’t do that to the players, you do it to the coaches. At my work if my boss changed every four months with a different philosophy every four months, I would say I’ve had enough. If I was not then paid my bonuses that I have earned, I’d say I’ve had enough. And I look at those players at the moment and I think you could get Pep in and they wouldn’t be able to shine on that pitch. I’ve not got onto the second question yet, you’ve got to answer that first one. The second question is a sort of A and B. The A is how much have we actually paid in severance payments to our ex-managers? We’re not a rich club. We average 20,000 although when I go to the ground it looks like 14,000. But we don’t have a lot of money, so how much have we paid in severance payments to these head coaches is part A. And part B is what’s your philosophy moving forward? Are you going to change your approach or is this the way’s it’s going to be moving forward? Have we just go to hope that we’re going to get lucky?

GP: “Well then I must be a very lucky man, because the club’s times over the last few years were the best ones along with the Elton times. And actually I think it comes as a compliment to me that the expectation has raised. When we arrived the expectation was quite different.

“Possibly the evaluation of this last season is because, through the hard work of people at this club over the last 10 years, we all expect something more.

“When we arrived I don’t think anybody was really disappointed about not being in the Premier League. There was other urgency, other needs.

“We understand as the club grows, expectation will also become different, become greater. And as I was telling you before, and as Scott was saying, we all know that the change of manager is not ideal. In fact that is the thing we need to fix, we need to find a manager that truly fits into the philosophy.

“We are stable and that is what has enabled us to have great results even without a stable appointment. As I said before, that’s the part where we have to work harder and we have to fix it. We know, because from my previous experience in football in Udinese, the greatest result we achieved was when a manager was in place long enough to carry out a technical project. But you need the right manager.

“In general it’s not very easy because when I look around let’s see how many clubs of our size have been able to achieve that and keep the manager long enough. Most of the clubs got promoted and got relegated, and changed the manager right after. That’s what happened in most of the occasions.

“It’s tricky, most possibly the most difficult appointment. That’s what makes it really important for the players. You see how players react to different managers. We are not here to protect the players but we know what the players will give us. So that’s the goal of the manager, he needs to manage the players.

“If he’s not able to manage then maybe we don’t have the right appointment. We have a particular group, we have a quite different set, there are a lot of different skills, a lot of different personalities, a lot of different backgrounds – which requires a different method.

“As you saw in the past, there were some managers who were able to get somewhere. We mentioned Xisco before – players were actually behaving differently. So was a player lazy before Xisco, and then became not lazy with Xisco? We have to say that in that case the manager was able to do his job properly and was able to get the players to be part of the plan.

“Of the current players we have, we have great quality but you need to get to them. Otherwise, in our set up, each club has to decide what is the way you want to go? You can just go with local players and have much more unity in that sense. While that makes it easy you might have to compromise maybe in quality. Because if you only look locally maybe your resources will be reduced.

“We approach this in a different way and so we have to be consistent, and we need to find a manager who is able to bring all this group together. When that happens, and in the past it has happened quite often. We haven’t been in the Premier League and we haven’t got to the FA Cup Final by invitation. We rightly deserved to be there because we done an extraordinary job.

“In order to surpass that we need more manager stability. We do agree on that.”

Mr Pozzo, you mention about you are here every day. Do you think that might be part of the problem, that a coach doesn’t want you here all the time, looking over their shoulder? Every single time it’s the manager. Every single time it’s the wrong manager. We’re either really bad at hiring, or we’re really good at firing – or a combination of both. Also, what about the underlying culture? Is there anything else underpinning that’s been identified for change in order to support each of the next managers? Something that we’ve learnt rather than the fact it’s always the manager?

SD: “To answer the question with regard to our new coach Valerien. We asked him what went wrong at West Brom. They had the best start in their history and were unbeaten in 11 games. He said what went wrong there was there was no support.

“There was no Technical Director, the owner was in China and he just felt isolated. When problems were occurring he had no solution and eventually things just unravelled for him.

“One of the attractions for him coming here – he had many options – was the support that is there. He looked at the fact the owner was based here, that the owner was passionate about football, that we had the scouting network, and that if there was an issue he had immediacy to resolve it.

“He loved the fact that he had a Sporting Director and a Technical Director. He needed and wanted that level of support, that daily interaction. He viewed it positively. If there was a problem he could solve it instantly.

“So I personally don’t see it as a hindrance I see it as a positive. I don’t want to keep harping on about it, but why we have achieved historical success – of course we need to do things differently and we’ve talked about the stability of coach – but why we have achieved historical success, and why I’m excited about this coach is he knows exactly what it is here, he knows exactly how we operate and that is the strength that he wants. That is the support that he requires.

“We’ve talked about what we want as a style of play, we want that work ethic, we want the high press. We want to entertain. We want to go to The Vic and enjoy a performance and a win. Then we’ll see how it goes. Expectation about promotion and doing well – I just want us to perform.

“I want to see a style of play that we can all identify and we can turn up week in, week out, knowing we’re going to see commitment, passion and a performance. And that’s what our coach wants to deliver, and part of how he’s going to deliver it is what we have, and the set-up we have here.

“So I don’t see it as a negative, I see it as a fundamental positive – and why what went wrong for him at West Brom won’t go wrong here.”

Some people feel that owner isn’t a job, it’s a status. Can you enlighten what your role is day to day around here for people who don’t work in football and don’t know all the job titles? What is it that you focus on in and around the training ground?

GP: “It’s more setting that philosophy. That idea of what we want, that sense of perfection. Then of course it’s about the people that help to do that.

“You don’t see me watching the training. You don’t see me participating in the team meetings. For all of that we have a Sporting Director and a Technical Director. But in the background there is a clear philosophy that we are carrying forward. Which is something unique and that’s the stability at this club.

“We’ve done something quite different from the past, and I’m sure a lot of you when we implemented certain policies – remember when we just arrived we brought in a lot of foreign players. Everyone said ‘They’ve got it completely wrong. It’s impossible to win this league if you don’t have a solid, strong English core, English manager. That’s the way you got to do it’.

“Well we knew if we were doing what everybody else was, most likely it would not work out in a better chance. I think someone from the audience was reminding me we are a small club in a sense. So we need to do something different to really progress.

“That’s why we need to have a solid philosophy and sometimes you have to get out of the normal, or what is considered the normal. But changing coaches is not that. We have done a lot of things differently from what people would normally expect, and I think that has been the key for the success we have had.”

The roles of Ben Manga and Cristiano Giaretta – their job titles don’t really mean much to me. Could you explain how they will work together and how the footballing team will work together? Particularly why Ben was brought in at this point, what was the change you proposed that needed to have that role in? What does he add that wasn’t here before?

GP: “In that search to improve the club, to make the club better. We were all impressed with the job that Ben did at Eintracht Frankfurt. The philosophy he was following was actually very close to the one we are implementing. So I think it was a really good fit. He has a strong knowledge of certain markets and we didn’t have great contacts there.

“We saw that there was a perfect fit because he was not overlapping in our knowledge, but at the same time he was bringing continuity in the philosophy that we have. In that case we wanted to give stronger support, add a stronger asset, inside the technical group. We have more scouts and there is a lot more work in the scouting area. And his presence here at the training ground enabled us to have a greater deal of control of relations with the players.

“We have a Technical Director and a Sporting Director, and the Sporting Director will be more on the individuals and the daily stuff, but the Technical Director intervenes on the philosophy and the continuity. When you are thinking ‘I don’t see the player commitment’, things like that. He’s also the one, together with the Sporting Director, to address those kinds of things. We want people who can help the coach to control those aspects, and make sure we have all those supports. And that’s what he offers us.”